Zone Leadership

Hello, all! We are glad to see that even when Andrew is busy with his responsibilities as Zone Leader, he still manages to write entertaining and informative e-mails. Enjoy!

It has actually been a ridiculously awesome week. I'm in the Volzhsky area of Saratov (Saratov is the city), and actually it hasn't been too hot at all recently... actually overcast most of the week. Also our apartment has AIR CONDITIONING!!!!!! so inside is always a lovely temperature. We actually went to Samara this week for Zone Leader Council, which is held at the beginning of each month. It was an amazing experience. We discussed problems each Zone has, and how to resolve them. 

It's amazing to see how the Lord's organization works. As Zone Leaders, the president has told us that we need to spend 70% of our focus and effort planning and working for the Zone, and 30% on our own areas. Yet, we are still expected to set examples for the rest of the zone by having really really strong areas with lots of success. So the Lord provides miracles for us that make up for the time we can't spend working in our own areas. For example, my first real day in Saratov (Tuesday), we went contacting on the street trying to find our one new investigator (each companionship in the mission is expected to find one new investigator each day). The third person we talked to was a really awesome guy from Congo. He speaks French, some African language that I don't remember the name of, English and Russian. So we have been teaching him in English. He is the most humble, good man ever, and he is going to be baptized in August. He has this super-sensitivity to the Spirit, and can really tell when it's talking to him. His name is L*. 

I guess at this point my main thoughts on being a zone leader are that it's really really tough and a TON of work and stress, but it's also a blast. In the Saratov Zone, we have three districts, and each district has three companionships. Four of our companionships have missionaries that got here on Tuesday from the MTC, completely green. And they are all super stars. One of them studied Russian for three years before he got his call, so he is already nearly fluent. The other three are just insanely hard workers with tons of faith and they are finding miraculously. We had a baptism yesterday even in our Zone, and two other baptisms in other zones in the mission. I really enjoy how much interaction I get to have with other missionaries on a consistent basis. In the month of July, our mission baptized a record-shattering 20 people. At Zone Leader Council, we discussed how this is the beginning of a new era for the Russia Samara mission. Almost all of the leadership now is new missionaries who have been on a mission for 6 months or less. After one more group of missionaries coming in in September (including Elder SWARTZ), there are no major changes in the complement of the entire mission for the entire year of 2012. It's a perfect storm to just absolutely blow the mission up with success. The Lord has a huge plan, and it's a lot easier to see it in its entirety (or more so, anyway) when you are coordinating a third of the mission all day long.

The members here are fantastic. A good number of them speak pretty decent English, actually, which is interesting. Many of them are among the very first people who were ever baptized in Russia. They are kind of the hard core of super solid members here as they have been members for around 20 years.

Life is crazy and I'm busy all the time, but I also feel more blessed than I ever have before. This kind of stress and work was exactly what I hated so much before my mission, and I was terrible at getting things done. But because there is absolutely no way I could do this without the Lord helping me, it's very evident that he's basically just holding me up as this deluge of work and responsibility washes over me. And I'm learning at rapid pace just how to be a Zone Leader in general. 

Okay. I love you all! I'm cutting this one short because we gotta get out of this place and take care of some stuff today.

Love from,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

We had a minor heart attack here this morning when we woke up to no email from Elder Broekhuijsen. Happily, it did eventually arrive, and our hearts have all calmed down again. And it was a great email - so well worth the wait!

WHOA!

Okay. I've got like 40 minutes or so to write. This week was absolutely insane, so we'll see how much I can pack in.

VISA TRIP: Awesome awesome awesome. I could spend 40 minutes typing about this alone. So just know that when I get home or when I get a phone call or something, I will have an awesome, really long story to tell about my first ever visa trip. But the readers' digest version goes a little something like this: We got up at 1:30 AM and took a taxi to the Samara airport. Our plane was scheduled to take off at 5:30, so we just kind of chilled in the terminal for a couple of hours and then got in line to board. Turns out they sold our tickets. Evidently standing in line at 4:50 (40 minutes early) doesn't count as being 40 minutes early; because they kept saying "No, you were 35 minutes early, it was cool for us to sell your seats). Anyway, somehow, miraculously, when they called straight to the plane, they were like "Oh yeah, we have 8 seats left). There were 7 of us. So that worked out. Then we flew to Kiev and couldn't find the taxi that was supposed to be standing there in the terminal holding a sign that said "LDS Church." We eventually found him, but the mission cards weren't working in the ATM. So I busted out the personal card and started trying to withdraw money. I got 500 Griven (somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 I think) to pay for the taxi, and we got things figured out and departed for the temple. While sitting on the taxi, we found a scrunched up sign in the back seat that said "LSD Church." :D Good effort, Ukraine.

So we got to the temple and stopped by the mission office, which is on the temple grounds for the Kiev mission, as evidently they were supposed to be waiting there with our new visas. They were. So that was good. It was so nice to go through the temple again. Really helped remind me and ground me again.

So then we went back to the airport after taking a few pictures outside the temple, flew to Moscow, and went to our next flight which was to depart at 9:30 to Samara, getting us home to Tol'yatti around 1:00 in the morning or so. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed about 90 minutes due to a big thunderstorm. Then finally they let us board, and we sat on the tarmac not doing anything for another 90 minutes before finally taking off. That put us in the Samara airport at around 2:30 or so. The taxi we took home to Tol'yatti totally ripped us off (1300 Rubles for a 1.5 hour drive), but we were beyond caring. So then we got home and slept until 11:00 the next morning (the rule is you get 8 hours of sleep after a visa trip regardless of regular scheduling).

The only reason they got us up at 11:00 was because they wanted us to eat something before we started a fast from 12:00 to 12:00 to hit our mission goal of 25 baptisms in July. The fast was interesting. Not only was it the hardest fast that I've ever done, but I could already tell was was super dehydrated right at the beginning. But the mission saw so many miracles in that 24 hour period (going from 14 baptisms to 20, including one in Tol'yatti New City!) that I know it was the right choice to do it instead of making excuses about how I was an exception because of the visa trip. And let me tell you; that was the most delicious cup of Kool-Aid I have ever had at 12:00 the following day.

So the big news: Transfers! You may have noticed that I am not writing this at the normal time. Roughly 8 hours after the normal time actually. Well, I'm sitting in the mission office in Samara right now, waiting until 9:00 or so when I'll head to the train station and take an overnight train out to the Volzhsky Area of Saratov to be a Zone Leader for the Saratov Zone. Saratov is one of the three zones in the mission (the other two being Tol'yatti and Samara). The entire city is right now on FIRE with success. So I'm SUPER lucky to get to be there as a ZL at this time. I'm blown away that I will be a ZL on my third transfer in the field. I'm not even particularly steady with the language yet, so this will be an interesting challenge.

My companion is Elder Morris. I actually haven't met him yet, but I've heard good things. He'll be the senior companion as he has been Zone Leader in Saratov for a cycle already. Apparently the branch I will be attending (along with I think 2 or 3 other companionships of missionaries) has about 80 members, and they are awesome from everything I've heard. I'm so pumped to get to work there. I'll miss Elder Kuzmin, who is training a brand new missionary in Komsomolsky Area in Tol'yatti next cycle, but the future of the whole mission looks really bright right now.

One more interesting story for today. The man who was baptized on Saturday was actually not our investigator (the sisters took him once they got transferred to Tol'yatti and we had to split our area with them). His name is A*. I got to take part in confirming him yesterday during church. He is the most humble man I've ever met. So awesome, and so prepared to accept the gospel. He does service all the time at this place where homeless people can come to take a shower for free, and we found him in the area book. Well this morning when the Assistants called and said I needed to find a member of the church to be my "companion" while I bussed up to Samara, Elder Kuzmin suggested that I call him. So I called him, and he was super excited to travel with me. I love this guy. He's the best. I'll miss a ton of the members in the Tol'yatti branches, but somehow I feel like I'll see them again.

Anyway. That's about it. Killer delicious week. Next email will be full of all sorts of information about Saratov and Elder Morris and being a Zone Leader when you don't speak Russian. Woohoo!

Love you all! The church is true!

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen