Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Today, I am sending you this e-mail from the Russian city of Smolensk, my new area. So far, I am really enjoying this small city. If you look at the map, Smolensk is right on the border of Belarus and Russia, in fact our train to Smolensk runs through to Minsk. Like I said before, Smolensk has had quite a history of war and violence but has managed to become a thriving city nonetheless. Smolensk is famous because it has the second biggest Russian Orthodox cathedral in Russia (which I have only seen from the outside, but I plan to visit it soon) and because Yuri Gagarin was born in a small town nearby. For those of you unaware, Gagarin was the first man in space, and I have been excited to be so close to his birthplace, I am hoping to get permission from the mission president to take a trip out to his home on a coming P-Day.

Smolensk itself is a pretty city, and is more of what I imagined Russia to look like. In Nizhny, I was more or less living in a giant factory with bland concrete buildings and continual snow, but Smolensk is filled with classic European architecture and has been sunny since I arrived. Smolensk really is a beautiful and clean city, and has really nice air, which was really noticeable after living in the smog of Nizhny (don't get my wrong though, I love Nizhny!).Smolensk is much colder though than Nizhny due to the wind chill. Our apartment here is nice as well, the biggest in the mission, and is right next to a major town square which has a nice park and constant Russian classical and folk music played over the speakers. Also, our apartment is right next to a portion of the old Smolensk fortress wall and our branch building looks out over a medieval defensive tower.

The branch of the church here is small. Right now Elder Melling is the branch president because there is nobody in Smolensk with priesthood authority to be the branch president (yet). We only have one male church member besides us that is active and he is trying to become a Spetznaz commando right now. Otherwise, all of our church members are women or young girls. I am also the only one in the branch who can play the piano, so I am now the official pianist. Right now our branch is having some problems with apostatizing members, but we are all working as hard as we can to keep our members active and happy.

My new companion is Elder Jewkes. He is from Missouri and is a pretty good basketball player. Before Smolensk he served in Astana, Kazakhstan with my old companion Elder Dannenberg. We get along really well right now and he has been helping me a lot with my Russian, because his Russian linguistic skills are amazing. Right now, we are in a three man companionship with Elder Melling because Elder Melling's companion, Elder Mitchell, will be arriving next week from Tver. As of now, we are trying our hardest to meet all of the investigators and branch members. Our most promising investigator is a man named Vladimir, who is a doctor and taught himself English. This man is amazing. He reads the Book of Mormon an hour every day, reads all sorts of church literature, listens to general conference in his free time and tells us that his kids are future Mormons. Right now he is co-habituating with his girlfriend/wife (?) but once they get officially married he will be baptized. I have never taught a person who is so accepting of the gospel, he acts like a member of the church already. We had a lesson with him and he pretty much explained the whole concept of enduring to the end and staying on the strait and narrow path without us even saying anything. He has already set a goal to go to the temple and receive a patriarchal blessing after reading through the book True to the Faith in almost a day. Another investigator we just met is a man named Anatoly who does graphic design for Soviet-style propaganda and also builds the furniture for the Orthodox cathedral here. I am always amazed by what cool people I have met on my mission.

One thing I forgot to mention was my Visa trip on Wednesday. It was actually quite a lot of fun because we went with a big group of missionaries who all had to renew their Visa's at the same time. In the Kiev airport Elder Barker and I were able to play a wonderful game of "Find the American/Not Russian-Ukrainian-Eastern European Person". This is a game that has become quite popular in our mission. The basic goal is to locate the people in the Kiev airport who are not from this area of the world, and initiate a conversation with them. We are about 90% sure that we found at least one American, who went into a bar so we didn't talk to him. However, we did start a conversation with two Israeli's, found a group of Frenchmen, more or less stalked a Danish guy, and located a group of Thai tourists. On the way back I made a terrible error. On Tuesday I ate at 4:00 PM and didn't eat anything after that, so by 1:00 PM the next day, I was starving. To feed my appetite I decided to eat a lot of Dark Swiss Chocolate (which is delicious by the way), however with nothing really substantial, my stomach was not happy. It really was a miserable flight/car ride back to the Moscow office.

Never tell me the odds!

Elder Zachery Brasier

People of Nizhny

The Sun!

Elder Mellor, Kolya Chernov, Me

Me, Stalina, Elder Mellor

Brother Kilemenchenko, Brother Vladimir Balabanov, Me, Boris Vlasov

Elder Mellor, Clava Isaeva, President Borodin (branch President) Ilya Berdnikov

Me and Konstantine Kutsnitsov

Babushka (grandma or old lady) Smirnova, Babushka Fiana, Me

Me, Sister and Brother Koribednikov

Hatalya and the Nizhny Primary Children, and Me as well

Sister Frankom, Ira Borodin, Rita, Sister Hansen

The Bagachev/Chesnakova family! We spent Christmas with them! Elder Mellor, Me, Brother Bagachev, Sister Bagachev, Sister Chesnakova, Natasha Chesnakova (in the foreground). This is Olga's relatives who have helped us out a ton with missionary work.

The Nizhny youth drew a pictures of me

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Things were going along somewhat uneventfully this week when suddenly on Friday, I get a call from President Woolley. I have been transferred. This Tuesday I leave Nizhny for good and head off to my new area, the city of Smolensk.

And thus my week has become quite hectic as I have been rushing to pack everything I need and also try to get lessons with the people I cared about the most while serving here in Nizhny. Honestly, I think it is harder to leave a city then to leave home on your mission. At least leaving home you know that you will see everybody again, but it's been hard to think that this might be my last time to see all of the people in the city. I really am going to miss this city. Nizhny has been a big experience in my life. I came here as a new missionary who could not speak Russian and am leaving with significantly more language skills and a ton of experiences that have really changed my life for the better. But, now it is time to move on and go see a new city in Russia and have a gamut of new experiences.

Here is what I know about Smolensk: Smolensk has been demolished by nearly every invasion of Russia in history from the Mongol tribes to Napoleon and even the Nazi forces during World War II. Somehow, Smolensk always ends up on the invasion route of Russia's enemies. As such, there is a lot of history in the city but there is also a general distrust of foreigners and a little bit of anger towards God for all the things that have happened there. Interestingly enough, Smolensk is also one of the main cities for the Russian Orthodox church, and in fact the second biggest Orthodox cathedral in Russia is located there (the biggest being in Moscow, which I've seen [it was awesome]). There is not many church members there, approximately 15 to be exact, and most of them are youngish girls. I will be companions with Elder Jewkes, who got transferred from Kazakhstan (just if your curious things have been very interesting in Kazakhstan lately. The government signed a new religious law that should help us get missionaries into the country. The problem is that nobody knows what the law allows so our missionaries have been unable to get proselyting licenses and thus most of our Kazakhstan missionaries are leaving the country since they are not allowed right now to talk on the street) after serving with Elder Dannenberg, my old trainer. We will be sharing the apartment with another companionship of Elders, Elder Melling and Elder Mitchell (who was in my MTC group). Elder Melling is the branch president and it should be interesting because neither Elder Jewkes or I have served in Smolensk before so it will be new for both of us. The cool things is that we will be in the biggest apartment in the mission, and it should be a party because I know all three other Elders and they are all awesome guys.

Because of my transfer I have been going around giving my "dying testimony" to members and investigators. On Sunday I gave my farewell talk in church which was interesting because afterwards members came up and talked to me about how they could understand nothing I said my first Sunday but now they could. I was really touched by all of the compliments that the branch members said (especially when they kept telling me to thank my parents and friends for sending me to Nizhny) especially because most of the times I don't feel like an amazing missionary, but the simple humility and love of the members really touched my heart. It seems so weird to be leaving, but I am also excited to be in a new area especially one that has a lot of work to be done and is considered to be one of the harder areas in the mission.

And thus, on Tuesday I leave Nizhny on a night train. Wednesday I have to go to Kiev to get my new Visa (three months have passed since by last Visa trip! Time goes by so fast!) and on Thursday Elder Mitchell, Elder Jewkes and I leave Moscow and head towards Smolensk. I'll be sure to let you know how things go next in my next letter. This really will be quite the adventure.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Even More Pictures!

The momument to a very famous Russian pilot

 Elder Mellor and Elder Bressler on a night train from Moscow

 I found an accordion.

Kolya and Elder Bressler making borshch (Russian beet soup)

More Pictures!

Our Christmas tree! Decorated with used batteries!

Elder Bressler, Elder Hasbuilin, Elder Hoffman, and Elder Bitner at the Nizhny New Years Party

Star Wars novelization in Russian

The onomatopoeia for R2D2's sounds in Russian (Second hyphen from the top)

 A monument!

Metro Leninskaya (the metro near my apartment [this picture was taken very secretly])

On the night train to Moscow, Elder Mellor and I

Dodgeball at the mission Christmas party (note Elder Olsen directly to the left of me!)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Unfortunately not a whole lot happened this week. We are trying to get more investigators and work to teach people. But otherwise, I really don't have a whole lot to report except that it is getting way cold here! At any rate, since I don't have much to say, I'll send pictures instead!

 An Airplane

 In the Russian Forest!

Tracting a sketchy apartment where none of the doorbells seem connected to the apartments!

Christmas Party in the Branch

Clava, Kenneth, Zhenya and I

Left to Right: Sergei, Me, Ilya and Natasha, in the foreground (some of our youth)

The Youth of our branch!

Elder Mellor and I

Elder Bressler, this kind of crazy singing lady and I

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

All in all this has been a relatively unexciting week with the exception of our mission Christmas party (more on that later). Because of this relative lack of excitement, I decided that I would send you a large packet of pictures and such. However, in an unfortunate turn of events I left my camera in my apartment and since I don't have the time nor patience to go all the way back to my apartment, I have no pictures to send you. And thus, you will just have to wait until next week to view my awesome photographs of the coming and goings of the holiday season in Russia.

On Wednesday night I boarded I night train heading to Moscow (which is somewhat unfortunate because I am not a big fan of night trains since the last time I was on one this drunk guy decided to keep sitting on my legs for nearly 45 minutes. This time Elder Mellor and I got a compartment all to ourselves, which improved conditions tremendously. Another significant improvement was the fact that we were on new model night train with longer beds, so instead of having to curl up in a little ball like on the Soviet night trains, I could stretch out and my feet only hung over the edge of the bed just a little bit) for the mission Christmas party, which was pretty awesome. I am a huge fan of large mission meetings because I get to see all of my old friends and meet the other missionaries. I was able to meet up with my old MTC companion Elder Stegeby which was awesome. Also, I was able to meet with some of my old friends, like Elder Erikson, Elder Mitchell, Sister Taggart and especially Elder Olsen! Elder Olsen and I had a great time catching up and sharing all of our random facts and knowledges. With Elder Erikson we established a "Nerd Table" and ended up talking all about advanced physics and a myriad of other topics. Other than being able to nerd out with my old friends, we had good times playing dodgeball and watching skits. Dodgeball was exceptionally exceptional due to the fact that the floor was extremely slippery allowing for amazing slides and other dodging techniques. Take my word for it, dodgeball was great. And thus the mission Christmas party came off without a hitch, and we even were given brand new leather bound Russian Bible's for Christmas from our President. (I also learned that reading the Bible in Russian is significantly harder than reading the Book of Mormon, so I'll probably be sticking to Book of Mormon reading for now.)

I also have been getting everybodies Christmas cards and Dear Elders. I was really happy to recieve the Christmas card from the Albright's and the Doxey's and also from Aunt Joanne and her extended family. Also thank you Mrs. Maxfield for your letter, I appreciated it quite a bit! Also I received all letters from my Grandparents, which made me so happy! And from my friends: Kristina and AnneMarie your letters are en route, and Taylor I received your reply to my original letter, I will be starting to draft my correspondance shortly. I feel like I need to confirm which letters I recieved because the Russian mail service is so sketchy sometimes.

In further news: Olga is continuing to insist she isn't ready and says she no longer wants to meet with us. This is unfortunate. In better news, all of our other investigators are coming back into Nizhny so I'm excited to meet with them again, especially this man Alexander who comes back in two weeks and is absolutely awesome, one of the greatest guys I have ever met. So I am pumped to see a lot of my old friends again.

And finally Elder Hoffman went home so now Elder Bressler is with Elder Melor and I for a week and a half before he gets a mini-missionary to serve with. This has been a blast.

Thus, that is all I have, sorry this week wasn't exceptionally exciting. Till next time,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Happy New Years! It has sure been a crazy holiday here in Russia, for nearly two nights straight now that skies have been filled with fireworks and the constant sounds of explosions. Russian's truly love New Years, and celebrating New Years in Russia is certainly a blast. For New Years, we had a zone party of sorts with all of the missionaries in Nizhny Novgorod and also the Assistants to the Mission President. After a few very intense games of Pit and Uno we were able to watch a movie, since in our mission we can watch approved movies on New Years. Thus, we decided to watch the Pixar film Up, which was great, but so weird at the same time. I could feel my movie analytical part of my brain starting to work and I was shocked by how fast moving movie are. At any rate, we left the Senior Couples apartment at 11:00 and went to other Elder's apartment. On our arrival we realized that a problem had occurred. All of the windows in that apartment are blocked by trees! So, being ingenious Elders, we decided to climb up onto the roof of the apartment building. Unfortunately only three of us (Elder Hoffman, Elder Hasbuilin and I) got on the roof before some drunk guy started to harass the other Elders and almost violently forced them out onto the street. However, I was able to get on the roof, which was sweet because we could see the whole city and all the fireworks going off around us. I took the time to briefly reflect on the year. 2011 began as I was sitting in Yukon, Idaho waiting for Freshmen orientation to start at BYU-I and ended with me standing on top of a Russian apartment complex in Nizhny Novgorod while my friends were being yelled at by a random drunk guy. What a year it has been! Our celebrations ended with a wonderful viewing of The Fantastic Mr. Fox and copious amounts of soda and chips. Needless to say, going to bed at 3:30 in the morning really made me tired the next day.

On an unfortunate note, Olga did not get baptized this week. We had set up the baptismal interview but she called and cancelled on us the day of. She told us that she did not feel like she was prepared to be baptized and no longer had the desire for baptism. Also, her health had been bad so she felt like she could not handle a baptism at the time. I was incredibly disappointed to say the least. Never fear, Elder Melor and I are extremely persistent missionaries and we are going to make absolutely sure that see is able to get baptized, because we know that it is the path that will truly make her happy and eventually give her an eternal family. We both care too much about Olga to give her anything less than eternal happiness so our resolve is set and we will be working as hard as we can these coming weeks with her!

Wednesday night starts our trip to Moscow for the branch Christmas party. I am concerned that I won't be getting much sleep that night because it will be all four Elders in one room on the train, and we tend to not sleep much when we all get together. I'll have to let you know how the Moscow trip goes. Moscow is a sweet city, and I love every opportunity I have to go the city. Moscow is more or less the Russian version of New York city, except it only has seven sky scrappers. The city itself is huge, and holds a large portion of Russia's population. The city uses an extensive and complex Metro system with outstandingly artistic stations. Moscow is also one of the most Western European cities in Russia, and thus Moscow looks a lot more of what people traditionally think of when they think of Russia. I really just love the energy and excitement of Moscow and the complexity of the whole infrastructure.

Well I really don't know what more I can report at this time. This week has been hard to work because everybody says to call them after the New Years and we were confined to our apartments for most of yesterday and the day before, because lots of drunk people can get a little dangerous for twenty year old Americans. But, it really has been a great holiday season and as I was standing on top of a Russian apartment in Nizhny Novgorod I had one of those moments were I really realized and understood how outstanding a mission is. I realized that at that time I was experiencing something unique and unreal in a way, something I would never have the opportunity to do again. Being on a mission really is a great blessing and adventure, one which I am so happy to be a part of. I truly love being here among these people and I am glad to have a new year to rededicate myself and try to do better.

I hope you all have a great New Years and a nice winter. Thank you for all the support and love you give me. Also, your Christmas cards are starting to come in, I just received the Doxey's card, which was awesome. It seems like Matt is doing great in South Africa and I am way excited for when I can see all my old friends again and swap crazy mission stories. That is going to be a blast!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier