Blog #15: Final Personal Narrative

To Russia and Back

“Family meeting! Everyone come to the family room!”

“Great. Another family meeting. It’s not like any of us actually pay attention.”

I roll my eyes as I drag my feet into the family room. My dad always called these meetings to discuss what was important for all of us to know. Usually that meant talking about what was going to happen in the week, or telling us to stop playing tic-tac-toe on the baby’s diaper, or something like that. To me it was time to see how much I could goof off with my brother Jake before we got in trouble. But my parents were insistent that we have these meetings, so we gathered together distractedly.

“Well kids, your mother and I have been meeting with some leaders of the Church, and now we have permission to tell you that I have been called as a mission president to the Russia, Moscow mission and in June we will be moving to Russia for the next three years.”

I had been lying on the carpet, but before my dad could finish his sentence I was sitting upright. This was kind of a big deal. I had never been to Russia, never even really heard anything about the place, but that was the country I would call home for the three years of my life. Three years was a long time, I had only even been alive for twice that. My parents tried to explain what this calling and this move meant and why it was all happening. I could faintly hear their voices, even though they were talking normally and we were in the same room. I was still dazed by the news, and I turned attention to my own thoughts. My brain was pounding against my skull as I tried to take in this information.

“Russia. Three years. Russia. Three years.”
The next few months were extremely busy, and I felt like my life had become a whirling twister of events. My parents had to pack up everything they needed for themselves and their six kids for the next three years, fly all of us over the ocean to a new country, and live for three years in a foreign place. With the oldest of these kids, my sister Annelise, being nine years old, and the youngest, my little brother McKay, having yet to hit the one year when the call came, this task was extremely difficult. My mom, while recovering from surgery, would slowly make her way around the house, carefully packing the belongings we needed to take with us, wrapping the fragile ones in newspaper and bubble wrap. My dad spoke to us in Russian, trying to give us a head start on learning the language.

“Priviet!” My dad spoke crisply with no trace of an American accent. “That is how you say hi to kids your age. Make sure you roll the r nicely.”

“Priviet!” Somehow I could never make it sound as good as my dad, although I did learn to roll my tongue the right way.

When the time finally came to leave, relatives were sobbing in the airport. Everyone was hugging, talking frantically about how much we were all going to be missed and what a great experience we were about to have. My legs were tired, so I sat in the baby’s car seat waiting to leave. I watched with disgust at all the kissing and the crying. Of course I acted all nice to everyone because my parents were around and I wasn’t going to see these people for three years anyways.

“Can we get on the plane already? I’m tired. This is ridiculous. I swear, if one more aunt tries to kiss me I am going to scream!”

When it finally came time to load the plane I was relieved. I could sit down and finally get moving. Patience has never been my strong point, and moving to a new country definitely would not be something I could wait for well. When we finally got to our seats my brother and I took the two seats by the window. My mom passed around gum for us to chew on so that our ears would pop when the plane took off. I pressed my face to the glass as the plane taxied down the runway and began her ascent. As the ground slowly receded from view, I took my last look at America, the land I would not see again for three years, then turned towards the front of the plane and started playing the games I brought in my carry-on.
I started my elementary school experience in Russia. Day one of first grade. As if the transition to a real school wouldn’t have been hard enough, I was going in without any of my old friends and I knew that I would be alone. My school, the Anglo-American School of Moscow (AAS), was the top international school in the area. The school attended by the children of ambassadors and business men alike. What I saw was a building much bigger than any elementary school I had seen at home, where the tallest was only two floors. Next to this building easily double the size of my old school, I felt myself shrink smaller and smaller, until I was sure I would slip between the cracks in the sidewalk. It didn’t help that I had made us all late either.

“Mom do I have to go to school today? I won’t know anybody! What if I don’t make any new friends?”

“Honey, you are going to love it! Just get in there and make some new friends.”

“Mom I really don’t want to. Please don’t make me go. I don’t want to!”

“Get in there now or I will hold your hand, walk you in, and sit with you the whole time.”

And thus started first grade. I came into my classroom alone after class had already begun, so all eyes were on me. A brilliant way to start off. I looked at all the faces, and I was shocked at what I saw; the skin tones ranged from white like me to very dark brown, with every possible tint in between. I had come from Utah, where everyone I knew was white. I didn’t even know that all these different ethnicities even existed. Russia was a much stranger place than I had imagined.

This initial shock did not last long, however. Although meeting new people of different races and cultures was new to me, it was not frightening. My curiosity was very much aroused, so I set out to make new friends in this new school. One of my first friends was Dylan, the kid I sat next to on my first day of school.

“Hi I’m Spencer. Who are you?”

“My name’s Dylan. I am from India. Where are you from?”

“I am from Orem, Utah, in the United States.”

I soon learned that my classmates were from all over the world including India, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Canada, Pakistan, Korea, and many other places. In fact, throughout all of AAS there were kids from 46 different countries. To me it was a tantalizing blur of colors, cultures, and traditions. Being so young, I really had no trouble adapting to this new situation. In America, all the people I knew were white and Mormon. Here people were Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and many other religions. Most people dressed the way I did, jeans and a t-shirt, but walking the halls of school I passed people wearing strange clothes. One girl wore clothes that wrapped her whole body, a boy wore a strange hat on the back of his head, some girls always kept their heads covered by a shawl.

“Well if that’s what they are supposed to wear, then that’s fine by me. A little weird, but hey that’s their deal.”

My fourth grade year, my last year in Russia, was a time when I learned the most. I had to very good friends, but their backgrounds were quite different from mine. C.J. was a fellow American, but he came from Texas and was a Catholic. Salim was from Egypt, and he was a devout Muslim. To those looking on, this surely was an unlikely trio. Our backgrounds had very little in common. This did not matter to us in the slightest. We were three rowdy young boys who had common interests. We spent our time playing video games, going bowling, playing racquetball, getting into trouble, and doing what normal elementary school kids do. However, there were times when our differences were discussed. One particular instance, we were discussing the idea of Christ and His return to the earth.

“I think that Christ was a good prophet. But He wasn’t a Savior, He didn’t come back from the dead, and He won’t come back to earth,” was Salim’s answer.

C.J. thought that “Christ has already told us when He is coming again. My parents know the exact day He is coming, and I will be ready.”

I told them what I believed, that “no one knows when Christ will come again, but we should be ready for Him whenever He does come.”

As we resumed our games, I thought about how we all think differently. No one of us was exactly the same.

“It would be kind of boring if everyone thought exactly the same. No excitement at all, and no one to talk about different ideas with.”

Three short years after that plane landed in Russia, I planted my feet firmly on American soil, breathed the American air, and basked in the American sunlight. It felt good to be home. However, in talking to my friends, I was alarmed at how little they knew about the world. Telling them my stories over the years often leads them to ask what I found to be obvious questions.

“Why do Indian women put dots on their foreheads?” “Why do Muslims all want to blow up Americans?” “Don’t people dress funny over there?” How could you stand living in such a cold, dirty, poor place?”

I smile as I answer as best I can. These people have never been east of the Mississippi, some never even outside the state of Utah. How are they to know? Over the years my answers have become more and more knowledgeable, as I learn more than I ever knew. Pouring over pages of books, watching news and informational programs, looking at artwork, I try to learn more about these cultures. Not the facts, the information, the statistics. The people I knew who came from these different heritages. I established my global roots eleven years ago. Maybe now I can plant that seed in someone else.