I was 87% sure that we wouldn't get email from our missionaries today, since it seemed likely that the places that they email from would be closed on Christmas Eve. Happily that doesn't seem to be the case (at least in Russia!)
Hey family!
How is everyone! I'm doing great. I'm going to start with the really important stuff first - the way things worked out, I need to do my call tomorrow night at 6:00pm, which I am 99.9% sure is 7:00am Utah time. So hopefully we don't get your Christmas started off too early ;) but with 6 missionaries in our branch and Christmas calls limited to the 25th this year because of transfer complications, that's the way the cookie crumbles. [Editor's note: That's okay Andrew - we're thinking it is probably worth it to get up at 7:00 a.m. to talk to our son who's been in Russia for the past 22 months!]
So it's been a pretty eventful week. Lots of ups and downs. I guess I can start by saying that serving with Elder Christensen is pretty dang fun. He's very different from Elder Nielson, kind of a lot more straight-laced, but that's a good thing in many aspects. What's cool is that he's a really experienced and skilled teacher, so when we teach together it's really straight up 50/50 and really smooth teaching. Reminds me of teaching with Elder Langston a lot.
We had a bit of a heartbreak with N* and M*. The situation is a lot more complicated and personal than is good to explain in an email, but it totals up to: we won't be meeting with them anymore for at least a few weeks, which means there's about 0 chance of them getting baptized while I'm here. I guess that's a bummer, but maybe the Lord just needed me to give up my selfish desire for them to be "my awesome golden family that I baptized" and just be happy if they get baptized and I hear about it by email a few weeks later, from Utah. I'm not sure.
On the bright side, Elder Christensen and I have really focused in on finding a bunch of families to work with. Our area is filling up, and there have been miracles with some of our other investigators. K* is a 23 year old girl who was progressing pretty slow (she had a lot of meetings that were spent 75% on us trying to get the lesson on track and off of the topic of "America," or "our hobbies," or "English.") Well she came to church this week and hit it off really good with my brat-tan (Russian/Tajikistanian terminology meaning "brother/friend," or, "stranger that I want to sell shoes to at the marketplace") V*, who is a sick member here who is getting ready for a mission. They ended up just chilling together during all of 3rd hour, and then we had a lesson with them. I'm not exactly sure what V* told her or what happened during that hour, but suddenly she's taking this whole "maybe I do want to join this church and get baptized" thin about 384% more seriously. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson and it went great. Now she's reading the Book of Mormon for reals and praying to find out if it's true. She also has begun making her mom pray with her before bed. Yeah baby! Go K*!
We have a new sister in our district! Sister Young went down to Penza and Sister Clyde came up to... Russia. And she's lucky, because she got to come to Bezimianski, aka miracle central. She's pretty cool. Actually President Sartori has introduced some pretty strict SYL rules in the mission in the last week or so, and so, seeing as how she's been in the country for about 1.5 weeks, we haven't exactly been able to get to know each other that great in Russian, and there's not much English happening in my life anymore. So be looking forwards to me not remembering how to say anything on Skype tomorrow. But I bet she's cool. After all, she's a Russia Samara Mission sister.
I decided what to spend my gift money from Grandma on and bought myself a spicy pair of European dress shoes today at the market (gosh I wish there was a halfway decent translation for the word "reenok." Saying "market" makes it sound like I went to get a pail of cream and say hi to Atticus, the town cobbler). They are in the traditional Russian/Tajikistanian style, which means really pointy and awesome, and they have fur on the inside and shiny black leather on the outside and instead of laces, zippers. I'm going to save them for special occasions. Can't wait to wow everyone with their glory at Zone Conference and ZLC. So thanks Grandma! If you were worried that my other shoes aren't holding up, worry no longer. I've been pretty faithful about switching them out and just in general taking care of them, and besides that, they're just really solid Ecco shoes, so they're still in almost perfect shape. I'll be wearing them after my mission, I think. I just wanted the Euro shoes because they'll go really well with my Palto, scarf, man purse (*ahem,* satchel), and well-trimmed toothbrush moustache (post-mission only).
What else happened this week? Well, me and Elder Christensen bought some cookies from a little shop near N* and M*'s house, and they tasted like cigarette smoke. That was awesome. Also we went knocking an apartment complex, and this one guy cracked his door and a little orange kitten came shooting out, but nobody noticed, and he wasn't interested, so he closed the door. He was like, "We don't need your message about families!" And then we picked up his cat, and knocked again and it went a little something like this:
"What?!""Hey, your cat ran out while we were talking to you.""We don't need your cat!""No, you don't get it. Can you hear us through that door? This is your own cat.""We don't need our own cat!"*slam*
So we named him Funkmaster Flex and he followed us around the rest of our knocking that night.
Also last night a cool family let us in while we were knocking (Funkmaster Flex patiently waited outside, presumably listening to Earth, Wind, and Fire). The dad's name is Y* and mom's name is E*. They have a daughter who still lives with them because she's 11, and 2 kids who are moved out. So we have an appointment with them actually tonight at 8:00. Should be funtimes; they're pretty cool!
Anyway. What else is there to say? Things are awesome here.
Until next time! (which is tomorrow evening at 6:00pm for me)
Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen
P.S. We have almost no snow on the ground here. It's super weird. And because of that (if everyone that we talk to on the streets is to be believed) it is a REALLY COLD winter. It's pretty bitter out there, especially if there's any kind of wind at all. We're doing just fine though in our huge coats, scarves, hats, and hoods. Man. Before my mission, my brain had never conceived of such cold temperatures ever being... felt... by my body before. It's nuts. I just had absolutely no imagination that you could feel that cold.
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