Barrett's email, July 15th

Lipetsk

A little clearing on the edge of a river

 Baptism in a river

Voronezh

The meeting house in Voronezh. It used to be a movie theatre in the Soviet Union

In world war II, the enemy did not make it beyond this point

Greetings from Voronezh, the prettiest city I've been to yet. What a week it's been. So let's see, since last monday, what has happened. Well the new missionaries arrived. 2 Elders, 2 Senior Couples (ie, 4 people), and 8 Sisters!! Pretty much every sister in the mission is training now. My companion and I went to the airport with President and picked them up. They had a ton of stuff. We had 2 vans their to carry all the stuff and a 14 man mini-bus to carry all the people. It was nuts. 
Then on wednesday, we helped train the newbies. They've changed the system so that now the arriving missionaries come on tuesday, have orientation on wednesday, and then transfers is on thursday. When I came, we came on wednesday, slept through most of the orientation,  and then met our companions the next day. 
Transfers was nuts!! Thursday morning we took the newbies to Red Square. It was half way closed off for some military thing. They were loving it. They are all way strong missionaries. They're awesome. We contacted on the way back to the Central building. You'll never guess who we ran into: A retired operatic singer on vacation who has been Josh Groban's vocal couch since Josh Groban was 17! Way nice guy. He was trying to find St. Basil's and knew that we would speak English. He's LDS and recognized us as missionaries. 
Then we had the actual transfer meeting. It was crazy! So many missionaries, so much luggage, Elder P's family, people running left and right, everybody has a question about how this or that will work, where to go next. All the little minor details that we overlooked were realized. Every companionship in the mission got an iTouch, half the companionships are "shotgunning" (both companions are new to the area). But we made it. As far as I know everyone made it to where they were headed. 
Then that night we got on an overnight train to Lipestk. Lipetsk was great. I actually had a little trouble sleeping in lipetsk because it was so quiet. No cars, no sirens, nothing. It was fantastic. We were there friday, saturday, and sunday morning. On saturday there was a baptism... IN A RIVER!! That's awesome! 
After church on sunday we took a two hour bus ride to voronezh. Oh my goodness, I love Voronezh! It is incredible. Beautiful buildings, super old streets, hillsides covered in little houses and trees. Sometimes it looks more like what I imagine Italy looking like than Russia. And the church building... well, just look at it! It's gigantic! 
Well, just about time to go. Have a great week. Love you. 
Love
Elder Hamp