Winter in Samara

You'll notice if you check the weather forecast on this blog page that the HIGH today in Samara will be -4° F!  I'm glad he's got that nice coat!  He must be pretty used to it, because I don't think he even mentions the weather in this email!  He DID, however, send some photos, which I will include along with the captions that he wrote himself!  

How's everyone doing! I'm doing great! I'll start off by saying I haven't yet read your emails. We write home in the office now, which has several advantages and a few disadvantages. Advantage: fast computer that has a USB port right there so I can send pictures now, and print your emails to save time during my internet hour for writing. Disadvantage: lots of people who need me to take a second and do something for them. But that's okay. I have a huge testimony of sacrificing my own time for others - even if it wasn't "worth it" already because I get to help someone else and do the right thing, God also tends to bless you more than if you had used that time for yourself. But what this means is that I'm going to blaze through this email, and FINALLY send some long-overdue pictures!

This week was eventful! The Assistants' area has been kind of sagging lately (the last 4 months or so) because the Assistants just have so much stuff to do that isn't missionary work in their own area. But Elder Morris and I decided we were going to reverse this trend and get back to finding our one new investigator a day in our own area. After all, it's a promise from the Lord through the mission president that it's possible for every companionship, and that if we do it, then we will be able to baptize one person a month in each area as well.

Our best investigator at the moment is named D* Sith.  "Sith" is because when he wears his hood, I expect him to pull out a red lightsaber at any given moment. But he's the nicest guy ever. He's a Pentecostal, and just says the most powerful, sincere, pump-you-up prayers ever. Super open to new truth and willing to try anything we ask him to do (like reading the Book of Mormon, etc.).

Elder Morris and I have done lots of really interesting administrative work already. We've so far welcomed a new elder in from the airport (Elder Strebe, he's amazing!), and figured out a Visa Trip schedule from scratch. It's amazing how complicated those things are, what with organizing 20 missionaries in all sorts of different cities, getting them all gathered by train and bus and taxi into a couple of apartments, and onto the same plane to Moscow and Kiev and back, and then back out to their own cities and areas, all within about 48 hours. It feels like a big giant logic puzzle while you're figuring it out, and you feel really accomplished when you hit "Print" on the finished schedule.

We'll be heading down to Saratov Zone Leaders on exchanges after Zone Leader Council on Wednesday, so that should be a blast. Actually, Elder Swartz is serving in the Volzhsky area and branch (same area and branch I served in while I was in Saratov, but they've moved the Zone Leaders to Centralney), and we're going to do split-down exchanges with the Zone Leaders and the Volzhsky district leader while we're there, so I'll probably get a chance to work with Elder Swartz again in Saratov. Woot woot!

Everything is more or less looking awesome. Our area is building back up and we are being given some really awesome investigators from all sorts of sources. The Lord is in this work.

Awesome. Well, I'm looking forwards to reading the updates from home and Boston! I love you all, thanks for everything you do! Have a fantastic day!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Without further ado, here are some photos! 

We have a nice selection here... First off, a picture of me sitting at my desk in the Bezimianski Zone Leaders' apartment. Displayed is my own face, and also my own face as rendered in oils (hanging on the wall). There was a lady we found on a transport who wanted to paint us really bad. So we let her borrow our photos and she painted me. Sweet! I definitely left that painting hanging over Elder Woolley's desk when I moved out of that apartment, as a joke. But I kind of want it back now, even though it makes me feel like someone who is very self-satisfied and prideful to have an oil painting of my own stupid face hanging over my desk. 

Next is a lovely sunset as seen out the grimy, reflective window of the Bezimianski Zone Leaders' aparment. If you look not very carefully, you can probably see my camera lens and our ceiling light in that picture too.

After that we have a picture of me standing both in Asia and Europe at the same time. Seems like I'm a little bit partial to Asia.

And lastly, we have the best baptism ever. From left to right, there's Elder Langston, G*, M*, and me. Yeah! They are both doing great, by the way. M* will be getting the Aaronic Priesthood next week, I believe.

11 Months Today!

So, that post title didn't come from Andrew - we just happened to realize at the breakfast table this morning that today marks 11 months since Elder Broekhuijsen entered the MTC!  Hard to imagine it's been that long (or that short!)  :-)  Sounds like he had another great week!

It's Elder Broekhuijsen again! I have about 20 minutes to write, so I'll try to squeeze in as much of the awesome stuff that happened this week as I can.

We had a double baptism on Saturday! A new member, A* (who is now serving on a short-term-mission with Sister Taylor in the Bezimianski Sisters' area, newly re-opened as of today), has a dad named M*. He is a boss. He knows the Bible almost as well as I know my Harry Potter trivia (and about as well as Hermione Granger knows Hogwarts, A History). He is just the perfect definition of elect. And he has the strongest testimony of missionary work. He's so amazing! 

G* was also baptized. She is also awesome! So awesome, actually. She asked me to baptize her, so I have officially found, taught, and baptized an investigator from start to finish in one trasnfer. Cool! Yesterday she received the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and two hours later, helped us on a lesson with another investigator, and she's already the BEST MEMBER HELP EVER! She testifies SO WELL and shares experiences and stuff. 

So I have one other large piece of news. I was informed about my transfer on Friday, about 36 hours before I was expecting to hear anything. President pulled me aside into his office after district meeting, and told me that I am going to be an Assistant to the President. Whoa, what? So as of today actually, I'm back with ELDER MORRIS! YEAH! And in about 2 or 3 hours, I'll be taking a taxi right into the thick of things with him. Transfers are in full swing right now, so there are Elders and Sisters attempting to miss trains and buses all througout the Samara oblast! (And the Penza, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, and Izhevsk oblasts, too, presumably.) It's going to be a huge adventure. I'm really excited for the new responsibilities I'll have. And to be honest, I kind of like the idea that I'll be in one place now for a good long time (probably 3 transfers absolute minimum, quite possibly a lot longer than that.) And I can't begin to describe my joy at getting to serve with Elder Morris again. That happens SO rarely that two missionaries get to serve together at two different parts of their mission. It will be so awesome.

I did get all the packages from everyone, by the way, and I wanted to say thank you for everything. I am right now wearing a certain spicy green tie. While drinking hot chocolate. Not really though, you can't bring your own hot chocolate into internet cafes. They don't appreciate it for some reason. Wanted to especially thank Joshua for the EPIC pen that he made me. It's so dicey, and classy, and weighs a lot, and writes so nice, and I examined that beast for like 15 minutes looking for a scratch or imperfection in the finish, and didn't find one. So as they say in Russian, molodyets. Good stinking job.

I got your photos from the S95 as well, Dad. Sweet! I'm WAY impressed with that guy! Of course, you're probably not going to print anything bigger than 11x14 of it if I know you, but I submit that you should hit up that nice black and white shot again with the 4x5. I can't believe you don't have any snow down there. It really does look like fall just kind of died and nobody covered it up yet. We get snow here any day it is warm enough to snow. To be honest, I don't notice the cold. My coat and hat and scarf are warm enough that I don't feel any different than inside in them. The only difference is the air makes you choke on how cold it is for the first 5 breaths when you go outside. And sometimes my face is really cold, but I'm pretty used to that. And if I stand still too long talking to someone, my feet start getting cold, but they warm back up again as soon as I start walking.

Anyway, my time is up. Thank you everyone for everything! I wish I could say I will get right down to writing reply letters to all the letters I've gotten from friends and family like Grandma, Sam, Elder Davis, Kendra, and everyone else. But from what I understand, the Assistants have been averaging about 0.8 P-days per transfer. Usually there's just too much administrative work to be done. I guess we'll see if I can make some letter writing happen. 

I love you all! My mission is AMAZING right now. I figured out that I'm in kind of the best time of the whole mission in a lot of ways. I've been out long enough that I'm comfortable in the country, comfortable with the language (not that I don't want to get better, and completely eliminate my accent), and comfortable with the work (or at least as comfortable as you can get with something like missionary work.) BUT I still have the better part of my mission in front of me, so I don't have to worry about "oh, I only have 3 transfers left" or any of that kind of garbage yet. YES! 

Have a fantastic week! I'm off to go bring some suitcases over to my new apartment and then dive into transfer work until bedtime.

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen

Best Week Ever!

I got to read Andrew's email at around 4:30 this morning on Jerome's iPad (so I didn't even have to get out of bed!)  Of course, I then went back to sleep like a sane person.  It sure is great to hear such happy reports!

I've had the best week ever! I seriously am having a hard time remembering a happier, better week of my entire mission.  I hate to crush Melissa's record, but we had NINE investigators at  church yesterday :P. I didn't know that it was possible for that to happen, but I guess it is. 

We had a Visa Trip on the 13th! We got SO lucky, because we had two direct flights - straight to Kiev from Samara, and straight back, with no layovers in Moscow to steal our temple time. Therefore we had mucho time at the temple! 

After the temple, we headed back to the Kiev Airport and played a game in the gate called "everyone is so tired we're all delirious, and anything anyone says is funny" for about 3 hours. It was highly enjoyable. I also played my own single-player game called "resist the temptation to go pull out a bunch of Hrivnya and buy a ridiculously overpriced Mont-Blanc fountain pen." I won, thankfully.   

On our way back into Samara, we played a game called "have lots of problems with our passports and visas." The guys waiting for us at passport control had just had another group of missionaries 24 hours before, and they were prepared with all the fun questions. So Elder Morris got our head registrator on the phone and he explained everything to them, and they were still giving us garbage. Sister Wilson got through with the "flirt maneuver." I got through with the "hick accent and terrible grammar and speaking lots of English" maneuver. It was hilarious. I literally said "zdrazvoocher" to the guy and he just stopped trying to speak Russian to me within 20 seconds, and grumpily stamped my passport. I also told him "Ya nravitza your chocolate. You know, chocolate?" Threw in a thumbs-up for good measure. (People who speak Russian will think this joke is funny.Sorry.) [Editor's note:  I left this in there in case some readers happen to speak Russian - as for me - I didn't get it!]  Elder Morris could barely contain himself after that. Elder Hughes didn't get so lucky. He had them go through his phone for about 30 minutes. Elder Langston also got pulled into a booth and questioned pretty hardcore about having two passports on his person for a good while. But it all worked out, like it always has, and it always will.  That's a perk of doing everything legally and also having the Lord on your side.  Pretty much it was the funnest Visa Trip ever. 

Other than that, there was a lot of regular old missionary work. I had a blast. We're having LOTS of success. Galya is getting baptized on Saturday. I can't remember if I told you or not, but she already finished reading the Book of Mormon and is on her second time through.  And the first time she prayed about it, she had a dream about it and got a testimony that it was true. She also said she's noticed her studies have gotten easier since she started meeting with us. Man, she is such a boss. I can't get over it.

I'm SO thankful to be in this awesome companionship in this awesome area in this awesome zone is this awesomest of all awesome missions.

My Birthday was also AWESOME! I had like three different companionships call me at 11:30 or so, shortly after I finished sleeping in from the Visa Trip. (8 mandatory hours of sleeping after a Visa Trip is definitely inspired) So I heard lots of Happy Birthday in English and Russian that day. Also got some letters and DearElders, although it's looking like your package won't show up until Thursday.  So thanks so much for sending it!  I'm excited to see what's inside.

Glad to hear you had some sweet Russian Rye bread. I had some in Orenburg, it was really really good. [I think his might have been a little more authentic than the loaf we got at Kohler's - what do you think?]  :-) 

Okay. Well I am about out of time, so I'm gonna finish her up and get off.  I love you all! Thanks everyone for being so good at writing good emails!  

Let Bryce know I respect him a ton and I hope he had an awesome mission!

Have a fantastic week! 

Love, Elder Broekhuijsen

Hooray for REAL email!

Not to sound whiny or anything, but the past couple of emails from our Elder have been too short for our liking.  Of course, he had good excuses, but we were still very pleased to receive a "nice, big, juicy" one (as promised) this morning!

I have about two weeks of my awesome mission to catch up filling you in on, so buckle up! 

Wow, the first thing I had written down to tell you about was our exchanges with Orenburg. That seems like about 32 years ago now, but I guess we'll start from the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.

We went to Orenburg! It was awesome. Let me tell you, it was the most exciting train ride I've ever had on my mission. We barely made it to the station on time and hopped on the train when the steam sounds were starting to happen. We were escorted to our coupet by a Uzebekistanian worker who checked our tickets and passports as usual, and then opened our door for us... to show that 4 drunk Uzebekistanian men were sleeping in our beds. She double checked our tickets to make sure there was no mistake and then explained to the Uzebekistanian men in Uzebekistanian something that made them all drunkenly stand up and file out of the room. I imagine the conversation went a little bit like this: "Hey guys, the people who actually paid for this coupet showed up after all. You're gonna have to get out, sorry." So they left and she kinda spruced up the room a little bit but it still reeked and did not change the fact that our beds had been occupied by smelly drunks. 

So Elder Langston asked her why they were in our coupet, and she said, "There was no one else here, and we're just trying to help them out." Then we noticed that there was a suitcase in the coupet, just chilling there. We asked her whose it was and she said, "There are only two of you in this coupet; you have plenty of room. Just let the suitcase stay there." Great.

Turns out "someone" had let a rather large number of Uzebekistanian people onto the train without tickets, because they were packed about 8 to a coupet. Or they would have been, had they been in the coupets. Instead, they were all out in the hallways drinking and laughing and speaking Uzebekistanian all night long. They didn't use their inside voices or 12-inch-whispers, either. So I had some calls to make and started by calling the Bezimianski Sisters. About 2 minutes into the call, this one guy knocked on our coupet door. Well it's normal for people to knock at the beginning because they usually double check your tickets and tell you you can go buy coffee and whatever else during the train ride. But no, it was one of our four friends. We opened the door and he stumbled in and sat down on the bed accross from me and asked me if I spoke Uzebekistanian. I told him no. He stared at me, puzzled, for a minute, and then said, "Okay, well. I'll be here tonight then." So while on the phone with Sister Wilson, I got to explain to him that we had paid for  the entire coupet, and that he was, in fact, leaving. After practicing my "authoritative tone" for about 2 minutes with this guy, I finally convinced him to get out. He stepped out and was like, "Okay, I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't close the door, I'll be right back!" So we slammed the door and locked it. Every 40 minutes from that point on, he came back and knocked on our coupet for a while, yelling, "Let me in, this is my spot!" It was funny until we got past 12:00 at night. 

Anyway, it was a sweet train ride and we slept really well and peacefully. [Do you suppose he's being a little sarcastic here?]  Add in the fact that Orenburg time is two hours earlier than Samara, and we were pretty wasted when we got up the next morning.

Exchanges were awesome though, we found 11 new investigators on the streets within two days. I also talked a lot with Elder Rekow serving down there. He came to Russia at the same time as Elder Swartz, and we have a lot in common. 

While in Orenburg, I also crossed the Ural river and made it to Asia! I actually took one of those cheesy "I'm standing in Europe and Asia at the same time!" pictures as well. Hopefully I'll be able to send that next week.

New Years was awesome! We had to stay inside unfortunately for the 31st and the 1st because there are staggering numbers of drunk people on the street (that adjective can describe both the numbers AND the people!). So on the 1st, we actually just went and stayed at the Assistant's apartment to hang out with them and take care of some Zone dealios (<-- this is Spanish). [Wrongo, Andrew-o!]  It was a blast. On New Years Night at 12:00, it was absolutely crazy outside. There were so many fireworks echoing accross the city that it was LITERALLY a low roar with no breaks at all for several hours. As in, I fell asleep not long after 12:00, then I woke up again to some fireworks right by our house at like 4:00, and the low roar of constant fireworks throughout the whole city was still going strong. It was absolutely insane. I didn't know there were that many fireworks in existance.

Anyway, thus started our week of staying at the Assistant's house every night. We were there Sunday because we spend New Years with them. On Tuesday we had split-down exchanges with the Office Elders and Novokuybyshevsk, so we just stayed at the Assistants to go with them the next morning. Wednesday was Zone Leader Council for January, so once again at the Assistants, and in the office all day. Then Thursday we went into our own area to work the evening and came back in to the Assistants that night because Friday and Saturday were exchanges with the Assistants. It was a blast of a week, but it felt good to sleep in my own bed last night.

We have a couple of investigators that have had awesome miracles lately! One is T*. She is awesome; she works at the branch building as a guard supplied by the guy who rents us the building. So she knows all the members and has come a bunch of times and was a really good investigator of the Bezimianski sisters for a while. Well we had an investigator give us the fig (not show up for a meeting and not answer his phone) at the branch building one day and our member help was there already, so we just decided, why not meet with T*? We sat down, had an opening prayer, and she opened up the meeting by saying, "I've been thinking, and I've decided I want to be baptized on the 25th of January." We were like... "OKAY!" So she's looking pretty strong. She studies the Book of Mormon better than I did before my mission, and has a ton of free time to kill at her job, so she's read all the Liahonas, tons of the Teachings of the Prophets books, and all sorts of stuff like that. She's way awesome.

We also have a girl we found on a bus named G*. She's about 23 or so, studying to be a psychologist. She is really... wise. I guess that's a good word. Just really sincere and awesome, too. She came to church yesterday and it was fast and testimony meeting. One of our members, A*, was bearing his testimony, and she tapped me on the arm and said, "Look! Look at him; he's glowing! Do you see?" And the more I looked at him, the more I did notice a glow. It was awesome. We're meeting with her tonight.

On Saturday, we heard this genius idea from another companionship called, "buy Pelmeni, boil it up and then fry it to make pot stickers which you can then eat with homemade sweet and sour sauce." So we went ahead and threw down some pot stickers. Oh, man it was good. We also have been making lots of peanut butter fudge lately, which is insanely delicious.

Whew! Okay. Well I feel caught up. I hope you all had a magical Christmas, New Years, and Dad, I hope you enjoyed your birthday. 

Can you believe it's 2012? I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't stayed up all night listening to loud fireworks and shouting drunk people. It blows my mind how little of my mission is really left now.  It absolutely blows my mind to shreds. I gotta kick it up a notch.

2012 is going to be our year. We are so pumped. 

I love you all! My mission rocks!

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen

Surprise Email!

Hey!  We just got a surprise email from Andrew.  After the email we received from Sister W. earlier today we weren't expecting anything from Andrew this week, so even though it's short, it's WAY better than nothing!

I wish I had good news for you about how much time I have to write this letter, but unfortunately, I don't. There's actually quite a lot to talk about, but I've kept good notes on what to write you about next P-day :)

The story goes like this: Russian New Years is the hugest holiday ever in the universe. Most businesses and government buildings shut down from the first to the 10th, because Russian Christmas is the 7th. So tons of missionaries couldn't write home since we usually write in post offices. Elder Langston and I  actually couldn't write home because we were insanely busy all day long on P-day and never found an hour to write between shopping for food, Zone Planning, and meetings with investigators.

But we just got out of Zone Leader Council for January and got special permission to just run down to the office and write there for a few minutes between interviews with President.

Expect a big, juicy email next week; there have been TONS of awesome things going on.

I hope you all had a super happy New Years! And Happy Birthday tomorrow, Dad! I love you! You'll probably get this shortly after I send this, so just picture me sitting in the mission office with the Assistants talking about potential for leadership in our Zone, because that's what I'll be doing right after I send this.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Happy New Year???

Hello everyone out there in blogland!  We were not surprised that we didn't receive an email from Andrew on Monday (due to the New Year holiday) but were a little surprised not to receive anything from him yesterday.  This morning, however, we received the following email from one of the Senior Missionaries who works in the mission office:

Dear Russia Samara Families,
 We understand that there is some concern because many of you haven’t heard from your missionaries this week! New Year is a HUGE Russian holiday and therefore MANY, MOST EVERYTHING was closed on Monday! The internet shops, the libraries, the post offices, all are closed for the holidays. Some are closed until 10 January. However, we believe that most of you will hear from your missionary on their next P-day, Monday 9 January. If you do NOT hear, please do not be concerned for their welfare! We are not certain when some areas will have the internet shops available again! Everyone here is doing very well!
 You should receive weekly emails from your missionary. Please be aware that if there is a Monday holiday here, the email will be delayed for a week. Do not worry, IF there was an emergency with your son or daughter, you will be contacted directly by President and/or Sister Sartori! We love your missionaries! We are doing our best to take good care of each one of them!
 Happy New Year!

So there you have it!  I guess we will try to be patient until next Monday!