Hooray for Packages!

Well, for privacy reasons I can't actually post all of Andrew's email this week, so it's going to be pretty short.  On the bright side, he does sound happy and his sense of humor is still intact!

Well, it's been a good week. I skimmed your emails, so I can't promise I'll be answering all your questions, but I'll try to remember what I need to.  So Melissa and I are the oldest 4th ward missionaries, huh? That's sure weird. I guess it probably has us both coming home "February 2013." Dang... that's the first time I've thought about those plaques hanging there. I remember I always used to walk past them and compare the time the missionary had left to how long I felt they had been out. Thinking in those terms, looking at a plaque that said "February 2013," I'd be thinking, "Huh, not too much time left for him..." DANG IT!

I've been thinking about how this is the second Millward reunion I've missed in my entire life. I had a creative idea - a lot of the Elders here have tape recorders. In Russian, they are called "dictophones" (or at least that's more or less how the word is pronounced). You know the ones I'm talking about; they're really small and just have a simple microphone and speaker built into the casing and movie producers and authors use them to record ideas they have right on the spot. Well I don't have time to write in a journal, frankly. I get into the apartment at night, and I'm lucky to finish nightly planning the way I like to before I'm on the phone, and I don't really get off the phone until I go to sleep after that. So... what if you bought one of those lil' guys before you go to Steve (Stanley/Beav). Then you could not only send it to me in a small package that need not contain large amounts of socks or peanut-butter-based candy, but just had the dictophone and maybe a few extra tapes, and ONE TAPE THAT HAD SHORT MESSAGES RECORDED ON IT FROM ALL SPEECH-CAPABLE MEMBERS OF THE MILLWARD CLAN! Plus from that point forwards, I could use it as my journal and have some kind of lasting record from my mission! I think it would be a cool plan.

I don't want to sound ungrateful for the package I just received. The socks are amazing (A++, they're just as good as the bamboo guys), the photos were SO awesome to see (when did Garrett turn into a 14-year-old boss master instead of a little kid?), and even though I feel like delayed gratification is something I've gotten a lot better at on my mission, the candy lasted me two days and I finished the lime chips this morning. So THANK YOU very much. Speaking of packages, Melissa said she sent me some stuff from Boston back in like January or something, but I'm guessing some dishonest postal workers are now the proud owners of whatever was in that box. Haven't seen anything.  Also, I got your letter Melissa, and the Star Trek stationary was too much. I went out and impulse-bought a bar of gold-pressed latinum right after I read it.

Well, the results are in with next transfer. I can't tell you yet, because it will leak. But probably either next week or the week after, I'll be able to let you know of any important changes.

Thanks for everything! Don't forget to send me pictures from Steve. Send everyone my love. Hopefully Jay Dee and Vance aren't too surprised when they get a package with nothing but borscht in it within the next month or so. Man. You all probably think I'm kidding.

Love,
Elder Andrew Broekhuijsen

Happy Father's Day!

We were lamenting (probably an overly strong word, but you get the idea) the fact that we didn't get a phone call on Father's Day - but Andrew's right - in no time at all we'll get that chance again…summer is definitely flying by so far.

Happy Father's Day! Bummer that I don't get another call... but I have this nasty feeling that the next thing I know, I'm going to be talking to you all over skype again at Christmas, and I'll have like 1 month left on my mission. Man that is scary.

It's been a great week! I'll go through the events of the week.

First off, we've been working with a new investigator named H*. He's from Somalia, and he lived in the United Arab Emirates for a really long time (In Abu Dahbi). He's a student here and he's been studying architecture in Samara for 3 years, with 4 more to go. So the nice thing about how that works out is, he knows Somali, English, Arabic, and Russian all fluently. He's such a boss. He's also hilarious, and a really deeply religious guy. So he's a Muslim, but when we met him, he told us he has lots of questions about Jesus Christ. He's been asking us the questions on lessons (he was right, BTW, he has LOTS of questions about Christ). A lot of them are really understandably generated from a Muslim background, but he's not trying to fight or prove anyone wrong. He's really just sincerely searching for answers. A few nights ago, he stayed up until 6:30am reading the Torah, the Koran, the Bible, and the Book of Mormon. He also came to a fireside about baptism, and came to sports day with us. So he has made a lot of progress in the past few days. Also, all the members love him because he speaks Russian really, really well and he's always joking around with everyone. The African members we have in the branch range from speaking no Russian to "some" Russian, so H* is kind of a hit. He's also really patient when every person he talks to makes some kind of reference to pirates when he mentions that he's from Somalia. So we had a meeting with him with E*, a member here who is from Nigeria. E* is basically like a REALLY Christian version of Mufasa. He speaks with this super dicey Lion King accent, and he just words things in English really interesting and sometimes funny. Gosh, E* is so cool.

T* is also progressing really well. We met her son, D*, and he's really cool. We're planning with the branch to set up a really sweet activity out by the Volga (it's this famous place that apparently the members kind of "showed" to Russell M. Nelson when he came here a few years ago, because it's like the Samara version of the Grand Canyon with a big old S-bend in the river and really steep cliffs and stuff). We're gonna go up, D* is coming as well as a bunch of branch members, and we're going to have a picnic. And by picnic, we mean plov. The exact same stuff as we had at the service project thing. And Sister Wood has the recipe, so I'mma go ahead and grab that guy before I go home. Yeah baby.

At the fireside, we had a few new converts bear their testimonies. Among them was G*, whom I baptized in Bezimianski. She is doing SO well. She seriously is probably one of the most amazing people in the universe. Her testimony is so strong, and I'm just way pumped about everything. So just an update. She's doing WAY dicey.

Yesterday morning, we were eating breakfast before church, and out our kitchen window, we heard some guys shouting unpleasant words. So we went over and looked out, and lo and behold, two drunk 20-year-olds (at 7:00 in the morning... jeez) were having a fistfight. It got pretty nasty. The guy who apparently started it kept throwing off his girly European side bag (yeah... I have one too, but his was girlier) whenever he got angry and would then throw himself back into the action. There was one point where he tried to rip his shirt off, too, but that was unsuccessful, so he kind of just put it back on. Also he tried to throw keys at the other guy, and ended up just nailing somebody's car. Ouch. The whole time, the lovely smell of vodka was wafting in through our window. And Angry McDrunkerson had a rather spastic fighting style. Things like that are the things that eliminate any and all desire to ever try alcohol in my life. Man.

Well, Elder Morris and I are doing great. We have a really happening area right now; lots of investigators progressing really well. Expect some baptisms this month and next. Elder Morris and I have our transfer meeting with President Sartori on Wednesday, where we'll be deciding his fate and my new companion. Weird stuff that he only has a cycle left, because I remember HIS year mark, and now I'm a good ways past my own. Gosh, no matter how hard I try to just forget about all the timing things, it keeps coming back to haunt me. Maybe it's better if I dwell on it though, because it will slow things down. But it basically comes down to Elder Morris goes home, and then I have maybe a cycle or two after that as an Assistant (that could go one of a number of ways at this point), and then 2 or 3 more cycles after that and that's it. Life is in the fast lane these days. I've been in this area for 6 months and I feel like I just got here, literally. I realized that it's by far the longest I've ever spent in an area on my mission, and I haven't even unpacked yet.

Things are good though. Elder Morris's birthday is tomorrow. Any ideas for what I should get him? Probably NOTHING, because I don't even buy you family members stuff for your birthdays anymore. Kind of. There will be gifts in about 8 months or so. Even sooner for Melissa if I ever get around to jumping through the bureaucratic hoops I need to jump through to send her package.  [The original word in that last sentence was "loops" instead of "hoops."  Not sure if that was just a typo or if Andrew is just forgetting some of his English idioms!]

Love you all! Thanks for everything!

Elder Broekhuijsen

Now, That's More Like It!

If I were a more faithful blogger, I would have posted this letter from  Andrew at 4:30 this morning when I first read it.  I was up getting Joshua (Andrew's brother) out the door for his week of hiking Dark Canyon and attending Camp Helaman.  But instead, I just went back to bed!  Anyway, it was great to hear more than "I don't have time to write" from Andrew today!

Well, it's been a pretty eventful couple of weeks. I guess you may have guessed that already, judging from how I had 9 seconds to write home last p-day. Here's the run-down.

Two weeks ago we were crazy busy because of transfers mostly. Transfers are already busy, but when you throw in the added bonus of pulling in 5 sisters from three cities in the mission, going to the airport twice to pick up 4 sisters, and then 1 (because the 1 is Ukrainian, and the Russian government takes special pleasure in making Ukrainians jump through beaurocratic hoops to get visas and stuff) the next day, having training meetings, moving luggage around, and dealing with the extra funtimes that one of your mission buddies decided to throw in the towel, and that by the way screws up the entire transfer schedule...

You get bad key indicators that week. :)

That was a lot of whining, but it really wasn't a bad week. Just really really busy.

So last week was also pretty crazy busy. On Monday, Elder Morris and I were desperately trying to get our breakout put together about Area Books to teach on the Samara/Tol'yatti and Saratov zone conferences. Dang. That is a HUGE perk of being an assistant - 2-3 zone conferences every three months. We were already in the thick of things with President Sartori, because we were counseling with him almost all day about what to do with juggling areas closing and opening, missionaries moving to different apartments, and helping a couple of the sisters who were having a rough time adjusting to mission life (about 99.99% of missionaries have a rough time adjusting to mission life, me included, so don't think that's anything special :D)

So we finished with President roughly 6:00 or so, which means P-day was already over. And I figured we had too much stuff to do to ask permission to write home anyways and spend a whole hour on that, so I made the executive decision to skip that. Sorry. It was for the greater good. Grindelwald would have agreed with me. Between herding Elders between cities and off of trains and busses and stuff, we ended up with about 19 minutes to prepare our breakout anyway. But the Lord makes up for it when you don't have time to do all His work, and He really inspired us with what to teach. It was like... imagine you're some kind of super genius that just thinks up all these crazy awesome ideas and has all these mission-changing realizations. That's how I felt for 19 minutes. It was so awesome. One of the moments on my mission when I've really felt and noticed inspiration as it happened in real time.

Samara/Tol'yatti Zone Conference was the next day, so we got up at 5:30 to allow for all the Elders in our apartment from outlying cities like Orenburg and Penza to have time to shower and get to the branch building on time. We hopped up there on a taxi with the landlord of the streets, O*, and got stuff set up with the Zone Leaders, and it was probably the best zone conference I've ever had my whole mission. President Sartori talked about Conversion during his closing remarks, and the breakouts all ran into each other like delicious egg yolk (I've been eating lots of eggs recently, despite the fact that this one time I saw a gross egg with maggots instead of egg in it, that smelled like Hades). The testimony meeting was awesome, and I had a freaking weird realization that it was Sister Quinn's last zone conference on her mission (SHE STARTED HER MISSION THE SAME DAY AS ME! I'M OLD, DANG IT!). Even weirder... we have a visa trip in about 2 weeks, and that's her last visa trip. No good. She's actually going home with Elder Morris. Who is also on his second-to-last transfer right now. Dang it.

Saratov Zone Conference went every bit as well as Samara/Tol'yatti. It was wonderful to be in Saratov again and see some friends and members, and I got to talk on the phone with V*, who got baptized while I was serving with Elder Morris in Volzhsky. He's doing so well. Has a few trials in life with finding work and stuff but he's as faithful as ever with his wife O* and his kid I*. I* is a boss. And now his daughter, A*, is finishing up the final few weeks of her rather long conversion process (getting officially married to her "husband," and she is now 100% done with smoking!), and she'll be getting baptized at the end of June. SWEET VICTORY! THAT'S ONE MORE ENTIRE FAMILY, SATAN! Somebody please sing "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer.

In our own area, we've been working with some really wonderful investigators. T* is now 6 times at church in a row, and it's long since time for us to set a baptismal date with her. But every time we meet with that intention, something comes up and it doesn't work out. So we'll just keep trying to follow the Lord's plan for her. She's headed towards the font (and then the temple, and then the celestial kingdom) though.

Also that guy S* that I probably didn't tell you about last week (he meet the Avrora Elders on their way to the baptism the Avrora Sisters had last Sunday morning right before church, and came with them and stayed for all three hours of church and a meeting afterwards, and is a boss), LIVES IN OUR AREA. Yeah, baby. He's a hippie, by the way. I'll send you a picture. He's so dang cool.

Okay. Well. I love my mission. I got about 8 more months to absolutely solidly rock the work (my date is officially, for sure, set-in-stone February 4th. Frowny face.) So I am going to use every second of it.

Love you all! Thanks for all your prayers and everything! I've seen missionaries that don't have support fom home, and I don't think I could do that.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

P.S. Elder Morris and I have been doing these workouts over the phone in the mornings with Elder Anderson, who is a marine. And we are both getting ripped. I have never had pectorals of this magnitude before. Just saying.

Better Than Nothing (?)

Hello All - sorry to have to report that Andrew didn't have time to send much of an email this week.  I guess we'll just be thankful for what we got and be glad that these little short emails aren't the norm.

I have about 2 minutes before the office meeting starts, and then we have meetings with President Sartori and a giant truckload of administrative stuff to do, and a visa trip schedule to write, and a breakout to prepare for zone conference tomorrow, and oh, yeah, we need to figure out what's going on for zone conference tomorrow.

So what I'm saying is, I hope I get a chance to write you today. Otherwise, thanks for your letters! I read them. Except Joshua's. He didn't send one. But I figure he's probably out of town or something.  [Editor's note:  Joshua DID actually write - we're not sure why Andrew didn't receive his email.]

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen