By Rita Turek

Dear Friends of Sister City,

We are now into our sixteenth year of friendship building with our sister city in Rubtsovsk, Russia, and have been considering taking on a partnership with another city in a different country. This year Sister Cities International celebrates 50 years of citizen diplomacy.

New to this organization, I am just learning about the potential of citizen diplomacy. Certainly we all know of the increasing pressures and hear about how countries outside of the United States feel about Americans. I am finding that Sister Cities is a wonderful way to be involved and contribute to international peace and understanding, one person at a time. Lofty goals yes, but collectively Sister Cities International represents more than 2500 communities in 126 countries.

To help us grow as an organization and build capacity of the sister city movement each one of you has a special role to play. We can all be citizen diplomats! You can start today by joining our local sister city or just making sure that you are on our mailing list. It takes only a minute to become involved and become part of a collective voice to improve our world.

Now is the time.

It’s time to join or renew membership in the Grants Pass Sister City Committee. Support exchange activities and community projects with your annual membership dues. These funds provide our operating expenses each year. Find the membership form on the back. Please send with your check to

Grants Pass Sister City Committee

P.O. Box 411, Grants Pass, OR 97528

If you would like short monthly news about sister city events and projects, please fill in your e-mail address. Since we produce only three or four print newsletters per year, we would like to keep members updated more frequently by e-mail.

If you have any membership questions, please phone Nancy Hitchcock at 479-9436.

Nina Fominykh, Director of the Rubtsovsk Library System, wrote us in December: "I'd like to thank you for the present that you have made for our Library. We have recently received from you the books that were collected for our customers. We hope that these books will help our readers to improve their knowledge of English. I send my heartfelt Christmas and New Year wishes to you."

These books were some of the 600 plus children’s books collected by the South Middle School Builders’ Club last spring. We will ship the remainder in 2006.

Valentina Tibekina, retired director of the Rubtsovsk schools, requests fifth and sixth grade children to be pen pals with Rubtsovsk students of the same age. Tanya Oskolkova, English instructor at the Rubtsovsk University, asks for pen pals for her students, who are in their early 20’s. Please call Nancy Hitchcock at 479-9436 if you are interested.

Kitty Waud of Three Rivers Community Hospital received a donation of medical sutures no longer being used. These were shipped to Hospital #3 via the Nazarene Ministry of Help in September. We hope to hear soon that they have been received by the hospital.

News from Rubtsovsk

In June, the four women who visited us in May met in the library with the Rubtsovsk press and sister city friends. President Marina Kovalyova reported, "There were people from other delegations and simply families who had guests from Grants Pass. Our ladies told a lot of new things about your medical system, their impressions, about our friends and so on. We recalled our stories and spent very wonderful time together."

Later in the summer, Elena Nefyodova e-mailed a letter to Grants Pass, which was read at the annual meeting in September.

"We, 4 women from Siberia, Rubtsovsk, were happy to have a chance to visit our Sister-City, Grants Pass in the USA. The beginning of our long trip was very sad because the embassy refused to give us visas thinking that we forged our invitation. It offended us and we didn’t hope to get them then, really. But due to the help of the Sister-Cities from both sides, who immediately began to fight for our honor, in the long run we got our visas.

So our journey began in Seattle, where we were met like queens, and this pleasant feeling of comfort and hospitality accompanied us during the whole visit. We were surrounded with such care and warmth that we didn’t feel homesickness and didn’t notice the absence of our Russian families. This fact was the most surprising for us. We expected to see strict people with certain ambitions, but we saw soft, kind people, striving for friendship and love.

When we entered Grants Pass, we saw no people (!) in the streets, only cars and trees, flowers everywhere. But then we saw that Grants Pass lives actively and is like "ant hill".

Time of our visit passed as one moment. Many nice meetings, parties, excursions were organized by the members of the Sister City in Grants Pass who put their hearts and souls to make our visit interesting and useful. We were excited to take part in the parade [Boatnik] and liked intellect and simplicity of the mayor of Grants Pass.

We were impressed by the beauty of Red Forest, Crater Lake, and the Pacific Ocean. It was a real luck to learn so many new things about the system of medicine in the USA, to see so many differences and still some similarities in our holy work to help people to be healthier and happier. In fact, we continue to share our impressions with our colleagues in Rubtsovsk till now, and it’s really pleasant that many people are interested in everything connected with your city, its people, their interests and so on.

Special thanks to our American families who appeared to become our relatives. They did their best to let us feel at home. All of us miss our families and friends. We are grateful to our interpreters who helped us a lot to understand you. We shan’t forget that when we left there were tears in our and your eyes.

We remember all people we’ve met and hope to see all of you in our city. Welcome to Rubtsovsk!

Love,

Lena Nefyodova and members of the medical delegation, 2005."

Take a look at the Grants Pass Sister City display in the hallway of the Josephine County Library Main Branch. The display, which will be up for the rest of January, showcases activities of our local sister city committee, including Winterfest, as well as the 50th Anniversary of Sister Cities International.

We are sorry to hear of the death this month of Galina Krasilovets, after a long illness. Galina was an English teacher who interpreted for many delegations to Rubtsovsk and accompanied students here in 1997.

Rita Turek, President 846-0507

Mark Kellenbeck, Vice Pres 476-1141

Gwen Jacobsen, Secretary 479-3262

Mary Slayter, Treasurer 476-6315

Fritz Brune

Nancy Hitchcock

Mollie Means

Ruth Pepple

Debbie Pike

Vera Quimby

Kitty Waud

We welcome Three Rivers Community Hospital nurse Debbie Pike, who hosted in May, to the board. We thank retiring board member Carolyn Rice, for her many years of service.

Winterfest is our annual gathering to celebrate the friendship between Grants Pass and Rubtsovsk. We’ll enjoy Russian food, meet former and future delegation members and re-connect with host families, interpreters, and others who help make exchange visits possible. It’s an opportunity for anyone interested in international friendship programs to learn what’s happening and how to be involved.

This year, we will introduce members of two exchange groups scheduled to visit Rubtsovsk in 2006. We’ll enjoy music by the Grants Pass Woodwind Quintet, under the leadership of Joe Chankin. The planning committee is studying Russian "finger food" recipes to provide hearty fare for a winter evening.

Brian Robinson, retired firefighter and police officer, has organized a five-person delegation to visit Rubtsovsk this spring. Over the years, former exchange member Ron Brown of KDRV has encouraged us to pursue such a delegation. Brian was further encouraged to visit Rubtsovsk by some of the Rubtsovsk doctors who are married to public safety officials.

We are delighted that two city firefighters have volunteered to be part of this delegation. Brian Pike serves as the Fire Commander for the City of Grants Pass and is a member of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Tony Strickland is a firefighter for the City of Grants Pass.

The other members of this delegation are recently retired Josephine County District Attorney Clay Johnson and his wife Huong. Mr. Johnson has long been interested in visiting our sister city, but could not find time to do so until his retirement.

What a wealth of information this group will have to share with their counterparts in Rubtsovsk. We hope this exchange visit will lead to a public safety delegation from Rubtsovsk visiting us in the future.

Ruth Pepple and Rachel Parker will accompany a small group of high school students to Rubtsovsk this summer. There is space available for one or two more students. The two-week trip will cost participants approximately $2000. The sister city committee will help students with fund-raising if needed.

We are looking for high school students who are interested in learning about and living in a foreign culture, have a desire to travel, work well with others, are willing to speak to groups, and have successfully completed at least their freshman year and will not be graduating in 2006.

Please call Ruth Pepple at 479-3786 as soon as possible if you are interested in this opportunity.