Bonus Photo!

We were very pleasantly surprised to receive an email this morning from a Senior Sister missionary who works in the office of Andrew's mission.  She sent us a couple of photos.  This one depicts Andrew "helping" with the money there in the office!

Wonderful Week

Well, I'm glad I didn't get up at 3:30 to check my email - since this one apparently didn't come in until almost 5:00 this morning!  Looks like Andrew must have been having a busy PDay…  Anyway, here's today's email.

It's me again. You probably knew that, but I like to make sure sometimes. I mean, theoretically, some other person could log onto my MyLDSMail account and send you an email who exactly imitated my writing style. But now that I think about it, that seems kind of unlikely.

In any case, it really is me.

It's been a wonderful week! I haven't read your letters yet because I wanted to make sure to get everything I wanted to tell you written down before I run out of time. So here goes.
First off, we had Zone Conference in Samara. It was delicious, except the Penza elders who stayed in our apartment left it an absolute wreck. I'm talking like... dried up bread on the table and stuff. Thanks. So we cleaned that up this morning. And while we were doing that, I realized that that's always how it goes. I have (believe it or not) learned how to be a neat, clean person somewhere in the last year. I really really love organization and cleanliness and as they say in Russian, paryadok (I guess that would mean "order"). So when our apartment gets messed up, it's other people's fault. [Mom's note:  That line actually sounds familiar…]  :-)  Thought I would share that with you. Here, I'll tie it into the gospel, one sec. Actually, never mind.

So we had District Conference yesterday, which is the equivalent to Stake Conference. So not only did I get to see awesome talks from all of the branch presidents, the district president, President and Sister Sartori, and one of President Sartori's counselors, I got to see all my old friends from Novo-K. Plus, O* came and loved it (I have only had an investigator come to church and not love it one time on my whole mission). But there are two awesome stories that come from District Conference.

First of all, the district president is President Haren. I've told you about him before. He's just crazy Christlike and kind and awesome and speaks decent English, especially considering he started studying a couple years ago and lives in Russia and is like 55. He was speaking about the Atonement, and he told the story about the little girl who saves forever but can't even afford the tiniest fraction of the bike she wants, so her dad pays for the rest of it (grace).

Other, spiritual story from District Conference: Elders Morris and I got out the door Sunday morning and decided to take a regular Tramvai up to District Conference so we could do some morning transport contacting (which I LOVE so much) (also, that isn't sarcasm; I really do love it more than anything). So we headed out and split up, so as to divide and conquer the tram car we were on. And I started talking to this girl, A* who was the conductor. She's 26. From Uzebekistan, but mostly Russian, so she's still really Russian-looking and didn't have an accent or anything. She was super nice, and I explained what we were doing here and stuff and we just chatted because I knew it was going to be a long ride and she wasn't going anywhere. So eventually she got interested and asked for our number, so we switched numbers. And I asked her when would be a good time to meet during the week, and she said, "Let's meet tonight." So I was like, "I'm down." So we set up a meeting in the mission office (we meet there all the time since it's in our area and the branch building isn't) for 7:30. And that night we showed up and called her and she was like "Yeah, I'm on my way." And we had a mix up with some member help not showing up and stuff, which ended up with us knocking on President Sartori's door and standing there in our orphan clothes holding out an empty bowl of gruel and saying, "Please sir, I want some more" with a British accent. Okay, that part didn't really happen, but we sure felt dumb asking for President's help on a lesson without any notice. Because we can't be in the same room with 1 or 2 girls without a man; only 3 or more, and one of them has to be 18 or older and a church member. So President came down and helped us on the lesson, and it was one of those magical ones that everything just clicks into place, and now A* has a baptismal date for April 21st. Yeah baby! Man. God can give you so much stuff out of thin air. Seriously.

Anyway. That's about it for this week. Things are rocking. The time is flying by faster than an F-16 fighter jet on crack. It's the end of March; what the heck?

Love you all! Thanks for everything! Have a wonderful week.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Life Rocks

Man, life rocks.

How is everyone doing? I'm doing great.

So I had a rockin' week. (I feel "seventh grader" vibes radiating from my vocabulary when I use the word "rockin'." I think I'll replace it with "spicy" from now on.) I had a spicy week. Both literally and figuratively. Take that as you will.

Okay.

Let's talk about awesome things that happened this week:

-Miracle in Kazan! This happened last night, actually. I got a call while I was contacting our way home from a meeting at about 8:45 from Elder Hale, one of the Tol'yatti zone leaders, who was an assistant until I came over to Avrora. Elder Christensen, who just barely whitewashed Kazan North area (when two missionaries get transferred into a new area blind, without anyone staying there who had been there before), had a story. By the way, Elder Christensen is also a district leader there in a city he's never served in before, and is training Elder Nielson, who just got to Russia two weeks ago (and is from Highland, and went to Lone Peak!)

Anyway. Elder Christensen and Nielson had a rough week, and they were making their way home from church, just kinda contacting without a lot of energy or faith. Elder Christensen decided that they weren't being effective, so they took a second, ducked off the street into somewhere a little quieter, and took a minute to have a personal prayer for each of them. Then they prayed as a companionship to find out where they should go contact. Both of them felt like they should go back to this street they had passed not long ago that was in the opposite direction as they were walking, so they headed back. Nobody was stopping for them, so Elder Christensen says, "I got a crazy idea. Let's just contact people in English and see what happens." So they started contacting people in English. They see this guy about to walk into his apartment building, and Elder Christensen snags him and says, "Do you speak English?" in Russian. To which this guy responds, in English, "Sorry, I don't speak Russian." Ha! So they start talking to him, and he invites them into his apartment. Turns out he and his brother just moved to Kazan from Syria. They don't speak Russian. They don't know what they're going to do with their lives. They are "searching for truth," in their own words. They don't have jobs or plans; they're just kind of floating and trying to find work before their savings run out. So the missionaries teach them the first lesson (The Restoration) in English, which means Elder Nielson can fully participate with no language barrier (awesome!). These guys are just eating it up. They're the most prepared people ever. So the time comes and Elder Christensen starts extending the baptismal committment: "As you read and pray and find out for yourself that the Book of Mormon is true, and the Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, will you be baptized--" and this guy cuts him off and finishes his sentence: "--by somebody who actually has the authority from God? Absolutely we will!" So they have two baptismal dates out of nowhere for April 14th. And these guys are awesome and want to meet every single day to learn more. And then he asks, "Hey, this stuff is really important. The work you're doing here is so important! Can we help you out any way? Can we come out on the streets with you and try to find more peopel to share this with? Or... we know a bunch of English-speaking students from the universities around here. We'll talk to them and get them to meet with you!"

Oh, man. That's gotta be one of the top two miracles on my whole mission. They basically were given straight from God two new investigators with baptismal dates, who are perfectly golden, want to go contacting with them, give them 1000 referrals, and are going to meet every single day. MAN this church is true.

-We had Zone Conference in Saratov this week! It was wonderful, as we all expected. Tol'yatti zone got SUPER inflated after their Zone Conference. This last week we got in the key indicators, which kinda gives us a really rough idea of how things are giong on in the zone, and they are WAY up from the previous like three months. So that's exciting. This week I'm looking forwards to another sweet Zone Conference in my hometown, Samara (also Tol'yatti and Saratov are kind of my home towns, I think). It should be rockin'. I mean spicy.

-Man. That's about it. Life is so good. Elder Morris and I threw down some spicy weekly planning on Saturday (finally had time for it, for once) and we are gonna make it happen this week with our area. Yeah we have to plan a Zone Conference and a six-group visa trip, but man we're going to set some baptismal dates while we're at it.

Thanks for everything you do! I love you all! Have a wonderful day and week!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

P.S. The weather is getting warmer finally. Today we woke up and it was exactly 0 degrees C, and we went outside and I didn't have to wear the inside liner of my palto, or gloves, or semi-broken earmuffs I've been using that I found. It felt like SUMMER outside. Elder Morris says spring gets ridiculously muddy and stuff. I'm ready to rock it. It's sunny and warm and all the snow is melting, and the 18-foot icicles are all crashing to the ground spectacularly (we're not allowed to walk near buildings until like May). Word.

Photos - As Promised!

At the end of Andrew's email today he said he would send some photos - and sure enough he did!  Here are three of them with his own descriptions as captions.

Here we have Elder Morris pouring milk out of a bag (milk comes in bags here!). Unfortunately, I decided to open this bag using the "spastically stab with scissors" method rather than the more standard "cut off a corner" method.

This is me sitting in the study room in New City North, enjoying a lightweight-yet-warm emergency blanket.

Elder Morris sometimes has these attacks where he feels the urge to pile everything in sight on my lap in 30 seconds or less. This is the direct aftermath of one such attack last night.

All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of the Spirit

I woke up at 2:00 this morning and checked email, but there was nothing yet from Elder Broekhuijsen.  Happily, by 5:00 there was, so I read it then!  Of course, that made it impossible to get back to sleep before 6:00 normal get-up time, but it was worth it!

Hey family and friends!

How's everyone doing? I'm doing great, thanks for asking. (Sometimes I like to pretend that YOU started this whole conversation.)

Well it's been a great week. A busy one. But we expected that. March is going to be a busy month in general. There are three Zone Conferences and right at the beginning of April we have a HUGE visa trip.

We started off getting ready for Tol'yatti Zone Conference. Elder Morris and I put together a breakout on planning (oh, man. If there is one aspect of missionary work I absolutely dominate at, it's planning. Also talking on public transportation. Thanks for talents, Heavenly Father!) We also got to figure out food for everyone there and travel, etc. etc. Actually, now that I think about it, we had transfers right before this. I'm going to be here a while, so I stopped even noticing when transfers were going on. When you plan it well enough, you more or less just fax the schedule to the Zone Leaders and no problems happen, so within a week, everyone has successfully made it to their new areas. Anyway. Zone Conference was fantastic. I'm looking forwards to doing it again this week in Saratov, and next week in Samara. Man, that's such a huge blessing - I get three two-day Zone Conferences, one after another. That's like a giant six-day all-you-can-eat buffet of the Spirit.

After Zone Conference, we came back to our own area and went straight to a meeting with O*. She's doing well. We FINALLY got acquainted with her 13-year-old daughter, N*. She also gave us two "referrals," in the form of her sister, and her sister's husband. They're a really young couple and cool, but not real interested, and they live in Moscow anyways. But the husband there does freelance iPod software design, so that was pretty cool. They also both spoke pretty decent English. O* and N* unfortunately didn't make it a priority to get to church yesterday, so that was disappointing. But all the same, they're both headed towards baptism for sure.

Our new District Leader, Elder Bishop, is awesome. As a district at district meeting (which we missed because of Zone Conference in Tol'yatti), we set a goal for each companionship to be up and on their feet at 6:29, saying a prayer of gratitude, instead of sleep/praying on our knees in our beds until 6:40, when my second alarm goes off. Now that I think about it, that's really a borderline disobedient way of doing mornings... we should have come up with this earlier. Anyway, it pays off. Elder Morris and I have been calling one of the Saratov Zone Leaders, Elder Anderson, every morning lately. He was a marine before his mission, and man he knows how to work out. Our workouts are SO intense. I think he must live in a constant state of soreness. Either that, or he's just laughing as he announces which ridiculous exercises we'll be doing next while he eats a large stack of pancakes every morning. I suspect the latter.

This morning in companion study (which on P-day is substituted by Mission Planning), Elder Morris and I FINALLY finished putting together the schedule for the next Visa Trip - it's enormous. There are six different groups leaving on different days throughot the first week of April, going to all sorts of different places by different means of transportation, like Kiev, Ukraine; Riga, Latvia; and Uralsk, Kazakhstan. It was such a pain to get it planned, but when we do a run-through with our big transfer board and double check that everything works without problems, it's pretty satisfying to watch. Also, turns out our trip will be the funnest Visa Trip of my entire mission. It's going to be Elder Morris, Elder Langston, Elder Hughes, Elder Glad, Elder Wiseman, Sister Webb, Sister Quinn, Sister Taylor, and me. We got lucky enough to have direct flights to Kiev and back to Samara, so we'll have lots of time at the temple. Yeah, baby!

Here's a rad rad rad miracle from the week: There's a family that Elder Langston baptized in Saratov about 3 months ago, and they've been trying to get the current Saratov Zone Leaders (Elders Anderson and Lythgoe) to go to a smallish city called Krasney Koot (those letters do not approximate the pronunciation of this city very well) to meet a family they know who's interested in the gospel. Krasney Koot is about 2.5 hours or so out of Saratov. Well President Sartori asked the Area Presidency for permission to send Elders there for a day, but they said no. Anyway, A*, a 14-year-old kid in this family of new members in Saratov, is a huge boss, and already a missionary, and he goes out to Krasney Koot pretty regularly (a couple of times a month or so). And I guess he's been teaching this family out there, and a bunch of their friends are interested now, and things have really taken off. So the way it stands now is that there are around 20ish people in this city who are REALLY interested in having missionaries teach them the lessons. They meet at one lady's house to study the Book of Mormon and the church magazines (the Liahona), and tried to come to church in Engels last week (the closest branch), but there was too much snow, so the busses all got closed down. As it stands, there are three full families and a handful of other people that have put their names down on a list and submitted it to the missionaries as a "please come and teach us" kind of a thing. They are already meeting on their own in this lady's house to study the Book of Mormon, and they are living the Word of Wisdom (they all quit drinking coffee and tea and smoking ALL ON THEIR OWN). What the heck? If that's not a random awesome miracle, I don't know what is. So the decision is that if there are really 21 people out there ready to get baptized, they'll start what's called a "group" for Krasney Koot. A group is basically a branch of members, but run only by the Aaronic Priesthood. There needs to be at least 8 people (I think?), and at least one Priest. Then they can baptize and confirm, hold an authorized Sacrament Meeting, etc. etc. And if it grows from there, eventually they'll open a branch there and put a pair of missionaries in a brand new city; quite possibly before my mission ends. I dunno about you, but that's about the coolest thing I've ever heard.

Okay. Well I want to save some time to send you pictures today, so I'll end this one now. Thanks for everything you do! I love you and hope you have a wonderful day, all of you!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Tol'yatti Photos

In Andrew's email on Monday, he mentioned that he had run into some friends from Tol'yatti last week.  One of them emailed some photos to Joshua, so I'll include a couple here.

 I'm not sure, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say the guy on the left is V* - who was baptized in October when Andrew was serving in New City (Tol'yatti.)

Judging by what Andrew said in his email, I think the people in this photo are (left to right) Elder Broekhuijsen (I'm actually quite sure of that one!) then either A* or S*, then V*, then O*.

Time Blows My Mind

Hooray for March!  Hooray for Mondays!  Hooray for email!

Man, it's been a crazy week. We started things off with Monday night, when we had to stay in after P-day to finish a transfer schedule (which is actually being carried out right now). Then Tuesday and Wednesday, we had Zone Leader Council! It was fantastic; we really got some great inspiration to have our mission move forwards. We set a baptismal goal for the month of March. It's a tall order, but we're having miracles pop up all over the place. For example, yesterday at church, we had a member show up who had been inactive for years. I'd never met him before. He was one of the first people baptized in the Samara mission - sometime in 1992, about 6 months after the mission opened. He said he'd been struggling with smoking for years, but he always believed, always kept reading the Book of Mormon, and always knew that he would come back. Well, he's been clean from smoking for a few months now, and decided to come back. He's awesome. He's got such a strong testimony, and loved being at church again. He also randomly stood up in Priesthood meeting and just said, "My wife and I, and our older son are baptized. But my youngest son never did get baptized. He wants to come to church and join. Which missionaries live closest to me?" It blew my mind. 

On Thursday and Friday, Elder Morris and I hit up Old City, Tol'yatti, to do exchanges with the Zone Leaders down there. It was a blast. We found new investigators in each companionship both nights, which really boosted the area. We actually found quite a few people tracting, as well. Seems like we kind of found the golden time for tracting in Russia (around 7:00ish in the evening, when everyone is getting home from work). Don't know why it took me that long to figure that out, but there you go. 

On Saturday, we had to be inside almost all day again because the transfers got switched around just enough for us to have to scrap our entire transfer schedule and start again from scratch. So that was awesome. And yesterday, it happened again, except this time the transfers were already happening. So we got to really quickly figure out a chunk of the transfer, and then call it down as fast as we could so that everyone knew where they were going and at what time, and how. Then write another section, and repeat. It was pretty stressful, but everything worked out all right. We felt pretty lame about our ridiculously low key indicators when we totaled everything up that night, but then we realized that we had three hours of missionary work for the week. Suddenly they seemed a little better ;)

So early this morning, Sisters Ostapchuk and Lednyova finished their missions and flew home. Sad day. Both of them were together in New City South while I was district leader there in New City North. It was so much fun to work with them, and they're both amazing sisters. We'll definitely be missing them around here. We have LOTS of new sisters coming in in the next 4 or 5 months though.

While Elder Morris and I were looking over the complement today to get some visa trip information straightened out, I caught a weird glimpse of the end of my mission. At the end of this transfer that starts today, Elder Hale goes home. Elder Hale is the former assistant that left when I got transferred here, and he's one of the Tol'yatti Zone Leaders. The cycle after that, we have one elder, and three of our best sisters going home. And the cycle after that, Elder Morris goes home, with Sister Quinn, who came into the MTC on the same day as me. What the heck? The cycle after that, one more sister goes home. One more, and nobody leaves. The cycle after that is when Elder Bullough goes home. He's my former Zone Leader, and only one transfer ahead of me. Which means the transfer after that, I'm done. This info is all contained on one piece of paper, and I don't know how much I like that. 

At the very beginning of my mission in Russia, they told me I would be going home somewhere in the March teens of 2013. But that info doesn't really get made clear or exact until way later on in the mission. There are a lot of things that affect your going-home date, most notably the way things work out with your visa trip schedule. I was always part of a group that got the long end of the deal (extra 4 weeks past 2 years, rather than 2 weeks less than 2 years) until about a week ago, when I started showing up as going home February 11th, 2013. So if that hasn't flipped back to March in 6 months or so, I think I'll do a little bit of further investigation there. I REALLY don't like the idea of finishing before my 2-year mark. The cycles are just absolutely blowing by these days. I swear I just moved into this apartment like a week ago, and I'm already looking around for a new clean planner. Everyone says the second year goes faster, but I didn't believe them. But I guess what this all boils down to is that I've finally realized that my mission is finite, in a very real and scary way. I gotta get moving if I'm going to accomplish everything I want to (and more importantly, everything that the Lord wants me to). 

Time blows my mind. Anyway, here's some cool news: on our way back from Tol'yatti, we stopped in Komsomolsky branch to pick up some papers that the office needed. Well it just so happens that there was a YSA group meeting there to plan some activities for spring. I got to see a TON of my old friends from Tol'yatti! It was awesome. I saw A*, S*, O*, and V*! V* is the guy that got baptized while I was in New City North in October. I was SO PUMPED! He's doing so well; he's got a calling in the branch now as a Sunday School teacher, and he's dating O*! Ha HA! Victory! Anyways, we took a few pictures on some of their phones. I told A* Joshua's email address, so he probably sent those to him by now.
Speaking of awesome people I know dating each other, SISTER W* AND ELDER E* GOT ENGAGED! Elder E* was the assistant that Elder Morris replaced. He was assistant forever; (actually he was assistant when Elder Morris got to Russia), and he was one of those mission "constants" for me. He's been home since November, but Sister W* got home 1 month ago! Ha HA! She basically went home and then went up to England to visit him, and he popped the question. Oh yeah. Elder E* is from England, and Sister W* always wanted to go to England to study in this one culinary arts school. And Elder E* just went in with his dad and they co-bought a bakery. Those two are going to have a life like a Beatles song. I'm unbelievably happy for them. 

I don't remember if I ever told you, but a few weeks ago I got a call from the Elders in Volzhsky, where Elder Morris and I served before. Usually the only time a companionship that isn't Zone Leaders calls us is when they have to report an incident (like somebody attacking them or something), so I braced myself and picked up, but it was Elder K*!  [Clarification here - Elder K* is a former companion of Andrew's who finished up his mission and went home to St. Petersburg a few months ago.]  He met a girl in Moscow that was originally from Saratov but moved to Moscow before Elder K* came on his mission. Long story short, they're engaged as well, but here's the kicker - she's going on a mission to Kiev for a year and a half, and he's waiting! Poor guy. But the best part is that that means I GET TO GO TO HIS WEDDING! WIN! Oh man. Marriage is the coolest thing ever. He's doing so well, he's like walking around on a cloud all the time now. Or at least that's what it seemed like when he called us. 

Okay. I'm out of time, and that's about all the awesome news I have. Jeez. All my friends and former companions are getting married. Awesome. 

Have a great week! 

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen