Sounds like Andrew's doing well! We love to hear from him, and his positive attitude is always a comfort. Here are some excerpts from today's e-mail. Enjoy!
Wahoo! Melissa is going into the MTC day after tomorrow? What the deuce?
Well congratulations! I'm so pumped you're going to be a missionary! Everyone do your best to end the "crying and being sad that Melissa is gone" phase ASAP because then it just gets all awesome and stuff. And you only have to be there for 3 weeks, which is barely long enough to being to tire of the things that aren't so fun.
Anyway, that's enough advice.
So. L* isn't baptized yet. He wanted his family to go to church down in Brazzaville, Congo, to make sure they weren't against the idea of him getting baptized. So far they're not, but he doesn't want to feel rushed. We're hoping for Wednesday. L* is amazing. He believes it's all true; he's reading the Book of Mormon a TON (in French now!) and he's ready to go, so I'll let you know how things go with him. But V* got baptized in Engles on Tuesday! He's amazing. He went from being one of the saddest people I had ever met to being one of the happiest people I know. He's completely quit smoking, and appears to be having no problems with temptation. He is officially engaged to his "wife," and they are waiting for their marriage date so that they can move back in together on September 28th. His son is going to be baptized within a week after he returns from a camping trip he's on. His wife is going to be baptized as soon as the elders in Engels finish teaching her everything. His whole family will be going through the temple before I'm even done with my mission. I LOVE this kind of story. BTW, V* loves us. He's the nicest guy around. He always wants Elder Morris and I to come down to Engels and have dinner with him or something.
It's been insane crazy crunch time for the last week, and there are still two days left of insane crazy crunch time. I'll definitely make time to pray for Melissa on Wednesday though. I should even be able to time it so that I can be praying around the same time she's going in.
It's going to be an unbelievable month. President Sartori is going to a Mission Presidents' Seminar and is expected to speak... Everything points to September just being absolutely phenomenal.
I love my mission. Whenever I'm focused on the work and doing my absolute best, I always feel good about my mission, even when I'm really stressed about about the Zone or exhausted from a hard day's work, or running away from drunk people in my Elder Derby nametag. Someone tell him I'm wearing his nametag, BTW. He'll think that's funny.
I'm glad you got those pictures; I guess the first time it didn't go through, so I told Sister K* it didn't work and gave her your email addresses again, as well as Joshua's. I guess it worked this time. She comes up to us like every other week before church starts and says "Oh, your family must be missing you so bad. It's time to send them another picture, I think." As far as the bandaged-up thumb, that's just a covering I put on. I had a couple of warts on my hand there and I kept hearing about this Russian wart stuff called "Super Chistityela" (which means "Super Clean Body"). So I picked some up; it was only 13 rubles in one of the little pharmacies that are all over everywhere. It's the most terrifying chemical I've ever encountered. In about two minutes, one application turned my warts into these awful looking craters. So, good news is the warts are gone. Bad news is my hand looks horrendous. But it will heal over in a few weeks. So no big deal.
Anyway, that's about it for news this week. One more cool story: we had a random babooshka come up to us while we were heading home one night and was like, "Hey, do you kids want some apples?" We were like, "...okay." So she loaded us up with like 10 kilgrams of apples. SO MANY OF THEM. And she also gave us a big ol' bundle of herbal tea she grew, which is actually way good; we've been drinking it all week. So today, we're making Borscht, and some sort of ridiculous quantity of apple crisp. It will be a success.
Okay. Well I'm out of time. Love you all! Have an amazing week! Don't be sad for a second about Melissa going into the MTC! She's about to do the best thing she's ever done! It's so much fun! Yeah there are some adjustment to make, but you get through them and then it's the best thing ever!
Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen
1 comment:
Andrew! I am so glad your mission has been such a great experience so far!! Love you and miss you tons!
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