It was a hot June day on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Russia, when Elder Khruschev (yes, like the former Soviet leader) turned to me and said, “I think we should visit Sofia again.”
My initial reaction was to wonder why on earth we’d want to do that, but only two days earlier we’d stopped by this same babushka’s apartment (babushka = old lady, or grandma) at his insistence, only to find her feeling terrible and close to calling an ambulance. We had explained that Elder Khruschev felt we needed to stop by for some reason, and gave her a priesthood blessing, after which she felt much better.
With that experience so recent in my memory, I wasn’t about to say no.
“Alright, let’s go,” I said.
When the elevator, which had enough graffiti on its walls to keep someone busy reading for a few hours, finally got to her floor, we instantly smelled something burning. We knocked on her door, noticing the smell was even stronger here, and soon the door opened to reveal a blanket of smoke.
Sofia’s four-foot figure waved us into the apartment. We could hardly see from one end to the other of her tiny apartment.
“I’m all in smoke!” she said in an adorable but exasperated voice. “Help me open the windows!”
We quickly set to opening all her doors and windows to let out the smoke. The levers that open the windows, it turns out, were too high for her to reach, so our arrival turned out to be quite fortuitous once again.
The apartment took a while to air out, even with all the windows and front door open. While we waited, Sofia quite animatedly unfolded the saga of how she had left in a hurry earlier and, in her haste, completely forgotten that she had been cooking eggs on her stove. A blackened crisp and an apartment full of smoke were all that remained of the eggs by the time she returned, and we had arrived a few short minutes later.
Aside from another reminder of Sofia’s comical senility and just how funny a place Russia can be, it was an interesting reminder of the fact that we’re all here for a reason, and sometimes a hunch is more than just a hunch. Elder Khruschev was often a loud and boisterous missionary, but he was also an insightful and caring branch president for the members of that (very) small branch in Sestroretsk, Russia. Looking back these two years, I admire the example that he set and the real difference he made in those peoples’ lives.
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