October 10, 2011

Hello, all!  Sounds like Elder Andrew is still excited to be where he is, doing what he's doing!  In a separate email to me, he mentioned that he did get a nice, heavy winter coat last Pday, so if you've been worried about that (like me!) you can set your mind at ease…  Anyway, here's what Elder Broekhuijsen had to say this week:

It has been an insanely awesome week! 

So let's start off by saying that General Conference = The Bomb. How on earth did I take it for granted for 18 years? Jeez. I was an ungrateful swine. God was like, "Hey, Andrew, here's 10 hours of pure revelation from the prophets and apostles on the earth. You can get some good stuff and all you have to do is sit and watch TV and maybe take some notes." And I was like, "No, I think I'll sleep."

Coolness from Conference that I can share with you:

First off, we had a baptism between sessions on Saturday in Komsomolsky/Schlyuzavoy! The lady's name is I*. She was super awesome and I conducted my first ever baptismal interview with her Friday evening.

Elder Bennett (who is former President Bennett, president of the Russia Samara Mission) spoke in the Sunday Afternoon session! He had a super cool talk! But the coolest part was when he talked about one Anatoly Reshetnikov who is a 70 from Russia. He happens to live in the boundaries of the Volzhsky branch in Saratov, and I saw him on a regular basis while I served there. He is the coolest man ever. I'll have you know he personally set up my registration to live in the city of Saratov when I first showed up! He also helped us on lessons all the time. And he is seriously the best. I have a picture of me with him that I took before I left Saratov. I'll send it down next week.

Also, the man who gave the closing prayer in that same session was Gregory Schwitzer, known to us as President Schwitzer, President of the Europe East Area, which includes all the Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, and Baltic missions. Cool! He was at our Zone Conference in Saratov as well, and conducted interviews afterwards. I also had some close interaction with him at Zone Leader Council back at the beginning of September. He's such an awesome man!

Russia is cool!

Completely switching gears, we have an insanely awesome investigator named V* (why are all the best investigators always named V*?) who is getting baptized on the 15th. He is the coolest. He is a photographer.

Speaking of photography! Today after we finish buying food and stuff, Elder Lewis and I got permission to go out to the forest between Old City and Komsomolsky. It is insanely beautiful fall colors here right now. So for the first time in 7 months, I'm gonna get out and do some good old photography! We'll find out how rusty I am! Next week we'll be writing home in a library in Old City with the Zone Leaders, so we'll be able to send pictures; hopefully I'll be able to send a few home then. 

Anyway. I had an insanely cool week. Things are looking up. Be prepared to hear about V*'s baptism next week! 

I love you all! Have an awesome time!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

What an Awesome Week!

No, I wasn't up at 4:15 this morning reading Andrew's email…  Whatever makes you think that?  :-)  Think how much I could get done if I had a missionary email coming each day of the week!  I suppose then I might not treasure them quite so much.  Anyway, here's the latest from Elder Broekhuijsen.

Oh my goodness! I can't believe how awesome your week was! That's insanely amazing! I'm so happy Dad found an amazing new job, that my long-lost SD card showed up, and that everything is just going awesome! I am SOOOO pumped about the Provo Tabernacle being restored into a temple. I seriously cannot believe that news. That is a better solution than I could have possibly dreamed of. Seriously. Now I can say I've SUNG UNDER MACK WILBERG IN A TEMPLE! That is going to be my favorite building in all of Utah, except maybe our house.

We had a pretty amazing week too. It's gotten cold. It's constantly raining and there's a nice biting wind all the time. So we're buying coats today. We have a member who has some hookups in Old City, so we're heading down there once we finish here sending emails.

We had a miraculous evening on Saturday. The sisters in the district (Sister Ostopchuk and Sister Lednyova, two natives) wanted to do kind of a low-key musical evening thing with some investigators, because they had a brand new investigator named C* who plays guitar and apparently sings in English. I was kind of iffy about it, but they invited us and I figured, eh, why not? I honestly was kind of scared it would be a flop and just be this weird awkward thing with like 4 missionaries and 1 or two investigators and a guitar. But we invited a bunch of investigators and members and stuff, and it just went awesome somehow. First off, C* sings these awesome folksy songs in English with a deep alto voice and a very thick Russian accent. I WILL be finding a way to get a video of that home. Don't worry. She's awesome though. Then we sang a bunch of hymns, other stuff, I sang "Let it Be" to the DELIGHT of all the 16-21 year old female church members who were in attendance (I am such a good missionary). No, I'm kidding. I did sing it though, and then we ended off the night with a lovely rendition of "I Know that My Redeemer Lives." Our investigator V*, the MoTab fan was there. He's an awesome baritone and loves the hymns. He was SO excited that we had that hymn in Russian. It's his favorite song he says. We're going to hook him up with a copy of the hymnbook in Russian. He also spontaneously decided that he was going to invite his whole family to come see General Conference with him. Yes!

We have another investigator who approached us on the street speaking English and asking if we are English teachers (an impression that a lot of previous missionaries left behind when there was English club in our mission). We met with him and he's actually super awesome. So we invited him (his name is Vl*, btw) to this evening too, and I was kind of worried he didn't like it much because he was really quiet and didn't want to sing. But the next day in Fast & Testimony meeting, we had another series of miracles. First off, C* came to church and bore her testimony that she felt so much peace at our music thing last night, and that she felt like God had strengthened her enough to come to church today and feel that peace again... (this like 3 days after she first met missionaries). Then A*, a member, got up and bore his testimony, talking about how APPARENTLY Vl* approached him on Saturday night before heading home and asked him what the deal was about this place. Questions like "why is everyone so happy?" "Why is this place so peaceful?" and "What made you want to choose this life in the church?" and finally, "How can I learn more about this?" A* told him straight up: "meet with the missionaries and listen to what they have to say." Vl* was like. "Okay. I'm down." We have another meeting with him and his mother tomorrow night at 8:00.

October is going to be the most miraculous month to this point on my mission. I'm loving it here. Miracles are everywhere. Tracting is really really fun here. People are weird. We had a girl talk to us for a minute through the door, and then when she found out we were missionaries, she went silent. We asked her "Are you still there?" And she said "Nobody is home!" and slammed the door. What the heck? I laughed so hard about that for like 15 minutes. Man. She sure fooled me, I thought someone was home the whole time.

So General Conference for us is next week. I'm so pumped.

I'm running out of time, but I love you all! I can't express the happiness I feel when I look at all the blessings that are raining down on me, our mission, my family, life in general. I love it. I thank the Lord every day for my mission.

Have an awesome week! Keep me posted! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen