4.27.11 Update

Here are some portions of his e-mail yesterday. Can you believe next week is his last week at the MTC?

Well it's been an awesome day and an awesome week. I hope you all remembered that my Preparation Day was moved to Wednesday as part of the new schedule, and weren't too freaked out when you didn't get an email yesterday.

 

So, tons of awesome stuff has happened since I last emailed. First of all, two apostles have spoken in the last week. Every Sunday and Tuesday here we have a fireside in the evening. Last Tuesday, we had Richard G. Scott come. It was awesome. His talk was fantastic, and halfway through, he just paused, looked around for a minute, and then said something like "I feel like I should exercise the privilges of my apostleship and bless you all with the gift of tongues. You will still have to study, but I think it will be a little easier now." And it totally has been. Then, yesterday, we had Dallin H. Oaks come and speak on basically his personal advice for missionaries. Also awesome.

 

So last week was the first week we get to host. Since our preparation day is now Wednesdays, it may be the only day I will get to host here. But I got to host JORDAN LEWIS! I knew he was coming in that day, but I didn't dare hope for more than a chance to see him, since there are a lot of missionaries that come in every Wednesday. But lo and behold, he pulls right up to my station and gets out. It was awesome. I just talked to him yesterday at choir (where we performed When I Survey the Wondrous Cross - shout out to all my A Capella friends!) and he's now a district leader. Go figure :) It was kind of weird hosting though. I think in hindsight, our family took things REALLY well at the drop-off. I saw lots and lots of lingering, sobbing sisters/mothers/aunts/you name it. This one girl was maybe 13 or 14 years old and wouldn't let go of the missionary coming in. I think it probably just barely hit her that she wouldn't see him for two years. Sad stuff; I'm glad we were prepared to do things a little more smoothly than that.

 

The new schedule is... a wonderful opportunity for me to practice being more patient. Service on Mondays starts at 6:05 AM, which usually consists of cleaning bathrooms for 1.5 hours. But that's okay. The bathrooms here are surprisingly un-disgusting. Usually. Other changes are the TE is shut down, there's no more MDT (it's the same thing, except personal, companion, and language study are blocked out for us now, which I don't entirely like), the teaching blocks are 3 hours instead of 4, and there are a bunch of little 15-minute pads of down-time between activities that make things seem less rushed. So there are advantages and disadvantages.

 

On Monday (oh, man, was it really only two days ago?) we started SYL. Ridiculous, but awesome. I'm surprised with how much I am able to communicate. But it also serves to make our study times significantly more... uh... reverent.

 

Brother McCleary told us some pretty awesome stories from his mission in Novisibirsk. Apparently one of his transfers was in the coldest town in the mission. It was a really really poor town where most people lived in home-built shacks and huts. During the winter, while he was there, it got down to -80 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes. -80. What? He said when it's that cold, you have to rub your nose every 30 seconds or so when you're out contacting or else you get frostbite. Apparently one elder had a haircut appointment at a barbershop about 100 yards down the street, and figured he didn't need his Shopka (big furry hat). So he just booked it down to the barbershop in about 30 seconds, and when he got there, his ears were completely white. He bent one and it stayed that way, then totally swelled up all huge when it thawed. Pretty scary. I'm glad I only have to worry about -40 degrees in Samara. Toasty warm :)

 

Brother McCleary also said that there are McDonalds in Russia, and they're super nice (granite tables, black leather booths, the works). Apparently McDonals is where all the rich businessmen and high-ranking Mafia members hang out. Somewhat ironic :D

 

So I should get my travel plans tomorrow in the mail. We'll see how that goes. But I'm so excited to get to Russia. Next week will be my last preparation day in Provo. I have an English Book of Mormon and a Russian one that I got from the bookstore. My plan is to place them both before I find out who my trainer is. I think I can do it... there are bound to be several hours of plane ride which = captive audience.

 

************

Ooh! Random funny story. CT. Ross sleep talks all the time, but apparently Monday morning (early early morning) I told CT. Berger, "It's not illegal, just throw it through the trash." Not sure what that means. Any interpretations out there?

 

Now for the part of the email where I prove decisively that Russian is the awesomest language:

 

There are several words that sound exactly like other words that mean VERY different things. For example...

-Pee-SAHT (to write), and PEE-saht, to urinate

-I don't remember the words, but the verb for "to tell," sounds very much like the verb "to give birth to."

-YXA can mean "ear" or "fish soup" depending on where the accent is.

-In our English Bible, Jesus says, "Woman, why weepest thou?" The Russian translation from their Bible is more like "Lady, quit your crying."

 

Well, that's about it. Oh. I'm putting together some songs for sacrament meeting and maybe a fireside with some other elders. There are a lot of Russians who are really good at singing right now, so that's kind of nice. Also, one of the elders in our zone got a personal letter written and signed by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Lucky.

 

Ah! I'm running out of time. Love you all. You're the best. As far as mail works once I get to Russia, I think there's some kind of pouch system, because that's how DearElders get to me there. They will no longer be same-day. Email is the only "instant" way to communicate I think, and I only check that on Preparation days, although I think I get an hour instead of 30 minutes. Mail will take roughly 3 weeks to arrive, but I may only be able to pick it up once a transfer (so every 6 weeks). Pouch mail could take any amount of time. Packages I've heard can take up to 3 months, and if you don't address them in Cyrillic, apparently the Russian post workers like to go through them and take stuff. So I'll get you more details as soon as I have them. Have an awesome week! Love you all, you're the best. The church is SO true, and I'm so pumped that I get to go share it with the world in less than 2 weeks!

 

Best,

Elder Andrew Broekhuijsen

4.19.11 E-mail (late, sorry)

Hey everyone - sorry for the delay in posting this. Final Exams and then a quick vacation got the better of me. I promise to stay better caught up.

Anyway, here are some portions of his e-mail home last week - pay attention to the "P.S." if you've been using DearElder.

Also, some logistics got changed - starting this week Andrew's P-day (the day he's allowed to write e-mails) is now Wednesday so we'll be getting another e-mail tomorrow!

...On Sunday, I finally figured it would be okay for me to go to Music and the Spoken Word. They play it every Sunday in the multipurpose room, but we're encouraged not to make a habit of going since it's right in the middle of our block of time where the Branch Presidency interviews us. Since I (finally) got interviewed last week, I felt safe going this week. Anyway, it blew me away. I know I love music and that Motab is fantastic and stuff. But I think a combination of just being somewhere so special as the MTC and having been mostly deprived of music for about 2 months now gave me this supernova of appreciation for the music that happened at the Spoken Word. I may or may not have cried a little during For the Beauty of the Earth, especially when they showed that giant panoramic view of Yosemite that had half-dome in it. The Nearer My God to Thee was also fantastic. In fact, I'm getting goosebumps even recalling it. I'm SO going again next week. Music is without a doubt the easiest way for me to feel the Spirit, and it was indescribably beautiful.

So tomorrow I host new missionaries (and my friend Elder Lewis comes in, so maybe I'll see him!), and the following Monday, we get our TRAVEL PLANS! Also starting on Monday I believe is 100% SYL. We did every other day SYL last week. It's hard, but at the same time I'm surprised with how much I've learned. Thanks, Spirit. Molodiets (awful English spelling, but I'm running out of time and I don't want to waste any switching to the Russian keyboard and hunting for the right letters). Mahl-uh-dee-ettes means "Good Jobber." They basically use it like "Good job."

Funny Russian moments from this week:

-CT. Smith was getting to know his investigator in the TRC and they said he looked like Zac Efron (which he totally does). He was trying to say "People tell me that all the time," but he accidentally confused a couple of verbs that are inexplicably similar, and instead it came out "People give birth to me every day." Win!

-Greensleeves, or What Child Is This is in the Russian Hymnbook, and it's not considered a Christmas song there; they sing it all year 'round. Which is awesome, because I love that song. But anyway, when you translate the title, it includes a common idiomatic saying that kind of means like... "What's the deal with this"...ish. So the title isn't "What Child is This," but "What's up with this kid?" Win! Russian is the best language.

Well, I love you all. I have a lot to say in my handwritten letters this week, so I probably won't be able to get back to all of you who mailed me this past week. But I'll do my best! Thanks for all your prayers and support! I really do notice them. There's no way I would be learning as much as am or enjoying it as much without them. I know this church is true. My testimony of that gets stronger every single day. Can't wait to get to the field!

покой,

Elder Broekhuijsen

P.S. I don't remember if I told you this before, but when you send me Cyrillic characters in letters through DearElder, they get translated into this terrible hex codes before printing, so it's unintelligable. Jay Dee figured out how to get around that though... just use English characters that look like Cyrillic letter! Like 6 = Cyrillic equivalent to "B." 3 = Z, 4 = Ch, etc. Thanks!

4.12.11 Update

We got our e-mail early this week! This is another good one - it sounds like Andrew is really doing well!


He could always use more letters so if you are reading this and you haven't written him lately (or at all) maybe you could write him a quick note? Or, even easier, you could use DearElder.com


I'm sure he'd really appreciate it!


Here are some excerpts for you:

So I realized I have never really given you an idea of what an average day is here.

 

I wake up sometime between 6:00 and 6:30, depending on what time I need to shower and what time I need to be places, and where. Generally I shower right when I get up, then go to class or MDT (MDT = Missionary Directive Time, which is basically study time for Personal and Companion study, preparing lessons for TE investigators, practicing the TRC language tasks and lessons, and studying anything else in the language that you need to be working on). Every day I have around 10 hours-ish of class or MDT time, which changes around based on the teachers' schedules. Somewhere in there we have Gym; it changes from day to day. On Thursdays we do service and clean another building. Tuesdays are firesides and also choir, although right now Tuesdays are also our Preparation Days (this will change on the 26th). Sundays are preisthood meeting, interviews with the branch presidency, sacrament meeting, lots of down time that isn't really MDT (we usually just watch conference talks and Mormon Messages on LDS.org), and then choir and a devotional at night. After that, Sunday nights are MOVIE NIGHT where we can watch the Testaments, the Joseph Smith movie, the District, conference talks, etc. in a variety of languages. It's a great day to unwind.

 

Starting on April 26th, our schedule gets re-done and they start a new cirriculum for everything that has been in development for a long time. From what I hear, I definitely prefer our cirriculum now, so I'm glad I'll only have about a week and a half of the new one before I fly out. The biggest change on your end will be that my P-days get moved to Wednesday, effective the 26th. So that's when you'll be getting emails, etc.

 

Funny stuff from this week:

-The Russian word we use for "companion" literally translates to "copilot." Awesome.

-One of our teachers, Brother McKleary, is considering becoming a seminary teacher. Elder Frandson told a pretty good joke... What's the difference between a medium pizza and a seminary teacher? A medium pizza can feed a family of four. Ouch. :D

-I had kind of an off day this last Friday. Not bad, just like... I was kind of out of it. I definitely wore my slippers to gym. Stop laughing.

-This last Sunday we had a special musical fireside by the BYU Men's Chorus. Oh man. Fantastic. It was like a breath of fresh air (music is not allowed here, since before we came in there were a bunch of problems with elders having contests to see who could blast their Mo-Tab louder. Nice.). They did a few songs I recognized, and one in particular that I did on New York Tour my Junior year, called Ubi Caritas. So beautiful and it brought back some great memories. Also, a friend of mine, Chris Hurley from Chamber was in the choir. It was awesome to see him. If anyone sees him regularly, let him know he did a great job for me. I was laughing so hard when the choir was stepping onto the risers at the beginning of the performance--the organist played this awesome fanfare that I'm pretty sure he was composing on the spot.

 

Our Dyedooshka Shannon left on Monday. About time. I'm happy for him; he had to wait forever because of his kidney troubles. He's in Vladivostok, which is like right above Korea. So he normally would have been flown to LA, then Seoul, then Vladivostok, but for some reason, he went through Atlanta, Moscow, and then all the way accross Russia to Vladivostok. Makes me wonder if the Lord had a Russian or two prepared to receieve his message on the plane or something. A fitting reward for his patience, I think.

 

So that's kind of the update. Things are going great. I'm excited to get out of here but I'm also enjoying myself immensely. All of you who are getting mission calls and stuff, PLEASE DearElder me when you get them! I love hearing where everyone is going. If you do get your call and tell me, make sure you include your address so I can write back (not allowed to email anyone but my family) and the date you report because I'm curious.

I know this church is true. I love being a missionary. Love it. Can't wait to get to the field. In a workshop I had yesterday, the teacher said the church in Russia is in its infancy. He said something along the lines of "when you see an infant, it's an exciting thing. You don't look at it and say, 'I am so much bigger than that baby.' You look at it and say 'Wow, it's learning how to walk!' It's the same way with new areas of the church. You have the opportunity to be a huge part of the work in its early stages of development there. What you do will have huge repercussions on how the church forms in the area." And it's true. It's like... a Brazillian missionary can baptize 100 people and it's a drop in the bucket. I don't want to minimize the importance of work there or anything of the sort, but if I baptize one person, that's a big deal in Russia, where the church is just starting out. I'm honored that Heavenly Father would trust me with this kind of a responsibility, and I've once again had my committment re-affirmed to be the absolute best missionary I can possibly be.

 

Love you all. I'll see you in a couple of years!

 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Pictures!

They woke up to snow! Crazy Utah weather

He named this one "The Gimp" because somehow it's so off-center

Andrew says this one is made out of "basically burlap" and that he named it "Castaway"

This baby is "Mozart at Midnight." Andrew says it's maybe the best trade he's ever made

A good friend that Andrew made in the MTC, Elder Zhalkovsky. He is originally from Russia, and left this past week to serve in the Salt Lake City Mission. We can tell from his letters that Andrew is really going to miss him.

Andrew and Elder Zhalkovsky

Andrew's Dad has been experimenting a lot with a large-format film camera. Andrew asked for him to send a negative, and then displayed it in his window. (This is a negative of a picture shot from our backyard)

He said he spent a long time positioning it just right so that it would catch the sunlight and he could see it from where he sits

Andrew's official name tag in Cyrillic! They sounded out "Broekhuijsen" phonetically so Andrew remarked that the Russian people will be able to pronounce it better than a lot of people who read it in English!

4.5.11 Update

Sounds like Andrew's getting a bit antsy to leave the MTC and get out to Russia! But it's good to hear that the language is coming along for him! 


Enjoy some excerpts from his e-mail home today:

We had our first TRC in 100% Russian last week. I felt like it actually went pretty well. There wasn't a lot that I wanted to say that I didn't know how to say, and I was FORCED to teach very simply, which is a good thing. I did have a binder full of verbs open in front of me the whole time though. Something I worked on. Tomorrow we teach the Restoration again in Russian, so it should go better this time.

 

So tomorrow the new missionaries come in who are speaking Russian. I get to be the old salt from then on. Except for CT. Shannon, who is still here waiting on results from his kidney biopsy, poor man. We call him Dyedooshka Shannon (Grandpa Shannon) because he's been here forever. Not as long as CT. Zhalkovsky was, (who left this morning). I believe he was here since the beginning of December. I can't even fathom. But he left to the field this morning; he's serving in the Utah Salt Lake City mission. It actually covers parts of Colorado and Wyoming and stuff too, but yeah. I'm excited for him.

 

So the missionaries that left last week had something funny happen to them. The flight that was taking the Novisibirsk-bound missionaries was supposed to go to Atlanta. The plane didn't take off. So they sat in the airport like all day long, then just got shuttled all the way back here and had to stay another night, get up at 3:30 again the next morning... etc. Sad stuff. But they're in Russia now, so I can't feel TOO bad for them.

 

As I'm sure you all saw, there was no MTC choir in General Conference this time. I was kind of bummed, but I still go to choir because we sing at every Tuesday devotional. Besides, the MTC special did us great justice, I think. It was weird seeing all the places I go like every day on TV. (We got to watch it after conference on Sunday night)

Random funny thing: whenever we have a huge block of class (like 4 hours or more) without a meal or something in between, the teachers usually try to wake us up halfway through by having us just go outside and take a couple of laps around the building. The fresh air really does help. It's like recharging our batteries really fast. Anyway, we happened to split up into two groups of 5 missionaries which each went the opposite way around the building a few days ago. As soon as the groups saw each other on the other side, it was like we had planned it: we all started snapping, West Side Story style, and fell into formation as we passed each other and glared. Sadly, choreographed knife-fighting isn't allowed according to the white bible, so there was none of that. I just had to laugh though.

As far as how mail will work in Russia, here's what I've gathered:

-Regular snail mail will take about 3 weeks either way.

-DearElder should still work, and probably won't have a delay of more than a day or so.

-Packages can take up to 3 months, and if they are not addressed in Cyrillic, the post workers will usually open them and take anything valuable before they deliver it. So definitely a good thing to know.

 

As far as transportation, I think we are walking missionaries. I doubt we get cars, and bikes don't work out for about 85% of the year, so I'm guessing lots of public transportation and walking. Fine with me. We get to wear stylish Russian clothes. Long trenchcoats, furry hats, and during the spring, we're allowed to wear these awesome newsie-style caps if we want. That's a definite yes.

 

Our cyrillic name tags got here right after I sent the email last week. They look so cool! There should be a picture on the card you will get Thursday. Woot woot! Too bad we're not allowed to wear them until we get to the airport.

 

Interesting things I learned about Russian this week:

Some funny words:

-Freekadyelickey (meatballs)

-Confyetti (candy)

-The word for "suit" is pronounced "costume," and the word for "tuxedo" is pronounced exactly like the word "smoking." Coincidence? I think not.

Some interesting wordings:

Instead of saying "I need you to eat this food," the literal translation from Russian would go something like, "To me is needed so that you ate this food." Funny stuff :) I'm sure I'll find more of that stuff as I stay here.

 

Anyway, good to hear from all of you. Thanks for everything you do! I only have 6 more weeks here. Apparently they go by a lot faster than the first 6, which is good. I'm seriously rearing to get to Russia more and more the longer I stay here.

 

The church is true. Every day here is exhausting, but in such a good way. I can't wait to start sharing my testimony and knowledge with those who the Lord has prepared for me; and those who have never heard of our church before.

 

I love you all!

 

Love from,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Lots of photos! (3.30.11)

Andrew and his companion came across this towel that no one wanted, and his companion, Elder Angerhofer decided that he wanted to make some shorts out of them! 

really though

Yeah they weren't joking

This is Andrew's zone - the people in front left last week to go abroad!

As Andrew described it, everyone got a little picture happy because they were sad about people leaving - that's why there are so many pictures this week!