Patience Pays Off

Hallelujah!  We did get an email from Andrew after all!  He didn't really explain why he wrote so late, but maybe his email just took the long route to get here - via Saturn or something!  Anyway, here's today's update.

Man. It's May. [Technically, Andrew, it's April 30th, but we'll let it slide…]  We just got done with Zone Leader Council. This one was an especially good one, because a huge focus was on preparing for the training of all the District Leaders in the mission tomorrow. We have a special meeting set up for that; and we've brought all of them into Samara for a day (which, in case you are wondering, is a logistical nightmare). But it's all going to be worth it. This leadership training tomorrow is going to be epically good. I think the entire mission is just going to get a big ol' boost from it.

It's been a good week. The key indicators in our area weren't so hot, but we got to go do exchanges down in Saratov, with the Zone Leaders. There's a lot of cool stuff that's related to that... in no particular order:

There is a new convert in the Volzhky branch named T*. At the end of my transfer with Elder Wood, there was a Zone Conference in Saratov, and they brought all the Zone Leaders in the mission down to teach breakouts. After the conference got over, I flexbusted out of the branch building with Elder Woolley and we found four new investigators in an hour. Tanya was one of them. Elder Wood taught her and it turns out she was super golden, and ended up getting baptized on Elder Wood's last Saturday on his mission. Anyway, she had a lot of problems with her family after that (they committed her to a mental institution and forbade her from coming to church). I'm actually not very in-the-know about the whole situation, but I know that she's recently been coming to church regularly again. I hope next time I go down to Saratov, I get to meet her.

While working with Elder Lythgoe, the senior Zone Leader in Saratov, we set a baptismal date with an awesome woman named N*! She's about 22, and has had a really rough life. It's amazing to see what living with church members and conforming her life to fit the gospel has done for her. It's a really awesome example of the gospel in action. She's so much happier, and was just glowing with excitement at the prospect of having all of her sins washed away.

When we got home, we stepped into our house and it smelled like a rotting corpse. That's one of my favorite welcomes after getting home from exchanges. Elder Morris and I did everything we could think of... we cleaned out the fridge, emptied the trash, did the dishes... nothing helped the smell. Within a day or so, we found the culprit. A boiled egg had, at some point during the week, amidst all the movement of missionaries in an out of the aparment that we always have, fallen on the ground, cracked open, and rolled under the stove. Yay. We sweeped it out and discovered that it was, indeed, the culprit. I'll send you a picture next week; I didn't bring my card reader to the office today. It's a shame a still photo doesn't really capture the lovely wriggling of the maggots we could see once the egg was in the light :). Oh, jeez. That was probably the grossest thing I've seen my whole mission. Actually, no. But anyway. Luckily, our apartment has returned to a normal, clean smell again.

So I'm happy to hear at least one of you got to meet Elder Wood, at least over the phone a bit. He's really an amazing guy, and an amazing missionary. I think he taught me just as much about being a missionary as my trainer, Elder Walton, my first cycle. He certainly taught me how to be a halfway decent Zone Leader. Funny that he mentioned transport contacting... the word, by the way, was probably either Marshrutka, or Gazelle (which is a type of Marshrutka). I remember one day riding to district meeting on a big ol' bus with him. There was a ton of traffic, and the first person I talked to rejected me, so I gave into the awkwardness of it and just shut up for the entire ride. We got off the bus, and he basically said, "What was that, Elder? You're a Zone Leader. You don't get to not talk on transports anymore." It was exactly what I needed. I haven't kept my mouth shut on a transport ever since. And that's a good thing too, because we found G* (who is now an awesome member) on a Marshrutka. Actually I've found a ton of new investigators on transports, now that I think about it. I love transport contacting to death. If you end up having Elder Wood over for dinner, make sure to invite Elder Hale too. I think they're roommates :D. And send me a picture if it works out! And don't force them to come up with compliments about me. Just let them eat in peace. And ask Elder Hale about stories from Texas or Iowa. He used to live there.

One last cool thing that's going on right now - I'm running out of time for writing. Remember V*, that got baptized back in New City before I came to Samara? HE'S DATING AN AWESOME MEMBER FROM NEW CITY BRANCH! HAHA! YEAH! VICTORY! It's getting serious, too. Man. Think of all those potential children of the covenant.

So I tried to send Melissa a super awesome package on her birthday. I bought a box from the post office, and loaded it up with awesome stuff, and then brought it back, and they were like, "What are you sending?" And I was like, "Lots of stuff." And they were like, "No, what are you sending?" And I was like, "Don't worry about it." And they were like, "Okay, let's look." So I opened it up, and they pulled a bunch of stuff out (basically everything that was paper, like the birthday card, etc.) and were like, "You can't send this in a box. You have to send it in an envelope." And I was like, "Lemme explain to you how packages work. I put stuff in a box, and write an address on it, and pay you some rubles, and you make that box go to that address. And we don't worry about what's in it or who needs to send what in envelopes." And they were like, "No, you can't send paper products in a box. That's the rules." And I said, "Fine, can I send this Super Snickers with hazelnuts and instant borscht in the same envelope as these paper products?" And they were like, "No, you have to send those in a box." So I wasn't particularly happy with that answer.

BUT. I'll find some other non-paper-product stuff to put in the box, and send the paper stuff in an envelope, and probably Melissa will get her two birthday packages from me sometime towards the end of her mission. But at least there are TWO birthday presents instead of ONE!

Also, there's a rad member in our branch named Y*. And Elder Morris and I left her a message where we sang the song from Robot Unicorn Attack for her. And then the next day we did a service project with the branch, and she came up to us and was like, "Hey, Elder Broekhuijsen, call me." And I called her, and she had downloaded the real song and put it as her ringtone when I call. Ha! Win. Elder Morris's by the way, is Barbie Girl.

Okay. I'm out of time. Love you!

Elder Broekhuijsen
 

 

It's a Mystery

Hmmm, no email from Andrew at 1:55 a.m. today.  No email at 2:00.  No email at 5:15.  No email at 7:39.  I believe we may have gotten skunked!  I'll keep you "posted."  (Get it?)  Yes, I am hilarious, actually…

Sweet! A Good Week!

Although he almost always sounds upbeat, it is particularly rewarding to hear Andrew sounding so happy!  Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers in his behalf!

Hey everyone!

It's been a good week for the area. Which is sweet, because it's been quite a while since we've had a particularly good week for the area.

The transfers went as smooth as butter (not lumpy butter though). Actually, that is a dumb saying, because "smooth" isn't even on my "first 15 adjectives I think of when I think of butter" list. The transfers went as smooth as a rock that has been sitting in a river for four centuries and then somebody took it out and sanded it with 400 grit, then 600, 800, 1000, and 1200 grit sandpapers, and then painted a perfect four coats of lacquer over it, resanding and buffing as needed.

On Tuesday, we randomly had an old former investigator, Y*, call us. He is a really successful businessman who lives outside of Samara, but comes in frequently. He's very very Christian. He always says that he wants to walk away from it all and just follow Christ, (although he hasn't seemed to do it just yet) and he's just about the nicest guy ever. Anyway, he called us and asked if there was going to be family home evening in the branch that night. There was, so we met him there, and had a lesson afterwards where he asked if there were going to be baptisms anytime soon. We told him there were and asked him if he would get ready to be baptized on May 5th. He said he was already ready. "Can't we just fill up the font right now? It's right over there." Sweeeeeeeeeeeet answer. So he's a big miracle this week. He doesn't answer his phone though because he's so busy all the time, so we're a little bit at his mercy as to when we can meet. But that's okay, I think he'll make his date.

Throughout the rest of the week, we had other missionaries in and our of our area for various reasons. Elders Woolley and Ceimers found an Armenian guy named A* on Friday. We met with him on Saturday and he's amazing. He and his wife say they have "dedicated their lives to Christ." He has a big ol' tattoo of Christ on his shoulder, and he calls him "My cool brother." That sounds way better in Russian though. So he and his wife, R*, are solid investigators now, reading the Book of Mormon and praying and stuff. Gosh, they're so cool. He also already doesn't smoke or drink. And he loves meeting, so he gave us a standing invitation to come over any time after 8, when they're always home, any night. And by the way, they live 5 minutes on foot from our apartment. YEAH baby!

There are also a couple of other new investigators we found by setting up meetings with them on the tramvai between our place and the branch building in Avrora. Tramvai contacting is seriously the best thing ever, I love it. So yesterday, while Elder Morris and I were planning, I noticed that we had started doing something that Elder Langston and I did every night - we had so many investigators in our area that we could just write down a list in any given time slot (say, 7:30-8:15) of investigators to meet with. Man, having a full area is the best thing ever.

So our area is finally building up. We're finding new investigators really consistently, and God is putting really really really awesome and elect people in our paths. I'm not sure what we did that changed things from "average" to "good," but I'll take it!

Thanks for getting those addresses for me! I've waited a LONG time for K's address (everybody look at Joshua with disappointed eyebrows for a moment, please).

The weather is amazing. Samara is SO beautiful once winter gets over. The whole mission is really picking up; with transfers, everyone ended up with companions that they really get along with or already know somehow or something, but there's tons of excitement about it, and that's translating into way more success in the key indicators and in the number of baptisms and just everyone's moods in general. The days can get hot, but I haven't seen TOO hot yet (wait until June/July for that ;) ), and the evenings are just absolutely perfect. The Volga is so beautiful with the sunset when we're headed down to the office in the evening for a meeting.

I'm loving it. Everything is going absolutely fantastic. Thanks for all the support I've gotten from all of you!

Looking forwards to Mother's Day, by the way. Weird, because last time there was Mother's Day, I was in the MTC and packing to get ready to go to the SLC airport. Weeeeeird.

Awesome.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

 

As Promised — Photos!

Andrew mentioned a couple of photos in his email today.  Here they are!

Not sure why he and Elder Swartz are looking so glum - perhaps those are just their serious faces!  :-)

Crazy Weather

Jerome watches the weather forecasts for Samara pretty closely, and it has recently started warming up significantly there.  Still, we were rather incredulous to see the following forecast last week - which Jerome sent to Andrew and to which he refers in his first paragraph.

How's life? It's pretty hot down here. I was flabbergasted (in Russian, Флэбэргэстировать, "to flabbergast" [okay, not really though]) to see the forecast. It's been hot on the streets today, but not THAT hot. I guess we'll see how the day pans out though, we very well could hit 120F sometime around 3:00 or so tomorrow. Gosh, that's crazy.

It's been a good week; kind of crazy. We watched General Conference this weekend, and I LOVED it. I especially enjoy the way L. Tom Perry says "The Book o' Marmon!" like a pirate. Seriously. I really really enjoy it.

Elder Hale is, right now as I type, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on his way back to America. Sad day, I'll miss that guy. But there will inevitably be road trips in the future. To the extent that we plan anything after our missions, Elders Morris, Hale, Langston and I have vaguely decided that we'll all room together at BYU one of these days.

Ooh! Just remembered! A list of people I saw in the MTC choir during the Saturday afternoon session: Elise Leavitt! Way to serve a mission! Yeah! Also, Dakota Murdock? At least, some dude that looked like him. Also, possibly Tamara Watkins? Elder Swartz called me and said he thinks he saw her. I wasn't looking for any sisters who graduated with me because none of them are old enough to serve missions yet, but apparently her dad is a mission president, so she can serve starting at age 20 or something? Anyway, if it was her, ALSO AWESOME. Actually, if there's anyone who still reads my blog that knows Tamara or could find out what's going on with her, could you tell me if that was her? I'd love to know. Also I'm pretty sure I saw a girl that looked like Kaitlyn Brunsdale, but I think she's already in San Antonio if she went to the MTC in January. So there's that.

So what else cool happened this week? Hmm... well, we found some cool new investigators. We also have transfers going on right now. Against all odds, I'm still in Avrora West ;). And probably will be until like August or September or something. Sweet. Elder Swartz got yanked out of Volzhsky and put back in as a District Leader in his old area in Penza. That's weird, because now both of us have been yanked out of Volzhky and sent back to work in old areas as District Leaders. I'll attach a picture I took of Elder Swartz and I this morning in our apartment. I'll also attach a picture of me indicating a man who is half cat. So, don't worry about it.

In other news... there isn't really a whole lot of other news. O*, our awesome investigator, is moving to Moscow. So with her schedule (or rather lack of schedule; she told us she hates planning, and that's why it's so hard to get meetings with her), we don't have enough time to meet with her and teach her everything and prepare her for baptism, which is a huge bummer. But she called US and asked if the church and the missionaries are in Moscow, to which we replied, "Oh, yes." Actually, what I said was, "Да! Даже, церковь там--намного крепче чем здесь в Самаре." So, there you have it. She'll go up there, meet the missionaries in her new area, and get baptized into a ward and a stake with N*. All the better for her!

So, also, MELANIE HAD A BABY NAMED AFTER A HARRY POTTER CHARACTER! Oh my gosh, what the heck? I swear it was like 20 minutes ago that I read the email that she was expecting. I guess this has probably been a WAY longer 9 months for her than for me. MAN, time flies. Well CONGRATULATIONS to her and Devin. Tell them I'm only 40% disappointed that they didn't name their son Andrew Broekhuijsen. Threenia would also have been acceptable.  [Editor's note:  Melanie is Andrew's cousin who had a baby GIRL last week - so the rest of us are glad she didn't name her Andrew Broekhuijsen!  Also, "Threenia" was the name 4-year-old Melanie picked out for Melissa when she was born.]

We're still working to build Zion here. The church is still true. Hope you enjoyed your vacation and told everyone I said hi.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Spring = Drunk Guys

Even in St. George, the first thing to do on a Monday morning is check for Andrew's email!  Happily, our hotel has internet.  (Let's face it, we wouldn't choose one without it…)  Also happily there was an email there waiting for us this morning.  Here it is for your reading pleasure.

Hey everyone!

Whoa, man. This is Elder Hale's last P-day. You don't know him, but he's awesome. And exactly one week from now he'll be on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Crazy.

Things are chugging along here in good ol' Samara. Life is great, the missionary work is going well, and I'm still learning and growing. The last part of that statement sounded pretty cheesy, didn't it? Oh, well. Sorry.

The visa trip went really well. More or less without a hitch. We headed out through Moscow to Kiev, had some time to go contacting in Kiev.  Man. I think 75% of the people we talked to were absolutely smashed, and it was like 3:00 PM. Maybe it had something to do with Easter coming up. (Russian Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday)

Speaking of Easter, you remember those little plastic sleeves that you can put on boiled eggs, and then dip them in really hot water, and they shrink and form-fit around the egg? Well I found some at the market (such a poor translation of the work "reinok") for 10 rubles for 8 of them. So... about 3 cents each. Ish. Yesterday I spent our lunch hour making Easter eggs with KITTENS on them! I'll send pictures next week if I remember.

What else is awesome? This week we met a guy on a tram on the way up to the branch building named I*.  He's super cool. We set up a meeting with him that night and he brought a friend named D* who is super hilarious. And both of them are really interested in the Book of Mormon. We have a meeting with them both tonight at 7:30 and they'll become progressing. They're so awesome. It's a huge testimony-builder for me that there's tons of just regular old people that haven't been super humbled by life circumstances who are still open to new ideas and new truths that they weren't aware of before.

So. Our area is actually doing pretty rough. We just cleaned out the area book and made things a little more realistic, and we don't have any progressing investigators, don't have any investigators with a baptismal date, and don't have any investigators who are attending church. But we're celebrating our very own home-brewed holiday called Diligence Week!!!? (The punctuation there is mandatory). And today we'll have two new progressors. Hope is never lost!

Man, with the weather, we've seen an approxinate 2033% increase in the number of drunk people everywhere. One of my favorite streets in the entire Russia Samara Mission is right by our house, Leningradskaya. It's a walking street, and also the best route to get to the mission office. But starting at 7:00am and ending at about 5:00am, it's now covered in drunk people. I'm talking hundreds of them. It's ridiculous. I didn't really realize before just how much of a society problem it is here with all the cheap terrible alcohol everywhere. You can barely walk 25 steps in any direction without being approached by a smashed guy who feels entitled for other people to give him money to buy more beer or vodka. "Hey guys, give me 15 rubles!" So unfortunately, Leningradskaya is no longer allowed for us. Missionaries have had too many incidents on that street in the past. It's too bad; that street is so beautiful and cultural. I'm not being sarcastic about that; I'll show you some pictures in the fall or the winter when I can go on it again.

Well, okay. That's pretty much the update. Thanks for all you do! Ooh! By the way, I got my package! Thank you so much! It's so awesome! I may have eaten the entire box of Samoas within 5 minutes of opening the package. Possibly. And thanks for the earmuffs! The weather here keeps being bipolar (I thought I escaped that aspect of Utah weather?), so even though today is really hot actually, I'm sure we'll get a freak snowstorm by the end of the week.

I love you all! Have a sweet time in California, send everyone my love!

Cool.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Faster than a Speeding Bullet

Elder  Broekhuijsen comes through again - what a faithful email writer!  We didn't get a super long one this week, but it's certainly not the shortest, so no complaints here…

Oh, man. Is it April? What is going on? It's weird that I can say that exactly one year ago to the second, I was sleeping on my bottom bunk under Elder Angerhofer in our residence hall in the MTC. That year has been the fastest and the slowest year of my life simultaneously. I'm nearing the end of my second cycle with Elder Morris as an assistant. That time has blown by. Every single cycle, things get quicker. I'm kind of freaked out. But then I remind myself that I still have a year (basically) and it's all good again.

So how is everyone doing? I'm doing great. We have a humongous Visa trip going on all week, with six groups all headed out to various destinations like Vilnius, Kiev, Riga, and Uralsk. I'm heading with Elder Morris and some others to Kiev on Friday and we get to go to the temple. Woot!

It's been a good week. We weren't able to meet with A* again because she has a crazy work schedule, but we're meeting with O* tonight, and Alyssa tomorrow (we hope). We also have a new investigator that the Saratov Zone Leaders found for us named G*. He's super cool. He's a soft-spoken, well-versed journalist.

The weather has been getting better! It's wet and muddy, but most of the snow has been melting. That being said, we heard from a guy on the streets yesterday that it's supposed to still be snowing on and off until April 11. Dag, yo.

There's not a whole lot to report. Things are moving forwards. Our area is doing pretty well, but we want to plan our time super effectively this week because we have to be constantly on-call for problems with Visa trips and also write the schedule for the new transfer that President is giving us today to get everyone into their new areas in a couple of weeks.  Elder Hale goes home in two weeks. That's so freaky. Anyway. The point being, we want to find a bunch of new investigators as well as helping some of the new investigators we found last week become progressing.

Well... I'll go through and write down a list of all your questions that you so I can answer them next week.

Yesterday, we contacted an old guy who was walking his dog. He said some rude things to us, and then said, "Yeah, and tell Mitt Romney I said hi!" And we, still trying to be nice and engage him in a conversation, said, "Oh yeah, how's he doing? We don't keep up with the news." And this guy heaved a huge sigh, and then said, quietly, "I'm his father." And then slowly walked off in the opposite direction. It was DANG funny.

Also, another funny story from this week that I just remembered: One of the nights this week (I forgot when), I had a dream that I built a balalaika out of wood. Except, instead of it being a regular triangle shape, it was the shape of the StarFleet logo.

INSPIRATION!

Yeah.

Love you! Talk to you later! Actually, yeah, because Mother's day is coming up faster than a speeding bullet. Man, wasn't it just Christamas? I swear...

Elder Broekhuijsen