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