"My life here is so full in one sense that it seems much more than a few months since I was in America. Life seems very, very short in comparison with the wide conception of possibilities which gives the zest to youth. Everything seems so partial and the total is so hard to realize. To keep tranquility with the increase of perception and understanding means renounciation as far as I can see. It must be a great privilege to work and pursue one's greatest convictions--to act what one feels sure of--this is in many ways adjustment to circumstances. Please God that there may be some good in it."
"The spirit is everything--nothing else matters. I can never leave the ward on their hands (new sisters) and I mean every day from 8 until 9 at night and often part of the night, if it is very serious. I am very well, sleep little, eat little and am flourishing."
So after this additional stage in Russia at the Community, Nelka returned once again to America, but not for very long. Early in 1912 she was again getting ready to go back to Europe. Writing from Ashantee in 1912 she said:
"I know it is unrest--I know it all--yet the true picture is that of going thousands of miles to where I am not needed, and leaving my two best friends. I long for the work and can't wait. Between now and it, just think what bumps and jolts and frights and moans. Oh, what is it all about?"
Nelka spent that winter with her aunt Martha in Washington. It had been a winter entirely filled with social activities--balls, dinners, the White House, the Embassies--and Nelka could not stand it any longer and was seeking some contrast. She certainly achieved the contrast all right, for as soon as she returned to Russia she was sent to the outskirts of the Oural Mountains. In that region a famine had been quite severe and the Government sent out feeding stations and Red Cross units to take care of the stricken people. Sisters were established in different villages, sometimes entirely isolated, where they issued provisions and gave medical care to the peasants. Nelka spent a whole winter in one of these villages, living in a one-room hut with a peasant family and sleeping on a wooden bench. What a contrast after the social life of Washington!