Last Email for 2011!

As I mentioned in the last post, it was great to hear from Elder Broekhuijsen on Christmas Eve.  I suppose after our 40 minute conversation, it was difficult to come up with much "new" stuff to say.  So, we'll accept this relatively short email for today, but it better be longer next week!  (Uh oh - there I go getting demanding and being ungrateful - just kidding, Andrew!)

Wow. I can't believe 2011 is drawing to a close. For reals, it's crazy to think that one year ago, I was already drawing close enough to my MTC day to be counting the days in the back of my mind. Time that is already over has flown quickly, even though time doesn't usually fly quickly while it's happening :D

Skyping you all (except not Melissa, because that would have been DISOBEDIENT) was a pleasure. The first time I've seen your faces in 10 months, can you believe it? Hopefully I didn't say too many half-Russian, half-English sentences. I kind of realized after the call was over that there isn't anyone I really ever talk to who doesn't understand the weird English/Russian hybrid language all the missionaries speak among ourselves. So I stopped noticing that there were English words that I hadn't said for months because I always just said them in Russian. I'm pretty sure a good 10% of that call was in Russian, in hindsight. Garrett, get a haircut.  [In Garrett's defense, Andrew called earlier than we expected and none of us had had a chance to "do our hair."  In fact, Garrett had a haircut on Monday last week!]

Hopefully as I write this, you're sleeping from a really fantastic Christmas Day! I know I had one.

We had some really miraculous things happen throughout the Zone yesterday. Destin (*ahem* I mean Elder Swartz) in Penza had a lady come to church named J*. She is half African and half Russian, and 100% awesome. She wants to be baptized. She loved church so much. Yesterday was also the first day they had ever met or heard of her. It's a Christmas Miracle!

Thank you SO MUCH for the awesome Christmas package. It made the whole month just full of brightness and cheer, and cheer, and brightness. The entire apartment smells like Christmas juice still, because I sprayed insane quantities of it every day. I'm wearing the dicey gold tie, and wore the sick purple one yesterday. They are SO cool. The PJs will be happening every night for at least 363 more days, and I just really had an amazing Christmas!

Anyway, my hour's almost up. Elder Langston and I gotta get home and pack for exchanges with Orenburg; we're leaving to go down there on a train at 5:30ish today. It's going to be awesome; I love trains.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in 2012!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Christmas Phone Call!

We don't have any video clips of our "phone call" with Andrew this morning (it was 7:30 at night there, but 8:30 in the morning here!)  It was actually a "Skype" communication, so we got video AND audio!  Anyway, we did take some notes of things he said and thought we'd share a bit!

Question:  What are your favorite things about Russia?

Answer:  The people (especially the branch members, who are super nice)  Finding "golden" investigators, with open minds; and CHOCOLATE!

Question:  What will you be doing on Christmas?

Answer:  Working!  In Russia, Christmas is celebrated not on 25 December, but on 7 January!  

Question:  Is it more difficult to find investigators in the cold winter?

Answer:  Actually, I prefer contacting in the winter.  There are virtually no drunk people out on the streets, so we can talk to anyone we see.  

Question:  What do you eat?

Answer:  Andrew said that because they travel around the zone so much, they end up eating whatever the missionaries they are visiting are eating.  His companion, Elder Langston did mention that Andrew makes a "killer borsch" and also something called "plove" which is apparently something like rice with chicken and curry and is a Ukrainian dish.  He also mentioned that they eat some sort of "cheap" grain - he thought it might be buckwheat, but wasn't sure of the English word for it.

Question:  Do  you have enough money?

Answer:  Yes, it is plenty as long as we keep track of the expenses that are reimbursable.  They won't let us starve or anything, so if we run out of money we can get more, along with a lecture about fiscal responsibility!  :-)

Question:  Did you get a pair of boots yet?

Answer:  No, but lots of missionaries go their whole missions without boots.  They are really expensive to get good ones and so far I haven't needed them.  As long as we keep walking, our toes stay warm!  

Question:  How do you get around?

Answer:  We use buses and "transports" a lot.  The "transports" are basically vans that you can take to various destinations.  We walk if it's close enough.  For travel between cities, we get to take the train!

Question:  Is it a hindrance to work so much in the dark?  (The sun sets at 3:30 in Samara right now.)

Answer:  I don't really notice it much anymore - we just keep working.  It was easy to get  up in the summer, though, because the sun came up so early - something like 2:00 a.m.  (We're thinking he may have been exaggerating a bit on that point!)

Andrew also demonstrated his Russian skills for us - sometimes intentionally (He and the Branch President's son had a conversation for us) and sometimes accidentally.  When Joshua asked him what his favorite part of being in Russia was, he started answering in Russian!  We all sat there listening and finally Joshua said, "Uh, we don't speak Russian!"

In all, it was wonderful to get to talk to Andrew. Those 40 minutes sped by remarkably fast!  He looks good!  He sounds good!  I wish there was a way to get/give a hug through Skype, but I guess I'll just be content with what I got!  Merry Christmas to you all from Andrew and from us!

Photos!!!

We received a surprise email from a Senior Sister who is serving in the office of the Samara mission.  She sent us a couple of photos and also said kind things about our son - so we think she is a very nice person! I'll put her comments  below the photos.

The nice lady said, "I had a chance to take a couple of pictures of your son at the Mission Office today and thought you would enjoy them! He is doing a great job! We enjoy being around him. He works hard, has a great attitude! You can be very proud of him! Enjoy the pictures!  Merry, Merry Christmas!"

A Quickie Email

I won't complain, because we DO get a phone call from Elder Broekhuijsen this week, but today's email was way shorter than normal.  Maybe he's just making sure we appreciate the fact that he generally sends much longer ones!

Boy, how the time flies.

Speaking of time flying, Elder Langston and I are going to the Saratov Zone Conference to do a training. Which is cool, except that it's 11:10 right now and we have to be at the train station in 50 minutes, and we're a half an hour from home. Which means this email is going to be CRAZY short. Sorry :( I'll make it up to you by calling on Christmas Eve at 7:00 PM our time. 

So L* is going to get baptized on Christmas Eve! Which is awesome, because that means I'm going to baptize her, and then get out of the water, get dressed, and we'll probably have a closing prayer and then I'll go skype you from the branch building not long after that.

There are actually way too many miracles to explain here in the next 5 minutes. But I'm SO happy for all the awesome stuff that Melissa is having in her area. I know she'll be a WONDERFUL trainer. I also have the Arabian Christmas song (I think that's what it's called?) stuck in my head about 99% of any given day. It's the best thing ever.

I love my mission! I'm excited to be able to tell you all the amazing stuff that I have going for me right now. Elder Langston is the best companion ever, we're tearing it up. God is pouring out new investigators on our heads like nothing else; they're so awesome and elect! And since neither of us has language skills miles ahead of the other, we teach in really good unity, which is awesome!

Zone Conference here was wonderful!

Okay. Well I pretty much have to go now. So, yeah. But I love you!  I'm so glad things are just going excellenty down there. I'm happy to hear my fish get to spend Christmas in Paradise :D  

[Editor's note: This was in response to us telling him the sad news that the heater in the aquarium malfunctioned and we unintentionally cooked all the fish he left here with us. Nice that he was able to see the "bright side" of the situation!]

Love you all! Talk to you in a few days!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Thanksgiving Pic

Andrew sent us this photo of his Thanksgiving at the mission home a couple of weeks ago.  For some reason (called "I forgot") I didn't post it until now.  He looks good, don't you think?!

December 11, 2011 Update

Another great Monday!   It's always a treat to hear from Andrew, and we try not to take for granted the fact that he is such a faithful email writer!  This is what he had to say today:

Well hey everyone!

I've been having a pretty ridiculous week. Last Tuesday morning, we had a bunch of missionaries come in from Penza, Orenburg, Novokuybyshevsk, and even two from Saratov to stay in our apartment during Visa trips. There are two Visa trip "groups" time-wise, so I didn't go on this one; I'm on the other track. Anyway, I got to spend some more time on the street with Elder Swartz. It was awesome!

Cool mini-story about that, actually. We had five Elders with us one night, and were trying to decide how to split things up between who was going to our meeting and who was going to work on the street. I just figured Elder Wood and I should go to our meeting and the other three could go contacting; but for some reason, Elder Wood said he felt like he should be on the street that night. At the end of the day, Elder Wood ended up on the street with Elder Swartz. They found a guy who had a dream about them finding him on the street one year ago. His name is S* and he speaks pretty good English. He is SO awesome. I LOVE IT SO MUCH when God puts a really spiritually sensitive, kind, humble, intelligent, amazing person like that in our path.

Cool other story about an investigator found this week: An entire family of deaf people on the street. They are also SO AMAZING. The mom's name is M* and her 12-year-old daughter is named N*. She also has a husband who we haven't met yet, and a 7-year-old daughter who actually does hear just fine but is really shy, and a son named R* who is 3 and the most hilarious kid ever. I'll take pictures and hopefully videos even if I can get permission. Even Melissa would not be able to deny this kid's cuteness.

Anyway, we had a meeting with them, and it was really different. There's not much point talking because they can barely hear anything and they never learned how to pronounce words very well either. They speak Russian sign language. We do a lot of writing and Elder Wood and I are also picking up on the sign language. It's nice because in spoken Russian, you have 6 different case-endings to worry about for pretty much any given word, crossed with four different possible genders. In signs, they dropped cases entirely. It's not as precise, but you can get the message across just fine. It requires less thinking in a lot of ways to construct a sentence.

Because the meetings are so quiet, you can feel the Spirit really strongly the whole time. The family is amazing.  They accept everything we tell them and will try anything. At the end of our second lesson with them, M* prayed at the end in signs. I didn't catch much, obviously, but I saw the word "spirit," "family," and a lot of "thank you"s. After the prayer, she just opened the floodgates and started crying. It was amazing how strong the Spirit was. 

The next steps we're taking is trying to get things hooked up with them and a deaf member family from the Dachney branch in Saratov. We're going through all the hoops we need to in order to get permission to set up a Skype call with them so they can translate on the lesson for us. It's interesting how easy it seems to speak "just plain ol' Russian" after a lesson with this awesome family. It's easier to speak Russian than English after talking Russian sign language with them for 45 minutes. 

L*, unfortunately, didn't get baptized.  As it happened, she gave us a call 30 minutes before we showed up to the branch. Her mom, who had never before expressed anything against her baptism (she's aware what's been going on and hasn't cared at all), had forbidden her to leave the house. I guess L* said something about the baptismal record that the church keeps that she needed to sign and her mom flipped out and put a quick end to the whole shebang. It's understandable because there are lots of really small "churches" around here that have sneaky ways of stealing people's apartments (that's one we hear all the time... "you just want to steal my apartment!"). But it's frustrating because her mom wouldn't see sense and read the document. She still doesn't care if L* gets baptized or not, she just doesn't want her to sign anything. So we had a great meeting with her last night and laid down some plans. We're hoping to get her baptized on Wednesday, even if that means not signing the baptismal record for a while. The paper isn't really important; it's just for the Church's records. So we'll be giving L*'s mom a few days to cool down and then hopefully she'll be willing to look at the document and figure out it isn't signing away anything. 

Elder Wood got transferred! It is now officially the first day of his last transfer, and the Lord decided to let this insanely aweome missionary go end his mission by lighting Saratov Zone on fire as a Zone Leader down there. I'm happy for him, but a little bummed we don't get to serve together again another transfer. He's an insanely awesome and experienced missionary, and I still feel I have a ton I could learn from him. My new companion and the new Samara Zone Leader with me will be Elder Langston. I'm WAY pumped actually. He's one of my best friends from the MTC; we were in the same district and everything. But in the field, I have yet to be in the same zone as him for a transfer, let alone the same companionship! It's going to be a ridiculously awesome cycle here in Bezimianski.

Zone Conference is coming up this week, so I'll be able to tell you all about it next week! Also, there's been some of that "political unrest" that the white handbook talks about here because of the elections. Lots of people think they're rigged. I won't offer my opinion on that, because it's pretty much not important at all to my work here. So there have been a couple of rallies and stuff, and the Area Presidency have decided that we can't talk to people who are affiliated with politics on the streets for the time being. We also will be staying inside on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Okay. My computer just told me I'm running out of time. So there's the update. Thanks for everything! I love you all! Merry Christmas! Have a wonderful holiday season! I'll talk to you next week!  Love you!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Happy December!

Last night I dreamed that Andrew came home from his mission for some kind of medical procedure, but he was very grumpy and uncommunicative.  Thank goodness it was only a dream!  From what I can tell, he's healthy and still willing to talk to us!  Here's what he said this morning:

I've had a good week! There isn't a whole lot to write about this week, but it was fun.

We had Zone Leader Council for December on Tuesday and Wednesday. ZLC is always a lot of fun. It's cool to come out of it with the helm kind of "readjusted" and everything feeling ready to take on a new month.  Elder Wood and I taught a breakout on building up areas to have good teaching pools and lots of investigators that are making progress towards baptism. That way, you always have people to meet with and rarely end up wandering around on the streets for eight long hours of contacting.

L* is doing wonderfully. She is living the word of wisdom (we bought her some "allowed" tea) and accepted the commitment to live the Law of Chastity. She is also really sincerely praying to find out if the Book of Mormon really is true. Everything so far is looking good for her. I guess next time I write I'll have to attach a picture of her baptism :)

I got your package! Thank you SO much! It's the happiest, most wonderful, best-organized package I have ever received in my life. The advent calendar is hanging behind my desk, and today Elder Wood and I are going to try to find a Christmas tree to put presents under for the apartment.

A couple of funny stories from this week: The Assistants have an investigator named M* that Elder Wood found while he was on exchanges down there a month or so ago (Elder Wood has a reputation for unwittingly finding high numbers of young, single, female investigators). The Assistants and M* had a fast together this week so that M*'s parents would let her come to church. At the end of the fast, they asked her how it went. She said, "It was great! I lost two kilograms." Oooh. Missed the point... :D

Early last week, Elder Wood and I found a man named J* from Georgia (the country). He was crazy golden it seemed. In fact, it seems like I told you about him last week, now that I think about it.  Anyway, we randomly just ran into him on the street while contacting a few days after he stood us up on a meeting. He said he had read the entire Book of Mormon and not learned anything he didn't already know. We were skeptical, of course. But regardless of the fact that he couldn't answer any questions about it, he insisted he had read it and it didn't mean there were any true religions. So that was kind of a bummer. Oh, well. He still has it. Maybe some day he'll REALLY read it and realize he needs to make some changes. It's frustrating to me when people just "decide" what they believe and then won't back off of it for any reason, regardless of how willing God is to give them real answers and real truth, if they would just open their minds and try Him. But I guess those people just aren't ready yet. Meanwhile, we will move on and seek out those who ARE ready to search with sincerity.

Okay. Well, that's it. I love you all! Things are awesome here, as usual! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen