Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well its been a pretty uneventful week this week. Me and Elder Lantuk are still together while we wait for him and Elder Wadsworth to get their Kazakhstani Visa's. The reason that this week has been relatively uneventful is because unfortunately me and Lantuk inherited an area that hadn't been worked for almost two months due to an unfortunate logistics nightmare involving Elder Erikson. So that basically means that we have no investigators and no clue where to start working the area, especially because we know that our time together is really only temporary until Lantuk moves to Kazakhstan, so any work we end up doing will be kind of pointless. With that situation me and Lantuk have just been doing a ton of door knocking and street contacting.

That being said, I am having a great time with Elder Lantuk. It is interesting for me to see the difference of style between Lantuk and Dannenberg when it comes to work. Lantuk is much more relaxed so its been kind of nice to work with him. Plus he is one of the weirdest persons I have ever met, so I never know exactly what he is going to do from time to time. We have been having quite a bit of fun though. It has also been fun to have Elder Olsen and Elder Wadsworth in Nizhny (even though Wadsworth will just be temporary). Those two were a lot of fun in the MTC and are a lot of fun here in Nizhny, especially because we all like the same movies and same music so we end up talking about that a ton. Also this week we had a baptism so Elder Erikson returned from Kaluga because the baptism was one of his old investigators. I was way happy to see him and it was a blast having him back in Nizhny for a day. On Saturday we have a double baptism for two investigators (one of them an African student) so Elder Bitner (with his companion Elder Winters) and Elder Beck (with his Ukranian companion who doesn't really like me all that much) will be coming to Nizhny that day. I am excited to see them and their companions.

One fun thing about having Lantuk as a companion is that I've been eating a lot more Russian food (and junk food) than I had with Dannenberg. My Russian culinary knowledge has been expanded and I've got to eat some of the more interesting foods of Russia. What has been blowing my mind recently has been Russian Lays Potato Chips. You would think that they would be the same flavors as in America right? Wrong! Of the choices of Lay's chips in Russia you have the following flavors: Onion and Sour Cream, Mushrooms and Sour Cream, Red Caviar, Pickle, Crab, Green Seasonings, and just cheese. I am very partial to the Mushrooms and Sour Cream flavor and am trying to get used to the Red Caviar one (it is very strange).

Well that's all I've got for now! Stay excellent my friends.

From Russian with Love,

(Dr.) Elder Zachery Brasier (Esq.)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Unfortunately it took a while to send the pictures on from my camera so this is going to be kind of short, but I hope you enjoy the pictures that I sent and enjoy seeing some of the cool sights of Russia and some pictures of my friends and my companion.

So basically here is what happened this week.  I have a new companion for two weeks because his Visa to Kazakhstan didn't go through.  His name is Elder Lantook and he is from Vladivostok, Russia, which is way cool because now on my mission I have served with a Swede, a German, and a Russian, making me one of the most ethnically diverse missionaries in the field.  I just need to serve with a Ukrainian and an American now and I'll have served with every possible nationality in our mission.

The cool thing is that we moved to the other Lower Area apartment, which is the second biggest in the mission (after the Smolensk apartment which has cathedral ceilings).  What is interesting though, is that our apartment is directly across the street from an extremely low security women's prison.  It's very interesting and we see them do roll call and other such prison related activities every morning.  The bad news is that we have almost no investigators to work with so, we have just been doing a ton of street contacting and visiting inactive members.

So that's about it, I'm running short of time so I'll answer some questions,  First of all I've got a question about if there are any Russian desserts that are like American desserts.  The closest one is these waffle cookies that are pretty much the same as the ones you can find in America.  Otherwise they are pretty different and mostly based on bread and fruit.  Also to answer the question about if Mikhail likes the Book of Mormon: He does, to a degree.  He is an extremely intelligent man so is super-analyzing it.  He has made about six pages of questions for us to handle.  We have our hands full!

Sincerely,
Elder Zachery Brasier

Pictures From Moscow and Nizhniy Novgorod

Red Square on my first day in Russia.

Me and Anatoly

Elder Dannenberg my companion

Nizhniy from my window.

Nizhniy Novgorod

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well, it's been an interesting week here in Russia.  Transfers are this week, which means that missionaries are being moved around to different cities and a fresh batch of missionaries come in from the MTC, which means I am no longer the youngest missionary in the field!  It was kind of sad though because Elder Harrison is leaving for Minsk, Belarus and Elder Erikson is leaving for Kaluga, Russia.  Fortunately though I'll be able to see them again most likely.  On the same day we found out that Erikson is leaving we found out that Anatoly, one of our really good friends in the branch is leaving next month for his mandatory year of army service, so we are really going to miss him a lot.  Hopefully though he'll be sent somewhere with missionaries so that he can continue to learn about the gospel. 

Tuesday this week was on of those days that was just ridiculous.  In the morning one of our investigators  Зух (pronounced Zookh, but the  transliteration looks really stupid so I'll just go with the Russian) called us to see if we could visit him in the hospital , so of course we said yes.  However, we had the most difficult time finding the hospital, and actually ended up in an old train museum that we had never seen before.  It was quite strange.  The day got more weird when we met with out investigator and found out why he was in the hospital.  Evidently he was walking along, late at night, in a dark park (a triple combination of things never to do in Russia) and got stabbed.  Don't worry though he's going to be alright because I guess his abs were rock solid from karate training, so the knife didn't go that far in.  He'll be out of the hospital on Friday.  As we were walking outside the hospital with him, we heard a lady screaming that she wanted to die.  We looked over at her as she was screaming and sitting in front of a bar and then she just collapsed and lay unconscious.  Me and Dannenberg thought her wish had come true.  So we called the paramedics and they revived her which we thought was pretty good.....Until the lady started yelling at us for calling  the paramedics.  I guess she was really angry about that.  Sometimes in Russia everything is ridiculous.

Otherwise, it was a somewhat uneventful week.  One of our investigators Mikhail (the former Seven Day Adventist) is reading the Book of Mormon and seems really interested in our church, so we are hoping that he eventually wants to be baptized.  He really is a great guy, and I love meeting with him, even though sometimes I have a hard time understanding him because he uses way big words.

This week, I have officially decided to coin the term "The Curse of Russian Desserts".  I'm going to explain this briefly, because I haven't really talked about Russian food on this blog.  Russian Desserts always look excessively delicious but never are.  Russian's just aren't big on sweet desserts so they tend to be pretty bland but always look way delicious.  It's really quite unfortunate.  But the Russian's make up for it with really good meat and fruit juice.  Mmmmm....Russian fruit juice.  It's probably the best fruit based drink ever.  Maybe next blog post I'll discuss some more Russian food, if the week is overall uneventful.

Anyways that's about it.  If you have any questions, post a comment on the blog post and my mother will forward it too me.  I would love to answer any questions to help people better understand Russia and Russian culture.

 Remain excellent as always,

 Elder Zachery Brasier

P.S.- Congratulations to Riley Creer and Bryce LeFevre on their mission calls!!!  They will both do awesome in their respective fields of service!!!!

Another Week!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

This has been a bit of an interesting week because we had one great
baptism and mission conference in Moscow.

On Saturday, our African friend Stanaslaus got baptized which was
awesome, it was such a great baptism and I have really enjoyed seeing
him change as he tries to live his life correctly and enjoys all the
friendship of the church members here in Nizhny. The missionaries love
the African students so much because the original two that got
baptized, Joseph and Kenneth are awesome at giving us people to teach,
unfortunately though the people they give us aren't in my area so I
never directly teach them. However, we do so much things with the
other missionaries in Nizhny that the people that we end up caring a
ton about the people they teach, which is why it has been so great to
see Stanaslaus get baptized. Also Joseph and Kenneth brought another
friend to the baptism who is from Namibia so we are hoping he'll be
our next African friend to join the church.

The rest of the week was shockingly uneventful though until Tuesday
when we all went to mission conference in Moscow on an early morning
high speed train. Moscow is a way cool city. It is a lot like a
European version of New York City, except that instead of growing up
with tall buildings it grows outwards. I really enjoy being in the
huge city though and it was a ton of fun to be in Moscow. It was
really cool to see all the other missionaries in our mission
(excluding the Kazakhstan missionaries cause they are too far away)
and I got to see my old friends from the MTC Elder Mitchell and Elder
Stegeby, which I really enjoyed catching up with.

The Nizhny people were lucky because we all got to stay an extra day
for the new missionary training, which I had to attend with all the
other missionaries who have only been here for 1-3 months. Most other
missionaries had to leave Moscow on Tuesday but we got to stay
overnight in the office Elder's apartment. It was certainly
interesting to have 14 Elder's in one apartment, we didn't get to
sleep for quite a while, and then in the morning we spent most of the
time throwing paper airplanes out the window of the office Elder's
apartment since it was on the 17th story of their building. Also, I
had a significantly more successful McDonald's trip in the morning,
but mostly because Elder Bressler helped me out with the Russian. I
still am not very good at McDonalds vocabulary.

Really that's about it though, it was a pretty uneventful week. I was
super excited to be in Moscow, but we didn't really do a whole lot of
noteworthy things! Next week, we get new missionaries from the MTC,
and my good friend Elder Olsen is coming to Nizhny, which I am pumped
about.

And to answer a question from Austin Brasier: The weather here is
getting a little chilly, its been overcast for quite a while and
really wet, which has kind of been nice for me because I was getting
sick of the heat. Basically Russia is just like most European climates
(especially my part) just colder. Nizhny is actually colder though
than Moscow most of the time. Also we've been getting some sweet
sunset because of the cloud cover. Russia really is quite a beautiful
place.

Yeah so that's about it for now!

Wearing Hipster Glasses in Russia,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Another Week in Nizhny Novgorod

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well its been another interesting week here in Nizhny Novgorod. As of
today all of the Russian schools start which actually made last week
quite a pain, because everybody we meet with decided to take last
minute vacations before school started so we had almost no
appointments and spent a ridiculous amount of time street contacting
and knocking doors, which is always an interesting experience.

On a plus side we met with Mikhail twice and talked to him a lot about
the prophet Joseph Smith. We had him read the Joseph Smith history and
I could see him began to gain a testimony of the prophet. After we
got done he said that he thinks that it is real because according to
him the Bible says that a story like Joseph Smith is possible. He is
still hung up though about how we worship the Sabbath on Sunday and
not Saturday so we just need to work with him through that concern. I
think he is progressing a lot and he loves meeting with us, he even
made us borscht!

In an unfortunate turn of events Zhenna is not going to be able to get
baptized soon. She is only 15 and her mother did not give permission,
and even threw out her Book of Mormon. Her older sister Asya will be
baptized though because she is 18, but its was very sad to hear that
they couldn't be getting baptized together.

We have an exciting month coming up though with baptisms ever week! On
Saturday Stanaslaus (the African man) is getting baptized and I am so
pumped for that. Then a bunch of other people are getting baptized,
but unfortunately none of our investigators! However we think that
Mikhail might want to get baptized soon and a guy we met on the
street, Andrei seems incredibly interested in the church, so we have
hope things will work up.

To explain why I was in the woods. We had a picnic for all the church
members in Nizhny Novgorod out in the woods outside of the city. It
was so much fun, and I had a blast with all the word members. The
youth here are really amazing and all have incredibly strong
testimonies. Plus our non-member friends Sasha and his girlfriend came
so that was quite a bit of fun. As with every Russian activity, we had
a ton of  watermelon, because Russian love watermelon! They eat it all
the time, I have only been offered a meal three times were watermelon
wasn't involved.

We liked going out in the woods so much we did it for P-Day today. The
Assistants to the Mission President are in Nizhny and all the
missionaries in Nizhny went out to the forest again in the morning. We
spent the whole morning in this huge sand pit  that had been dug out
jumping off the dirt cliffs into the sand. It was a blast, but then it
started raining! So we ran and tried to hide in the forest, but the
trees weren't blocking too much rain, so Elder Bressler tried to build
a shelter. It didn't work so we just sat there and ate sandwiches in
the rain. Also the Russian army was doing some sort of exercise out in
the woods so we could here machine gun fire in the distance!!! Finally
the rain stopped and on our way out I looked up and a MiG-29 (a
Russian jet fighter) flew over doing airelon rolls! It certain was an
eventful P-Day.

So that's about all I've got for now. I'm working on getting pictures
to you guys, but me and Elder Erikson are still trying to figure out
the computers. At any rate, keep being awesome everybody and enjoy the
start of school!

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier