Time Is Being All Smart-Alecky

When it's cold outside and we haven't yet turned on our heaters it takes something pretty good to get me to leave my warm and comfortable bed in the morning.  Email from Elder Broekhuijsen works!  (Not sure what will do it for tomorrow, though!)

Man, it seems like my mission is laughing at me by speeding up the weeks from "crazy fast" to "you are in front of this computer screen in this post office every 4 hours." 

October has come and passed. The weather is starting to get cold. Actually, it's really awesome right now. Cold enough to wear my ridiculously attractive European fall coat (Called a "Palto," and prounounced with a soft "l" for those of you who know what that means, which, if I were to draw a representative venn diagram, would perfectly coincide with those of you who know what a Palto is already) and my rad checkery scarf. But not cold enough to give me frostbite if I forget to rub my nose every few seconds.

So. We've had a great week. First epically cool news: 

N* and M* are doing super wonderful. We went by with our home skillets Y* and her mom G* on like Thursday or something, and when we sat down, N* started asking all these questions about our responsibilities as Elders. But they were... really like... aimed. It was obvious she had gained a vast amount of information but not yet finished processing it. Turns out, she had stayed up until 2:00am the night before completely reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover, INCLUDING the Russian equivalent to reading the LDS KJV Topical Guide and Bible Dictionary (they put them together in the back of the BoM here, because the church can't print Russian Bibles). She said the alphabetized section was her favorite because it was much more simple and understandable than the rest. Oh, man. So we taught her the first half of the Plan of Salvation. She wants to get baptized, but clearly has some things making her nervous, because she was asking questions like, "What are your thoughts on people who know they should get baptized, but they just realize that it's a really huge, important decision, and they don't want to make the wrong choice because they rushed it? Do you still meet with people like that?" Yes, N*.  Yes we do. 

So they're doing wonderfully, and little M* is really starting to warm up. We're going by their place for the second half of the Plan of Salvation tonight, and we're planning on getting a picture of two; I'll be sure to send them next week. Unfortunately, I think we may be kinda done with the audio files as long as I'm here in Bezimianski. This post office doesn't have a printer, and the only other one in our area that I know of has computers that work about 1 in 5 times we stop by. So I can't print your letters anymore. Oh, well.

Other cool news from this week: We had a meeting with E*, who got baptized last November while I was here with Elder Wood. She's having a little trouble staying active, but she's as awesome as ever. Turns out she's still in contact with L* and K*, two girls that ALMOST got baptized while Elder Langston and I were here. So she's going to read the scriptures, pray for guidance on what to say to them, and then call them and see if she can set us up a meeting. It will be awesome because, aside from just getting us more awesome investigators to work with, it will help E* a ton to be on meeting with us and help her own friends learn about the restored Gospel. 

Other sick news! I think maybe I already told you this, but maybe not. V*, my BRAT-TAN from this branch, decided to go on a mission! YEAH BABY! He's probably going to be heading out sometime in like January or something, so we'll see. But man. I love that guy so dang much. 

We set up a day (with permission, of course) to go do "exchanges" (see: "contacting on the street for 4 hours") with the Bezimianski sisters this week. The sisters in the mission in general are all just undertrained because all of our older, experienced sisters finished and went home, and then we got a giant influx of brand new sisters right after that, so even now, we still have 2nd-transfer sisters training 1st-transfer sisters, etc. etc. So all the sisters in our zone have had trouble with things like stopping people on the streets; having conversations with their still-new Russian skills; setting up meetings, and as a result they've been killing themselves contacting all day long with very few meetings in between. So we went down and hopefully helped them out a little bit with showing them our ridiculously pro contacting skills. Or something. Either way, they said it helped. So I guess that's good. The sisters are so rad though. They earn miracles the way I never have been able to :D 

This coming week we have Zone Leader Council. Pretty pumped. It was going to be on Halloween, but now not. Which is probably for the best, as Elder Nielson and I had some somewhat less-than-dignified ideas kicking around in sections of our brain that are still 6 years old about trading nametags for the day, or going as "3-hole-punch Elders" or something dumb like that. 

Other than that, it's just been another solid week of missionary work. I figure if the time is going to be all smart-alecky and speed up on me, I'm going to do the same thing and speed up the pace of my missionary work. So what now, time? I got three whole big old months left to throw as many monkey wrenches in Satan's plans for this place as I can. Another potential missionary and Melchizidek Priesthood holder, baptized, walking the streets of Samara. What now, Satan? 

Also, I had a member download the Russian audio of Elder Holland's talk onto my flash drive, so I can listen to it in the morning when I work out. It's had a noticeable effect on my physique AND the amount of facial hair I am now capable of growing, and that's after one morning so far. 

DANG everyone is going on missions. I mean, that's great and all, but I was hoping to have a few friends when I got back :D k

So no photos or audio this week. Thanks for all the updates. Thanks for being awesome and stuff. I love you all! I guess I'll be talking to you in about one transfer or so, so probably before I finish typing this sentence I'll be sitting in front of a webcam Skyping with you all. 

Keep on keeping on. If I didn't answer someone's questions, just keep asking. Maybe I'll catch on one of these days :) 

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen 

Extra Post!

Lucky us!  We received an email this morning from a man who had met up with Andrew and his companion in Samara.  He was there on business and is a friend of Andrew's companion's family.  So, he must have gotten Jerome's email address from Andrew and he sent us this photo!  He said,
They seem very happy and healthy!  It's obvious that they are anxiously engaged in the the Lord's work."  Thanks nice man!

Elder Broekhuijsen and Elder Nielson right outside their apartment.  Looking very European, don't you think?  

Awesome Miracle!

Sorry to be so late in posting this.  It came at the normal time, but I got distracted and forgot that I hadn't yet posted it.  My bad.  Andrew tried sending us an audio clip today, but said that the computers where they send email are just too old and slow so it wouldn't work.  :-(  Oh well, happily, we still got the normal written email!

Hey everyone!

This is Elder Broekhuijsen. 

So! I have lots of questions. Actually 2 

1. Who of my friends have mission calls now? Because let's face it. There are now girls who graduated a year AFTER me who could be going on missions within the next few weeks. What the heck.2. Who of my friends are already working on their papers/have decided to go on missions? 

We had an awesome miracle this week! Remember N*? The lady who thought we were ridiculously beautiful? (I mean, come on. I think we are quite reasonably beautiful.). We got a meeting with her. She invited us over to her house, and we had a member come with us, Brother S*. And we taught the most perfect Restoration lesson I've taught in probably my whole mission. She accepted everything and was coming to conclusions about things faster than we could smoothly transition between doctrinal points in a fabulous display of preparation and companionship unity. I mean. We sat down and prayed, and she was like, "So I'm a little confused.  How are Joseph Smith and Nephi related?" And we were like, "Yeah... we'll tell you." So as we were teaching, we got to the point where we explain the restoration after the great apostasy, and we started explaining about Joseph Smith. Elder Nielson was like, "Joseph Smith was a 14-year-old boy who lived about 200 years ago." And she cut him off and was like, "Ohhhhh! That makes way more sense! I thought when you said 'prophet' that he was like 50 years old or something, but it makes WAY more sense why God would want to restore his gospel through a young person who didn't have the life experience to form a bunch of his own opinions yet. Now I have no problem believing that he was a prophet!" And we looked at each other in a rather flabbergasted manner. And then finished teaching. So she wants to be baptized. Unfortunately she couldn't come to church this week because her daughter, M*, who is 10, has bad health and got sick this weekend. But last night after church we had a meeting with both of them again and taught Lehi's Dream (in this mission there is a policy called "teach about the great and spacious building REALLY soon after you meet someone because otherwise they will hear something bad or find something bad on the internet and stop answering their phone," so we didn't move on to the Plan of Salvation just yet). So that lesson went great, and M* is a small-sized boss. 

Anyway, we're pumped about her. 

Another cool story: The Priesthood in Bezimianski is so active that President Sartori decided to put the extra companionship that our mission complement will gain in our branch. So next cycle, assuming I'm still here (I can't imagine otherwise, and I actually have the experience to back up an assumption like that now), we'll have us, Bezi Elders, and Bezi Sisters. 

Speaking of the Bezimianski Sisters, and the Avrora Sisters while we're at it, we had interviews with both of them this week. They were wonderful. Those sisters are so dang cool. Actually, sister misionaries in general are so dang cool. Also one of the Avrora Sisters, Sister Wynn, knows Kaitlyn Brunsdale, because they worked together. Man. Small world. 

So that's probably about it for the week. Hopefully things are still going great down there in Highland. The weather is starting to get colder down here, and everyone is saying that it's supposed to be the coldest winter in 20 years, and we're going to break -40C. Yeah baby! Talk about snagging an extra mission adventure story that I can tell all the young'uns for the rest of my life. Presumably in a Scottish accent: 

"When I w's yer'age, we dinna have no warm wayther! Oal we had was dert! And we were gretful!" Yeah, don't worry that typing in a Scottish accent isn't a skill I've obtained yet. 

I'll try Pirate:
"When aye was YAARRRR age, 'twas bein' right cold outsiiiiiiiide!" Better. 

That's probably enough nonsense for today. 

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen 

P.S. Ooh! I have a few minutes left, so I'll probably try to send a few photos.  [Editor's note:  No photos came, so I'm guessing that the computers he sends email on were also too old and slow to send photos on.  Drat.]

Mid-October Update

No school for Joshua and Garrett today, so I got to sleep in a bit - and I'm glad I did because getting up at 5:30 would NOT have been worth it, since this today's email from Andrew didn't come until 7:30!

I'll give you the bad news first: I'm not going to be able to send pictures or sound or anything today. Turns out the post offices by our branch building close at 5:00 generally. So I'm in an internet cafe that blocks all USB ports. Sweet. 

So it's been a pretty cool week. On Friday we had a cool "Zone Meeting." Which is kind of like a zone conference, but mostly the point is just to get all the new information, training, decisions, etc. down the line from Zone Leader Council. We'll be doing one once a month, so obviously it will have to be smaller scale than Zone Conference, because otherwise we would be pulling Elders and Sisters out of there cities like every week and a half on trains and busses. It went well, so that was pretty fun.

We also had exchanges with the Assistants. I worked with Elder Langston one day, and we went contacting down closer to the Volga. We talked to this guy who was out taking a smoke break, and he invited us into his office. Turns out he was a really nice, well-put-together, successful contractor kind of a guy. Very religious, did lots of construction contracting for the Russian Orthodox church, etc. etc. Then out of nowhere, he told us that he was the subject of a Nostradamus prophecy. The conversation went down in quality from that point. But we did get his signed business card, so if (I mean when) he DOES become a famous and influential politician, we can sell them on eBay for lots of rubles. 

Saturday was Elder Nielson's birthday! His family sent him a suitcase full of candy.  In the box was a Betty Crocker cake mix. It was delicious. 

Also on Saturday was the Europe East Area viewing of General Conference! It was wonderful, as always. Every year I appreciate conference more. I just can't understand the mentality of some of the members who aren't real interested in coming. It's like... "Hey! Have questions in life? God wants to answer them for you for 10 hours. Free!" And they're like, "Nah, listen, I'm going to watch some movies at home." Laaaaaame.

Then on Sunday was the sickest [in a good way…], most pumping-up talk I've ever heard by Jeffery R. Holland. I was wondering... could someone get an MP3 of that guy and email it to me? I want to listen to it while we work out in the morning. Seriously, that was probably my favorite conference talk I've ever heard. Man.

So it's actually kind of starting to get cold around these parts now. Yesterday I added the inside lining to my palto and wore my gloves and earmuffs. We went contacting for a couple of hours, and saw something totally nuts, which is in no way related to the weather, but still is a great story:

Once upon a time, at the tail end of a contacting block, Elders Broekhuijsen and Nielson were walking home. Elder Broekhuijsen was talking to the Orenburg missionaries on the phone to solve some sort of nonsense with city registration for a new missionary, and Elder Nielson was talking to a Tataran guy to the left while they walked. Suddenly, two completely smashfaced guys in leather jackets started walking behind them. Or, staggering behind them in a less-than-straight line which was, admittedly, mostly confined to the sidewalk. Elder Broekhuijsen wasn't paying much attention, even when they started arguing in loud, drunk voices. That is, he wasn't until the sound of a bottle being smashed over someone's head put an abrupt halt to the phone conversation he was having. He turned around, and saw Drunk #1 sitting on the ground, stunned, and Drunk #2 throwing the remains of the empty beer bottle on the ground, about 10 yards behind them. Drunk #2 proceeded to put his steel-toed boot into Drunk #1's face at a high velocity. That was not a pleasant sound. Think of the sound it would make to swing a sledgehammer with all your might at a solid block of concrete. So obviously, Drunk #1 was no longer especially conscious. On his way down, Drunk #2 decided to put his knee into the exact same face, at a similar velocity. Ouch. A lot of ouch. Drunk #1 was out for the count. Elders Nielson and Broekhuijsen decided that, in the interest of safety, they should probably cross the street to get out of the path of Drunk #2, who was staggering forwards again as if none of this had just happened.  

Anyway, we looked back across the street when we got to the other side, and miraculously, Drunk #1 was up and at 'em again. He was just walking around aimlessly with his head and hands totally covered in blood. His face was a mess. I don't know how in the world he was still alive, let alone awake. Poor guy. Moral of the story: Alcohol is bad.

Okay. Well, that's all for this week's adventures of Elders Broekhuijsen and Nielson: World Class for LIFE!  [Editor's note:  For those readers not from Highland and/or Alpine - "World Class for Life" is the motto of Lone Peak High School - where both Andrew and his companion attended high school - so that obviously makes their companionship "world class for life!"  :-)]

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen

Everything is Awesome!

We've been anxiously awaiting Andrew's email this week to hear how his adjustment back to "regular missionary" has been going.  Sounds like it's going just great!  See for yourself…

Hey everyone! 

It's been a pretty crazy week. This Russian computer I am writing on in this Russian post office thinks that I am spelling every single word of this email wrong so far. But it is the one that is mistaken! I'm just bilingual. Don't worry about it. 

I have some very excellent things to report. 

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

Elder Nielson is a giant boss. I specifically took some small pictures on my camera so that I could email them to Melissa. [Seen at the end of this blog post]  So hopefully everyone is as pumped about the fact that I'm serving with Elder Nielson as I am.

On Thursday and Friday, we had a 2-day Zone Leader Council with all of the district leaders in attendance. Aside from being pretty nuts how many people we fit in the apartment, it was possibly the best ZLC of my whole entire mission. There was revelation flowing in that room the same way peanut butter oreo shakes flowed when I was serving with Elder Langston. That's a lot, for the record. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened is the redefinition of what constitutes "finding" a new investigator. Virtually my whole mission (well, starting from about 3 weeks after I hit the field out of the MTC), the Russia Samara Mission has been operating under the goal of "one-a-day, one-a-month." Meaning one new investigator found every day per companionship, and one baptism a month for each companionship, as an ideal. In order to make that goal more achievable, President Sartori saw fit to tweak the Preach My Gospel definition of a new investigator from "a lesson taught with a commitment given, a firm return appointment set, and an opening and closing prayer" to "a lesson taught (could be as small as one principle) with at least one prayer and a commitment + return appointment). Basically taking one prayer out of the scenario, which made it VERY possible to find people on the streets the first time you met them. 

No longer. President felt that it's time to return to finding the way PMG says. That sounds like a very small change, but it has really changed EVERYTHING in my mission. No longer can I expect to find new investigators on the streets the first time I ever meet them. That kind of sounds bad, but this is all good, really. It forces us to look ahead, plan better, and what I've noticed is that every single person on the streets that we talk to seems to be full of potential, and if we can get their number or place a Book of Mormon with them or have a prayer with them right there, or anything, suddenly, they're WAY important to me to follow up on, instead of just confining them to the endless Potential Investigator sheets of the area book and forgetting about them, because it "wasn't a find." This change helps me see the value in every person, and the potential they have to learn more about the truth we share, instead of just searching out the people who are absolutely crazy religious or prepared. It has also led to us having approximately 108,347 meetings set up every day, of which maybe 2 or 3 go through :D. That's the nature of potential investigator meetings here, I guess. 

Anyway, sufficeth it to say that I'm pumped about this change, and I'm loving it, and coming in from contacting feeling like I accomplished something, because there's not so much stress about "finding" anymore. We still want to find new investigators, but it's not an instantaneous thing anymore, so we're not expected to do it every time we hit the streets. 

So another good thing from this week: A* is a guy that Elder Langston and I taught here in Bezimianski right before I left. He got baptized, and is a boss. But right around the time Elder Langston left, he started having some major hardships at work, and with money, and who knows what else. He went inactive, and it was "bad" inactive, not just "call him and invite him to church" inactive. He said he didn't believe in God, and that he didn't want to meet with anyone, even though we had E*, his best member friend, calling him all the time. 

Well, he decided to let the missionaries meet with him. Elders Langston and Bishop met and committed him to read, pray, and come to church. He showed up to church on Sunday right before I got transferred, and seemed to like it. That night, he called Elder Langston and said "Langston! I was at work, and I got online and for some reason I found a talk by Thomas Monson to listen to during my lunch break! And I listened to it and I felt the Spirit! I still have a testimony!" He was so stoked. So Elder Nielson and I met with him on our first night in Bezi. Elder Nielson introduced himself at the beginning of the lesson, and then said, "Well, A*, tell me about yourself!" And A* was like, "What is there to tell? I found my testimony. I believe in God and I believe that Christ is his Son. I believe this is the true church. I'm coming back, and I'm not missing church ever again. I listen to conference talks while I'm at work and they help me feel something from above all day long." And he was just beaming, and then he said the closing prayer and I was happier than I can even possibly describe with words in any language.
Man, God is so cool. 

So, two more miracle stories and then we'll call it quits. Both of them have to do with a lady named N*. Actually, two ladies named N*. They are different miracles, and each miracle has its own N*. Make sense? Okay, here we go.

Elder Nielson and I decided to take a break from all the drudgery of overhauling the unorganized apartment we had just moved into (as of this morning, by the way, it is TOTALLY organized and sparkling clean), and punish the streets for a few hours. So we hoofed it out to a far corner of our area, and talked to everyone on the way there. Street one: Sovetskoy Army. We got our faces kicked in. Nobody wanted to talk or even break step. Street 2: Novo-Sadovaya. Now we're talking. We were getting numbers and meetings set up left and right, and then we talked to this mom with a 10-year-old daughter. Her first reaction to Elder Nielson's enthusiastic "Zdravstvooytye!" was the typical "hide my child from the cultists" maneuver. She seemed to be ready to walk off, but then suddenly her eyes got all wide and she said, in tones of absolute rapture, "Takiye krasiviye..." For those of you playing at home, that means, translated by meaning rather than literally, "Oh my gosh, you're so beautiful..." I guess that's more of a normal thing to say in Russian; it doesn't translate real well as far as how awkward that sounds. Anyway, we started laughing and the conversation took off. Turns out she's really pumped that we're Americans (normal). She believes in God (mostly normal). And she really wants to meet with us really bad (not that normal). Her daughter, M*, is super cool. She's an artist and she speaks English pretty well because of her specialized school. So later that night, after we concluded a particularly spiritual planning session (with the help of two candles and no electric lights), she called us to report that she had read the introduction to the Book of Mormon, and wanted to move her meeting to a closer day because she had lots of questions about Joseph Smith. Yeah baby! 

Miracle number dva (2): Not 5 minutes after N* #1 finished talking to Elder Nielson and we fist pumped, I got a call from "Potential Investigator: N* AB" on my phone. The very last potential investigator that I hadn't been able to get ahold of or sort or organize in any way, left over from the last Elders here. She told me that she was told by her daughter that she was meeting with two missionaries from a church that wasn't the Russian Orthodox church, and that the missionaries who her daughter, Ksyusha, was meeting with, were leaving town, but there were supposed to be two new missionaries moving in. That would be us. She then proceeded to explain that not long ago, she decided that her church wasn't for her, and she was planning on getting re-baptized into a different church, but then she found out about our church, and went online to research. Usually that's bad, because online contains about 99% trash about our church, and 1% truth. But she just said she was really interested in meeting to find out more, and asked some detailed questions about what we believe in, etc. Got a meeting set up with her in a couple of days now. 

Yeah, Elder Nielson and I enjoyed another fist pump. 

Basically, everything is sick awesome. 

I can't seem to print your emails anymore, so I'm probably going to have to figure out some other system of making stuff work here. We'll see what happens.  But for today, enjoy the photos. Thanks for the updates from home. 

Also - I'm way in shock about the missionary age change. That's nuts - 19 year old sisters? That is nuts. So cool though. The sisters down here are really "angry" about that, because "I HAD TO WAIT SO LONG BEFORE I WAS ALLOWED TO PUT MY PAPERS IN!" Ha. 

So we'll be talking to you next week.

Love,Elder Broekhuijsen

Elder Nielson and I being gangsters in my old stomping grounds (Bezimianski North Apartment.)

Elder Nielson posing a question of the soul (Is there life after death?) while I just pose in general. And lift a weight that is lots of kilograms. So yeah, I'm strong. Don't worry about it.

Elder Nielson and I marveling at how organized our zone is, while enjoying the possibility of hands-free conversation if the need arises.

Elder Broekhuijsen (hand model comparable in many ways to David Duchovny) doing some nightly planning by candlelight. Yes, that's a thing in Bezimianski North. 

Transfers

Andrew warned us last week that he might not have time to send much of an email today - but it turns out he DID have time - so here it is!

Man, is it weird to be in October.

Well the time has finally come to spill the beans with transfers. I know you've all been waiting. Or at least, if you're anything like every single Elder I have talked to on the phone for the past two weeks, you've all been waiting. (Come on, just give me a clue!)

I am headed over to the fruitful vinyard of Bezimianski North! My old stomping grounds. Woot! And my companion is none other than the famous Elder Nielson. For those of you playing at home, why, yes, that is indeed the very same Elder Christopher Nielson from the Lone Peak class of 2011. And what's more, Elder Swartz is in our district; serving over in Novokuybyshevsk, the smallish neighboring city to Samara right across the Volga. So we pretty much have the Lone Peak District chilling in Samara. Woot again! The new Assistant is Elder Taylor. You don't know him, I don't think. But he's from Morgan, Utah. And he's a pretty cool guy.

So things are going to go down over there in Bezimianski.  Elder Nielson and I are going to parachute in and get some hardcore new-investigator-finding going on from day one. I've seen what that area and that branch can do, and I'm ready for a repeat performance. The last 8 months of administrative work have been steadily pulling me back further and further like a slingshot. Without so much "extra-curricular" stuff to do, it's about to get unleashed.

So this week we made maple bars. There's not much to say about them except that they were delicious, and I haven't eaten any such thing for a year and a half.

 The insanely delicious maple bars we made. From scratch.

 

T* is doing well. She has understood and told us that she will eventually get baptized. But any time we bring it up, she digs in her heels and clams up, so we told her to pray and read and ask God every day when she should be baptized, and that we won't have any more lessons about it; it's her decision. She really wants to get baptized in the Volga. We told her it's getting late. But there is a picture hanging in the MTC of an American Elder baptizing someone in a rectangle of absolutely arctic water that they chopped through who knows how many inches of ice. It was taken somewhere near Vladivostok. Cold water is something I just don't do. It's the worst thing ever when the city turns off our hot water and we have cold showers for a week. But I would do that to baptize T*. She's also really bummed that I'm leaving Avrora, and has threatened a bunch of times to start going to Bezimianski branch, even though she lives in the Avrora boundaries. We tried everything to get her not to... but we'll have to see what happens. I'm not allowed to meet with her anymore, but she's being really stubborn about that. She really in general just doesn't like rules, and has a long way to go before someone can just tell her, "You can't do this because God said so," and have that be a good enough reason. I remember Mom wishing me children "just like you" whenever I was being argumentative as a child for the exact same reason - not agreeing with the "why" and not understanding the whole doctrine of obedience. I guess this is my paycheck. :D  [Editor's note:  "Ah - music to my ears!"  :-)]

So we had exchanges this week too. They were fun. But honestly not a whole lot to talk about there. Elder Langston apparently went out to explore the far corners of our area one day and followed the train tracks out to the bridge that goes to Novo-k. I guess there weren't a whole lot of options as far as where you can run when a train starts coming at you by that point... as in "left" or "right." Not exactly sure what happened, but the way I heard Elder Langston recording it into his journal last night it seems like he narrowly escaped... :D

Well, that's about all I got. I hope everything back home is going great. Looking forward to reading almost twice as many emails as usual today :D

Love you all!
Elder Broekhuijsen