This is the Barahoka, a wholesale bazzar where we bought the food relief items. We spent $12,300 worth of clothing, shoes, boots, underwear, etc. for flood victims. The Barahoka is HUGE. 3 miles lon and hlf mile wide on both sides of the street. thousands of shops.

Snow in Almaty the last of March. It was so beautiful, but everone hated it so much. They thought spring had come. It reminded us of Idaho.

These 2 young men are return missionaries, Max and Demi from the branch. They served in Russia. Demi broke his arm just before coming home doing a karate chop.

The Almaty branch holds a sports day on Saturdays for a couple of hours. Rain or shine or "snow".

One morning we looked out our bedroom apt. window and there was alot of people gathered in the courtyard. We didn't know what was happening. We watched as people talked to the group and then we saw a man on a stretcher, we thought, then we realized it was a muslim funeral and this man wasn't going to be put in a coffin just put in the ground. There are around 12 apt. buildings that surround the courtyard and this man lived in one of the buildings.

Almaty from the 15 floor of another missionaries apt. See the beautiful mountains.

President Woolley-mission president, Lena- convert of 6 months very sweet, one of our favorite people in the branch, and Jack(name tag) only in Almaty.

Jack in the stairwell. Most stairwells look like this one in the apt. buildings. This is a 5 story building. We are lucky we live on the third floor not the fifth. No elevator in this building. Very typical Russian apt. building. Hundreds of these in the cities here. This one was built about 60 years ago.

This is the living room. It has big windows also with a tv that gets the BBCnews in English. It has 2 large chairs and a couch.

This is the bedroom. Two large windows that looks out over the court yard and small closet space.

This is the bathroom. The washer machine is in the bathroom too. No dryer.

In Almaty, our new apt. pictures are the next few pics. this is the kitchen. This apt. rent is $700 and is on the third floor with no elavator. About half the size of the Astana apt. which costs $900. The church pays for the one in Almaty.

On International Women's Day the young missionary elders honored all of us sister missionaries with a box of chocolates and a rose.

This is Elder Weihing(wine) a new missionary that had an infection in his leg that made it swell up. The other missionaries danced and he was elevating his leg. It took over a month before the swelling went down. They never figured out what was wrong it just got better because of priesthood blessings.

This is Nona. She is taking the missionary discussions. It is taking her along time to accept the church. She calls the elders her boys. She gave us a beautiful book about Kazakhstan. She has been teaching at the university all her life. She is very witty and as sweet as they come.

This is the young missionary elders doing the manly dance for International Women's Day on March 8. We also got a new granddaughter, Annabelle, Rocky and Jenise's first baby.

Zhanna, our member in Astana came down to Almaty to get her temple recommend also. She rode the train there. And that night she rode it back so she could be at work on Monday morning.

These are the members in Kyrgystan. the lady, Jyldyz, in the middle is our translator there and works with us on projects in Kyrgystan. She is visiting the branch in Almaty. She got her first temple recommend this time when she came to visit with our help.

They felt sorry for us so they gave us a new apt. in Almaty-600 miles south of Astana. Now we have 2 apts. one up north in Astana and one down south in Almaty.

In March it is still very cold in Astana, -30F. and lots of snow and ice. You can see not to many people out on the street.

At most of our closings of projects the director likes to feed us as a thank you. This is what Aiman fed us.

The other project is a 40 foot Deseret Industries container full of winter clothing, household items and new tied quilts. The director is Aiman.

When we got back to Astana there was a couple of projects we needed to close. This is a regional hospital that needed 2 fridges for their medicines and a microwave.

On Valentine's Day we gave Zhanna and Mira a scarf and hat. This is Mira with hers. She is possing by a Christmas gift she gave us on the tv.

This is Clara, the director of an organization for abused and abandoned women with children and wants us to do a project of sewing machines.

Since last February we have been unable to get on our blog. Today June 4, 2010 we tried and it came up. Surprise! So we are going to do a little catch up here for March, April and May. If everything goes ok here arfe some new things to look at, if not we did try and we will keep trying. We are well and happy and actually we are headed back to Almaty for a month to do work in the south. The the first of July we will be back here to do a week of NRT work in two other cities.