3 Photos

We love receiving photos almost as much as we love receiving emails around here!  Here are three that Andrew sent this morning.

This is Elder Broekhuijsen (obviously!) with President Vasilyev of the Volzhky branch in Saratov (he's the one on the right as you're looking at the photo.  The man on the left is Elder Reshetnikov, a member of the Seventy that Elder Bennett mentioned in his General Conference address this October.

Here is Elder Broekhuijsen with his good friend, Elder Swartz (Destin) who arrived in Samara a few weeks ago.  He and Andrew went to Lone Peak High School together.

This is the city of Tol'yatti at night.  Andrew says, "Tol'yatti is just an insanely beautiful city at night. The sunsets there are spectacular every day."

Happy Halloween!

After reading today's email, I was tempted to title this post "Heppy Helloween" but just couldn't quite bring myself to do it.  :-)  Anyway, today's email was certainly a "treat" - not a "trick."  (Sorry, I had to make some kind of lame pun - I am related to Andrew, after all!)

Heppy Helloween! Funny story to start off the day: The Tol'yatti district (not the missionary district, but the "someday will be a stake" district) had a sweet Halloween party on Saturday. We had tons of investigators and members come in from as far away as Kazan! It was so cool. It was a way fun party. But the funny story part is how the poster they designed and hung up in all the branch buildings said "HELLOWEEN" in huge capital English letters. I laughed. I think I may have a picture... I'll have to look.

Anyway, the big news you've all been waiting for... I got transferred again! I'm a Zone Leader again! This time in Samara Zone. So my area isn't too far away from the Mission Office and the Assistants' apartment and stuff. The area is called Bezimanski (which means "Nameless" - heh). My companion is Elder Wood! He's been a Zone Leader here for about 3 cycles now, so a little over four months. He's awesome. He's super hilarious, which I already knew. But I've only been with him for about 30 minutes now, so I'll tell you all about him next week. 

One perk with being in a new area is that there is a 99% chance I'll be able to send photos now! I think New City North is kind of the only area where the internet place the missionaries use blocks USB ports. And boy. I have LOTS of pictures to send you. 

So anyway I don't have a whole lot of news about the zone or anything because I haven't even been to my apartment yet. Elder Wood and I just left from the Assistants' apartment this morning, and stopped at the post office on the way home to send email home. 

Last cycle was amazing. Elder Lewis is a champion. He's going to be awesome. Elder Walton, my first companion and trainer, Elder Kuzmin, my second companion and second trainer, Elder Eyers, the "constant" unchanging force in the mission (as the Assistant who welcomed me to Russia back in May), and Elder Fearn, a really awesome missionary I knew while I was serving in Saratov, are all on a plane home right now. Elder Walton and Elder Fearn are somewhere over the Atlantic presumably. Elder Eyers may actually be in England already. And Elder Kuzmin is likely already released from his calling as a full-time missionary, as he lives in a little city called Vyburg right outside of St. Petersburg - not far from Samara at all. I can't even believe it. It's devastatingly sad. 

Elder Morris, my ZL companion from Saratov, is now the Assistant with Elder Hale! Awesome, I'm looking forward to working with him again! 

Seeing changes in the mission like this has really made me reflect on what I'm doing. Last night I really made a firm resolve to not waste a single second, as I spent my last few minutes with Elder Kuzmin that I will spend with him for a really long time. My last few minutes I will ever spend with him while we're both full-time Samara missionaries. I've made that resolve before, but I have to remind myself now and then. This mission goes by quicker than I can blink. I've already been out for more than 8 months. WHAT?

Last cycle was successful! At the end of September, we had a district meeting in Old City, Tol'yatti where together as a district, we kneeled together and got inspiration to set a baptismal goal for the month of October. Then we got to work. And the miracles started flowing. As of Saturday the Zone met its goal. V* from New City is getting the Aaronic Priesthood next week and has been called as a Gospel Principles teacher. Life is awesome.

Anyway. I had a hard time saying goodbye to the awesome members in New City last night, but it's unfathomable to me that I wouldn't see them again on my mission. I will. I've still got like 16 months.

I'm so sure I'm supposed to be here. Yeah there are hard days. They happen. There are discouraging days where nobody will even so much as take a pass-along card on the street. There are days when I wonder if we're really getting anything done here in Russia.

And then there are days where we baptize a family and get them on the path towards being together for all eternity. Those are the days where we get to metaphorically punch Satan in the face. I enjoy those days. I'm looking forwards to many more of them on my mission.

I love you all. I love my mission. For the first time last night, I realized that if I was sent home today, I would be SO unbelievably sad. I would be devastated. I need to be here. This is my life. 

Have an awesome day, and an awesome Halloween! Thanks for everything! I'm sure that the 16 months I still have ahead of me will pass by "as if it were a dream" (Scripture reference: somewhere towards the end of the last chapter in Jacob, if I'm not mistaken). 

Peace out. 

Elder Broekhuijsen

Visa Trip #2

I'm a lucky mom - two missionaries out and they both write great emails every week!  Hurrah for Mondays!

So here's the story of today. Once upon a time, Elder Bullough, my Zone Leader, told me there was this super nice internet cafe in a different part of New City where we would probably be able to send pictures. So I got all my SD cards and stuff together and this morning we set out and found it. Well, you can't use USB stuff there either. So no pictures this week. And that's one less hour for us today. Oh, well. I just tried to type a Russian word that means "it happens." Then I realized I couldn't type that word, so my mind automatically suggested to my fingers a different Russian word that means, "let it be." The third best choice my brain offered after my fingers balked at that request was yet another Russian phrase that means "no big deal." So there you go. I don't speak English anymore, officially.

The Visa trip was awesome! Somehow, I was travel leader. Which is great, because I don't even know how to use English airports. Luckily, nothing went wrong at all. It was smooth as butter. The trip was a lot of fun! We got to hang out on the Kiev temple grounds for about 4 hours waiting for the session. While we were there we tried some really cheap Ukrainian food that turned out pretty good. It was kind of like an egg roll actually or a spring roll, just with more of a doughy outside. Then when we got out of the session, it was dark and the temple was lit up. It was insanely beautiful. Elder Veit, an elder who is almost done with his mission, from Austria, right then vowed to me he would get married in the Kiev temple. I got some really awesome pictures that I'm excited to send home... at some point.

So, transfers happen in one week. This transfer was 7 weeks long instead of the usual 6 because our mission is trying to sync up with the MTC in Spain from what I understand. I think that has something to do with the fact that they're sending a lot of native Russian missionaries there instead of the Provo MTC now for some reason or another. But basically, next time I write, it may be from Samara, or on a Tuesday, or something like that. Then again, I might just stay in New City North, possibly even with Elder Lewis. We'll see. I honestly have no idea where to this time around. Not that I've ever been right about it before :D. 

Everyone is going home. Elder Walton, my trainer. Elder Kuzmin, my second companion. Elder Eyers, the guy who's been an Assistant since before I got here and is just awesome and has so much vision for the mission... they're all done in a week. Then there are about 5 or 6 elders or something like that in the whole mission who are older than me. That kind of freaks me out. Although I am 1/3 of the way through my entire mission. What the heck? When did that happen? The next cycle goes halfway through December. Once December's over, it's a hop skip and a jump to February again, and that's halfway. That blows my entire mind. 

So I got your package! Thanks so much! Peanut butter-themed candy is a HIT around here, let me tell you. Even the natives love it; I shared some at district meeting on Friday. There is probably enough red scripture marking lead to last me about 4 or 5 more missions after this one, so thanks for that :D. I also this morning decided to quickly format those two new SD cards you sent up, and discovered to my surprise that one of them was full of videos from Joshua. I particularly enjoyed the part where he explained to Melissa that I cannot receive audio. Yeah... I can recieve audio.

So we've had a really great week. We have had five baptisms in October as of last Saturday, when a husband and a wife got baptized together. It was awesome. We also have at least 3 or 4 more, possibly 5 or 6 planned for Friday and Saturday and Sunday of this coming week. So pretty much the Lord is showering down blessings on our district.

Ooh. Also got some letters, including a DearElder from Lindsey Webb. Cool! I'm actually way pumped to read some Tolstoy and Chekhov when I get back from Russia someday. I'm actually fairly convinced now that I will be heading home with a suitcase full of books and that's it. I already have amassed way more than I thought I would. Some nice Baptists gave me a New Testament that has English and Russian right next to each other, and in Samara I finally picked up a nice leather-bound Bible in Russian that I've needed on about 4,328 lessons so far on my mission :D 

Got Robin's letter in Russian as well! Aside from a few confusing moments regarding handwriting, it was all understandable :D

Cool. Well it's been a really fun week, although I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time in our own area... haha. Things are looking up. We're hoping to set a baptismal date with a guy named Va* tonight. Hopefully he can feel the Spirit really strongly tonight on our lesson, and make the right decision.

V*'s birthday was yesterday. It was so fun. The branch already loves V* to death, because he's the coolest person ever. So that's good. We all ate a bunch of cake and gave him presents and stuff after 3rd hour. I'm gonna miss that guy if I get transferred. 

Anyway, I'm running out of stuff to talk about. Thanks for the package, for everything! Hopefully I can find SOMEWHERE to send some pictures home next week, be it in New City, Old City, Samara, Saratov, or Vladivostok. 

I really do have a testimony that this church is the true one. It gets tested every day. Sometimes it's not pleasant. But like that quote says... every person gets backed up to the edge of the cliff of faith (or however it goes) and there he must make his stand. It's happened to me a few times. Turns out it really helps you strengthen your testimony when you just endure through the tough times. And God is ALWAYS ready and willing to confirm to the humble asker the truth, again and again and again.

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

October 17, 2011

Some people dread Mondays - all I can say is they obviously don't have a missionary they're keeping in touch with!  Hooray for Mondays!  Here's what we heard from (one of) ours this week!

It's been a crazy week. I think I start off most of my emails like that, but really. First off I'll apologize for not sending any pictures. The plan didn't work out as we didn't get permission to go to Old City and do email with the Zone Leaders and didn't feel like searching all around in New City for an internet cafe that offered USB. So I may send some fall photography back next week (I do believe I got one good shot), or maybe just wait until next transfer, depending on where I end up. I may well get left in New City, either with a new trainee, still with Elder Lewis, or who knows? Next transfer is really up in the air as there needs to be a new Assistant, which will almost definitely come from the Zone Leaders, etc. I really have no guesses as to where I'll end up.

So some cool miracles from this week:

-We met a lady named M* on the street and she became a new investigator. Why? When we were talking to her, she said "I've seen guys like you before, not too long ago." That's pretty common, so I was like, "Cool, do you remember where or when?" Turns out she talked to them on a bus from Tol'yatti to Samara back at the end of July. She also remembered another detail called "They said they were going home to America; they had finished their missions." I asked if perhaps their names were Yates and Bolt? Her face lit up and she was like, "Yeah! That was it! That Yates... he was a chudesney person (that word translates roughly as "miraculous" or "wonderful")!" So Elder Derby (aka Elder Yates) decided to not stop being a missionary when he was going home and made a super good impression on this lady. Result: she's now an investigator and we're hoping to meet her family this week so they can all be investigators. Molodyets, Derbs. (Someone make sure he finds out about this, okay? Tell him on Facebook or something.)

-V* got baptized! Yeah! V* is like my best friend. We talk about photography and stuff all the time and he's just awesome. We actually had a really intense meeting right before he got baptized. He was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. On Thursday, we called him and he wanted to meet one more time before the baptismal interview on Friday. He said he had "a few questions." Normal. So we met with him, and oh, man did he have questions.  One was about polygamy. Another was about Joseph Smith fighting back with a gun in Carthage Jail. Then about Joseph Smith changing the Bible. The list went on. Needless to say, he went online and read a lot of things from unfavorable sources. But here's the cool miracle part: apparently when he read all this stuff, he called a member that he got acquainted with at General Conference. She tried to answer some of his questions, but basically told him "better to ask the missionaries." Then pretty much right after he hung up from that call, we called him. Coincidence? I think not. Way to go Elder Lewis following a prompting to give him a call even though our interview was already set up for Friday. We helped V* understand that all his concerns hinged on whether or not the Book of Mormon was true. We asked him if he believed that it was true. He said "I can't say 100% that I know it's true. But tonight I will pray really hard before I go to sleep." He asked us if we could give him advice on how to overcome his doubts and concerns "as friends, not as missionaries." I shared an experience from a couple of cycles ago where I just was having a really hard time and didn't have a lot of answers to my questions, and felt a lot of peace from the Holy Ghost when I prayed. He then told us that every time he's ever come into a church building of ours, he's felt really peaceful.

Cut to after the baptism. He got up to bear his testimony right after he was baptized, and told about how hard it was for him after he read all that stuff online. How much he was worried he was making the wrong decision. And about how he prayed that night and just felt peaceful. And now that he was baptized, he KNEW he had made the right choice, and felt more at peace with everything in his life than he ever had before.

That's right. Miracles happen here.

-Another cool miracle! A dude came up to us on the street that we contacted two cycles ago. His name is A*. Two cycles ago, we were talking to him and his dad came over and cut us off with something like "It's the Jehovah's Catholics Cult, don't talk to them," or something equally as well-informed. Well A* came up to us last Tuesday or something and was like, "Hey, I'm still interested." And I didn't recognize him at first. I was like, "What the heck is he talking about?" But we talked to him, and then I remembered everything all at once. So cool. We have a meeting with him tonight.

So this next week will be insane. We have training all day in Samara tomorrow, and then I'm staying overnight there because I have a visa trip on Wednesday, I think again to Kiev. Possibly to Vilnius, Lithuania. We'll see. Either way, sweet. Then on Friday we have a cultural night, we're going to see a really popular play about WWII. I'm way excited. Saturday we have a few other baptisms going down in the district. Actually there was this sweet old guy from Old City that got baptized with V* named A*. He's awesome. He speaks like a tiny bit of English, and he is like 99% blind. He always says "bones, baby." and then does a knuckle punch when he's talking to us. This has resulted in him accidentally decking Elder Wooley in the stomach like 4 times already. Haha. He's super awesome.

Okay, I have like 2 minutes, so last awesome story. We had a guy come up to us on the street who had an alcohol-blood content percentage instead of a blood-alcohol content percentage. He started the conversation by pleasantly and calmly stating. "I'm going to kill you today." We immediately started walking away, but he followed us saying death threats and stuff. So I pulled the old, "pretend I don't understand very well and get him to explain and repeat stuff a ton to stall him while we wait for the crosswalk light to turn green" trick. It worked. We bolted when it turned green and he tried to follow us, but let's face it - what are the odds of that working out for him? So we lost him. That was fun.

Anyway. An awesome week. Next week will be full of all sorts of news too. Happy to hear my letters showed up! 

I love you all. I love my mission. I love hearing news from you. Sorry I can't write to you all individually as much as I would like.

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

October 10, 2011

Hello, all!  Sounds like Elder Andrew is still excited to be where he is, doing what he's doing!  In a separate email to me, he mentioned that he did get a nice, heavy winter coat last Pday, so if you've been worried about that (like me!) you can set your mind at ease…  Anyway, here's what Elder Broekhuijsen had to say this week:

It has been an insanely awesome week! 

So let's start off by saying that General Conference = The Bomb. How on earth did I take it for granted for 18 years? Jeez. I was an ungrateful swine. God was like, "Hey, Andrew, here's 10 hours of pure revelation from the prophets and apostles on the earth. You can get some good stuff and all you have to do is sit and watch TV and maybe take some notes." And I was like, "No, I think I'll sleep."

Coolness from Conference that I can share with you:

First off, we had a baptism between sessions on Saturday in Komsomolsky/Schlyuzavoy! The lady's name is I*. She was super awesome and I conducted my first ever baptismal interview with her Friday evening.

Elder Bennett (who is former President Bennett, president of the Russia Samara Mission) spoke in the Sunday Afternoon session! He had a super cool talk! But the coolest part was when he talked about one Anatoly Reshetnikov who is a 70 from Russia. He happens to live in the boundaries of the Volzhsky branch in Saratov, and I saw him on a regular basis while I served there. He is the coolest man ever. I'll have you know he personally set up my registration to live in the city of Saratov when I first showed up! He also helped us on lessons all the time. And he is seriously the best. I have a picture of me with him that I took before I left Saratov. I'll send it down next week.

Also, the man who gave the closing prayer in that same session was Gregory Schwitzer, known to us as President Schwitzer, President of the Europe East Area, which includes all the Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, and Baltic missions. Cool! He was at our Zone Conference in Saratov as well, and conducted interviews afterwards. I also had some close interaction with him at Zone Leader Council back at the beginning of September. He's such an awesome man!

Russia is cool!

Completely switching gears, we have an insanely awesome investigator named V* (why are all the best investigators always named V*?) who is getting baptized on the 15th. He is the coolest. He is a photographer.

Speaking of photography! Today after we finish buying food and stuff, Elder Lewis and I got permission to go out to the forest between Old City and Komsomolsky. It is insanely beautiful fall colors here right now. So for the first time in 7 months, I'm gonna get out and do some good old photography! We'll find out how rusty I am! Next week we'll be writing home in a library in Old City with the Zone Leaders, so we'll be able to send pictures; hopefully I'll be able to send a few home then. 

Anyway. I had an insanely cool week. Things are looking up. Be prepared to hear about V*'s baptism next week! 

I love you all! Have an awesome time!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

What an Awesome Week!

No, I wasn't up at 4:15 this morning reading Andrew's email…  Whatever makes you think that?  :-)  Think how much I could get done if I had a missionary email coming each day of the week!  I suppose then I might not treasure them quite so much.  Anyway, here's the latest from Elder Broekhuijsen.

Oh my goodness! I can't believe how awesome your week was! That's insanely amazing! I'm so happy Dad found an amazing new job, that my long-lost SD card showed up, and that everything is just going awesome! I am SOOOO pumped about the Provo Tabernacle being restored into a temple. I seriously cannot believe that news. That is a better solution than I could have possibly dreamed of. Seriously. Now I can say I've SUNG UNDER MACK WILBERG IN A TEMPLE! That is going to be my favorite building in all of Utah, except maybe our house.

We had a pretty amazing week too. It's gotten cold. It's constantly raining and there's a nice biting wind all the time. So we're buying coats today. We have a member who has some hookups in Old City, so we're heading down there once we finish here sending emails.

We had a miraculous evening on Saturday. The sisters in the district (Sister Ostopchuk and Sister Lednyova, two natives) wanted to do kind of a low-key musical evening thing with some investigators, because they had a brand new investigator named C* who plays guitar and apparently sings in English. I was kind of iffy about it, but they invited us and I figured, eh, why not? I honestly was kind of scared it would be a flop and just be this weird awkward thing with like 4 missionaries and 1 or two investigators and a guitar. But we invited a bunch of investigators and members and stuff, and it just went awesome somehow. First off, C* sings these awesome folksy songs in English with a deep alto voice and a very thick Russian accent. I WILL be finding a way to get a video of that home. Don't worry. She's awesome though. Then we sang a bunch of hymns, other stuff, I sang "Let it Be" to the DELIGHT of all the 16-21 year old female church members who were in attendance (I am such a good missionary). No, I'm kidding. I did sing it though, and then we ended off the night with a lovely rendition of "I Know that My Redeemer Lives." Our investigator V*, the MoTab fan was there. He's an awesome baritone and loves the hymns. He was SO excited that we had that hymn in Russian. It's his favorite song he says. We're going to hook him up with a copy of the hymnbook in Russian. He also spontaneously decided that he was going to invite his whole family to come see General Conference with him. Yes!

We have another investigator who approached us on the street speaking English and asking if we are English teachers (an impression that a lot of previous missionaries left behind when there was English club in our mission). We met with him and he's actually super awesome. So we invited him (his name is Vl*, btw) to this evening too, and I was kind of worried he didn't like it much because he was really quiet and didn't want to sing. But the next day in Fast & Testimony meeting, we had another series of miracles. First off, C* came to church and bore her testimony that she felt so much peace at our music thing last night, and that she felt like God had strengthened her enough to come to church today and feel that peace again... (this like 3 days after she first met missionaries). Then A*, a member, got up and bore his testimony, talking about how APPARENTLY Vl* approached him on Saturday night before heading home and asked him what the deal was about this place. Questions like "why is everyone so happy?" "Why is this place so peaceful?" and "What made you want to choose this life in the church?" and finally, "How can I learn more about this?" A* told him straight up: "meet with the missionaries and listen to what they have to say." Vl* was like. "Okay. I'm down." We have another meeting with him and his mother tomorrow night at 8:00.

October is going to be the most miraculous month to this point on my mission. I'm loving it here. Miracles are everywhere. Tracting is really really fun here. People are weird. We had a girl talk to us for a minute through the door, and then when she found out we were missionaries, she went silent. We asked her "Are you still there?" And she said "Nobody is home!" and slammed the door. What the heck? I laughed so hard about that for like 15 minutes. Man. She sure fooled me, I thought someone was home the whole time.

So General Conference for us is next week. I'm so pumped.

I'm running out of time, but I love you all! I can't express the happiness I feel when I look at all the blessings that are raining down on me, our mission, my family, life in general. I love it. I thank the Lord every day for my mission.

Have an awesome week! Keep me posted! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen