Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

We had a minor heart attack here this morning when we woke up to no email from Elder Broekhuijsen. Happily, it did eventually arrive, and our hearts have all calmed down again. And it was a great email - so well worth the wait!

WHOA!

Okay. I've got like 40 minutes or so to write. This week was absolutely insane, so we'll see how much I can pack in.

VISA TRIP: Awesome awesome awesome. I could spend 40 minutes typing about this alone. So just know that when I get home or when I get a phone call or something, I will have an awesome, really long story to tell about my first ever visa trip. But the readers' digest version goes a little something like this: We got up at 1:30 AM and took a taxi to the Samara airport. Our plane was scheduled to take off at 5:30, so we just kind of chilled in the terminal for a couple of hours and then got in line to board. Turns out they sold our tickets. Evidently standing in line at 4:50 (40 minutes early) doesn't count as being 40 minutes early; because they kept saying "No, you were 35 minutes early, it was cool for us to sell your seats). Anyway, somehow, miraculously, when they called straight to the plane, they were like "Oh yeah, we have 8 seats left). There were 7 of us. So that worked out. Then we flew to Kiev and couldn't find the taxi that was supposed to be standing there in the terminal holding a sign that said "LDS Church." We eventually found him, but the mission cards weren't working in the ATM. So I busted out the personal card and started trying to withdraw money. I got 500 Griven (somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 I think) to pay for the taxi, and we got things figured out and departed for the temple. While sitting on the taxi, we found a scrunched up sign in the back seat that said "LSD Church." :D Good effort, Ukraine.

So we got to the temple and stopped by the mission office, which is on the temple grounds for the Kiev mission, as evidently they were supposed to be waiting there with our new visas. They were. So that was good. It was so nice to go through the temple again. Really helped remind me and ground me again.

So then we went back to the airport after taking a few pictures outside the temple, flew to Moscow, and went to our next flight which was to depart at 9:30 to Samara, getting us home to Tol'yatti around 1:00 in the morning or so. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed about 90 minutes due to a big thunderstorm. Then finally they let us board, and we sat on the tarmac not doing anything for another 90 minutes before finally taking off. That put us in the Samara airport at around 2:30 or so. The taxi we took home to Tol'yatti totally ripped us off (1300 Rubles for a 1.5 hour drive), but we were beyond caring. So then we got home and slept until 11:00 the next morning (the rule is you get 8 hours of sleep after a visa trip regardless of regular scheduling).

The only reason they got us up at 11:00 was because they wanted us to eat something before we started a fast from 12:00 to 12:00 to hit our mission goal of 25 baptisms in July. The fast was interesting. Not only was it the hardest fast that I've ever done, but I could already tell was was super dehydrated right at the beginning. But the mission saw so many miracles in that 24 hour period (going from 14 baptisms to 20, including one in Tol'yatti New City!) that I know it was the right choice to do it instead of making excuses about how I was an exception because of the visa trip. And let me tell you; that was the most delicious cup of Kool-Aid I have ever had at 12:00 the following day.

So the big news: Transfers! You may have noticed that I am not writing this at the normal time. Roughly 8 hours after the normal time actually. Well, I'm sitting in the mission office in Samara right now, waiting until 9:00 or so when I'll head to the train station and take an overnight train out to the Volzhsky Area of Saratov to be a Zone Leader for the Saratov Zone. Saratov is one of the three zones in the mission (the other two being Tol'yatti and Samara). The entire city is right now on FIRE with success. So I'm SUPER lucky to get to be there as a ZL at this time. I'm blown away that I will be a ZL on my third transfer in the field. I'm not even particularly steady with the language yet, so this will be an interesting challenge.

My companion is Elder Morris. I actually haven't met him yet, but I've heard good things. He'll be the senior companion as he has been Zone Leader in Saratov for a cycle already. Apparently the branch I will be attending (along with I think 2 or 3 other companionships of missionaries) has about 80 members, and they are awesome from everything I've heard. I'm so pumped to get to work there. I'll miss Elder Kuzmin, who is training a brand new missionary in Komsomolsky Area in Tol'yatti next cycle, but the future of the whole mission looks really bright right now.

One more interesting story for today. The man who was baptized on Saturday was actually not our investigator (the sisters took him once they got transferred to Tol'yatti and we had to split our area with them). His name is A*. I got to take part in confirming him yesterday during church. He is the most humble man I've ever met. So awesome, and so prepared to accept the gospel. He does service all the time at this place where homeless people can come to take a shower for free, and we found him in the area book. Well this morning when the Assistants called and said I needed to find a member of the church to be my "companion" while I bussed up to Samara, Elder Kuzmin suggested that I call him. So I called him, and he was super excited to travel with me. I love this guy. He's the best. I'll miss a ton of the members in the Tol'yatti branches, but somehow I feel like I'll see them again.

Anyway. That's about it. Killer delicious week. Next email will be full of all sorts of information about Saratov and Elder Morris and being a Zone Leader when you don't speak Russian. Woohoo!

Love you all! The church is true!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen