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