From Russia With Love

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