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.