PIctures!!!!

Me and Dannenberg right before transfers.

Me and Dannenberg being Russian Generals

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Defend the Motherland RISK!

 Tracting

USSR bar!

Statue of Maxim Gorky, founder of Nizhny

Protoslavnic church

Elder Olsen as the T-1000 (Halloween)

African Night

Food at African Night

District Meeting, Me, Elder Olsen, Elder Dannenberg

District Meeting Dinner

Me as Harry Potter- Halloween

Me, Dannenberg, Joseph and Kenneth

Happy Thanksgiving From Russia

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Happy Thanksgiving to all my good friends and family members in America. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and I hope you remember then sacrifice that the noble turkeys have made for you. If they hadn't given their lives for the cause of Thanksgiving, you would not have a delicious meal. I propose a moment of silence for the Turkey's..... alright, moment over moving on.

It was weird for me to wake up today and realize that it is Thanksgiving and I am not celebrating it until tomorrow. Who would have guessed a year ago that I would be waking up on Thanksgiving morning in a small apartment in Nizhny Novgorod and the I wouldn't be celebrating the holiday until tomorrow with a bunch of Russians. Crazy right? It will also be weird to not be eating turkey on Thanksgiving. Unfortunately we were not able to locate an adequate supply of turkey so we have had to substitute chicken instead of turkey. I guess we just have to make the best out of what we have. So today I am actually not with Kvasnitsky. He is in the city of Kaluga with Elder Bressler baptizing one of his old investigators. That means that today I am hanging out with Elder Olsen, which has been awesome. Elder Olsen is a champ and we have been having quite a bit of fun so far. Next P-Day we are going to that nesting doll factory so I guess it is two awesome P-Day's in a row.

Speaking of baptisms, we challenged our investigator Olga to get baptized! It was a crazy lesson because we did it at her home and her whole family is very against the church, so they kept interrupting and trying to get us to drink black tea and just being really distracting. I thought that it was almost like the forces against us were conspiring to make the lesson go badly. Things were disorganized and our plan for the lesson had been completely destroyed. But then, we started talking about baptism and I could tell that Olga was very interested in baptism and what it means, since she had read a little bit about it in a pamphlet we gave her. So at the end I just felt like I should go for it and started to give her the commitment to be baptized. I think that I spoke in the best Russian I had my whole mission and she accepted an invitation to be baptized December 17th. She is going to need a lot of work, but I know that she can do it. One thing that a lot of missionaries have a problem with is that they never have enough faith in their investigators. My rule is, how can we ask our investigators to have faith in the gospel and Jesus Christ if we aren't willing to have faith in them? That same day, a man walked into our English Club who had read the Book of Mormon three times and had prayed about it and knows that it is true and Joseph Smith was a prophet. We are probably going to challenge him to baptism as well.

It has been getting quite frigid here in Nizhny Novgorod. Today it was -10 degrees C in the morning and last night it was around -12. The winter has officially come and will probably get colder. I have developed a system of coldness and how much clothes I need. Right now I am at level 3 (Extremities frozen and body comfortably chilled). I still have four more levels of clothes combinations I can use and a few emergency levels (like put on all my sweaters and suit coats and my overcoat). Hopefully I can survive the winter. Incidentally the Russian language has a verb that literally translates into "to survive a winter." I thought that was awesome, and evidently the Russian's do need a word to describe winter survival. While I am on the topic of the Russian language, I learned a new Russian idiom yesterday. In English we use the phrase "throw somebody under the bus". The Russian's have a very similar phrase to that. They use to phrase: "throw somebody under the TANK." To me it seems extremely Russian to substitute bus for tank.

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday. Our investigator Stalina thought that we were trying to brainwash her. Missionaries have a habit of leaning forward and using a different tone of voice when they start to testify on a certain topic. Also when they are the most solemn and serious they tend to lock eyes with the investigator and sometimes not blink. Well Stalina thought that we were using hypnosis when we do that in an attempt to brainwash her. It was a very interesting conversation as we tried to explain that missionaries do that only because they want to be serious when they testify and they want investigator's to feel the same. I am glad she brought this up because she has been meeting missionaries for more than a year now and has been thinking we practice hypnosis this whole time, and she has just had a strong enough mind to stop it. I had to try really really hard not to laugh.

Well so that's my week. I'll be sending pictures so I hope you enjoy those. Stay frosty my friends and have a great Thanksgiving!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been getting cold here in Nizhny Novgorod! Not cold enough to freeze the inside of bones, but still chilly enough that your skin is numb after a few hours outside. Interestingly enough I get a forwarded e-mail from my friend serving in a part of Siberia and for some reason it is colder here than it is in his city. I am still trying to figure out how that works out. I am happy that it is winter, since I like the cold and snow, and I also like that I've finally had to break out the winter jackets and scarfs. Unfortunately that also means breaking out the hats (which is unfortunate because I don't like wearing hats), because if I don't then Russian people yell at me for not wearing a hat. They take the winter very seriously here.

This has been a great week for our investigators though. Tonight we are meeting with Natalya and are going to answer all of her questions about LIFE and also talk to her about Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon. Since our lessons with her are in English I had to go back and re-memorize Joseph Smith's account of his First Vision in English, which was weird because I've been doing it pretty consistently in Russian. I am hoping our lesson with her goes well. We have also been meeting a lot with Olga, who is the relative of one of our branch members. She seems to be taking the lessons very well, she takes notes and also writes down every scripture we use so she can study them later. So we taught her two lessons which went great and we were going to commit her to be baptized, but she called us before the meeting and told us her husband was going to be on the lesson! We decided to go back and reteach the first lesson and talk about Joseph Smith so he would know. It was an awesome lesson because he committed to keep meeting with us and Olga was pretty much teaching him the doctrine for us. Then at the end we asked Olga's husband if he wanted to pray. He said no, but then Olga was like "Here, I'll teach you how to pray!" So she taught her husband how to pray and told him that they were going to pray together at night and read the Book of Mormon. It was a great lesson and I am excited for Olga and her husband, because I have very high hopes for the both of them. That same day we had a lesson with a guy who wants us to help him stop using drugs. I am a little nervous about that one because narcotics is quite a serious problem and I am going to need a lot of divine help to help this man with his problems.

Otherwise I have not a whole lot to report from this week. I am trying to work as hard as possible lately because I have a feeling that this might be my last transfer here in Nizhny Novgorod, mostly because Elder Kvasnitsky told me that it probably was my last transfer, and since he worked in the office I am more inclined to believe him. At any rate, I have been really trying to put in my very best effort, more than usually. A great thing is that my Russian skills have been improving quite a bit. For the most part I can understand people, and can hold pretty good conversations with them. The problem is that my vocabulary is still incredibly limited, so I can't fully express myself and end up repeating myself quite a bit. Fortunately though my grammar is improving and I am starting to pick of simple idiomatic expressions so that I can better relate to the Russian people.

The next few weeks are going to be fun. Next P-Day we are going to a factory where they make the Russian nesting egg dolls. I have been there before on my second P-Day in Russia, but unfortunately my camera wasn't charged, so I didn't take any pictures! It is a little weird though because when I think back to that P-Day I realize that everybody who went with me last time is gone to other cities and in some cases other countries. I am officially the missionary (besides one of the senior couples) who has been in Nizhny Novgorod the longest. Also next week we are going to be celebrating Thanksgiving with a dinner for us and our investigators. The condition is that to come to the dinner you have to bring an investigator, so I am probably going to invite our investigator Viktor, who loves America and will love celebrating an American holiday! Hopefully he can get off work. Then the next day President Woolley comes to Nizhny for a zone conference, which means that next week I will be eating very well.

So that is about it, I have really nothing else to report for the week. I am still trying incredibly hard to work with my companion. I have officially decided that patience is one of the hardest and most painful Christ-like attributes to work on. I am trying really hard to get along with him because we need to at least have a nice relationship in order to teach and we need to be able to teach with all these important investigators we have. I am just hoping that my next companion will be someone who I can easily be friends with.

Well have an excellent week my friends and compatriots. I pray for all of you often!

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

I want you to imagine that winter is personified in a grumpy old man, and that grumpy old man has been asleep for a long time because his alarm clock wasn't working. And then suddenly, he woke up on his own and realized that he was late in bringing the winter to Russia, so in order to make up for that he dumped all of the coldness and snow he could on Russia all at once. Yep, that is what happened this week.

Last week was a unseasonably warm week, around 0 degrees Celsius, and then this week started with a brisk -14 degrees Celsius. Finally, on Monday, the snow came, and it hasn't stopped since then. Now Russia is starting to look like what I always imagined it to look like. Snow and gray clouds all the time, which I actually have really been liking quite a bit.

Otherwise though this has been an incredibly unexciting week. The good thing is that we got two new investigators this week, one of which we teach in English because she prefers to talk English and likes meeting with our Senior Missionaries here, who don't speak Russian (Kvasnitsky is actually pretty angry about this, he is really annoyed that we are teaching somebody in English cause he can't understand what is going on.) We also are now meeting with the aunt of one of our branch members, who seems really promising, especially because we have the help of a great family in our branch. And of course we are still teaching our Seven Day Adventist friend Mikhail who is reading the Book of Mormon but still has a huge concern about us worshipping the Sabbath Day on Sunday. I think I have read literally every scripture ever written about that topic by this time.

My new companionship is going decently. Kvasnitsky doesn't speak very much English so I speak mostly Russian now, which is really helping me a lot. Kvasnitsky is also teaching me some very important and consistent lessons in patience... And that is enough about that.

I feel bad right now that I have nothing really exciting to report right now. I have really started to get into the routine of living in Russia which is good and bad. Good because now I know what I am doing most of the time (except for last night when this lady pushed me off a bus so I got stranded at a bus stop while my companion travelled on. We eventually met up and he had some extremely kind words to say to me about the experience, I thought it was hilarious though!). The flip side of this is that because I am in a routine now I feel like I can't think of anything truly exciting to tell all of you!

Well hopefully this coming week will provide some good stories for me to tell you. Stay excellent as always!

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

This has officially been a really long week. Sometimes in the mission field a time warp opens up and stretches the days out to be weeks and you end up on your next P-Day feeling extremely exhausted. Other times, the time warp makes the days seem like only a few hours and you end up wondering where your week went! Those darn mission time warps, they just really mess up your week.

Thursday night I left for my first Visa trip of my mission. We had to ride on a night train to Moscow, which was.. interesting. I must say I am not a huge fan of night trains since the people who ride them are usually quite drunk so you always get into a cabin with two drunk Russian men who smell like beer. So yep, that was fun. On Friday morning I arrived in Moscow and got to see my old MTC companion Elder Stegeby and my good friend Elder Mitchell. I was really happy to see them both again and we got to spend a lot of time catching up on what has been happening over the last three months. In Moscow our plane got delayed quite a bit and even got delayed on the tarmac, which would have been quite annoying except that I got mysteriously upgraded to first class! I have no clue how but when we printed my ticket it was for a first class seat so I got to fly like a big-shot to Kiev. I think the meal on the airplane was one of the better meals I have eating on my mission! (of course I jest, but it was pretty good). However, when we arrived in Kiev we found out that because of the delay we had missed our flight back to Moscow and had to book another one. This meant that we had to wait and extra five hours in the Kiev airport, which is pretty much a warehouse with one restaurant in it. It's a good thing I like Elder Stegeby and Elder Mitchell a lot because I would have got quite bored. Eventually I made it back to Moscow and took another night train back to Nizhny. I was absolutely exhausted when I returned, and the whole time just felt like one incredibly long day.

On Saturday we had our branch Halloween party which was awesome. We spent all day preparing decorations, calling people, and pretty working hard for the party that night. I was put in charge of making fake gravestones and other decorations so I happily started making gravestones for a multitude of people: Michael Jackson, Mufasa, Steve Jobs, Ian Curtis and of course, myself. After a few hours of making decorations I ran out of good ideas so I just started making vintage video game characters, so that our branch walls bore the effigy of Pac-Man, the Pac-Man ghosts, Mario, and Space Invaders. When the party eventually got started all the missionaries dressed up and were in charge of games, I chose to be Harry Potter, since it seemed like the easiest thing to do! Anyways, it was a great activity, a ton of our investigators came and a lot of the ward members, including our awesome African brethren. Everybody had a great time and we had so much candy that we were literally giving it out by the hand fulls when people left. I was surprised how readily the Russian's enjoyed Halloween, since it seems like an incredibly American holiday to spend a whole night eating candy and getting sick, but they absolutely loved it!

Last night Elder Dannenberg left for Astana. I am pretty excited for him, but I am going to miss him because we became really close friends the last few weeks we had been together. That night my new companion arrived, Elder Kvasnitsky. Do you remember a few e-mails ago when I mentioned that Elder Beck was going to come to Nizhny with his Ukrainian companion who doesn't really like me? Yep, that Ukrainian is my new companion! We've been having a good time so far and it's crazy to me that five transfers into my mission I have yet to serve with an American! I've served with a Swede, a German, a Russian and now a Ukrainian. When I eventually serve with an American I'll have collected all the possible nationalities in my mission (excluding French, because the French missionary is a sister missionary).

Well so that has been my busy week. I had a lot of meetings this week because everybody wanted to meet with us as soon as they found out that Dannenberg was leaving. We must have travelled the whole width and length of Nizhny twenty times over last week! I will be sending some pictures of the African and Halloween party as soon as I can and I'm sorry that this letter is somewhat devoid of funny stories or interesting details. I don't know if you can tell over the medium of electronic mail communication (probably not, since you can't see my body language or hear my paralinguals) but I am absolutely exhausted!

Stay excellent my friends.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier