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