Spring = Drunk Guys

Even in St. George, the first thing to do on a Monday morning is check for Andrew's email!  Happily, our hotel has internet.  (Let's face it, we wouldn't choose one without it…)  Also happily there was an email there waiting for us this morning.  Here it is for your reading pleasure.

Hey everyone!

Whoa, man. This is Elder Hale's last P-day. You don't know him, but he's awesome. And exactly one week from now he'll be on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Crazy.

Things are chugging along here in good ol' Samara. Life is great, the missionary work is going well, and I'm still learning and growing. The last part of that statement sounded pretty cheesy, didn't it? Oh, well. Sorry.

The visa trip went really well. More or less without a hitch. We headed out through Moscow to Kiev, had some time to go contacting in Kiev.  Man. I think 75% of the people we talked to were absolutely smashed, and it was like 3:00 PM. Maybe it had something to do with Easter coming up. (Russian Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday)

Speaking of Easter, you remember those little plastic sleeves that you can put on boiled eggs, and then dip them in really hot water, and they shrink and form-fit around the egg? Well I found some at the market (such a poor translation of the work "reinok") for 10 rubles for 8 of them. So... about 3 cents each. Ish. Yesterday I spent our lunch hour making Easter eggs with KITTENS on them! I'll send pictures next week if I remember.

What else is awesome? This week we met a guy on a tram on the way up to the branch building named I*.  He's super cool. We set up a meeting with him that night and he brought a friend named D* who is super hilarious. And both of them are really interested in the Book of Mormon. We have a meeting with them both tonight at 7:30 and they'll become progressing. They're so awesome. It's a huge testimony-builder for me that there's tons of just regular old people that haven't been super humbled by life circumstances who are still open to new ideas and new truths that they weren't aware of before.

So. Our area is actually doing pretty rough. We just cleaned out the area book and made things a little more realistic, and we don't have any progressing investigators, don't have any investigators with a baptismal date, and don't have any investigators who are attending church. But we're celebrating our very own home-brewed holiday called Diligence Week!!!? (The punctuation there is mandatory). And today we'll have two new progressors. Hope is never lost!

Man, with the weather, we've seen an approxinate 2033% increase in the number of drunk people everywhere. One of my favorite streets in the entire Russia Samara Mission is right by our house, Leningradskaya. It's a walking street, and also the best route to get to the mission office. But starting at 7:00am and ending at about 5:00am, it's now covered in drunk people. I'm talking hundreds of them. It's ridiculous. I didn't really realize before just how much of a society problem it is here with all the cheap terrible alcohol everywhere. You can barely walk 25 steps in any direction without being approached by a smashed guy who feels entitled for other people to give him money to buy more beer or vodka. "Hey guys, give me 15 rubles!" So unfortunately, Leningradskaya is no longer allowed for us. Missionaries have had too many incidents on that street in the past. It's too bad; that street is so beautiful and cultural. I'm not being sarcastic about that; I'll show you some pictures in the fall or the winter when I can go on it again.

Well, okay. That's pretty much the update. Thanks for all you do! Ooh! By the way, I got my package! Thank you so much! It's so awesome! I may have eaten the entire box of Samoas within 5 minutes of opening the package. Possibly. And thanks for the earmuffs! The weather here keeps being bipolar (I thought I escaped that aspect of Utah weather?), so even though today is really hot actually, I'm sure we'll get a freak snowstorm by the end of the week.

I love you all! Have a sweet time in California, send everyone my love!

Cool.

Love,
Elder Broekhuijsen

Faster than a Speeding Bullet

Elder  Broekhuijsen comes through again - what a faithful email writer!  We didn't get a super long one this week, but it's certainly not the shortest, so no complaints here…

Oh, man. Is it April? What is going on? It's weird that I can say that exactly one year ago to the second, I was sleeping on my bottom bunk under Elder Angerhofer in our residence hall in the MTC. That year has been the fastest and the slowest year of my life simultaneously. I'm nearing the end of my second cycle with Elder Morris as an assistant. That time has blown by. Every single cycle, things get quicker. I'm kind of freaked out. But then I remind myself that I still have a year (basically) and it's all good again.

So how is everyone doing? I'm doing great. We have a humongous Visa trip going on all week, with six groups all headed out to various destinations like Vilnius, Kiev, Riga, and Uralsk. I'm heading with Elder Morris and some others to Kiev on Friday and we get to go to the temple. Woot!

It's been a good week. We weren't able to meet with A* again because she has a crazy work schedule, but we're meeting with O* tonight, and Alyssa tomorrow (we hope). We also have a new investigator that the Saratov Zone Leaders found for us named G*. He's super cool. He's a soft-spoken, well-versed journalist.

The weather has been getting better! It's wet and muddy, but most of the snow has been melting. That being said, we heard from a guy on the streets yesterday that it's supposed to still be snowing on and off until April 11. Dag, yo.

There's not a whole lot to report. Things are moving forwards. Our area is doing pretty well, but we want to plan our time super effectively this week because we have to be constantly on-call for problems with Visa trips and also write the schedule for the new transfer that President is giving us today to get everyone into their new areas in a couple of weeks.  Elder Hale goes home in two weeks. That's so freaky. Anyway. The point being, we want to find a bunch of new investigators as well as helping some of the new investigators we found last week become progressing.

Well... I'll go through and write down a list of all your questions that you so I can answer them next week.

Yesterday, we contacted an old guy who was walking his dog. He said some rude things to us, and then said, "Yeah, and tell Mitt Romney I said hi!" And we, still trying to be nice and engage him in a conversation, said, "Oh yeah, how's he doing? We don't keep up with the news." And this guy heaved a huge sigh, and then said, quietly, "I'm his father." And then slowly walked off in the opposite direction. It was DANG funny.

Also, another funny story from this week that I just remembered: One of the nights this week (I forgot when), I had a dream that I built a balalaika out of wood. Except, instead of it being a regular triangle shape, it was the shape of the StarFleet logo.

INSPIRATION!

Yeah.

Love you! Talk to you later! Actually, yeah, because Mother's day is coming up faster than a speeding bullet. Man, wasn't it just Christamas? I swear...

Elder Broekhuijsen