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