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