Last Email for 2011!

As I mentioned in the last post, it was great to hear from Elder Broekhuijsen on Christmas Eve.  I suppose after our 40 minute conversation, it was difficult to come up with much "new" stuff to say.  So, we'll accept this relatively short email for today, but it better be longer next week!  (Uh oh - there I go getting demanding and being ungrateful - just kidding, Andrew!)

Wow. I can't believe 2011 is drawing to a close. For reals, it's crazy to think that one year ago, I was already drawing close enough to my MTC day to be counting the days in the back of my mind. Time that is already over has flown quickly, even though time doesn't usually fly quickly while it's happening :D

Skyping you all (except not Melissa, because that would have been DISOBEDIENT) was a pleasure. The first time I've seen your faces in 10 months, can you believe it? Hopefully I didn't say too many half-Russian, half-English sentences. I kind of realized after the call was over that there isn't anyone I really ever talk to who doesn't understand the weird English/Russian hybrid language all the missionaries speak among ourselves. So I stopped noticing that there were English words that I hadn't said for months because I always just said them in Russian. I'm pretty sure a good 10% of that call was in Russian, in hindsight. Garrett, get a haircut.  [In Garrett's defense, Andrew called earlier than we expected and none of us had had a chance to "do our hair."  In fact, Garrett had a haircut on Monday last week!]

Hopefully as I write this, you're sleeping from a really fantastic Christmas Day! I know I had one.

We had some really miraculous things happen throughout the Zone yesterday. Destin (*ahem* I mean Elder Swartz) in Penza had a lady come to church named J*. She is half African and half Russian, and 100% awesome. She wants to be baptized. She loved church so much. Yesterday was also the first day they had ever met or heard of her. It's a Christmas Miracle!

Thank you SO MUCH for the awesome Christmas package. It made the whole month just full of brightness and cheer, and cheer, and brightness. The entire apartment smells like Christmas juice still, because I sprayed insane quantities of it every day. I'm wearing the dicey gold tie, and wore the sick purple one yesterday. They are SO cool. The PJs will be happening every night for at least 363 more days, and I just really had an amazing Christmas!

Anyway, my hour's almost up. Elder Langston and I gotta get home and pack for exchanges with Orenburg; we're leaving to go down there on a train at 5:30ish today. It's going to be awesome; I love trains.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in 2012!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Christmas Phone Call!

We don't have any video clips of our "phone call" with Andrew this morning (it was 7:30 at night there, but 8:30 in the morning here!)  It was actually a "Skype" communication, so we got video AND audio!  Anyway, we did take some notes of things he said and thought we'd share a bit!

Question:  What are your favorite things about Russia?

Answer:  The people (especially the branch members, who are super nice)  Finding "golden" investigators, with open minds; and CHOCOLATE!

Question:  What will you be doing on Christmas?

Answer:  Working!  In Russia, Christmas is celebrated not on 25 December, but on 7 January!  

Question:  Is it more difficult to find investigators in the cold winter?

Answer:  Actually, I prefer contacting in the winter.  There are virtually no drunk people out on the streets, so we can talk to anyone we see.  

Question:  What do you eat?

Answer:  Andrew said that because they travel around the zone so much, they end up eating whatever the missionaries they are visiting are eating.  His companion, Elder Langston did mention that Andrew makes a "killer borsch" and also something called "plove" which is apparently something like rice with chicken and curry and is a Ukrainian dish.  He also mentioned that they eat some sort of "cheap" grain - he thought it might be buckwheat, but wasn't sure of the English word for it.

Question:  Do  you have enough money?

Answer:  Yes, it is plenty as long as we keep track of the expenses that are reimbursable.  They won't let us starve or anything, so if we run out of money we can get more, along with a lecture about fiscal responsibility!  :-)

Question:  Did you get a pair of boots yet?

Answer:  No, but lots of missionaries go their whole missions without boots.  They are really expensive to get good ones and so far I haven't needed them.  As long as we keep walking, our toes stay warm!  

Question:  How do you get around?

Answer:  We use buses and "transports" a lot.  The "transports" are basically vans that you can take to various destinations.  We walk if it's close enough.  For travel between cities, we get to take the train!

Question:  Is it a hindrance to work so much in the dark?  (The sun sets at 3:30 in Samara right now.)

Answer:  I don't really notice it much anymore - we just keep working.  It was easy to get  up in the summer, though, because the sun came up so early - something like 2:00 a.m.  (We're thinking he may have been exaggerating a bit on that point!)

Andrew also demonstrated his Russian skills for us - sometimes intentionally (He and the Branch President's son had a conversation for us) and sometimes accidentally.  When Joshua asked him what his favorite part of being in Russia was, he started answering in Russian!  We all sat there listening and finally Joshua said, "Uh, we don't speak Russian!"

In all, it was wonderful to get to talk to Andrew. Those 40 minutes sped by remarkably fast!  He looks good!  He sounds good!  I wish there was a way to get/give a hug through Skype, but I guess I'll just be content with what I got!  Merry Christmas to you all from Andrew and from us!

Photos!!!

We received a surprise email from a Senior Sister who is serving in the office of the Samara mission.  She sent us a couple of photos and also said kind things about our son - so we think she is a very nice person! I'll put her comments  below the photos.

The nice lady said, "I had a chance to take a couple of pictures of your son at the Mission Office today and thought you would enjoy them! He is doing a great job! We enjoy being around him. He works hard, has a great attitude! You can be very proud of him! Enjoy the pictures!  Merry, Merry Christmas!"

A Quickie Email

I won't complain, because we DO get a phone call from Elder Broekhuijsen this week, but today's email was way shorter than normal.  Maybe he's just making sure we appreciate the fact that he generally sends much longer ones!

Boy, how the time flies.

Speaking of time flying, Elder Langston and I are going to the Saratov Zone Conference to do a training. Which is cool, except that it's 11:10 right now and we have to be at the train station in 50 minutes, and we're a half an hour from home. Which means this email is going to be CRAZY short. Sorry :( I'll make it up to you by calling on Christmas Eve at 7:00 PM our time. 

So L* is going to get baptized on Christmas Eve! Which is awesome, because that means I'm going to baptize her, and then get out of the water, get dressed, and we'll probably have a closing prayer and then I'll go skype you from the branch building not long after that.

There are actually way too many miracles to explain here in the next 5 minutes. But I'm SO happy for all the awesome stuff that Melissa is having in her area. I know she'll be a WONDERFUL trainer. I also have the Arabian Christmas song (I think that's what it's called?) stuck in my head about 99% of any given day. It's the best thing ever.

I love my mission! I'm excited to be able to tell you all the amazing stuff that I have going for me right now. Elder Langston is the best companion ever, we're tearing it up. God is pouring out new investigators on our heads like nothing else; they're so awesome and elect! And since neither of us has language skills miles ahead of the other, we teach in really good unity, which is awesome!

Zone Conference here was wonderful!

Okay. Well I pretty much have to go now. So, yeah. But I love you!  I'm so glad things are just going excellenty down there. I'm happy to hear my fish get to spend Christmas in Paradise :D  

[Editor's note: This was in response to us telling him the sad news that the heater in the aquarium malfunctioned and we unintentionally cooked all the fish he left here with us. Nice that he was able to see the "bright side" of the situation!]

Love you all! Talk to you in a few days!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Thanksgiving Pic

Andrew sent us this photo of his Thanksgiving at the mission home a couple of weeks ago.  For some reason (called "I forgot") I didn't post it until now.  He looks good, don't you think?!

December 11, 2011 Update

Another great Monday!   It's always a treat to hear from Andrew, and we try not to take for granted the fact that he is such a faithful email writer!  This is what he had to say today:

Well hey everyone!

I've been having a pretty ridiculous week. Last Tuesday morning, we had a bunch of missionaries come in from Penza, Orenburg, Novokuybyshevsk, and even two from Saratov to stay in our apartment during Visa trips. There are two Visa trip "groups" time-wise, so I didn't go on this one; I'm on the other track. Anyway, I got to spend some more time on the street with Elder Swartz. It was awesome!

Cool mini-story about that, actually. We had five Elders with us one night, and were trying to decide how to split things up between who was going to our meeting and who was going to work on the street. I just figured Elder Wood and I should go to our meeting and the other three could go contacting; but for some reason, Elder Wood said he felt like he should be on the street that night. At the end of the day, Elder Wood ended up on the street with Elder Swartz. They found a guy who had a dream about them finding him on the street one year ago. His name is S* and he speaks pretty good English. He is SO awesome. I LOVE IT SO MUCH when God puts a really spiritually sensitive, kind, humble, intelligent, amazing person like that in our path.

Cool other story about an investigator found this week: An entire family of deaf people on the street. They are also SO AMAZING. The mom's name is M* and her 12-year-old daughter is named N*. She also has a husband who we haven't met yet, and a 7-year-old daughter who actually does hear just fine but is really shy, and a son named R* who is 3 and the most hilarious kid ever. I'll take pictures and hopefully videos even if I can get permission. Even Melissa would not be able to deny this kid's cuteness.

Anyway, we had a meeting with them, and it was really different. There's not much point talking because they can barely hear anything and they never learned how to pronounce words very well either. They speak Russian sign language. We do a lot of writing and Elder Wood and I are also picking up on the sign language. It's nice because in spoken Russian, you have 6 different case-endings to worry about for pretty much any given word, crossed with four different possible genders. In signs, they dropped cases entirely. It's not as precise, but you can get the message across just fine. It requires less thinking in a lot of ways to construct a sentence.

Because the meetings are so quiet, you can feel the Spirit really strongly the whole time. The family is amazing.  They accept everything we tell them and will try anything. At the end of our second lesson with them, M* prayed at the end in signs. I didn't catch much, obviously, but I saw the word "spirit," "family," and a lot of "thank you"s. After the prayer, she just opened the floodgates and started crying. It was amazing how strong the Spirit was. 

The next steps we're taking is trying to get things hooked up with them and a deaf member family from the Dachney branch in Saratov. We're going through all the hoops we need to in order to get permission to set up a Skype call with them so they can translate on the lesson for us. It's interesting how easy it seems to speak "just plain ol' Russian" after a lesson with this awesome family. It's easier to speak Russian than English after talking Russian sign language with them for 45 minutes. 

L*, unfortunately, didn't get baptized.  As it happened, she gave us a call 30 minutes before we showed up to the branch. Her mom, who had never before expressed anything against her baptism (she's aware what's been going on and hasn't cared at all), had forbidden her to leave the house. I guess L* said something about the baptismal record that the church keeps that she needed to sign and her mom flipped out and put a quick end to the whole shebang. It's understandable because there are lots of really small "churches" around here that have sneaky ways of stealing people's apartments (that's one we hear all the time... "you just want to steal my apartment!"). But it's frustrating because her mom wouldn't see sense and read the document. She still doesn't care if L* gets baptized or not, she just doesn't want her to sign anything. So we had a great meeting with her last night and laid down some plans. We're hoping to get her baptized on Wednesday, even if that means not signing the baptismal record for a while. The paper isn't really important; it's just for the Church's records. So we'll be giving L*'s mom a few days to cool down and then hopefully she'll be willing to look at the document and figure out it isn't signing away anything. 

Elder Wood got transferred! It is now officially the first day of his last transfer, and the Lord decided to let this insanely aweome missionary go end his mission by lighting Saratov Zone on fire as a Zone Leader down there. I'm happy for him, but a little bummed we don't get to serve together again another transfer. He's an insanely awesome and experienced missionary, and I still feel I have a ton I could learn from him. My new companion and the new Samara Zone Leader with me will be Elder Langston. I'm WAY pumped actually. He's one of my best friends from the MTC; we were in the same district and everything. But in the field, I have yet to be in the same zone as him for a transfer, let alone the same companionship! It's going to be a ridiculously awesome cycle here in Bezimianski.

Zone Conference is coming up this week, so I'll be able to tell you all about it next week! Also, there's been some of that "political unrest" that the white handbook talks about here because of the elections. Lots of people think they're rigged. I won't offer my opinion on that, because it's pretty much not important at all to my work here. So there have been a couple of rallies and stuff, and the Area Presidency have decided that we can't talk to people who are affiliated with politics on the streets for the time being. We also will be staying inside on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Okay. My computer just told me I'm running out of time. So there's the update. Thanks for everything! I love you all! Merry Christmas! Have a wonderful holiday season! I'll talk to you next week!  Love you!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Happy December!

Last night I dreamed that Andrew came home from his mission for some kind of medical procedure, but he was very grumpy and uncommunicative.  Thank goodness it was only a dream!  From what I can tell, he's healthy and still willing to talk to us!  Here's what he said this morning:

I've had a good week! There isn't a whole lot to write about this week, but it was fun.

We had Zone Leader Council for December on Tuesday and Wednesday. ZLC is always a lot of fun. It's cool to come out of it with the helm kind of "readjusted" and everything feeling ready to take on a new month.  Elder Wood and I taught a breakout on building up areas to have good teaching pools and lots of investigators that are making progress towards baptism. That way, you always have people to meet with and rarely end up wandering around on the streets for eight long hours of contacting.

L* is doing wonderfully. She is living the word of wisdom (we bought her some "allowed" tea) and accepted the commitment to live the Law of Chastity. She is also really sincerely praying to find out if the Book of Mormon really is true. Everything so far is looking good for her. I guess next time I write I'll have to attach a picture of her baptism :)

I got your package! Thank you SO much! It's the happiest, most wonderful, best-organized package I have ever received in my life. The advent calendar is hanging behind my desk, and today Elder Wood and I are going to try to find a Christmas tree to put presents under for the apartment.

A couple of funny stories from this week: The Assistants have an investigator named M* that Elder Wood found while he was on exchanges down there a month or so ago (Elder Wood has a reputation for unwittingly finding high numbers of young, single, female investigators). The Assistants and M* had a fast together this week so that M*'s parents would let her come to church. At the end of the fast, they asked her how it went. She said, "It was great! I lost two kilograms." Oooh. Missed the point... :D

Early last week, Elder Wood and I found a man named J* from Georgia (the country). He was crazy golden it seemed. In fact, it seems like I told you about him last week, now that I think about it.  Anyway, we randomly just ran into him on the street while contacting a few days after he stood us up on a meeting. He said he had read the entire Book of Mormon and not learned anything he didn't already know. We were skeptical, of course. But regardless of the fact that he couldn't answer any questions about it, he insisted he had read it and it didn't mean there were any true religions. So that was kind of a bummer. Oh, well. He still has it. Maybe some day he'll REALLY read it and realize he needs to make some changes. It's frustrating to me when people just "decide" what they believe and then won't back off of it for any reason, regardless of how willing God is to give them real answers and real truth, if they would just open their minds and try Him. But I guess those people just aren't ready yet. Meanwhile, we will move on and seek out those who ARE ready to search with sincerity.

Okay. Well, that's it. I love you all! Things are awesome here, as usual! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Thanksgiving in Russia

Sounds like Andrew had a great Thanksgiving.  Hope you all did too!  Here's what Elder Broekhuijsen had to say this morning…

It's pretty cold down here in Samara. On exchanges with the Avrora Office Elders this week, we had a lot of meetings fall through, so I spent a good two hours on the street with Elder Long (Elder Johnson's [<-- that's Melissa's friend!] companion from the MTC), just contacting. Man it was chilly. Found out later that day from a member that it was -16 Celcius. So we're not hitting -40 yet, but we're on the way. It was cold enough to finally get the cool "breath freezing on your scarf and eyebrows" effect. Luckily, my coat and thermal stuff weren't phased at all, and my hands stayed in my pockets unless I was giving someone an invitation to church or a Book of Mormon.

We also had exchanges with assistants this week. I got to spend a night with Elder Morris out on the streets. He's such an awesome missionary, I was so lucky to serve with him. And I'm way pumped to get to see him and work closely with him as long as he's assistant and I'm zone leader here, which will most likely be a minimum of one more cycle after this transfer is over.

Happy Birthday Mom! I know it's not yet, but it's soon! I love you! I'll probably find a day to send down a big ol' package of Christmas and Birthday stuff for everyone. I don't have a ton of money to spend on it, but there are certain things here that are cheaper and better here than in America. One of them starts with a 'C' and ends with "hocolate." 

We had Thanksgiving Dinner with the whole district and the office couple and President and Sister Sartori on Wednesday! It was insanely delicious and SO much fun. I haven't eaten that well since before my mission. It really was a fantastic day to think about all the billions and billions of things I have to be grateful for. I remember having a hard time thinking of stuff to write in the Thankful Turkey guy back at home. Man. I guess I was a pretty stinking ungrateful kid.  [Editor's note:  Not true, but still the kind of thing a parent appreciates hearing on occasion!]   :-) 

Elder Wood and I found a really awesome elect man named J* from Georgia on the streets yesterday. He believes in God SO strongly, but he's not real satisfied with religion, especially in Russia.  He wrote his dissertation on Religions of the World back in the Soviet Union times, and told us some stories about how he had to be really sneaky to get his hands on books about religion at all (including one story where he bribed a librarian to let him see the religion books by giving her expensive chocolate). There was also one about how he tricked his professor into writing him a note so he would have permission to get into the restricted section of the library. Madam Pince almost didn't let him in, but in the end of the day, he didn't have to bust out the invisibility cloak. Okay, I made that last one up.

Anyway. Other than that, not a whole lot out of the ordinary going on. I'm loving my mission more than ever. I'm happy to hear there's some sick nasty computer-construct-age going down in the Broekhuijsen house. If I had heard about that my first cycle in the field... oh, man. Distractions. But thankfully, I've gotten past that phase of my mission. Seriously, I'm really glad I don't care about that stuff very much right now. It's not that I won't be interested in it again when I get home, but God has changed my brain somehow. I can just turn off the part of it that cares about my old hobbies for the most part. It's really a huge blessing. 

Speaking of old hobbies (I leave the "caring about old hobbies" part of my brain on on P-days.) :D  Elder Wood Senior (the husband in the office couple... yeah, names are confusing, I know) is a really good photographer, turns out, AND he highly enjoys pen turning. I see  some cool hanging out with him, me and Dad some day in the future. I'll have to make sure to get his contact information before whichever one of us goes home first actually goes home. 

Okay. Well have a wonderful week! 

Happy Thanksgiving/Merry Christmas/Happy Birthday Mom!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Baptism Photos

Andrew sent us a couple of photos on Monday, but  I'm just now getting around to posting them!  These are from E*'s baptism last Saturday (19 November.)  Jerome showed them to a coworker of his who served his mission in Samara about 8 or 9 years ago.  Jerome said something about the people not looking overly happy, at which point his coworker explained that the Russian people don't always show a lot of emotion outwardly because in years past (in the Soviet Union) "if you were smiling, then you must have something valuable - so people would follow you to your home, break in, and steal it."   So, the people just got used to not showing a lot of outward (positive) emotion.  Anyway, I thought that was an interesting insight.

Bratya & Syostri

I'm not sure why Jerome's alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m., but at least it was helpful today.  (I can't say that I was as happy about it yesterday…)  Anyway, you can thank him for getting this post so early this morning!

Alright, Bratya & Syostri,

Let's get started! I had a great week! We went on exchanges with the Elders in Novokuybyshevsk this week! They're doing really well. They like finding entire families to baptize. Turns out they just moved apartments and are now living in the apartment of a recently-deceased 80-something-year-old schoolteacher. He left SO MUCH cool stuff in his house and the landlord pretty much said "you can do whatever you want with this stuff." Among the awesome finds: A copy of Anna Karanina in Russian; printed in 1965, with a note written in the front cover "Given to Mr. Whatever his name is from the 5th class as we celebrate the day of our Soviet Army's victory - February 23, 1965" The same day I came into the MTC. Lindsey Webb is SO STINKING JEALOUS right now. Of course, I left it there because I want to double check with the landlord that all this stuff really doesn't belong to everyone before I just start taking stuff. But I'm feeling like I will be the owner of this book before too long. Also: a big old jar of random old assorted Soviet Union coins. Everything from the 1 and 3 kopeck coins (worth 1/1000th, and 1/3000th of a dollar, respectively) to the 50 ruble coin, which is worth like $2.00. Hopefully I can add a few of those to my coin collection as well. Anyway. Enough about me wanting to loot an old dead man's house. 

E* got baptized! She was baptized on Saturday! It was wonderful that she was baptized, but there was some confusion as to who was supposed to turn on the water for the font that takes a minimum of 4 hours to fill, and at what time. So basically V*, our cool new convert who got baptized in August (and baptized E* two days ago) had to baptize her in like 18 inches of relatively cold water. It took three tries. Ooooh. 

The same day E* got baptized, there was a Nigerian man who's here in Samara studying who got baptized in Avrora. His name is T*. I met him yesterday as I was translating for his interview with a branch president so he could get his ecclesiastical endorsement to go to BYU Hawaii. He's been in Russia for 3 weeks and speaks pretty much no Russian, but excellent English. Anyway, he of course, passed the interview with flying colors, and said the prayer at the end.  It was the most amazing prayer ever. He thanked God for leading him to the land of Samara, Russia, so that he could find the LDS church and be baptized. The way everything worked out with his schooling (he wasn't able to get into any classes that were available in a language he speaks), it's quite obvious that the only real reason the Lord led him here was to find the church. SO cool. He's so excited to get the Priesthood and study at BYU. He looks kind of like LeVar Burton, BTW. Extra bonus.

Yesterday after church, I had 15 minutes or so to talk to President Haran, the district President of the Samara District (hopefully the Samara Stake before too many years). It's the first time I've ever met him, although I've heard about him for quite a while. He's just an absolutely amazing man. He's learning English and speaks really quite well. He has such an awesome testimony. He said that there are certain missionaries that he just immediately recognizes as his "brothers" as he puts it. That is, brothers in the tribe of Ephraim. Apparently I'm one of them. We have a lot in common; he's also really into music and sings as a tenor, among other things. We talked for a while, and then he just came out and said "I believe that we were friends in the pre-mortal life. I'm glad to see you again. You're my brother, and I love you." And then he gave me a big hug. I felt the Spirit SO strong. That is such a cool miracle for me that God sent me here knowing I would get to meet (or really, re-connect with) this awesome man. Just another testament that I am supposed to be here. And that means the apostles really are inspired. And that means the church is true. That's what I love about this church. Everywhere you turn is more evidence that it's true.

Let's talk for a second about how all the Zone Leaders and the Assistants were given Bluetooth headsets. When I wear mine, I increase both my efficiency on the phone and my desire to punch myself in the face by approximately 200%. Luckily, we're only allowed to wear them inside. The streets in Russia area dangerous enough without looking like a complete nerd.

Well. I'm out of time again. I love you all! You're the best!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Russian is the Best!

Andrew was in rare form when he wrote this email - his personality really comes shining through - he was definitely in a good mood!  (Which, of course, is music to this mom's ears.)

Hello family and friends!

I feel a little guilty for having such a fantastic week while Melissa had such a terrible one. [Editor's note:  Andrew gets his sister's emails a week late because of the time zone difference - so he is actually referring to her email from last week.]  But I guess that's nothing to feel guilty about. Just take this in the spirit of "Elder Broekhuijsen rejoicing over his blessings" rather than "Elder Broekhuijsen bragging about how easy his mission is," okay? 

First off. We went on exchanges with the elders in Penza this week. Penza is a lovely little city (seems really "village"-ish even though the population is, of course, way the heck higher than pretty much any city in Utah) where they make delicious Kvass. I actually didn't drink any Kvass in Penza, but I've had Penza brand Kvass in New City before and it beats all others, hands down. Just a fun fact. 

Another fun fact about Penza: Elder Swartz is serving there right now! I got to hang out with him and do missionary work for three full days! Can anyone think of something awesomer than doing missionary work for three days with someone who has been one of your best friends since quite a while before the mission? I submit that there are not many things awesomer at all. By the way, Elder Swartz is TEARING IT UP, for those who were curious. The senior Assistant to the President (Elder Hale) said that if the whole mission was doing things po-Swartz-omu (ugh. This translates roughly as "according to the Swartz," but makes approximately 382% more sense in Russian than it does translated into English), we would all be winning. So that should say something, considering he's on his second transfer in Russia. 

Final fun fact about Penza (you thought I was going to take advantage of all that automatic alliteration as always, but I didn't): I respect it too much. As we were taking a taxi back to the train station (fun Russian word for train station: Zhelezhnadorozhney Vokzal), I caught a glimpse of a store that just had a giant Canon logo on it and nothing else. As I was basking in the awesomeness of a camera store in Russia that preferred Canon, I happened to look over to the left and see in passing, a bright white Apple logo on another store, shining through the night like a bright beacon of truth directly to my own retinas. I agree, Penza. I agree.

So, something I don't remember if I've mentioned before or not: we eat pancakes ALL THE TIME here. We made some really beastly large ones in Penza, and we have a specially-formed pancake griddle in Bezimanski where I live, and lots of maple extract to go around. And Elder Wood happens to be a pro pancake chef. Pancakes are good. 

Our investigator E* is getting baptized on the 19th! I sat by her in Sacrament meeting yesterday and they announced it and had her stand up and everything. She's so excited. She has quit drinking tea and coffee and basically ostracized herself from her group of bad-influence friends and replaced them with good-influence friends instead, and is so awesome.

This week in Elder Broekhuijsen's Russian Language Study, I'm focusing on numbers. Numbers are weird because they're kind of like an adjective, and kind of like a verb, and kind of like an animate thing, depending on what you're saying, and kind of inanimate, and there's four possible genders for some of them, and all of them have six possible case-endings times however many genders. What this boils down to is that there are 24 ways to say the number "one" depending on what role it plays in the sentence. Not long ago, I would have complained about this and said, "English figured out how to function without having more than one way to say the number "one." What gives, Russian?" But now, I'm pumped. I'm owning Russian. I have Russian in a headlock right now and I'm cutting off its circulation. It's kind of like Nephi when he grabbed Zoram. He's like, "I was a pretty big dude, so I grabbed him, but I guess yeah I also got some strength from the Lord." I feel like the Lord is helping me SO much with the language right now. I'm not sure why, to be honest. But I'll take it. Fun fact about how you can say 200 like this in Russian: "Dvoomya-stami." You can. 

This morning, I was so tired. I kneeled down at my desk to pray and start personal study, but instead I just started counting in my head. I got all the way up to 60 before I was like, "Hey wait. This isn't why I kneeled down. Something isn't right here..." and then I figured it out. So there you go. 

So I'm not going to attempt to send pictures on this dinosaur computer (Beige-a-saurus Rex, I believe), and I printed everyone else's emails off instead of using email time to read them, so I still have some time. Therefore, I'll give you a rundown of the Samara Zone so you can understand a little better what's the deal. 

There are four cities in the Samara Zone: Samara itself, Orenburg, Penza, and Novokuybyshevsk (say that one five times fast. Or one time. At all.) In Samara we have one district, that includes the Bezimansky Elders (us), the Bezimansky Sisters, the Avrora Elders (The district leader is one of them, and they are also the office elders), the Avrora Sisters, the other Avrora Elders (aka the Assistants), and actually the Novokuybyshevsk Elders (who are baptizing two full families and another guy named N* next Saturday).

In Orenburg there is one companionship. Orenburg is like a 12 hour train ride east, and also TECHNICALLY IN ASIA! I can't wait to go there so I can say I've been on three continents. It's the only city in the mission where the time zone is off; it's exactly 12 hours ahead of Utah, while the rest of the mission is 10. Orenburg is its own district, and the companionship there contains the district leader.

Penza is roughly an eight-hour train ride from Samara, so they just do it overnight because it's really easy to sleep on trains (you get a bed). In Penza there are normally three companionships: Two sets of Penza Elders (of which one includes the district leader) and one set of sisters. But right now there's an odd number of Elders in the mission, and we weren't able to find a member of the church here who could serve a short-term mission for this cycle, so there's a threesome (I mean tripanionship) of Elders and a regular companionship of sisters there now. By the way, one of those sisters is Sister Callister, who is from Alpine or Highland and knows Melissa. What the random? She seems vaguely familiar to me, but I don't remember ever talking to her.

Fun fact about trains: They are a blast. But nobody will sell you chocolate frogs. 

Anyway. That's about all I had to write about this week. I love you all. I hope things pick up for you soon Melissa. Sometimes the Lord has to teach us patience. Right now is an opportunity for you to get REALLY REALLY good at being patient, nothing more. Why not take it? 

So. Hopefully that email didn't display too much ADHD on my part. Sorry I'm still pretty much the worst at answering questions people have. I don't remember them really and I get really focused on just writing what I remember from the week when my hour is ticking down. 

Have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Extenuating Circumstances

Your reward for the fact that Daylight Savings Time has ended is that I was perkily alert at 5:15 a.m. and have time now to post a new blog entry before waking up my family.  So, here you go!

Hey family and friends!

Well it's been a crazy week. Due to some extenuating circumstances, (did I use that word correctly? I like to think that I can still use large English vocabulary words) I have like 12 minutes to type my entire email to everyone. So that means it's going to be short, and I'm only going to be able to get off one today, for everyone.

Before I forget: I have had two questions that I have been forgetting to ask for like 2 months now: First, is it possible to get a small pair of earmuffs (those collapsible ones that don't go over the top of your head, but around the back) in the Christmas package? My companion has a set and they are RIDICULOUSLY convenient. It took me a really long time to remember the English word for "convenient." Second question: How are my fish doing? Have they all perished? Sad.

So my area is cool! I haven't seen much of it yet because we keep having success contacting in the same 4 or 5 areas that are close to the apartment, so we haven't left them much yet. We also do lots of our meetings with investigators at the branch building. We have some awesome investigators. Strangely enough, our four "main" investigators at the moment are four girls who are 19, 20, 20, and 21. Funny how that works out. Only two of them have asked if we are allowed to have relationships with people while we're on our mission though, so I think it's probably just a coincidence ;) Ha. Elder Wood says there are investigators in Orenburg and Penza (two other cities in the zone) that refuse to meet with the missionaries "unless Wood is there." What a lady killer. The coolest part is that they're all sincere investigators though. One of them is going to be baptized on the 19th, her name is E*.

We eat a LOT of pancakes. They are delicious. So thanks for the maple extract. It's a hit. As is the peanut butter.

It is COLD sauce. The air is a lot wetter here, so even though it's only about -15 degrees C (I don't know what that is in F, but not THAT cold), it feels way colder. Add that to the insane biting wind, and if I get a phone call outside, it automatically means one of my hands will be numb within the minute. I learned the art of wearing a scarf properly though, so at least my face is fine. I also have a nice coat and some cool under-armor type stuff from Cabelas, so I'm not cold. Just the weather.

We took the subway here in Samara once this week to get between two different branch buildings. It is the exact opposite of the New York subway. It is CRAZY clean and beautiful and well-maintained, simple enough to understand even though it's in Russian, and actually SMELLS GOOD. I know. I know. Calm down. Also, we met these 4 old people there who had just gotten back from a dance specifically for old people. They were so happy and in the best mood ever and awesome and one of the babooshkas kissed me on the cheek before she got off the subway. Oooooh. Not allowed.

Anyway, I'm not going to be sending any pictures today as I'm down to three minutes and the internet here is about as fast as the iMac. But I love you all. I love my mission. Hopefully I'll be able to write a better email next week!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

P.S. This computer is trying to convince me that I spelled every single word wrong in this email, but I think it's just because it doesn't speak English.

3 Photos

We love receiving photos almost as much as we love receiving emails around here!  Here are three that Andrew sent this morning.

This is Elder Broekhuijsen (obviously!) with President Vasilyev of the Volzhky branch in Saratov (he's the one on the right as you're looking at the photo.  The man on the left is Elder Reshetnikov, a member of the Seventy that Elder Bennett mentioned in his General Conference address this October.

Here is Elder Broekhuijsen with his good friend, Elder Swartz (Destin) who arrived in Samara a few weeks ago.  He and Andrew went to Lone Peak High School together.

This is the city of Tol'yatti at night.  Andrew says, "Tol'yatti is just an insanely beautiful city at night. The sunsets there are spectacular every day."

Happy Halloween!

After reading today's email, I was tempted to title this post "Heppy Helloween" but just couldn't quite bring myself to do it.  :-)  Anyway, today's email was certainly a "treat" - not a "trick."  (Sorry, I had to make some kind of lame pun - I am related to Andrew, after all!)

Heppy Helloween! Funny story to start off the day: The Tol'yatti district (not the missionary district, but the "someday will be a stake" district) had a sweet Halloween party on Saturday. We had tons of investigators and members come in from as far away as Kazan! It was so cool. It was a way fun party. But the funny story part is how the poster they designed and hung up in all the branch buildings said "HELLOWEEN" in huge capital English letters. I laughed. I think I may have a picture... I'll have to look.

Anyway, the big news you've all been waiting for... I got transferred again! I'm a Zone Leader again! This time in Samara Zone. So my area isn't too far away from the Mission Office and the Assistants' apartment and stuff. The area is called Bezimanski (which means "Nameless" - heh). My companion is Elder Wood! He's been a Zone Leader here for about 3 cycles now, so a little over four months. He's awesome. He's super hilarious, which I already knew. But I've only been with him for about 30 minutes now, so I'll tell you all about him next week. 

One perk with being in a new area is that there is a 99% chance I'll be able to send photos now! I think New City North is kind of the only area where the internet place the missionaries use blocks USB ports. And boy. I have LOTS of pictures to send you. 

So anyway I don't have a whole lot of news about the zone or anything because I haven't even been to my apartment yet. Elder Wood and I just left from the Assistants' apartment this morning, and stopped at the post office on the way home to send email home. 

Last cycle was amazing. Elder Lewis is a champion. He's going to be awesome. Elder Walton, my first companion and trainer, Elder Kuzmin, my second companion and second trainer, Elder Eyers, the "constant" unchanging force in the mission (as the Assistant who welcomed me to Russia back in May), and Elder Fearn, a really awesome missionary I knew while I was serving in Saratov, are all on a plane home right now. Elder Walton and Elder Fearn are somewhere over the Atlantic presumably. Elder Eyers may actually be in England already. And Elder Kuzmin is likely already released from his calling as a full-time missionary, as he lives in a little city called Vyburg right outside of St. Petersburg - not far from Samara at all. I can't even believe it. It's devastatingly sad. 

Elder Morris, my ZL companion from Saratov, is now the Assistant with Elder Hale! Awesome, I'm looking forward to working with him again! 

Seeing changes in the mission like this has really made me reflect on what I'm doing. Last night I really made a firm resolve to not waste a single second, as I spent my last few minutes with Elder Kuzmin that I will spend with him for a really long time. My last few minutes I will ever spend with him while we're both full-time Samara missionaries. I've made that resolve before, but I have to remind myself now and then. This mission goes by quicker than I can blink. I've already been out for more than 8 months. WHAT?

Last cycle was successful! At the end of September, we had a district meeting in Old City, Tol'yatti where together as a district, we kneeled together and got inspiration to set a baptismal goal for the month of October. Then we got to work. And the miracles started flowing. As of Saturday the Zone met its goal. V* from New City is getting the Aaronic Priesthood next week and has been called as a Gospel Principles teacher. Life is awesome.

Anyway. I had a hard time saying goodbye to the awesome members in New City last night, but it's unfathomable to me that I wouldn't see them again on my mission. I will. I've still got like 16 months.

I'm so sure I'm supposed to be here. Yeah there are hard days. They happen. There are discouraging days where nobody will even so much as take a pass-along card on the street. There are days when I wonder if we're really getting anything done here in Russia.

And then there are days where we baptize a family and get them on the path towards being together for all eternity. Those are the days where we get to metaphorically punch Satan in the face. I enjoy those days. I'm looking forwards to many more of them on my mission.

I love you all. I love my mission. For the first time last night, I realized that if I was sent home today, I would be SO unbelievably sad. I would be devastated. I need to be here. This is my life. 

Have an awesome day, and an awesome Halloween! Thanks for everything! I'm sure that the 16 months I still have ahead of me will pass by "as if it were a dream" (Scripture reference: somewhere towards the end of the last chapter in Jacob, if I'm not mistaken). 

Peace out. 

Elder Broekhuijsen

Visa Trip #2

I'm a lucky mom - two missionaries out and they both write great emails every week!  Hurrah for Mondays!

So here's the story of today. Once upon a time, Elder Bullough, my Zone Leader, told me there was this super nice internet cafe in a different part of New City where we would probably be able to send pictures. So I got all my SD cards and stuff together and this morning we set out and found it. Well, you can't use USB stuff there either. So no pictures this week. And that's one less hour for us today. Oh, well. I just tried to type a Russian word that means "it happens." Then I realized I couldn't type that word, so my mind automatically suggested to my fingers a different Russian word that means, "let it be." The third best choice my brain offered after my fingers balked at that request was yet another Russian phrase that means "no big deal." So there you go. I don't speak English anymore, officially.

The Visa trip was awesome! Somehow, I was travel leader. Which is great, because I don't even know how to use English airports. Luckily, nothing went wrong at all. It was smooth as butter. The trip was a lot of fun! We got to hang out on the Kiev temple grounds for about 4 hours waiting for the session. While we were there we tried some really cheap Ukrainian food that turned out pretty good. It was kind of like an egg roll actually or a spring roll, just with more of a doughy outside. Then when we got out of the session, it was dark and the temple was lit up. It was insanely beautiful. Elder Veit, an elder who is almost done with his mission, from Austria, right then vowed to me he would get married in the Kiev temple. I got some really awesome pictures that I'm excited to send home... at some point.

So, transfers happen in one week. This transfer was 7 weeks long instead of the usual 6 because our mission is trying to sync up with the MTC in Spain from what I understand. I think that has something to do with the fact that they're sending a lot of native Russian missionaries there instead of the Provo MTC now for some reason or another. But basically, next time I write, it may be from Samara, or on a Tuesday, or something like that. Then again, I might just stay in New City North, possibly even with Elder Lewis. We'll see. I honestly have no idea where to this time around. Not that I've ever been right about it before :D. 

Everyone is going home. Elder Walton, my trainer. Elder Kuzmin, my second companion. Elder Eyers, the guy who's been an Assistant since before I got here and is just awesome and has so much vision for the mission... they're all done in a week. Then there are about 5 or 6 elders or something like that in the whole mission who are older than me. That kind of freaks me out. Although I am 1/3 of the way through my entire mission. What the heck? When did that happen? The next cycle goes halfway through December. Once December's over, it's a hop skip and a jump to February again, and that's halfway. That blows my entire mind. 

So I got your package! Thanks so much! Peanut butter-themed candy is a HIT around here, let me tell you. Even the natives love it; I shared some at district meeting on Friday. There is probably enough red scripture marking lead to last me about 4 or 5 more missions after this one, so thanks for that :D. I also this morning decided to quickly format those two new SD cards you sent up, and discovered to my surprise that one of them was full of videos from Joshua. I particularly enjoyed the part where he explained to Melissa that I cannot receive audio. Yeah... I can recieve audio.

So we've had a really great week. We have had five baptisms in October as of last Saturday, when a husband and a wife got baptized together. It was awesome. We also have at least 3 or 4 more, possibly 5 or 6 planned for Friday and Saturday and Sunday of this coming week. So pretty much the Lord is showering down blessings on our district.

Ooh. Also got some letters, including a DearElder from Lindsey Webb. Cool! I'm actually way pumped to read some Tolstoy and Chekhov when I get back from Russia someday. I'm actually fairly convinced now that I will be heading home with a suitcase full of books and that's it. I already have amassed way more than I thought I would. Some nice Baptists gave me a New Testament that has English and Russian right next to each other, and in Samara I finally picked up a nice leather-bound Bible in Russian that I've needed on about 4,328 lessons so far on my mission :D 

Got Robin's letter in Russian as well! Aside from a few confusing moments regarding handwriting, it was all understandable :D

Cool. Well it's been a really fun week, although I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time in our own area... haha. Things are looking up. We're hoping to set a baptismal date with a guy named Va* tonight. Hopefully he can feel the Spirit really strongly tonight on our lesson, and make the right decision.

V*'s birthday was yesterday. It was so fun. The branch already loves V* to death, because he's the coolest person ever. So that's good. We all ate a bunch of cake and gave him presents and stuff after 3rd hour. I'm gonna miss that guy if I get transferred. 

Anyway, I'm running out of stuff to talk about. Thanks for the package, for everything! Hopefully I can find SOMEWHERE to send some pictures home next week, be it in New City, Old City, Samara, Saratov, or Vladivostok. 

I really do have a testimony that this church is the true one. It gets tested every day. Sometimes it's not pleasant. But like that quote says... every person gets backed up to the edge of the cliff of faith (or however it goes) and there he must make his stand. It's happened to me a few times. Turns out it really helps you strengthen your testimony when you just endure through the tough times. And God is ALWAYS ready and willing to confirm to the humble asker the truth, again and again and again.

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

October 17, 2011

Some people dread Mondays - all I can say is they obviously don't have a missionary they're keeping in touch with!  Hooray for Mondays!  Here's what we heard from (one of) ours this week!

It's been a crazy week. I think I start off most of my emails like that, but really. First off I'll apologize for not sending any pictures. The plan didn't work out as we didn't get permission to go to Old City and do email with the Zone Leaders and didn't feel like searching all around in New City for an internet cafe that offered USB. So I may send some fall photography back next week (I do believe I got one good shot), or maybe just wait until next transfer, depending on where I end up. I may well get left in New City, either with a new trainee, still with Elder Lewis, or who knows? Next transfer is really up in the air as there needs to be a new Assistant, which will almost definitely come from the Zone Leaders, etc. I really have no guesses as to where I'll end up.

So some cool miracles from this week:

-We met a lady named M* on the street and she became a new investigator. Why? When we were talking to her, she said "I've seen guys like you before, not too long ago." That's pretty common, so I was like, "Cool, do you remember where or when?" Turns out she talked to them on a bus from Tol'yatti to Samara back at the end of July. She also remembered another detail called "They said they were going home to America; they had finished their missions." I asked if perhaps their names were Yates and Bolt? Her face lit up and she was like, "Yeah! That was it! That Yates... he was a chudesney person (that word translates roughly as "miraculous" or "wonderful")!" So Elder Derby (aka Elder Yates) decided to not stop being a missionary when he was going home and made a super good impression on this lady. Result: she's now an investigator and we're hoping to meet her family this week so they can all be investigators. Molodyets, Derbs. (Someone make sure he finds out about this, okay? Tell him on Facebook or something.)

-V* got baptized! Yeah! V* is like my best friend. We talk about photography and stuff all the time and he's just awesome. We actually had a really intense meeting right before he got baptized. He was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. On Thursday, we called him and he wanted to meet one more time before the baptismal interview on Friday. He said he had "a few questions." Normal. So we met with him, and oh, man did he have questions.  One was about polygamy. Another was about Joseph Smith fighting back with a gun in Carthage Jail. Then about Joseph Smith changing the Bible. The list went on. Needless to say, he went online and read a lot of things from unfavorable sources. But here's the cool miracle part: apparently when he read all this stuff, he called a member that he got acquainted with at General Conference. She tried to answer some of his questions, but basically told him "better to ask the missionaries." Then pretty much right after he hung up from that call, we called him. Coincidence? I think not. Way to go Elder Lewis following a prompting to give him a call even though our interview was already set up for Friday. We helped V* understand that all his concerns hinged on whether or not the Book of Mormon was true. We asked him if he believed that it was true. He said "I can't say 100% that I know it's true. But tonight I will pray really hard before I go to sleep." He asked us if we could give him advice on how to overcome his doubts and concerns "as friends, not as missionaries." I shared an experience from a couple of cycles ago where I just was having a really hard time and didn't have a lot of answers to my questions, and felt a lot of peace from the Holy Ghost when I prayed. He then told us that every time he's ever come into a church building of ours, he's felt really peaceful.

Cut to after the baptism. He got up to bear his testimony right after he was baptized, and told about how hard it was for him after he read all that stuff online. How much he was worried he was making the wrong decision. And about how he prayed that night and just felt peaceful. And now that he was baptized, he KNEW he had made the right choice, and felt more at peace with everything in his life than he ever had before.

That's right. Miracles happen here.

-Another cool miracle! A dude came up to us on the street that we contacted two cycles ago. His name is A*. Two cycles ago, we were talking to him and his dad came over and cut us off with something like "It's the Jehovah's Catholics Cult, don't talk to them," or something equally as well-informed. Well A* came up to us last Tuesday or something and was like, "Hey, I'm still interested." And I didn't recognize him at first. I was like, "What the heck is he talking about?" But we talked to him, and then I remembered everything all at once. So cool. We have a meeting with him tonight.

So this next week will be insane. We have training all day in Samara tomorrow, and then I'm staying overnight there because I have a visa trip on Wednesday, I think again to Kiev. Possibly to Vilnius, Lithuania. We'll see. Either way, sweet. Then on Friday we have a cultural night, we're going to see a really popular play about WWII. I'm way excited. Saturday we have a few other baptisms going down in the district. Actually there was this sweet old guy from Old City that got baptized with V* named A*. He's awesome. He speaks like a tiny bit of English, and he is like 99% blind. He always says "bones, baby." and then does a knuckle punch when he's talking to us. This has resulted in him accidentally decking Elder Wooley in the stomach like 4 times already. Haha. He's super awesome.

Okay, I have like 2 minutes, so last awesome story. We had a guy come up to us on the street who had an alcohol-blood content percentage instead of a blood-alcohol content percentage. He started the conversation by pleasantly and calmly stating. "I'm going to kill you today." We immediately started walking away, but he followed us saying death threats and stuff. So I pulled the old, "pretend I don't understand very well and get him to explain and repeat stuff a ton to stall him while we wait for the crosswalk light to turn green" trick. It worked. We bolted when it turned green and he tried to follow us, but let's face it - what are the odds of that working out for him? So we lost him. That was fun.

Anyway. An awesome week. Next week will be full of all sorts of news too. Happy to hear my letters showed up! 

I love you all. I love my mission. I love hearing news from you. Sorry I can't write to you all individually as much as I would like.

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

October 10, 2011

Hello, all!  Sounds like Elder Andrew is still excited to be where he is, doing what he's doing!  In a separate email to me, he mentioned that he did get a nice, heavy winter coat last Pday, so if you've been worried about that (like me!) you can set your mind at ease…  Anyway, here's what Elder Broekhuijsen had to say this week:

It has been an insanely awesome week! 

So let's start off by saying that General Conference = The Bomb. How on earth did I take it for granted for 18 years? Jeez. I was an ungrateful swine. God was like, "Hey, Andrew, here's 10 hours of pure revelation from the prophets and apostles on the earth. You can get some good stuff and all you have to do is sit and watch TV and maybe take some notes." And I was like, "No, I think I'll sleep."

Coolness from Conference that I can share with you:

First off, we had a baptism between sessions on Saturday in Komsomolsky/Schlyuzavoy! The lady's name is I*. She was super awesome and I conducted my first ever baptismal interview with her Friday evening.

Elder Bennett (who is former President Bennett, president of the Russia Samara Mission) spoke in the Sunday Afternoon session! He had a super cool talk! But the coolest part was when he talked about one Anatoly Reshetnikov who is a 70 from Russia. He happens to live in the boundaries of the Volzhsky branch in Saratov, and I saw him on a regular basis while I served there. He is the coolest man ever. I'll have you know he personally set up my registration to live in the city of Saratov when I first showed up! He also helped us on lessons all the time. And he is seriously the best. I have a picture of me with him that I took before I left Saratov. I'll send it down next week.

Also, the man who gave the closing prayer in that same session was Gregory Schwitzer, known to us as President Schwitzer, President of the Europe East Area, which includes all the Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, and Baltic missions. Cool! He was at our Zone Conference in Saratov as well, and conducted interviews afterwards. I also had some close interaction with him at Zone Leader Council back at the beginning of September. He's such an awesome man!

Russia is cool!

Completely switching gears, we have an insanely awesome investigator named V* (why are all the best investigators always named V*?) who is getting baptized on the 15th. He is the coolest. He is a photographer.

Speaking of photography! Today after we finish buying food and stuff, Elder Lewis and I got permission to go out to the forest between Old City and Komsomolsky. It is insanely beautiful fall colors here right now. So for the first time in 7 months, I'm gonna get out and do some good old photography! We'll find out how rusty I am! Next week we'll be writing home in a library in Old City with the Zone Leaders, so we'll be able to send pictures; hopefully I'll be able to send a few home then. 

Anyway. I had an insanely cool week. Things are looking up. Be prepared to hear about V*'s baptism next week! 

I love you all! Have an awesome time!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

What an Awesome Week!

No, I wasn't up at 4:15 this morning reading Andrew's email…  Whatever makes you think that?  :-)  Think how much I could get done if I had a missionary email coming each day of the week!  I suppose then I might not treasure them quite so much.  Anyway, here's the latest from Elder Broekhuijsen.

Oh my goodness! I can't believe how awesome your week was! That's insanely amazing! I'm so happy Dad found an amazing new job, that my long-lost SD card showed up, and that everything is just going awesome! I am SOOOO pumped about the Provo Tabernacle being restored into a temple. I seriously cannot believe that news. That is a better solution than I could have possibly dreamed of. Seriously. Now I can say I've SUNG UNDER MACK WILBERG IN A TEMPLE! That is going to be my favorite building in all of Utah, except maybe our house.

We had a pretty amazing week too. It's gotten cold. It's constantly raining and there's a nice biting wind all the time. So we're buying coats today. We have a member who has some hookups in Old City, so we're heading down there once we finish here sending emails.

We had a miraculous evening on Saturday. The sisters in the district (Sister Ostopchuk and Sister Lednyova, two natives) wanted to do kind of a low-key musical evening thing with some investigators, because they had a brand new investigator named C* who plays guitar and apparently sings in English. I was kind of iffy about it, but they invited us and I figured, eh, why not? I honestly was kind of scared it would be a flop and just be this weird awkward thing with like 4 missionaries and 1 or two investigators and a guitar. But we invited a bunch of investigators and members and stuff, and it just went awesome somehow. First off, C* sings these awesome folksy songs in English with a deep alto voice and a very thick Russian accent. I WILL be finding a way to get a video of that home. Don't worry. She's awesome though. Then we sang a bunch of hymns, other stuff, I sang "Let it Be" to the DELIGHT of all the 16-21 year old female church members who were in attendance (I am such a good missionary). No, I'm kidding. I did sing it though, and then we ended off the night with a lovely rendition of "I Know that My Redeemer Lives." Our investigator V*, the MoTab fan was there. He's an awesome baritone and loves the hymns. He was SO excited that we had that hymn in Russian. It's his favorite song he says. We're going to hook him up with a copy of the hymnbook in Russian. He also spontaneously decided that he was going to invite his whole family to come see General Conference with him. Yes!

We have another investigator who approached us on the street speaking English and asking if we are English teachers (an impression that a lot of previous missionaries left behind when there was English club in our mission). We met with him and he's actually super awesome. So we invited him (his name is Vl*, btw) to this evening too, and I was kind of worried he didn't like it much because he was really quiet and didn't want to sing. But the next day in Fast & Testimony meeting, we had another series of miracles. First off, C* came to church and bore her testimony that she felt so much peace at our music thing last night, and that she felt like God had strengthened her enough to come to church today and feel that peace again... (this like 3 days after she first met missionaries). Then A*, a member, got up and bore his testimony, talking about how APPARENTLY Vl* approached him on Saturday night before heading home and asked him what the deal was about this place. Questions like "why is everyone so happy?" "Why is this place so peaceful?" and "What made you want to choose this life in the church?" and finally, "How can I learn more about this?" A* told him straight up: "meet with the missionaries and listen to what they have to say." Vl* was like. "Okay. I'm down." We have another meeting with him and his mother tomorrow night at 8:00.

October is going to be the most miraculous month to this point on my mission. I'm loving it here. Miracles are everywhere. Tracting is really really fun here. People are weird. We had a girl talk to us for a minute through the door, and then when she found out we were missionaries, she went silent. We asked her "Are you still there?" And she said "Nobody is home!" and slammed the door. What the heck? I laughed so hard about that for like 15 minutes. Man. She sure fooled me, I thought someone was home the whole time.

So General Conference for us is next week. I'm so pumped.

I'm running out of time, but I love you all! I can't express the happiness I feel when I look at all the blessings that are raining down on me, our mission, my family, life in general. I love it. I thank the Lord every day for my mission.

Have an awesome week! Keep me posted! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Surprise!

Once upon a time on July 11, 2011, Elder Broekhuijsen wrote two letters and sent them separately to his home in Highland, along with 2 SD cards from his camera.  Letter #2 arrived in Highland on August 5th, but the SD card included with it was corrupted, much to the chagrin of his family.  Letter #1 did not arrive, and had been given up for lost when suddenly today it showed up in our mailbox!  And there was much rejoicing…

Happily, the SD card included with THIS letter came through safe and sound.  There were a few photos from Andrew's last 2 days in the MTC, along with this fun video, which I post here for your viewing and listening pleasure!

The song they are singing is called, "Prayer of the Children" and was written by Kurt Bestor.   Andrew sang it with both his jr. high and high school choirs.  I'm assuming that the other Elders singing with him may have also attended Timberline or Lone Peak - or possibly they just sang the song in their high school choir - it's a popular piece.

September 26, 2011 Update

Happy day!  It's great as always to hear from Elder Broekhuijsen.  Here's what he had to say this week.

Goodness. Is it already September 26th? What the heck. September wasn't even a month.

Anyway. Some awesome stuff this week, in uber-efficient list format:

-B*'s schedule miraculously getting cleaned up. He finished his treatments this week and will be coming to church starting next week. 

-I am a master of making Borch and Plove. You have to wait for like a year and a half before you get to try them, but I assure you they are delicious.

-The Lord is giving us ridiculously awesome miracles lately. Three separate times, we have had one or two people approach US on the street, speaking almost perfect ENGLISH, of all languages, and get interested and become new investigators. One of these people happened to be really involved with some sort of choir in this city. He told us all about how he loves the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, loves using Mack Wilberg arrangements with his choir, and then played us "The Morning Breaks" on his cell phone before we prayed with him. Yeah... he's coming to General Conference.

Speaking of General Conference, we get to see it! In English, even! It just gets broadcast out to the Komsomolsky branch building one week after you all get to see it. I'm so excited! We'll actually just be in the bishop's office there watching it in English online while the members watch the broadcast on a projector in Russian. But I can't wait. Unbelievable that this is already my second General Conference on my mission. Things are flying by in a lot of ways. It's insane that I'm even starting to come up on my year mark. I think about what I was doing one year ago though... filling out mission papers. So pretty ridiculous. Maybe the time has seemed slow for you, and of course I've had my share of slow days, weeks, and even months, but looking back on the mission so far as a whole, I can't believe how fast it's going by.

Anyway, it's been a great week. I'm excited to hear that the Cougs didn't decide to continue their failtastic trend while Vance and company were in town. I'm glad Melissa got to get out to the field on schedule even though sinuses are the worst part of the human body. I'm glad the weather is really starting to get cold. It's been ridiculously rainy here. To the point that we usually do tracting rather than street contacting. Yesterday we went tracting. The first door my companion ever knocked on his mission, he was told to go back to America. Haha. But we found a few people that were somewhat interested; we just need to follow up.

Kazan (another city in the zone that has two companionships in it) has had some miracles too. They had a man call them who said, "A couple of months ago a man gave me a Book of Mormon. I just finished reading it, and I believe it's true. When can we meet?" Later that same day, a DIFFERENT person called them and said, "I want to be baptized. When can we meet?" What the heck? I love when the Lord gives us crazy awesome miracles. Elder Kuzmin is looking to finish his mission with a bang by baptizing an entire family of five in his last week. We have our fair share of amazing investigators, and better yet, the branch is SO willing to help us with everything.

I'm so excited for Melissa to start having awesome experiences in the field. Be sure to put me on your list when you email home, Melissa! I'm praying for you and I hope you have an awesome time out there in the land of Boston. Tell me about your trainer and your investigators and your area and stuff, okay?

I love you all! I love my mission! I'm amazed by how fast it all seems to be going! Have an amazing week; thank you all for everything! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Back to New City, Tol'yatti

Sounds like Elder Broekhuijsen, a.k.a. Andrew, is well and happy - which of course makes US very happy too! We sure appreciate all the friends and family members who write to him and keep him in their prayers - we know it means a lot to him. Here are some words from the man himself!

Wow! It's been a crazy week! First things first. I'm training!? My new companion is fresh out of the MTC; his name is Elder Lewis. He's from Brigham City, Utah, and he's awesome. I actually saw Elder Swartz while we were all getting our assignments in Samara. It was cool to catch up with him, and also really, really weird to see someone from "old life." Really, really, really weird. But he's in Penza, an area in the Samara Zone that has maybe the "best" branch in the mission. But I'm absolutely positive that Elder Lewis is the companion I'm supposed to have right now. President Sartori told me that he hadn't even finished his interview with Elder Lewis before he got a prompting to put him with me. So evidently, there is something that I need to learn from him, or vice versa, or both. Probably both.

He's crazy good at contacting. He's not afraid to talk to everyone with his broken Russian, and on numerous occasions I have just told him, "Okay. Go talk to that family. I'm not going to say a word." And he pulls it off. One time I was on the phone with the Zone Leaders discussing a baptismal candidate and he just stopped a guy without me even noticing or paying attention and got the guy's contact info and stuff. It was awesome.

New City is on fire! The branch is like emerging from a cocoon and becoming a family. It's turning into like a Utah ward. Nobody is talking about a stake in Tol'yatti yet because we still need quite a few more members before that's an option. But I think the idea is simmering in the back of some people's minds. And it's awesome. I love the members here so much. They're amazing.

Something I love about New City is that all the people are super nice! Or at least, compared to Saratov, everyone is nice. Nobody just gives you the silent treatment and blows past when you try to contact them. People listen to what you say. Even the punk kids are kind of cool. Or cool in that they don't want to beat us up, they just think we're awesome because we're from America and speak English. As a result of contacting without having to worry about avoiding certain areas or people, we found 7 new investigators in this short week that began Wednesday night. We have about 18 investigators right now that were just found on the street and didn't have a whole lot of interaction with us yet after that.

We also have a really awesome investigator with a baptismal date that we inherited with the area. His name is V* as well, ironically enough. He apparently asked the other missionaries that were here before we got here if he could be baptized because he understood and accepted everything so well. He's in the final stages of cancer treatments and it's looking like he'll make a full recovery. His date is for October 15th right now. We've only met with him once, but he was like hungry to know all the stuff he had to know before he could get baptized. He kept asking us more and more questions about commandments and we ended up teaching him quite a bit more than we planned for. It was awesome.

I can't believe how much of my mission has already gotten over. Being with a first-cycle missionary makes me realize how much I really have learned since I got here, especially with the really noticeable things like the language. It's weird... but I think I could say I'm fluent in Russian now and not be lying. I think that's really weird. I'm fluent in Russian. Obviously there's tons of ground to cover before I'm "satisfied" with my language skills, if such a thing exists. But I started a hardcore study regime of Modern Russian, which is the textbook that the BYU curriculum uses from what I understand. And the more I read, the more I realize that I already know like 90% of the stuff in there. It almost seems like it's mostly a matter of vocabulary at this point. But I'll keep studying just as hard. There are specific things I really want to work on and get good at while I'm still here, like translating, writing, reading (written Russian is quite different from spoken Russian), and my accent and pronunciation.

Anyway, I'm about out of time.  I love you all! Have an awesome day!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Transfers!

Wow - those 6 week time periods between transfers seem to pass pretty quickly. Of course, you'll hear no complaints from ME about time passing too fast! BTW, thanks to all who have written to Elder Broekhuijsen. I know he really appreciates hearing from friends and family. So, keep up the good work! Okay, I know you didn't come to this blog to hear from me, so without further ado…here's Elder Broekhuijsen!

I have some big news. I got a call from President Sartori on Thursday night, and here's the verdict: I'm getting transferred back to New City in Tol'yatti to be a District Leader and train! Whoa! Wasn't expecting that at all! But I prayed really hard, especially at the beginning of my mission here in Russia that I would get to train Elder Swartz. Of course, I can't say specifically that I'll be training HIM, but I know the Lord answers prayers. As I type this, Elder Swartz is probably feeling vaguely guilty about being up past 10:30, and packing everything into two suitcases, desperately trying to stay under the weight limit. He'll be flying out in not too long, and arriving in Samara late tomorrow night (from my perspective). I'll be on a train back to Samara where I'll go through a "New Trainer Meeting" and then each trainee will be interviewed by president and assigned a trainer, then shipped off to our areas. That puts me in New City again Wednesday evening around 7:00. Of course, I'm ready to train whoever the Lord wants me to train. But I can't help but think how strange it is that I was put as a Zone Leader for just one transfer... I know the Lord has great plans for me.

So I'm going to miss Saratov. But It's okay. I love New City. After Zone Conference, (which went awesome, by the way), I've resolved to do a much better job of working with the members. The members and the missionaries in small branches like we have in Russia should be like one big family working for the same thing, all together. It shouldn't be us barely knowing the members but always asking them to do stuff like sit in on lessons with us. So I'm going to hit up relations with the members back in the New City branch right away. Ironically enough, Elder Kuzmin is going to be training for his last cycle in Schloozavoy, which is in my District. Cool!

At Zone Leader Council and Zone Conference, we had the privilege of hosting Elder Zwick of the 70 and President Schwitzer, our Europe East Area president (over all the missions in Russia, Ukraine, etc.). It was fantastic. Elder Zwick is a really amazing guy.

Got mail from a bunch of people when it came down from Samara at Zone Conference. Thanks for writing, everyone! I got DearElders from Elder Derby. I mean Gordy DerbyYates. And Sam Bunderson (although I have NOT gotten any regular letters from you, so apparently nobody sent them) and Kendra Nicholls. I also got a letter from you, Mom, and one from Grandma. Got a DearElder from John and Kimi, and Paula & fam. Everyone's on my list to write back to. :D And next transfer I should actually have time on P-day to do things like "write back to lettters" instead of spending all P-day doing Zone Planning and stuff. And for those wanting to send letters that are not one page, single sided through the pouch, you can mail them straight to the Bodnikov Street 95-1 address that should be on the blog.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers on my behalf. Some days they're the only thing still keeping me going. ;) No, I'm kidding, but I know they really do help. Prayer is ridiculously powerful. I never understood that until my mission.

Mom, Dad, you can rest easy while I'm in Tol'yatti. I never even met an angry drunk once while I was there. It's like the safest city in the mission except maybe Izhevsk or something.

I love you all! I'll do my best to get photos and letters home whenever I can find time! Have an awesome week everyone!

You rock!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen