We were very pleasantly surprised this morning to receive an "extra" email from Samara. One of the missionaries that works in the office sent us this funny story along with a couple of photos. Needless to say, it made our day!
Hello from the Russia Samara Mission!
Elder Broekhuijsen recently had a funny experience that I documented in film for his family! We were in the middle of transfers and he had a great deal going on that he was responsible for. He was searching everywhere for a telephone that R*, our driver had given to him. He finally called R* and asked him if he was certain that he had given him the telephone, as he just couldn’t find it anywhere. R* suggested that he call the telephone! He called the number and…..Elder Broekhuijsen’s backpack started to ring!!! He recognized the ringtone…mystery solved!
Enjoy the pictures. Your son is a very good sport and we all enjoyed laughing TOGETHER! No one was actually certain that THEY hadn’t lost that telephone!
"Hey, what's that ringing sound?"
"How did that get in here?" [I love the look of incredulity on his face!]
Getting email from Elder Broekhuijsen makes it worth getting up at 5:30! (Yeah, school has started…)
Hey family!
How's everyone doing? I'm doing great. It's been a pretty eventful week. Just like every week, actually. I think I type that sentence every Monday.
The biggest news is... you didn't invite Elder M* over for dinner yet. At least as far as the super fast skimming of your emails has told me. Get on it before he goes to college in Logan! [Too late, Andrew - USU is already in session!]
The next biggest news is, we have 12 new missionaries. On Monday we had the same crazy transfers P-day we always have with 28347 Elders in our apartment and everyone wanting to write home in the office and stuff. Can't say I blame them. We got everyone sent off, and Tuesday we went out to the airport at night to pick up the newbies. Whenever there are more than 2 missionaries in a group, we have to order something larger than R*'s VW van to get everyone and their luggage home. Usually we order an 18-seater Ford Transit. That wasn't big enough for this group, so we ordered a 24-seater Mercedes. It was massive. Like a Greyhound or something. It was so sweet. The missionaries are awesome. We got home and had everyone asleep by about 3:00am, and then I got up at 5:00 to shower, because there were 9 other missionaries in the apartment that we needed to get through the shower before 7:30. We got down to the office/mission home and did breakfast, interviews, orientation, etc. like usual, then the trainers showed up; we had a meeting with them, and finally the trainers/trainees met and got companionship assignments.
The missionaries are so rad. 8 Elders and 4 Sisters, and every single one of them is awesome. So that was cool. After lunch, just like always, everything exploded into a "24 missionaries with luggage who don't know what to do or where to go and just stand around and wait for you to tell them where to go." We were maniacs, maniacs on the floor and ordered approximately 283 taxis, and we were moving luggage like we'd never moved before. [Ah, Andrew - nice job of 1980's lyrics to real life!] Finally we got everyone sent off, and took a 2 minute break to realize that we were running on 2 hours of sleep out of the last 35. But I had no complaints, because at least I didn't have 10 hours worth of jet-lag to add to that, like the 12 new missionaries. Man.
That night, we did a repeat performance of herding missionaries from all over Samara to the train station. One of the tickets to Penza ended up being wrong, so we had Elders B* and B* (his trainee) over at our place that night. We made Elder B* eat borshch and kvas. Ha. He liked them both. Except for the kvas. That's okay; more for me.
The next morning, Elders B* and L* were both feeling pretty wasted, but the Bezimianski Sisters needed help moving to their new apartment (they literally left the trainee/trainer lunch to sign the contract, because the timingly worked out that way). So Elder B* and I headed up there and got them all moved out and into their new place (which is HUGE and SUPER NICE, by the way; the way sister apartments should be). R* helped us out, and it turns out it was his birthday. So he took us to the office and we bought a watermelon and a dinya on the way home (Dinya is real similar to canaloupe, only larger, more football-shaped, white on the inside instead of orange, and in my opinion more delicious) and had a mini 10-minute party for him in the office. Then Elder B* and I got home and we spent the rest of the day proselyting.
That's probably the big news from this week. Luckily God really blessed us though, and we found 7 new investigators despite the big chunk of time taken out of proselyting.
Hopefully the pictures come through okay. I wanted to send a super old picture (MTC - me and Elder B* standing there on our last day. Man that seems like a whole 'nother life right now) as well as a relatively new picture (the Samara district on our last district meeting of last cycle; about a week ago or so). I think I look younger in the second one. Dang it. Oh, well. I'll just grow a beard and that will fix all of it. [Mom's note: I so hope he's kidding…]
This is the MTC photo
Samara District
Well thanks for the updates. I sure love hearing about all the stuff that's going on in your lives, and especially appreciated Joshua's sound clips of enjoying a huge hamburger that I can't hope to ever see in this country. Also, Joshua, special assignment: email me a picture of Dax Flame. A really good one to put on my planner. Also you should use your dictophone to record some sick stuff that chamber does and send me the sound files.
A short but good email from Andrew today - with pictures! (Which, of course are worth at least 1000 words each.)
Hey there family, friends, and unknown reader from Australia!
It's your friend, Elder Broekhuijsen again. It actually has been him every time so far, so no surprises there.
It's been a cool week. We had some exchanges, I think. I can't remember. But I guess I should explain the pictures.
First off - a grasshopper that landed on our windowsill. We get lots of bugs in our apartment because of a thing called "the weather is insanely hot and the windows have not been closed for like 3 weeks." So this guy came in and he was not shy about my macro lens. [Editor's note: I think he looks like Jiminy Cricket, even though he is a grasshopper and not a cricket - hence the post title.]
Also the moth (that one is DEFINITELY not a butterfly) was huge. Like 2 inches. It scared the bejeebers out of my companion. He's not a bug fan.
Next news. Elder M* is on a plane right now. Dag, yo. I've never sent my own companion home like that before. I served with that guy for more than a fourth of my mission. [Andrew next proceeds to give us his address and phone number so we can contact him and have him over for Thai food and to play the piano for us!] :-)
Well I left my dictophone with the departing missionaries last night so they could all leave me some whispered sweet nothings. Dang, Sisters Q* and K* are in that group. Weird sauce; Sister Q* came to the MTC with me, and Sister K* came to the MTC after me. Weird weird weird wyrd. So next week I'll have some dictophone stuff. I think what I'll do is start not reading your emails, putting a lot of effort and photos into the email, and then attach a sound clip that answers your questions and stuff from last week. Good plan? I submit that, yes.
Elder Langston and I have become bug snipers. We have rubber bands all over the apartment now. It's gotten to the point that we can pick off mosquitos from the other end of the room. The centipedes that don't serve any discernable purpose in anyone's food chain or the Plan of Salvation in general are just fodder now. And Elder Langston actually shot down a small moth IN FLIGHT the other night. It was epic. Our apartment has fewer bugs when we go hunting. By a lot.
Okay, well transfers are in full swing right now and it's time for me to head on out. Thanks for everything! Congrats on being chamber President, Joshua. Molodets. Gosh there is no satisfying way to spell that word in English.
It's always nice to wake up to a great email from our favorite Russionary! No sound files today - but maybe next week!
We had a rad week. We had exchanges with the Samara Zone Leaders, which was cool. I got to spend an evening back in my old area in Bezimianski North. Good times. Even just smelling that apartment brings me right back to that winter when Elder Langston and I tore up the street. Cool story - during those exchanges, I had a meeting with Elder Hughes and their best investigator - A*. A*, interestingly enough, was in the area book. Elder Langston met her on a bus when he was serving with Elder Wood in Bezimianski... 11 or so months ago. Then I was serving with Elder Wood the next transfer, and she called us and we met with her two or three times before she stopped answering her phone. Well now she just decided to get baptized, and is really awesome. So, that's pretty rad. She said my Russian has gotten better since last time she talked to me. I sure hope so. Plateauing after 8 months on my mission would be sad.
Elder Langston and I had a wonderful miracle last night, called setting two baptismal dates with a delicious family. We were feeling pretty down because A* and M* are really in "say lots of words and keep 0 committments" mode, and so they have completely stopped progressing. We're likely not going to be meeting with them more than once or twice a month unless they start doing something now. But we have another family that we just found a week ago. They are wonderful, humble, kind, amazing, good people. The mom's name is O*, and the dad is R*. They're in their late 20s (or somewhere around there) (I wanted to use all three kinds of "there"). Last night, we taught the Restoration, and they just GOT it. Before we had even finished, the asked us to be baptized. So we set dates right there for the 29th of September. Just so happens that O*'s birthday is the 30th, as we found out. Those dates are so solid. More to come on this family, for sure. They also have awesome cute kids. A 4-year-old son named D* who is always smiling, and a 5 year old whom I haven't met yet.
We had some cool adventures in a random part of our area behind the railroad tracks. There was a crazy babushka with a huge goose that was just chilling there. She was petting the goose, but when we came up to contact her, she switched from petting it to beating it back with a stick so it wouldn't attack us. Apparently you can buy geese here for 200 rubles. The next day, we were contacting again in that area, and she was there again. Same thing, petting her goose. I'm pretty sure that area is a fairy tale.
I've been keeping up on my journal wonderfully :D Once again, thanks for that recorder. I'm happy to hear you got the recordings, but man. I was NOT planning on you having to transcribe them. I figured you would just post them on the blog as MP3s. You don't need to do that. I think what I'll do is type you a regular email for the blog, and then just during the week, make you a recording to answer all the questions you asked in the previous email. And I'll try to send photos as much as possible. Videos are not allowed anymore in our mission without permission in advance, so probably don't be expecting many of those.
Ooh. One more cool story, then I'm done. We had a big old thunderstorm on Thursday, and it just so happened to hit right about 9:00, when it was dark and we were going in for the night. So I took the opportunity to try out some lightning photography. No particularly impressive results, but I did get about half of one good bolt. I'll send it next week if you remind me.
Cool. Everything is good. I'm so happy to hear about Dad's work success. That really is an awesome miracle. Keep up all you're doing!
Jerome and I woke up around 2:00 this morning (due, I believe, to a loud clap of thunder, or perhaps the sound of pouring rain. Anyway, since we were awake, Jerome checked his iPad and sure enough, there was email from Andrew. He received his package (that was sent only 2 weeks ago - new record) which contained the digital recorder, so most of his email was an audio file. It was wonderful to hear his voice and we were happy to be able to save him some time, since talking takes a lot less time than writing. The only down side I can see is that I will now need to transcribe the talking into writing - which will take me a while…This first attempt might be a little rough, since the "talking" version of his message to us is a little more random and less organized than when he sends written email. With all that said — here goes!
I happened to get the best package in the entire universe this week. Actually, two of the best packages in the entire universe, one full of unsettling merchandise, sent from Massachussetts. [Editor's note: We are assuming this is the long lost package Melissa sent him back in January? Or perhaps she just ended up sending him a new one…]
So I went ahead and recorded the same things I would have typed on the sweet recorder on the way down to the office this morning. It's in a few fragments, and I'm hoping I'll be able to send the .mp3 files without too much trouble.
So I'm going to send what I recorded after just barely skimming the manual the night I got the package (we happened to have the Tol'yatti Zone Leaders over on exchanges), and then in a separate email I'll send what I recorded this morning, having long since devoured the manual and familiarized myself with all the controls and functions of the super rad dictaphone.
[Editor's note: Following are the two short audio clips of Andrew's first recording on his digital recorder.]
[Beginning of audio transcription]
Alright - I'm not going to write an email today (very long) because I have this awesome gadget. So, we're leaving our house right now and we're gonna walk down to the office and the whole time I'm just gonna narrate what happened this week and then email it to you, 'cause that's easier than typing it and that gives me more time to read your emails and then maybe I can spend some time responding to your emails or something.
Anyway…what did we do this week? I don't even remember — by the end of the week, the whole week's just a blur - that's how it works. We started off with zone leader council. Was that this week? [Elder Langston then confirms that it was this week] Seems like a long time ago! [Next come various interruptions of the narrative as Andrew greets people on the street, answers questions from his companion, etc.] Tuesday we had Zone Leader council - it was really good - everything went great. On Tuesday I also had an interview with President Sartori just after zone council, like we always do, and I asked him if he knew where I was headed after I was done being assistant and he said he hasn't thought about it yet. But I told him that I really, really, really want to be a district leader and a trainer before I go home, so I'll probably go down and be a zone leader somewhere first, but I don't know. I'll probably get (depending on how things work out) 3 cycles not as an assistant. So, probably I'll spend one or two of those as a zone leader somewhere with a new zone leader, like training him and then I will spend one or two of those hopefully as a district leader and a trainer. That would rock! And there's only one missionary coming in my last cycle, so I dibs-ed him! :-) So, yeah, we talked about that - don't know if I'm necessarily going to get it, but it would rock.
On Wednesday and Thursday we had exchanges with the Tol'yatti Zone leaders, so they just stayed in town after Zone Leader Council. It was good - we had some good meetings with some of our investigators - with S* and with T*. They're both doing good - both of them are moving towards baptism, but they're not necessarily going to get there in August. We've got a bunch of other investigators too. We've got one investigator who speaks English and he hopefully can be ready in August, but he needs to come to church right away. So that's our investigators - they're doing good.
On Friday my package got here - so thank you. I'm pumped. This little recorder thing is the diciest thing ever! I don't have to write in my journal anymore - it takes me like 5-10 minutes to do the whole journal entry and that's if like I go into a ton of detail and like tell about the whole day. And I never had the desire to do that when I was writing 'cause it takes forever since I think 50 times faster than I write. So, I'm pumped about this.
[At this point Andrew pauses to take a phone call, but also gives us the chance to listen to a street performer who is playing the guitar and singing…]
I don't remember what I was talking about before I got interrupted, but I'm gonna tell you about - well, exchanges went really well - except our toilet got broken, which was the worst thing ever because every single time we had to go to the bathroom we had to go all the way down to the office and it was seriously the worst thing ever. And so, we [laughs] so…I just have to tell this story. We had our landlord come over today 'cause it's the beginning of the month and he was picking up the rent. So, the toilet broke like 3 or 4 days ago and so we were like, "Ah, he'll be here soon, so we'll just tell him when he gets here." So he got there and we were like, "Hey, our toilet's broken" and he was like, "Alright." So, he called a plumber up there and they started going to work on it and they took care of it. It wasn't like a big problem - it was just clogged a little. So, they took care of it, and then the landlord was like, "You guys! You know what the problem was? The problem was there was toilet paper in the pipes! There was toilet paper in there!" And I was like, "Uh, I could have told you as much…" And he was like, "Guys, what are you doing flushing toilet paper? Go buy one of those garbage cans that's for toilet paper and then throw it in there. And then go take it out to the dumpster whenever you go out!" And I was like "Okaaaay, I'm never gonna do that, ever. Never going to. Not gonna do it." And so he was like, "No more flushing toilet paper, alright?" And I was like "Uh huh" - and I carefully did not agree to that condition. And then he left. And I went ahead and flushed some toilet paper down the toilet just out of pure spite for that idea of keeping it in the house. Anyway, that was the fun story of the day - that was this morning.
Now we are just arriving at the office and today hopefully we are going to be able to go to the [Editor's note: insert Russian word here that I have no idea how to spell] which is like a big flea market place out in the sisters' area at the other end of the city. We're going to head out there today and I'm going to hopefully pick up some ties and stuff 'cause I've missed about 73 birthdays and a Christmas since I left and I want to get Joshua and dad and Garrett ties.
By the way, Happy Birthday Joshua a couple of days ago. You're 18 — what the heck? That's so weird. I was looking at all the pictures from Steaver and it was way weird because everybody looks really, really old. [Editor's note: I'm sure he just meant all the kids - he would not dare imply that we adults have aged at all!] And also I got the messages from Steaver - it was sweeeeet! It was way awesome, so thank you for sending those. Apparently everybody thinks I've been gone for 5 years and forgotten them, because everyone introduced themselves to me. [Editor's note: Jerome did request that everyone state their name just so he'd know for sure who was talking…]
Well, I'm going to get started on my email, so I'll just type the rest. Thank you! Love you all!
[Back to the typed portion of Andrew's email]
As for your preferences, let me know - better to get a typed message that you can post on the blog? Or better to get a sound message that you can just listen to while resting your eyes and sipping a Reese's Peanut Butter shake? (I don't know if they have those in America, now that I think about it.) Or a tri-force attack of written text, recorded audio, and photos to boot?
Awesome. I'm gonna wait for this to finish uploading and then send it off.
