Happy Pioneer Day - A Little Late…

Okay, so maybe they don't celebrate Pioneer Day in Russia, and maybe Andrew (oops, Elder Broekhuijsen) didn't mention it in his email, but you are still wished a good one! Here's a bit of the most recent email from "our favorite Russionary."

Woohoo! I had a really great week! Some immediate news, first of all:

My Visa trip will be on Thursday, a little earlier than we were expecting. It's also super quick, because apparently they want us back in time for a day or two in Samara before the next cycle begins. So actually, the entire Visa trip is going to be one day. We leave ridiculously early on Thursday morning (sometime around 5:00 I think) and then return late Thursday night. We DO get to go to Kiev temple (woot woot!)

So this week rocked. We tried our musical contacting again, this time + sister missionaries and some YSA age peeps from the branch. At the last second, it turned out that R*, a potential investigator we found on a bus came with us. He plays guitar. REALLY REALLY well. So it was cool to have him with us; two guitars are better than one.

The beginning of this week, I had splits with Elder Derby who is going home this Sunday. He is awesome. He basically "let me drive." It was a new experience to be sure, being in charge of making sure we had meetings, members with us on lessons, etc. But things went really well. It was interesting teaching without the safety net of a native Russian speaker if I didn't know how to say something. But with the Spirit, things went really really well.

So next week (starting this evening, actually), we have splits again. I'll be with Elder Bollo, who has been in Russia one transfer longer than me. I'm excited, it will be a great challenge and a great experience, especially if I end up training or something crazy next cycle. We also have a giant party tonight for P-Day because Elder Bolt and Elder Derby from our district are going home on Sunday! We're going to eat Shashleeks, which are these awesome Russian shish-kebab things. I'm excited. And hungry (we kind of ran out of food like yesterday morning, except we had some cake left, but I wanted to save it for when we had ice cream too).

Funny story of the week: We went to a potential investigator's house on a meeting we set up. Neither of us had met with her before (her name is O*). So we got to the apartment building and called her room, but her phone wasn't working right. At this point our normal approach is to call a random number and say, "Let us in, we don't have a key." It works like 80% of the time. And when it doesn't work... call another random number. But this time these nice grandmas who were sitting on the bench (there were three of them, Babooshkas live in groups) were like, "Oh, we have a key, do you need to get in?" We were like, "Yeah, thanks." So one of them came up and almost opened the door for us, but then noticed we were wearing nametags and was like, "Oh, we don't need to buy anything from you here in this apartment building." We explained that we weren't salesmen, but missionaries. That didn't go over too well. "No, get out of here, we don't want missionaries in this house." "Are you going to let us in or not?" "Of course not!" Then they all sat back down on the bench and passive-aggressively watched us with their beady little Babooshka eyes. So we started calling random numbers. As soon as someone would pick up their room phone, the Babooshkas would start yelling "No! Don't let them in! Don't open the door!" It was kind of funny. Anyway, we got in, the meeting fell through, and we left. On our way out, the Babooshkas were evidently rather bitter that their valiant efforts to stop us from entering their kingdom had all been in vain. So one of them started yelling at us again, calling us Duraks, which is a Russian word that's kind of like a cross between fool, jerk, and idiot all at once. So we told her that all we were doing was sharing knowledge and a chance to have the gospel with people who wanted it, and you'll never believe what she did. She went all 4th grade on us. For reals, she screwed up her face and in a high-pitched sing song voice starting yelling just disjointed phrases like "Oh, eternal life, and oh, Lord, you're so good, blah blah blah." I could barely keep myself from laughing. I actually almost got offended, but luckily, I remembered in time that I wasn't nine years old. Anyway. We looked at each other and didn't say anything, just left. Then I laughed really hard once we were out of earshot. I'll always have that image in my head - a Russian 85-year-old lady with a screwed up face yelling the phrase "eternal life" at me in a sing-song voice. Too funny.

So I want to end with a really awesome experience I had this morning. The last month I've really been examining a lot of things that I've always just taken for granted in my life that are contained in my beliefs. Kind of stress-checking my testimony I guess. So I've been praying for the last two weeks or so a lot for another confirmation that the Book of Mormon is true, that this is the true church, etc. I just like reminding myself every now and then… Anyway, this morning in personal study I was reading my Patriarchal Blessing again. I read a sentence that talks about my mission, and WHAM! Out of nowhere the Spirit just blew my entire mind and I just KNEW, somehow, that THIS PLACE, RIGHT NOW is EXACTLY where I'm supposed to be. It's one of the things where you just KNOW it without knowing how you know it or being able to trace the logic of how you know it back to where it came from. I don't usually do the "crying while feeling the Spirit" thing, but it was just that powerful this morning.

So I know more than ever before now, that even when things are tough, it doesn't matter at all. As long as I'm doing everything I can, I'm good to go and that's all I need to worry about. I'm in the right place.

I love you all. I'll keep you updated on things this week, it's going to be an interesting one with the splits, Visa trip, and end of the cycle. Thanks for your prayers, I really do feel them here.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

July 18, 2011

As always, we were all up early this morning to read Andrew's latest email. Here are some excerpts. Enjoy!

Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo, yo.

(This is how CT. Kuzmin has been answering the phone lately :D )

I had another kind of tough week, but tough weeks don't bother me anymore. It's kind of like the heat... I hated it at first. The feeling sweaty and gross all the time, the humidity, etc. After like two weeks of it though, I barely notice it. So I'm guessing the same sort of thing happened. It's weird. Tough weeks before used to = bad attitude Elder Broekhuijsen. Not really anymore. It's nice to be able to see improvements in myself after what really isn't all that much of a trial in the first place.

I noticed this week that I always know what people are talking about, even if I'm not catching every single word. And I no longer have to really carefully, actively listen to a conversation to follow it. My brain just understands, kind of. I remember my first week here where I could pick out a few words if I listened really carefully, and then string them together and make a decent guess at what a sentence was about. But if I wasn't listening, it just sounded like a bunch of gobbeldygook (sp? this word would be easier to write in cyrillic). So on the days where I feel hopelessly lost in the Russian language, I remind myself that it's coming :)

On Monday, I had probably the best lesson of my whole mission so far. S* has smoked 40 cigarettes a day for a long time now. But we commited him to quit, made a plan out of the Preach My Gospel chapter 10 "Plan for overcoming addiction" section, and really got him pumped out preparing for baptism. He wants to quit anyway. At the end of the lesson, one of the members we had with us (Brother AK*) shared a story about his brother who is a convert and quit smoking in three days to make his baptismal date. S* took out his cigarettes that he had with him right there and tore them to pieces right in front of us. He said, "I don't need these." Then we flushed them down the weird Russian toliet (all the toilets here are weird, bee tee dubs). [Editor's note: For those who may not be fluent in this language "bee tee dubs" is Andrew's way of saying "BTW", which stands for "by the way."] It was the awesomest thing ever.

Since then, his mom has gotten rather anti-Mormon. She actually took his Book of Mormon and burned it while he was at work, which was < cool. But no big, we have tons of those. Unfortunately, S* doesn't have a cell phone, and every attempt we have made to call him has ended up with his mom picking up the phone and either hanging up, or yelling at the person who called, and then hanging up. So we haven't been able to contact him as much as we would like, but we're still optimistic about his baptism being on the 30th of July. This isn't the first time we've dealt with family members who are anti-church. S* is 28 though, so he's currently going through the process of getting his own apartment so we can continue to meet. I'll keep you updated on that.

One night last week (maybe Tuesday night? Forgot exactly), I was going to sleep and I heard the X-Files theme music playing from the apartment above us (we sleep with the windows open because we don't like sleeping in an oven). I laughed and asked CT. Kuzmin if he knew what that was. He said, "Of course. X-Files was a way popular show here in the 90s." GO RUSSIA!

On Wednesday, we went to do some service for a boarding school for deaf children. The good news is, for service we can be in shorts and a tee shirt. The bad news is, service and yardwork are the same word here. The worse news is, stinging nettle (or Krepeeva, if you want to say it in Russian) grows here in large patches. I found that out all at once. The somewhat hilarious news is, marijuana also grows here wild. I may or may not have accidentally destroyed several Krepeeva and Marijuana plants maliciously.

On Thursday or Friday (somewhere in there) we tried this awesome new method of contacting, called, we get some people together in the park or on a street and sing hymns while I play guitar. The idea being that the people who are interested in talking to us will come up to US instead of us digging through 10 people who want to argue or fight with us for every one who wants to listen. Well, it works well. We are going to try it again and on a larger scale on Saturday, so I'll let you know how that goes. But in like an hour we got 3 good phone numbers of people who were interested. We also attracted a somewhat disproportional percentage of drunk people and 20-year-old girls. But our member friend AK* didn't seem to mind... :D

So when I was reading some stuff about Russian food several centuries ago (November), I remember reading about something called Kvass, which is basically bread soda, and thinking "Gross, I'll never drink that." Well, I drank it. And it's actually kind of good. Actually really good if you get the right brand. Man! I am such a Russian already!

The weather has started to cool off a bit, which is nice. According to Elder Kuzmin, it already peaked, and August will be way cooler. Awesome. Apparently summer here peaks for like 2 days. In Utah the heat peaks for like 2.5 months before it starts getting cooler.

I get to go to Kiev in like 2 weeks! Awesome! And I get to go to the temple!

Well that's about all I can think of. Love you all! Hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

11.07.11 Update

It's Monday! Yay! Here's the latest email treasure from Elder Broekhuijsen! BTW, he's supposed to be sending home an SD card from his camera this week, so hopefully we'll have some new pictures to post soon!

Whoa, hang on, where did June go? This summer is going by faster than any summers I can remember between school years. Weird. And once July is over, it will be August, and things will finally start to cool off here (apparently in this area of Russia, August is more like Fall than Summer).

Well it was a weird week. Elder Kuzmin and I went to the doctor to freeze his foot again. We also had to pay for the currently-vacant other apartment in New City, which happens to be pretty close to the clinic. So we stayed there a night, all the next day since he couldn't walk well, and another night. While there, we did a LOT of studying, and I made and ate a pan of brownies. But don't worry. Somehow I'm STILL losing weight. I feel like I eat so much food right now. More than I did in the MTC to be certain. So it's kind of nice actually. Since Elder Kuzmin became my companion, we have made and eaten five cakes. So there's that.

So yesterday we had something called Invitation Sunday here in the branch. It's been planned actually for July 10 since shortly before I arrived in Russia, so there was a LOT of work and a LOT of planning and a LOT of effort that went into it. The basic idea was having members invite their friends and family to come see what our Sunday services were like, and to meet the missionaries in case they were interested. Well we had several people show up who were not members. One of them is completely golden. His name is S*, and he's the nicest guy ever. He accepted everything we told him, understood it all (we taught the restoration of the church, basically), and wanted to be baptized. So we set a date for the 30th. Cool! Then we went to another lady who came out of nowhere, as a referral from a member. She met with missionaries several years ago (but wasn't in our area book somehow), was completely prepared for baptism, and then her son stepped in and shut the whole thing down right before she was going to be baptized. Well for one reason or another, this is apparently no longer a problem. Her name is L*. I didn't actually understand all of the Russian when she explained why she can get baptized now, but my companion did obviously, and she will also be baptized on the 30th! Cool! Miracles happen when you work really hard! After that, we had another meeting with a guy who seems pretty prepared for the gospel. He's been "searching" as he puts it, for the right church for nearly a year. His name is O*, BTW. We had a good lesson about the restoration. He's very open, and we'll be meeting with him again for sure. In short, the work is going really really well in this area of the Samara Mission.

Something I just remembered: we totally made Bleens (Russian pancakes, and the word "Bleens" sounds weird, because plural in Russian is "Bleenie") But anyway, they were insanely delicious with peanut butter and maple syrup. I didn't think I missed peanut butter until I ate it again. Then I was like... "Oh, man. I missed peanut butter."

So the only kind of bummer news from the week is that the sisters in our district got transferred today. One came to Russia at the same time as me, and she's going to Saratov (which is actually the center of the church's strength in the Samara Mission), and one has been here for 8 months and it's her first area still... haha. She's going to Samara. Everyone in the district is such a close friend to me now that it's hard to see them go. But there are two new sisters getting transferred down to New City to live in the other apartment. So now we have other missionaries in our branch on Sunday! Cool! But on the other hand, "our" area is getting split between us so we basically just lost 50% of our investigators... haha. Oh, well. Such is missionary life.

Well, that's about all I can think of. I really did lose 15 pounds in my first two months here. Which sounds scary until I tell you that I gained 15 pounds in the time leading up to my mission where I did a lot of sitting around, and in the MTC, where I did even more sitting around. So I'm not some stick now, I'm just back to normal.

Okay. I love you all! Have fun this week!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Fourth of July Update

Hello family and friends! We have been on vacation in Idaho for the past few days at a family favorite campsite called "Beaver Creek" (this will be important when you read the e-mail). So when we came back to civilization this evening, a lovely e-mail from Andrew was waiting for us.

Enjoy! We did.

Happy Independence Day!

I forgot it was July 4th until CT. Derby reminded me. We all met today for some pizza in Old City.
First off. I got your package! And about 500 DearElders! Okay, 12. I also got a letter from Grandma! It was great to hear from you all. The package was fantastic. I opened it right after I ended my fast. Which may not have been a good idea. The first thing I did was make an almond-peanut-butter-guava-candy-spam-tamale-maple-bookmark sandwich. Okay, that's a lie. But I did eat about 8 packages of Fruit Snacks before I realized I needed to make them LAST :) The thing is, fast sunday back home was like... wake up, go to church, come home, sleep until dinner, done. Fast Sunday here is insane. Sunday is one of the best days of the week for missionary work since people are generally home. So there's a LOT of walking, and it's insane hot here. I don't know exactly how hot, but I guess somewhere in the mid 80's. Which isn't THAT bad, except the humidity here has been somewhere around 8324% (give or take 1000%) since last Monday. For reals. I can't think of any way to describe it except "sauna." That word is used to describe hot humid places so much that it seems trite. But it really, really is like a sauna. Except you can't leave, because it's everywhere. Even inside. But it's okay. I'll live. I'm probably sweating off like 4 pounds a day (I have lost 15 pounds since I left the MTC... haha hopefully it's fat and not muscle).
So news from this week:

It was kind of a rough week. Just really dry contacting (not dry in the weather sense) without much results. But we're going to be focusing a lot on activities this month since regular street contacting has been getting progressively less and less effective with each week for a while. Elder Kuzmin said something I considered particularly wise though on Saturday night: "Whenever you have a really hard week like this, it's more important than ever to have a good attitude and endure well, because it's usually the lord testing you. And when you pass the test, you get a huge blessing coming up soon." I'll let you know what the blessing is next week :D
We just got a new set of SYL (speak your language) rules. Uh oh. 100% everywhere now, including meetings. The only exceptions are in Zone Conference and when your leaders say you don't have to. This will be really tough for me, but it's okay. Things will be fine. There's no such thing as a stupid rule in this mission.

Well, that's about all I can think of. I probably won't have time to write letters today, because it's already getting up towards six and we still have thing to do before we go home. So don't expect any letters in the next ten days or so :D. But next week I should be able to get off some pictures to you. I have quite a few built up now.

Love you all! Hope everyone had an awesome time at Beav! It was weird thinking about how this is the first Deer Park/Beaver Creek I have missed in my memory. But hopefully someone else there knows how to build the fire. Probably you got by.
Have a great week! Word.

Love,
-Elder Andrew Broekhuijsen