"Pupils"

Andrew must have had a little more time than usual this to write today - love the longer emails!

Wow. It sure is the end of July. Man. I remember last July dragged by. This July lasted about 20 minutes. That also means that my first visa trip and my first time in the Kyiv temple were more than a year ago. Pretty nuts.

This morning we've been hanging out with E*. E* is a boss from the Dachney branch in Saratov. He's headed out on a mission. Elder Langston and I will be taking him to the airport tonight to drop him off; and he'll fly to Spain. When he finishes at the MTC there, he'll fly to Novisibirsk and serve for two years. He's seriously so awesome; he's going to be an amazing missionary.

It's been an amazing week. The pattern of success that Elder Langston and I seem to have always had together is continuing. Our key indicators were great last week (10 new investigators; and like 4 of them are progressing now, woot!), and we have lots of potential for baptism just learning and growing more and more in the area. Such amazing people we get to work with here. A* and M* are doing well; although A* didn't show up to church like he promised. We are also working still with S*; he's doing way well, too. We've been working with a guy named O* who speaks English and is one of the most Christian people I've ever met; but he doesn't associate himself with any one church. He's accepting the message really well. Also, on Thursday or Friday, we ended up finding a couple of youngish girls (19 years old) and one of them met with us again last night; her name is L* - she is progressing as well. But she doesn't get along very well with our member help/date buster, Y*. Y* is a dicey member who is like 22. She helps us all the time. I think I've told you about her; maybe not. Anyway, things got a little catty on that meeting, but we all pulled through. We always invite Y* whenever there might be a problem with the flirt factor.

Actually I'll go ahead and tell the story of how we found them, because it's pretty weird. We were contacting around Revolution Square (a street called Kuybysheva, as it happens). We were talking to a couple of 17-year-olds, a dude and his girlfriend, and they were way nice and interested. Suddenly, this random girl came up and asked me to step over and talk to her so she wouldn't interrupt our conversation. So I took a couple of steps over, and this girl introduced herself and asked us if she could have a Book of Mormon. I was like... "Yes. Yes you can." Turns out she knew missionaries a while ago and she was reading the Book of Mormon already. Her name is I*. Her friend, L* came up and was also pretty nice. Elder Langston finished teaching a few principles from the first lesson with the first couple, and said a closing prayer on the lesson with them, and then came to join me. I* and L* tried really hard to convince us to go to the beach with them. Not allowed, sorry. So we ended up just walking with them in the direction of our own apartment because it was already about 8:40. On the way, Elder Langston taught L* the first lesson, and I deflected endless waves of shameless, weird, extremely forwards flirting from I*. "Do you like Russian girls? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you have free time here, or do you have to be working all the time? Why can't you go to the beach?" She kept trying to slip into the "I am being escorted by you" position, but I wouldn't let her. But at the same time; she was way interested in the church; probably a third of her questions were about that. Anyway, we had a prayer with them and went home, and I was pretty freaked out. I* wasn't just being flirty, she was being downright way weird. We talked about it a little bit and Elder Langston said something like, "Did you notice her pupils?" I thought back... "Yeah... yeah. They were huge." Yeah. We figured she was probably high on something. Which is dang sad, because she's 19. Pretty messed-up world. We asked L* about it yesterday, who, while decidedly on the "flirty" end of the spectrum, was way more sane. Turns out, I* is taking some weird medicine stuff that is supposed to help her with her eyes, but L* says she's not using it right, and... pretty much yeah. We were right.

So I don't know if we'll meet with I* again. We'll have to see. For sure the gospel could help her get out of this trap before it gets really serious and bad. But I don't know what exactly her desires to meet are pointed at. In any case... we'll have Y* there for backup.

Other than that, we've been working on the transfer schedule. It's insane. I thought I had these things down; because I've made like 8 of them now. But we have 12 new missionaries, which means twelve trainers. So there's a point during the transfer that we have 12 new missionaries, 12 trainers, Elder Langston and I, the Woods, and President and Sister Sartori in one room for lunch. That's like half the mission. Nuts.

I always intend to sit down and collect all the questions you all ask before I get to the next P-day so I can answer them all, but I didn't get to it this week either. I'll try to remember what questions you asked and answer them:

Dad asked a bunch of times about what service we do, and I never answered. Well... lots of different kinds. We do lots of moving furniture. Lots of missionaries do yard work. Branch service activities are way varied. This week, we moved a piano down five flights of stairs and drove it to the branch, where we unloaded and placed it in the relief society room (a member donated it). Once, our branch went to this shelter for animals and cleaned up. Once, we went to this place where they did stuff that had to do with animals and special needs children, and just cleaned up the grounds. So... short answer; all sorts of stuff.

Cool study stuff: Elder Connell, the Elder from a senior couple of missionaries here, is teaching a class that is Book of Mormon study from kind of a literary standpoint, and it's all done in English with translation, so it draws a big crowd of investigators that are interested in learning English. He's been putting a big focus on chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. He's totally gotten way into it and he's allowed to use the internet and stuff, so he knows tons of stuff about it. Like, apparently a bunch of really big-time Bible scholars  found chiasmuses (chiasmii?) exactly like the ones in the Old Testament. Notable chiasmus: Alma 36 (I think tons of people know about that one, but it's sweet to study). I started a new project during personal study where I hunt down and tear them apart. You can find them a lot in parts of the Book of Mormon where it's the words of angels and stuff; like Mosiah 3. It's way rad. It reminds me of being in AP Lit again, and sometimes I find myself mentally preparing to write an FRQ about the chapter as I read. Like I just subconsciously come up with thesises (thesii?) [Editor's note:  It's theses, Andrew, and hopefully you're just kidding and it's not really the case that you've forgotten your English that much!  :-)  ]  as I write. That probably makes it sound less-than-extremely-spiritual, but it's actually way inspiring to see that God uses awesome literary techniques to help better deliver the point of His words to His children. Also, I am trying to figure out a way to include another word in this paragraph that has an irregular plural (pluralii?), but it's not working.

So. Keep on asking questions. I hope Steaver was awesome and free of dangerous bears attacking all the honey-head kids. Everyone is so... adults. It's weird. The Millward clan is running out of kids. We gotta start going on that next generation. Where are all the potty-humor jokes going to come from? Oh, yeah. The adults.

I'm anxiously awaiting that dictaphone and package in general. Thinking about it got me so spruced up about journals (also reading some old journal entries from earlier on my mission) that I started writing again. Heh. But it will be way better once I have the dictaphone. So. Question. What are dictaphones (dictaphonii?) called in English?

Funny story that I can't resist telling - I busted out my journal this week and read an entry from exactly a year ago the day I opened it (July 24, 2011). It said something to the effect of, "So I've been thinking about it, and I figure that in exactly one year from now, I should have crazy awesome, fluent Russian skills." Now that's what I call a good guess. I can't even remember a time in my life when I didn't know how to speak Russian. Man, Russian is so cool. I'm totally going to take Russian classes after my mission still. Too bad BYU discriminates against hardworking Russian missionaries and doesn't let them minor in Russian. But that's okay. Maybe I'll double-major.

Alright. I'm done. I haven't read your emails yet, but I'll try to answer any questions in there next week.

Thank you, I love you all!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen