Wow - it sounds like the "Russian groundhog" must have seen his shadow! It sure doesn't sound like winter is over yet in Samara. Thanks so much to all who have been writing to Andrew and keeping him in your prayers. I know he feels and appreciates your support - and so do we!
How's everyone doing? I'm having a good day. We kind of have a P-day today. Which means, we got to clean our apartment. Mom isn't going to believe this, but I LOVE having a clean place to live now. That is something I have learned on my mission. I still don't get excited about the idea of organizing the desk, but I get excited enough about the idea of having a clean desk that it gets me through the actual organizing part easily. [Editor's note: Mom would love for him to come and organize her desk!]
We had a pretty eventful week. On Thursday was Zone Leader Council, which was a blast as usual. We really were able to address a lot of the problems the mission is facing right now and get us all pointed in the right direction. We've set a baptismal goal for the mission in February and are already off to a first start with two people in the Bezimianski Zone Leaders' area getting baptized this last Saturday. A* and T*, that is, both of which I worked with while I was in that area. They are both so awesome; they're going to be great members. Unfortunately, Elder Morris and I were on exchanges with the Saratov Zone Leaders on Friday and Saturday, so I wasn't able to attend the service. But things are looking really good for the month. There are awesome golden people popping up everywhere in the mission. Even areas that have been less successful as of late are setting baptismal dates with investigators that just came out of the woodwork. It's amazing! Elder Langston and his new companion, Elder Woolley, are baptizing awesome people like bandits!
Exchanges with Saratov were fantastic! We split down to do sister interviews and kind of show the Zone Leaders how those are conducted. I'm not particulrly experienced there myself, but I guess a little more so than the Saratov Zone Leaders, who are really new. The sisters in Oktyabrsky area and Dachney South are doing well, which is always nice to know. It's not fun at all when there are sisters in the mission having a hard time. Or Elders, for that matter. It just stays in the back of your mind all day and usually there's not anything I can just do that will help them get back on their feet right away.
I dunno... seems like things are going really well. I'm getting more and more used to doing administrative stuff all day. After I write, I'm probably going to have to spend most of the rest of my P-day working on a density map of the Saratov membership so that the big guys in Moscow can decide how the branch boundaries need to change based on the availability of chuch buildings and stuff. It's a really fun process: see name on a branch list, look up address, locate address on the map of Saratov hanging up at my desk, locate the same place on the tiny map I'm drawing on, put a red dot there. Repeat 1500 times.
The weather has just been getting colder and colder. Most days don't go much higher than about -20C [-4° F], and everyone says that we're going down to -35C [-31° F!] this coming week. Woohoo! Elder Hughes actually got a touch of frostbite on his nose when he stayed out contacting a little too long, but they've told us that if we rub our cheeks and noses every few minutes, we won't get any. It's pretty amazing to experience this kind of cold. It's like... colder than I had imagined there could be weather. But it's not in an unpleasant way, usually. Just keep my hands in my pockets and of course my coat and hat and scarf are plenty warm. I'm not complaining, I like being outside when it's that cold. It's kind of awesome.
Anyway. I hope you all have a fantastic day! I love you all so much! Keep on writing emails! I can print them all now without problems, and now that I can send photos easily (living within 20 minutes of the mission office has its perks), I think I'll be taking a lot more. I'm really hoping for a day where we break -40C [-40° F - the magical place where Celsius & Fahrenheit are the same] before this winter is over; I'll be sure to snap a picture of the thermometer if we make it that far :)
Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen
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