Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

It has been a while since I have written a more proper blog post, but alas, here it is! Things have changed a lot recently around Nizhny Novgorod. Elder Olsen left for Tula, which was more disappointing for me than the Fourth Indiana Jones movie and Sister Cianflone left for Kazakhstan, which was extremely lucky for her, since they are not sending very many Americans Kazakhstan right now, the Visa's have been bit of a mess. Anyways, I've got a new companion Elder Mellor, who I have been getting along with pretty well. He is from California and is a pretty precise missionary, also he agrees with everything that anybody says, which has been funny for me so far. But, things are going well and I think we are going to get along great this transfer, which will be nice since I believe my time in Nizhny is coming to an end. I've been here for almost five months now and usually missionaries don't stay much longer in a city then that amount of time. We also got a new missionary fresh from the MTC this week, which has been fun since I can see how bad my Russian was back in the day. I also found out from her that one of teachers, Brother Tate is going to be a father in a few months. It is crazy how life flows on!

Christmas is coming rapidly, I think this has been the fastest December of my life. We have a Christmas tree up in the branch building, I received my Christmas package from the family and our district is planning our skit for the mission Christmas party (which will be a take on Lord of The Rings). Unfortunately our baptism date with Olga fell through again, because she was sick and could not come to church on Sunday. And so, we will be baptizing her on the 31st of December, just in time to make our goal for doing a baptism before the end of the year. Yes, we are cutting it a little close! However, Olga is really ready to be baptized as soon as she comes to one more church meeting. I am so excited for her, and if things go through it will be my first baptism on my mission, which I am stoked about.

And so I'm sure that you would like to know what we are doing for Christmas here in Nizhny. On Christmas Eve we are having our ward Christmas party, which is going to be relatively entertaining, unfortunately most of our investigators including Viktor will not be able to make it (Viktor will be busy holding a political rally against Putin, which I told him was not nearly as important as feeling the spirit of Christmas! But to each his own I guess) but I'm sure it will still be great. I think we might even be putting on a Christmas Nativity Scene for the branch, which should be fun, even though our Senior Missionaries here said that I couldn't be Herod Agrippa during the play. I guess I'll just be a donkey instead. After that we will be having a special Christmas themed church meeting on the 25th and finally the missionary party on the 5th, which I am excited for, especially because I will be able to see my good friends Elder Mitchell, Elder Stegeby and Elder Olsen yet again. Also, President allows us to watch a movie as a mission, and Elder Olsen, Elder Wadsworth, and I have been campaigning pretty hard to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox. We are almost considering giving bribes to get our way.

For some reason the weather here has been somewhat bipolar with just a hint of paranoid schizophrenia with a dash of Multiple Affective Personality Disorder for flavor. Lately, the weather has decided to alternate rain and snow off and on which wouldn't be too bad except for the fact that this pattern always produces much ice, and especially the black variety. And thus, I have been doing quite a bit of slipping and sliding. My record right now is 8 falls in one day, which was quite a feat if I had to say so myself, I had to work really quite hard.

Really that is the current state of affairs here in Nizhny. I have found myself falling into a comfortable swing of things as of late, and I am really enjoying having new people in or zone and a lot of promising investigators and lessons. At the beginning of the year one of our investigators Alexander is coming back from Arzanas, which is extremely exciting for me because he is true one of my favorite people I have met on my mission. Overall, I am trying to make the most out of my time here before I get deracinated within a transfer or two. I am sure that there is still work that I need to do here in Nizhny and I won't be transferred out until I do the work that I am supposed to do. I truly love serving here in Nizhny, and I'm excited that I get to be here for Christmas! Everybody have a great Christmas and have a great time celebrating the birth of our Savoir with your family and friends. Rock the Holidays my friends!

From Russia With Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Pictures!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Unfortunately I have a lot of things to get done today and not a lot of time to do them! Also really not much has happened since I last wrote so I will just write some full letters next Monday. I am sorry for the inconvenience that this might cause you in having to wait a few extra days, but in order to make this up to you, I will send pictures!

Me, using an old telephone.

Me, about to turn off the power for a whole factory floor at the Doll Factory!

A Factory Floor at the Doll Factory.

The Dining Room of My Apartment.

A gigantic spoon (my hand is inside of the spoon, for scale)

MOTHER RUSSIA!

 The Russian National Crest

Sochi 2014 Olympics!

The Family of our young branch President, President Borodin (top row, third from the left)

Paranoia!!!

 "Ploshet Gopkova" (Gorky Square) at night

 Sketchy apartment!

Elder Olsen and I, piloting a hover craft

Elder Olsen and I, piloting a jet car

Me, in a tank

Elder Olsen, in said tank

Elder Olsen, in what I call "Forward to Victory" or "Epitome of Epic"

Statue of Maxim Gorky, hero of Nizhny Novgorod

 There is an active street artist in Upper Nizhny who paints one-eyed sheep. This is one of his pieces

Elder Bressler, Anna, Zhenya, and Elder Olsen at Thanksgiving

Me and Victor at Thanksgiving with the Branch

Intense High Five at the English Club Elder Olsen and I taught

The Zone. On the Left of the Car, front row (left to right): Sister Owens, Sister Cianflone, Sister Frankom. Back Row: Sister Gay, Elder Gay, Elder Foutz, Sister Foutz, Elder Kvasnitsky, Right Side of the Car: From front to back: Sister Talakh, Elder Bressler, Me, Elder Olsen

Elder Olsen, Me, Elder Bressler, Elder Kvasnitsky

Me and Elder Olsen on the "Night Warren" (the car that the KGB used during the Soviet Era)

Same Car, more mysterious pose.

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Before I forget I must tell you some very important news. Our P-Day is changing to Monday now. That means this following Monday will be a P-Day for me and then after that no more P-Day's on Thursday. This is very important to know, since new posts should be going up on Monday and any e-mails that are sent to me need to be sent before Monday (from my point of view.)

Ok so now that the logistics are over I can talk about my week. I must be honest with you, this has been a rough week. Our baptismal date with Olga will have to be moved back since she is having the hardest time making it to church on Sunday and if she doesn't come to church two more times over the next two weeks we are going to have to keep moving the date back, which is quite unfortunate because we were hoping to have her baptized by the end of the year, and it is looking increasingly less likely that this will happen. Also one of our promising investigators dropped off the face of the Earth, another decided that she doesn't want to meet with us as much because she doesn't like Elder Kvasnitsky and a ton of other problems have been occurring.

On a more positive and interesting note, transfer calls came in today. It looks like I will be staying in Nizhny Novgorod for at least another six weeks and I will be receiving a new companion, Elder Melor. Once he is my companion I will have officially served with every possible nationality at this time: Russian, German, Swede, Ukranian and finally American with Elder Melor. I am excited to serve with him especially because he is a hard worker so we are really going to be able to progress our current investigators and find new ones. An unfortunate side-effect of the transfer though is that Elder Olsen is leaving to Tula, which is quite unfortunate since I really enjoyed having him around in Nizhny Novgorod. I am hoping that I will be able to serve with him sometime down the road, or at least be in the same city again.

Christmas is in swing her in Russia, which actually isn't that different from the rest of the year. For Russians Christmas is a secondary holiday to the New Years, so they don't go all out like the Americans do and make everything Christmas themed and such, but on New Years I hear that they go nuts. So I'm excited for that. It is just weird for me to not have everybody get excited for Christmas and see a bunch of Christmas lights and such. Interestingly enough though, I think in a way this is good, because with out all the commercial and outwardly ornate parts of Christmas I have been able to truly focus on the meaning of the holiday, that is the birth of Jesus Christ.

I really don't have much more exciting things to tell you right now. Today we went to the GAZ car factory in Nizhny, which was set up by Henry Ford during the 1920's to manufacture knock-off Model A cars in Russia. GAZ is now one of the major car factories in Russia so we got to see their whole history and toured a huge show room with a ton of Russian cars in it, which was awesome. In the very back of the show room that had a big GAZ Armored Personnel Carrier, which was open and you can look inside. Being missionaries, we of course wanted to climb inside this APC, but we weren't quite sure if it was allowed. So we just waited until nobody was around and then Elder Olsen, Sister Cianflone and I took an internal tour of a Russian APC. I got some sweet pictures of us sticking out of the hatches and just pretty much being dumb 19-20 year olds in a tank. Also, we learned all about the car that the KGB drove in the old Soviet times, known colloquially as the "Night Warren" and always painted black. Yes, this was a quite ominous car.

Well I'll probably be writing again on Monday, but I'm not too sure. So everybody have a great week and enjoy the Christmas season!

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Thanksgiving And Other Fun Things!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well this has been a busy and somewhat exhausting week! We have had two Thanksgiving Dinners, a two day Zone Conference and a lot of lessons and all sorts of other missionary work.

On Friday we celebrated Thanksgiving the first time. What we decided to do as a Zone is have a big American-style dinner at one of the Senior Missionary Couple's house and each companionship would have to invite one investigator or else they could not come. So of course I made an effort to find somebody to come, and ended up inviting one of our investigators Viktor who is a great friend, loves America and also 60's Rock, so we talk all the time about classic rock bands. It was a quite nice Thanksgiving dinner, I prepared carrots and corns and we had a huge attendance that night! We got to spend a lot of time talking to our investigators and having a great time as friends. I was really happy to see that the Sister missionaries brought a girl named Anna to the dinner. Dannenberg and I had contacted her aunt Elza and invited her to the German Club we were running, and when Elza came, Anna came too. Not much ever came of Elza since she is so busy, but Anna is a great investigator and is really interested in the gospel. I also enjoy talking to her about medicine since she is studying to become a doctor and speaks English, so I spent a good portion of my Thanksgiving talking about the endocrine and lymphatic systems of the human body. It is crazy how that one contact that I got months ago turned into nothing but opened the pathway for somebody else to know the gospel.

The next night we had the branch Thanksgiving party, which was fun, although not nearly as delicious. Viktor came to that party too since I think Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday now. Also President Woolley was in Nizhny at the time and came to the party. And thus, I had two Thanksgiving's in a row and spent a lot of time talking about what I was thankful for, so I am very comfortable now talking about blessings in Russian.

President was scheduled to be in Nizhny from Saturday until Tuesday, which meant the Assistants to the President where also in town. I was excited because on Saturday I was able to work with Elder Hassbuilan, who is a really funny guy from Rostov-au-Daru, which is a city in Southern Russia. Then on Sunday I had to translate for President which was tough because I had to translate a meeting about preparing branch histories, a topic I had never studied in Russian. Somehow I was able to effectively translate (probably with some divine help) but I was completely wiped out for the rest of Sunday. For the next two days we had training meetings, which I don't really like because I just don't really like meetings in general, and I'd much rather be out on the streets than in a two day long meeting. At any rate, I ate some good food and Elder Olsen and I developed some pretty good jokes out of the meetings. Then to finish off a busy week, today we went to a factory that makes Russian nesting dolls and other Russian traditional wood work. I will have to send some pictures to you possibly next week. An unexpected source of entertainment was all of the old style Soviet machinery and electrical equipment, so I have a lot of pictures of Elder Olsen and I pretending to flip huge electrical switches and levers (secretly). I was also able to purchase a sweet Russian traditional plate that I was very pleased with. It might be my first non-Cold War related purchase of souvenir in Russia.

In other news, our investigators are doing decently. Olga is preparing herself for her baptism on December 17th which is so close that we have been frantically trying to teach her and get her to come to church more often. I am really hoping that things go well for her and her family will not keep her from being a great church member! And of course we have found some promising new investigators and continue to work with our old investigators, but Olga has been the forefront of my thoughts lately.

And also, check out this article on LDS news! I don't know how many of you have seen this but our zone is now famous for a contacting activity we did in October. Read all about it (even though my name has been terrible butchered)! http://lds.org/church/news/unique-missionary-approach-prompts-questions-for-god-in-russia?lang=eng

Well my friends, keep up the great work. As the Russian's say "Продолждай!"

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

PS- Thanks for the mail that you have been sending. I am replying as fast as I can, and I know for sure that there are letters in the mail, the mail is just slow. Specifically, Taylor Jensen, I have gotten all three letters, yours is en route. Rachel and Anne Marie, yours are also en route.