Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Imagine to yourself a train sitting on a platform in Nizhny Novgorod. It is midnight and the train is about to leave to Moscow when suddenly two young men in black jackets come running out of the station frantically looking for a train conductor to talk to. They finally find a young train conductor and hand her a large package and explain to her in thick American and German accents that this package needs to be delivered to Moscow. They explain that in the morning, an Ukranian and an American will meet her at Moscow station and she needs to give the package to them. She is given strict instructions not to open the package because it contains important documents, but the American and the German promise her that she will be payed for her trouble in Moscow. After all of this is said, the American and the German leave the station and mysteriously disappear into the night. Sounds like a spy movie right? Well actually that was Dannenberg and I, last night.

Our little spy adventure was the cumulation of the events that started when Elder Dannenberg got a transfer call. Next Thursday he will be leaving to Astana, Kazakhstan and I will be getting a new companion, who I don't know yet. Due to the fact that the mission office didn't have his passport though, Dannenberg and I needed to send his passport to Moscow as soon as possible to secure his Kazakhstani Visa. President Woolley likes things done quickly, so we were instructed to find a train conductor on the Night Train to Moscow and pay him or her to courier Dannenberg's Visa. So as you read above, we completed that transfer, and I felt very much like a spy, and thus I am calling our little adventure Dannenberg and Brasier and The Night Train to Moscow. Sometimes things can be pretty crazy in Russia.

Another interesting thing that happened yesterday is that Dannenberg and I met with business men who tried to get us into the Amway pyramid scheme. We had met a young guy on the street who told us he was really interested in what we were doing and told us that we could meet. Of course we were excited so we met with him last night. We got even more excited when he brought friends with him! However, they soon brought us into a room and began giving us the presentation about how Amway was going to make us rich. It was quite funny because they asked us what we liked and I told them I like mathematics. They got really happy and said: "Splendid! Then you see that this business will make you rich!" Of course, I kept my silence but was laughing because in actuality I could see how I would loose a ton of money through this business! One cool thing that happened is we ended up being able to testify about our message and it was crazy how quickly the Spirit entered the room. Suddenly everything got calm and quiet as Dannenberg and I solemnly testified about the truthfulness of our message. They weren't extremely interested and neither were we in their business so we left on affable terms. I made sure though to get a picture of the time we were recruited for a pyramid scheme!

Otherwise things have been going really normally. We have got some great new investigators and we are going to ask Mikhail to be baptized next time we meet with him. We are hoping that with Dannenberg leaving it will change something for him, since it usually tends to happen that way with investigators. When the missionary they first met leaves, they suddenly start to really consider making changes in their life. So I'm hoping that things go well with that. Unfortunately I have nothing else new to report, since for the most part this week tended to be relatively uneventful. OH I ALMOST FORGOT! We had a sweet "African Party" on Saturday where we had our African friends come and talk about their countries and invite all of their friends. It was sweet because I got to talk with people from Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, Cameroon, Zaire and much more. I really love African people, they are way awesome. It was also funny to see how the somewhat racist Russians handled everything. It was pretty funny, and a good experience for all who participated.

Well have a great week!

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Pictures!!!!

Working hard and drinking a delicious "Chuda"

Me and Elder Lantuk calling people.

Me and a La-7 (a fighter plane from World War II)

From Left to right: Elder Bressler, Me, Elder Wadsworth and Elder Olsen (background) in front of the bridge for the C-13 submarine

Me and Elder Bressler: Just another day at work in Russia!

 World War II memorial in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.

  My "O Nizhny" picture....

Me and Elder Wadsworth in front of a T-34 tank. Almost all Russian moments involve World War II equipment.

Nizhny Novogorod from the Kremlin.

 Nizhny at night from the Avtozavodskaya apartment. Black and White with 8 second shutter delay. Probably my favorite picture of the city I have taken so far.

 Me and Lantuk with babushka Irena, an awesome babushka who always feeds us a ton of food!

 

Some explanation is required here. In the Park of Culture near the Avtozavodskaya apartment there is this rock.

It is not very big, but it is in the middle of this huge sandpit, and although you can't see in the picture it is surrounded by floodlights

All of this is for one solitary rock. I was pretty baffled by what was so important about this rock, so I sat on it and took this picture.

Zone Conference last week. From left to right. Front Row: Sister Cianflon, President Woolley, Sister Woolley, Elder Fautz,

Sister Fautz, Sister Tagart. Middle Row: Sister Lovett, Sister Gay.

Back Row: Elder Hoffman, Elder Wadsworth, Elder Dannenberg, Me, Elder Lantuk, Elder Olsen, Elder Bressler, Elder Lovett and Elder Gay

First snow in Nizhny! Me and Elder Hoffman on companionship exchanges.

One of my favorite families in the branch, the Berdnikov family. Left To Right. Foreground: Me, Elder Dannenberg, Ilya Berdnikov.

Back ground: Brother Berdnikov, Elder Gay, Sister Gay, Sister Berdnikov, and Natasha Berdnikov (their young daughter) in the far background.

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

It is always interesting for me to write these letters, because things that seem like they are old news are actually new for you, considering the week delay that we have. The reason I start this blog post with this observation is because right after I wrote last weeks letter, I got transferred back with Dannenberg because Lantuk and Wadsworth got their Visa's and headed off to Kazakhstan. I just think its funny that for a whole week you have thought that Lantuk has been my companion, when in actuality it has been Dannenberg. So maybe it is not that funny for you, but I just thought I would make that comment.

Basically me and Dannenberg are working together again, which has been nice. Unfortunately I had to leave my really nice apartment in the Avtozavodskaya region of Nizhny Novogorod and move back to the somewhat tiny Leninskaya apartment, but I am really happy to be working with Dannenberg again. The really good thing that happened is that now we have more people interested in learning the gospel then before due to the work that both companionships were able to accomplish. Me and Dannenberg are currently working still with Mikhail (I don't know if you remember him, he was the one dissecting the Book of Mormon) who still has a major concern with us observing the Sabbath Day on Sunday, since he believes it is on Saturday and always unloads a menagerie of Biblical scriptures whenever we bring it up. We are also working with a man named Viktor who absolutely loves America, a man named Alexander who broke his leg and is in the hospital, a woman named Stalina who has a huge fear of being underwater (a problem for missionaries who teach baptism by immersion) and a really nice family that we met tracting. When we don't have appointments, of course we are talking with a ton of people out on the street.

Halloween is coming up and it should be a lot of fun. The branch puts on a Halloween party which the missionaries help set up and run. Rumor has it that this party is always a lot of fun. Unfortunately my Visa expires on October 31st so I hope I'm not in Ukraine when it happens. Me and Dannenberg have been getting ready for Halloween too. Next week we are going to buy pumpkin juice (like Harry Potter) and Dannenberg has been carving out apples since we don't have any pumpkins and putting them on our flashlight. Its like a Jack-O-Lantern, but with an apple.

One thing I can't believe I never mentioned is the crazy lady me and Dannenberg met one day. It happened about a few weeks ago but has become something of a legend in Nizhny Novgorod. One day we were talking to this man who wasn't very interested and this lady came up from behind him and exclaimed "I am here to save your soul!" After he promptly ran away the lady started talking to us by stating how much she loved everything. To quote: "I love the sky! I love the cars! I love the roof on the houses! I love that man! I love this speck on the ground!" The list gets exhaustive. To stop the list from continuing we asked her what her name was. She responded: "People call me Elena, but my real name is:" and she started to sing a song about how the galaxy was a giant pearl. And then she grabbed my hand and started singing a song about how much she loved me. It was really quite odd and I just wanted her to stop holding my hand. Finally we told her we had to leave and she gave us a really interesting pamphlet that would "save our soul." I spent a week of language study trying to translate it and I'm still quite unsure what was going on. It was a weird contact but the story has become something of a legend in Nizhny.

So that's about all I've got for now. Stay excellent my friends.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well this was a pretty good week for us, mostly because it started out with General Conference! For missionaries, General Conference is akin to the Superbowl. We all got together on Saturday and Sunday, bought a ton of chips, cookies and soda and spent a combined time of 10 hours in front of a TV. It was really funny for me to see everybody get so excited when speakers were announced, like when Elder Jeffrey R. Holland was announced as the first speaker for Priesthood session. I thought we were all going to explode because of how excited we were. And what a great talk he gave, it fired me up a ton to go out and work. I hope all prospective missionaries watch that talk again and again to get ready for the work. Also Russia got mentioned twice, and both times we were super excited, to the point of standing up and cheering!! What a great General Conference. We are so blessed to have living apostles and a prophet on this Earth today who give us such wonderful direction and council. I took so many notes from their talks, I think I understand now when the scriptures say "Feasting on the word of God," because I was definitely feasting. I think my favorite talks where Jeffrey R. Holland's in Priesthood Session, President Uchtdorf's in Relief Society Session (yes we watched that too), President Monson's in Priesthood Session and President Eyring's talk on Sunday. I also really liked Elder Bednar's call for the youth to become involved in Family History work. If I was home right now I would be all over that, but I hope that all the youth heed that prophetic call.

After Conference on Sunday, we had a great contacting activity on the Nizhny Novgorod Walking Street, which is basically like an outdoor shopping mall. We set up a table with a big piece of paper and had a large sign that said "If you could ask God one question, what would it be?" and then people could write it on the paper. It was a huge success, unfortunately me and Lantuk showed up late because we had an appointment (that was incredibly unsuccessful) but for the 3 hours that the other missionaries manned the table they gave out 50+ Book's of Mormon and had 27 people give their phone numbers for more information. That is a huge success for Russia! I was a little disappointed though because I got absolutely no success in the hour I talked to people, but as I was walking home depressed, we ran into a group of people performing Hare Krishna, which was incredibly awesome, so it cheered me up substantially!

For the rest of the week it was pretty normal missionary work. I've been a little sick recently because I drank some bad water. I distinctly remember the moment too. I drank some water and thought "Hmm... that water tasted like rust, I hope it wasn't TOO dirty..." Yeah, I guess it was pretty dirty. So I was sick from Tuesday to today, and now I'm feeling a little better. Unfortunately I haven't been able to work too hard, and I really was only able to work really effectively yesterday where I concluded the day with a three hour door tracting session where a white supremacist (not sure on the spelling there) threatened to break my nose because I was American. It was pretty awesome. Also me and Lantuk are getting more people interested in the gospel so that has been really nice to start really teaching again. Our relationship is getting better, but still struggles. I am trying the best I can but he can be really tough to work with. It's been making me really miss working with Dannenberg! But alas, I still have to push onward because the work is more important than petty differences.

Anyways, that's about all I've got for now. I hope everything is going delectably wherever you are when you read this blog post. Keep doing what you are doing and remember that God loves you and cares about you individually!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well this has kind of been an up and down week for me. The beginning of the week was great because we had two baptisms, Anton and Fidel, one of the African students here in Nizhny Novgorod. It was a really good double baptism and we are excited to have both of them in our church. I'm pretty excited because the African students will be putting on some sort of African cultural night soon, which sounds pretty awesome and I'm way pumped to learn about some African culture from my African brethren. I was also really honored on Sunday because Anton asked me to help give him the gift of the Holy Ghost in church meeting, which was such a great experience for me. Doing that really helped me increase my testimoney of the work and the importance of what we are doing here in Russia. Anton is going to be a great church member and future leader of the growing church in Russia.

Unfortunately I had a little bit of companionship troubles this week. On Tuesday Elder Lantuk decided to unleash a relatively hypocritical speech of hatred against me. Basically it was this long rant about how I am a terrible person and an even worse missionary. I was of course relatively shocked since I thought we were getting along pretty well. And then I got angry when he told me he had been texting the mission president about how terrible of a missionary I was almost every night, instead of actually bringing his concerns up with me and letting me fix them. Yes, I was filled with lividity. But I remembered a story that my MTC branch president told me that I will tell you now:

" One day there was a donkey, which fell into a deep well. When the owner of the donkey came and found the donkey in the well, he decided that the time and the money it would take to get the donkey out of the well was far too great, and it was better to cut his loses and just buy a new donkey. So him and his friends got some dirt and shovels and elected to bury the donkey alive in the well. As they started shoveling the donkey got annoyed because dirt was falling on him, and kept shaking it off his back. Eventually the dirt built up around his feet, so being a smart donkey, he stepped up on the growing pile of dirt. He kept doing this until eventually the pile of dirt grew to the point that he made it out of the well." THE END

I decided that I needed to take the oppurtunity and step above the dirt. Some of the stuff he said was valid criticism so I took that and have decided to work on it, and otherwise just shake off the hatred. After a very tense Tuesday and most of Wednesday I just started to talk to him about himself, because I figured everybody likes talking about themselves right? Eventually we were joking and happy again, and even though I don't trust him at all anymore, we are working together again and today the sun came out for the first time in two weeks on Nizhny Novgorod. Once again, the mission teaches me an important life lesson.

Otherwise the work is going well. We have some new investigators that we are working with and have been doing a ton of street contacting and door contacting. Also my Russian is actually getting quite a bit better, even though I still have a pretty thick American accent and for some reason a lot of Russian's think I'm a Jew because of my accent (or Armenian, which I don't get at all because I definitely do not have an even vaguely Armenian accent). At any rate, thats pretty much been my week. I hope all is going well and I'm pumped to here General Conference in a few days!

From Russia With Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier