Busy, Busy, Busy!

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.

I love you all!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen