December 11, 2011 Update

Another great Monday!   It's always a treat to hear from Andrew, and we try not to take for granted the fact that he is such a faithful email writer!  This is what he had to say today:

Well hey everyone!

I've been having a pretty ridiculous week. Last Tuesday morning, we had a bunch of missionaries come in from Penza, Orenburg, Novokuybyshevsk, and even two from Saratov to stay in our apartment during Visa trips. There are two Visa trip "groups" time-wise, so I didn't go on this one; I'm on the other track. Anyway, I got to spend some more time on the street with Elder Swartz. It was awesome!

Cool mini-story about that, actually. We had five Elders with us one night, and were trying to decide how to split things up between who was going to our meeting and who was going to work on the street. I just figured Elder Wood and I should go to our meeting and the other three could go contacting; but for some reason, Elder Wood said he felt like he should be on the street that night. At the end of the day, Elder Wood ended up on the street with Elder Swartz. They found a guy who had a dream about them finding him on the street one year ago. His name is S* and he speaks pretty good English. He is SO awesome. I LOVE IT SO MUCH when God puts a really spiritually sensitive, kind, humble, intelligent, amazing person like that in our path.

Cool other story about an investigator found this week: An entire family of deaf people on the street. They are also SO AMAZING. The mom's name is M* and her 12-year-old daughter is named N*. She also has a husband who we haven't met yet, and a 7-year-old daughter who actually does hear just fine but is really shy, and a son named R* who is 3 and the most hilarious kid ever. I'll take pictures and hopefully videos even if I can get permission. Even Melissa would not be able to deny this kid's cuteness.

Anyway, we had a meeting with them, and it was really different. There's not much point talking because they can barely hear anything and they never learned how to pronounce words very well either. They speak Russian sign language. We do a lot of writing and Elder Wood and I are also picking up on the sign language. It's nice because in spoken Russian, you have 6 different case-endings to worry about for pretty much any given word, crossed with four different possible genders. In signs, they dropped cases entirely. It's not as precise, but you can get the message across just fine. It requires less thinking in a lot of ways to construct a sentence.

Because the meetings are so quiet, you can feel the Spirit really strongly the whole time. The family is amazing.  They accept everything we tell them and will try anything. At the end of our second lesson with them, M* prayed at the end in signs. I didn't catch much, obviously, but I saw the word "spirit," "family," and a lot of "thank you"s. After the prayer, she just opened the floodgates and started crying. It was amazing how strong the Spirit was. 

The next steps we're taking is trying to get things hooked up with them and a deaf member family from the Dachney branch in Saratov. We're going through all the hoops we need to in order to get permission to set up a Skype call with them so they can translate on the lesson for us. It's interesting how easy it seems to speak "just plain ol' Russian" after a lesson with this awesome family. It's easier to speak Russian than English after talking Russian sign language with them for 45 minutes. 

L*, unfortunately, didn't get baptized.  As it happened, she gave us a call 30 minutes before we showed up to the branch. Her mom, who had never before expressed anything against her baptism (she's aware what's been going on and hasn't cared at all), had forbidden her to leave the house. I guess L* said something about the baptismal record that the church keeps that she needed to sign and her mom flipped out and put a quick end to the whole shebang. It's understandable because there are lots of really small "churches" around here that have sneaky ways of stealing people's apartments (that's one we hear all the time... "you just want to steal my apartment!"). But it's frustrating because her mom wouldn't see sense and read the document. She still doesn't care if L* gets baptized or not, she just doesn't want her to sign anything. So we had a great meeting with her last night and laid down some plans. We're hoping to get her baptized on Wednesday, even if that means not signing the baptismal record for a while. The paper isn't really important; it's just for the Church's records. So we'll be giving L*'s mom a few days to cool down and then hopefully she'll be willing to look at the document and figure out it isn't signing away anything. 

Elder Wood got transferred! It is now officially the first day of his last transfer, and the Lord decided to let this insanely aweome missionary go end his mission by lighting Saratov Zone on fire as a Zone Leader down there. I'm happy for him, but a little bummed we don't get to serve together again another transfer. He's an insanely awesome and experienced missionary, and I still feel I have a ton I could learn from him. My new companion and the new Samara Zone Leader with me will be Elder Langston. I'm WAY pumped actually. He's one of my best friends from the MTC; we were in the same district and everything. But in the field, I have yet to be in the same zone as him for a transfer, let alone the same companionship! It's going to be a ridiculously awesome cycle here in Bezimianski.

Zone Conference is coming up this week, so I'll be able to tell you all about it next week! Also, there's been some of that "political unrest" that the white handbook talks about here because of the elections. Lots of people think they're rigged. I won't offer my opinion on that, because it's pretty much not important at all to my work here. So there have been a couple of rallies and stuff, and the Area Presidency have decided that we can't talk to people who are affiliated with politics on the streets for the time being. We also will be staying inside on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Okay. My computer just told me I'm running out of time. So there's the update. Thanks for everything! I love you all! Merry Christmas! Have a wonderful holiday season! I'll talk to you next week!  Love you!

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen

Happy December!

Last night I dreamed that Andrew came home from his mission for some kind of medical procedure, but he was very grumpy and uncommunicative.  Thank goodness it was only a dream!  From what I can tell, he's healthy and still willing to talk to us!  Here's what he said this morning:

I've had a good week! There isn't a whole lot to write about this week, but it was fun.

We had Zone Leader Council for December on Tuesday and Wednesday. ZLC is always a lot of fun. It's cool to come out of it with the helm kind of "readjusted" and everything feeling ready to take on a new month.  Elder Wood and I taught a breakout on building up areas to have good teaching pools and lots of investigators that are making progress towards baptism. That way, you always have people to meet with and rarely end up wandering around on the streets for eight long hours of contacting.

L* is doing wonderfully. She is living the word of wisdom (we bought her some "allowed" tea) and accepted the commitment to live the Law of Chastity. She is also really sincerely praying to find out if the Book of Mormon really is true. Everything so far is looking good for her. I guess next time I write I'll have to attach a picture of her baptism :)

I got your package! Thank you SO much! It's the happiest, most wonderful, best-organized package I have ever received in my life. The advent calendar is hanging behind my desk, and today Elder Wood and I are going to try to find a Christmas tree to put presents under for the apartment.

A couple of funny stories from this week: The Assistants have an investigator named M* that Elder Wood found while he was on exchanges down there a month or so ago (Elder Wood has a reputation for unwittingly finding high numbers of young, single, female investigators). The Assistants and M* had a fast together this week so that M*'s parents would let her come to church. At the end of the fast, they asked her how it went. She said, "It was great! I lost two kilograms." Oooh. Missed the point... :D

Early last week, Elder Wood and I found a man named J* from Georgia (the country). He was crazy golden it seemed. In fact, it seems like I told you about him last week, now that I think about it.  Anyway, we randomly just ran into him on the street while contacting a few days after he stood us up on a meeting. He said he had read the entire Book of Mormon and not learned anything he didn't already know. We were skeptical, of course. But regardless of the fact that he couldn't answer any questions about it, he insisted he had read it and it didn't mean there were any true religions. So that was kind of a bummer. Oh, well. He still has it. Maybe some day he'll REALLY read it and realize he needs to make some changes. It's frustrating to me when people just "decide" what they believe and then won't back off of it for any reason, regardless of how willing God is to give them real answers and real truth, if they would just open their minds and try Him. But I guess those people just aren't ready yet. Meanwhile, we will move on and seek out those who ARE ready to search with sincerity.

Okay. Well, that's it. I love you all! Things are awesome here, as usual! 

Love,

Elder Broekhuijsen