Having A Lack Of A Title For E-Mails Sometimes Makes Me Angry!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well its been another good week in Russia. Me and Elder Dannenberg are
teaching quite a bit of people since we have been really trying to get
appointments. We have a pretty big pool of people whom we can meet
with, but unfortunately they all have incredibly busy schedules or go
out of town every week to their summer Dasha, which is like a summer
home in the middle of nowhere that a lot of Russians have. So it gets
incredibly frustrating when we know that there are people that we can
be teaching but they just won't meet with us!

But we have had a few interesting meetings. Last Saturday we taught a
group of people who held their own Bible study club because they had
left the Seven Day Adventist church due to some doctrinal issues. What
was awesome is that they were concerned about doctrinal issues that we
had the answers too. We talked for almost three hours with them (we
had no other appointments that day) and are going back Saturday. Me
and Dannenberg were blown away how prepared those people were.

In contrast, the next day we went to a lesson that ended up being in
another Protestant church. We meet a German and a Swiss there, and it
was funny to see Dannenberg speak and teach in German a little, since
he only speaks English and Russian with me. So we talked to those two
guys and ended up setting up a return appointment at the local
McDonalds. It was a very frustrating lesson since they basically came
to argue with us about doctrinal points. I was getting frustrated
since they just wouldn't listen and ended up completely shooting us
down. I wasn't particularly happy, especially since I was teaching in
English so I knew exactly what was going on.

Otherwise we have been doing some good lessons and trying to get
people progressing by keeping commitments and learning about the
Gospel.

Monday was the weirdest day I've had on my mission. It started out
normal, and we had a nice lesson with one of our investigators,
Mikhail. Then we needed to get to the other side of the city so he
offered us a ride. This is where things start going weird. Mikhail's
car is a 1971 bright red Soviet era car with no seatbelts and no
airconditioning. But it had a good sound system as we found out as he
blasted music on our ride. It was strange to hear "Sweet Dreams" by
the Eurythmatics on my mission! So after that strange car ride we got
dropped off in the Upper part of the city, our lesson cancelled on us
so we went street contacting where we ran into a former investigator.
He wanted to go to McDonalds, which we did, but then he ditched us
when we were in line ordering food. I completely messed up my order
and ended up with a single kids size hamburger instead of a double
cheeseburger and we ended up catching up with our investigator in a
park were we sat down. Right when we sat down a man dressed up as
Superman came and offered us a chance to test drive a Suzuki and I
realized I had sat in a huge pile of gum. Then as we were talking to
our investigator four other people just ended up randomly jumping  in
on the conversation. It was a weird day, but I've come to realize that
sometimes in Russia, everything is just ridiculous.

Anyways, that's pretty much all I've got for the week, its been pretty
exciting, but I feel bad because I experience so much everyday that I
can't even write a fraction of it. I guess this will just have to
suffice.

Also, for anybody wanting to write me, please send everything to the
mission office in Moscow (mom, if you could put that address on this).
Its safer and more dependable and I'll probably get it faster since
there are always people coming from Moscow to Ninzhy and vice versa.

You all rock!

Indubitably,
Старейшина Зак Брэйжер
Elder Zachery Brasier
Muravskaya Street, Bldg. 1, Floor 3
Moscow 125310
Russia