Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well this week has been an interesting one. Finally, Elder Jewkes and I are starting to see the fruits of our labors here in Smolensk. It is great that we are starting to see some success from our six hour contacting marathons on the street. We have been having a good time, and I really enjoy serving with Elder Jewkes. He's a great guy and we have had some crazy experiences together that give us something to laugh about. Also, on a slightly crazy note, Elder Jewkes knows Breyden Burley, since one of Breyden's first areas was his home town. One day he was telling us a story about how this volleyball playing missionary from Vegas drilled him in the face while playing volleyball. Out of curiosity I asked him what the Elder's name was and he told me Elder Burley. It sure is a small Mormon world.

 

So here is some of the interesting experiences we have ran into this week, in chronological order. Last Saturday, we handed out a Book of Mormon to a vaguely drunk guy who gave us his number. Then on Sunday we called him to see if he wanted to meet. When Elder Jewkes called he asked for Vladimir but the man who answered told us his name was Ivan. Elder Jewkes was very confused. After not much talking Ivan invited us over to his house because he needed some help learning English. It turns out that this guy is a missionary for a different church who needed help practicing English in order to serve a mission in Africa and just moved to Smolensk! The drunk guy on the street gave us the wrong number and it turned out that the number he gave was a person who actually needed our help. Right now he isn't very interested in the gospel but I don't believe that things like that happen by accident.

 

Then on Wednesday after English Club we had another slightly shocking experience. For awhile this 20 year old guy named Dima has been coming to English Club. Elder Jewkes and I met him on the street but we wrote down the wrong number (do you see a common theme?) so Dima just came to English Club on his own. The guy reminds me of the kid from the movie October Skies and always tells me about his ideas for rocketry and lasers. On Wednesday we talked about travelling to different countries in English Club. Elder Jewkes and I had planned to talk to Dima about the gospel but he left too quickly. However, he returned about five minutes later because he thought he had forgot his camera and out of nowhere asked us what he needs to do to become a missionary for our church! Of course he doesn't understand exactly what that means to be a missionary (I think part of his motivation is he wants to go to Australia) but that is a desire that we are going to work with.

 

Finally, on Friday night we had some interesting door tracting experiences. Usually tracting involves sitting outside of an apartment complex calling on the intercom system until somebody lets us in and then knocking on a few doors until somebody throws us out or calls the cops. I love tracting. I always say that the miracles happen while tracting. Elder Jewkes and I had been tracting for almost an hour and having no success. We had just called all the apartments on an intercom system and had started to go the next apartment building when we heard somebody behind us yell: "Hey boys come back here!" One of the men we had called on the intercom had decided to come out and talk to us personally because he couldn't understand us on the intercom. We ended up giving him a Book of Mormon and getting his contact. The next apartment hallway ended with us getting kicked out and as we were walking out the lady was yelling at us out of her window! She was not very happy. I don't like to get dissuaded by stuff like that, so I went to the next apartment staircase and starting calling people while Elder Jewkes tried to calm down this rather unpleasant lady. The second lady I called let us in. Right as we enter the stairwell I hear her yell down 8 stories: "WHO ARE YOU! WHAT DO YOU WANT!" I was sure we were going to get kicked out again. I yelled back up 8 stories: "WE ARE MISSIONARIES WITH THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS, WE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU ABOUT GOD AND HIS RESTORED CHURCH." Down comes the reply: "I CAN'T UNDERSTAND A SINGLE WORD YOU ARE SAYING!" A little frustrated I yell back: "WAIT RIGHT THERE! WE WILL COME UP TO YOU." Elder Jewkes and I sprinted up 8 flights of stairs and arrived at the top, winded but ready to talk to this lady. We tell her a little about ourselves and we offer her a Book of Mormon. She says: "I don't think that this is a good idea, my daughter works in the cathedral so she won't like if I read this..." I thought we had lost the conversation. Suddenly, this ladies face twists up into a mask of firm resolve and she says: "But I'll hide it! I want to read this book!" and she stuffs the Book of Mormon up her shirt (at this point I kind of didn't want the book back)! So she gave us her number, and we called her to come to church yesterday. Unfortunately she had to work but she told us that she told her family about us and now they are all interested to meet! I'm hoping things work out!

 

And really that is pretty much all I've got for this week. We have been meeting with a lot of our street contacts and a few of them seem like they can become really solid investigators. I think right now has been the most productive and successful I have been on my mission. Also, Vladimir told us that he is finally going to get all the paperwork done and get legally married to his wife, which means he'll be able to be baptized shortly! I am pretty excited for that to happen (and a little scared, because we have no baptismal font, which means we will baptize him in the iced over river!)

 

Oh, and President Woolley called yesterday. Elder Jewkes is going to be the new Smolensk branch president when Elder Melling leaves next month. I'm not quite sure how he feels about that....

 

Well live long and prosper my friends.

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you feel like quite a bit
has happened but you really don't know how to fully explain it because
as you search the recesses of your mind to try and find some sort of
concrete story from your week, you inexplicably come up blank. If you
have experienced something similar to this phenomenon, then you have
an insight into how my week has been. Although I know somethings have
happened, I can think of absolutely nothing exciting to write! So I
will try my hardest, because I realize that I have two options, either
write a small letter and thus cause a slight bit of worry among the
family or write a lengthy letter but dive into areas of abstraction
that could be strange or confusing. I will desperately try to avoid
both of those seemingly inevitable conclusions.

After the rather large shock of the mission conference, things have
been settling back into a normal rythmn of things. The whole mission
boundry change is strange because it is close, but also far enough in
the future that it poses absolutely no obstruction to mission work. At
any rate, I am rather comfortable with this future change, although I
am somewhat disappointed that I will not be able to serve in
Kazakhstan. However, I now have a new goal: Serve in Kaliningrad! (If
you don't know where that is, I don't blame you. It is an exclave of
Russian territory that is located under the Baltic States. Look
closely at the map, you'll find it, and yes, that is inexplicably
Russian territory.)

This week Elders from Tver and Minsk came in. I had a good time with
Elder Jensen from Tver, since we are usually on the same page of
cleverness and some dark humor. Elder Jensen's current companion,
Vova, is a short term missionary from Kazakhstan. If you watch the
video of the Ukraine temple dedication there is a part where two
Kazakhs are talking about their dance number, and Vova is the darker
complexioned quiter guy. We had a good time with them, and also with
the Minsk Elders who got to practice some street contacting (which is
currently illegal in Belarus).

Elder Jewkes and I have been working hard in order to find new people
interested in the church, since we are building our area from scratch.
We have found a few good people, including this old grandma named
Raiyna (which is an extremely strange name). She was overjoyed when we
gave her a Book of Mormon and then came to church on Sunday with gifts
for us: A Dosteivsky novel and a book of Russian poetry, which I
thought was cool (incedently I am building up quite the Russian
library, I just can't read any of it after my mission! Everybody who
finds out I like to read ends up giving me some sort of novel from a
Russian author). We showed Raiyna the restoration movie about Joseph
Smith and she loved it. She also wanted to pray with us, and she
embarked on a half-memorized Orthodox prayer that she kept forgetting
and asking us for help. It was quite funny because Elder Jewkes and I
could not decide if she was done praying or not and confusing ensued.
We'll have to work with her on that.

Otherwise, Vladimir is still working to get married and came to church
yesterday with his son. He also got quite angry at Elder Melling
because Vladimir believes that Elder Melling is experiencing
malnutrition, and gave Elder Melling a lengthy talk about health. I
found it quite entertaining. Elder Jewkes and I have also found a lot
of other people who are potentially interested so we are hoping that
the area will really start to grow over the next week or two.

Russia tricked us today. It was sunny for a few days and the
temperature was warming up! We were all viewing it as a sign that the
winter was past its worst. Today the clouds closed in, the wind
started, the temperature dropped and snow started to fall. And thus,
the freeze is still on.

Also, good news, I have a picture to send you! As I said earlier, it
is practically impossible for me to send pictures while I am in
Smolensk, but President Woolley sent us a picture from mission
conference. You may be confused as too my strange facial expression. I
have an explanation. Elder Olsen and I were talking about making
strange faces during the mission picture, so we did for the first one.
Then the photographer went to take a second one and Elder Olsen was
sure that this was just a back up and thus we could look even stranger
and nobody would know the better. So I did just that, and Elder Olsen
smiled nicely. He later informed me that at the last second he figured
that the second picture was the real one, and decided to smile
normally. He forgot to inform me.
Well I hope everybody has a nice week. Stay frosty my friends!

As Always, Elder Zachery Brasier

(Unfortunately I couldn't get the picture he sent.  I don't know his password for that account.  I will ask him about that.  Sorry.)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

There has been a rumor going around about a change in my mission, and I will set everything strait right now. On Wednesday we had a mission conference in Moscow were one of the leaders of the Eastern European area gave us a pep talk, and also some news. He started by talking about change and how change is good for all of us. Continuing, he foreshadowed the fact that there would be a big change in our mission. He started telling us about how the 12 Apostles all prayed about it and then the President Uchtdorf and Eyring and finally the Prophet Thomas S. Monson. He informed us that they had held a meeting in the Salt Lake temple about this change and even though it wasn't the most seemingly logical option, it was the one they felt inspire to pursue. This build up lasts for almost 15 minutes and I am about to jump out of my seat! With all this build up I was expecting an announcement like: "The Moscow West mission will now be merged with the Manilla, Philippines mission so you will all be on an airplane tomorrow...." or something to that effect. Right before he announces this change, the Elders from Lipetsk show up so we had to organize translation for the Ukranian missionaries. This took about 10 gut wrenching minutes. After the logistics where sorted out, the Area President started to build up again for another 10-15 minutes. (I am purposefully stretching this story out so you can experience what I felt like during this meeting.)

 

Here is the change. On July 1st our current mission president goes home and the Moscow West Mission gets merged with the Moscow mission. Belarus becomes part of the Baltic Mission and Kazakhstan becomes part of the Novosibirsk mission. So what does this mean for me? First of all our mission doubles in size. Secondly I will be able to serve in Moscow and also Zaliningrad, which are both not part of our mission boundaries. I am pretty excited about this opportunity to serve in Moscow, because I love big cities and also it will be cool to have the opportunity to see some of the awesome sights there. And that's the big news, in July the Moscow West mission will cease to exist and is replaced by a huge Moscow mission.

 

Otherwise this week was not very exciting. Elder Jewkes and I are trying to get more people to meet with because we are more or less opening up a new area right now. That means a lot of time on the streets. I finally gave in and bought a pair of Russian boots and have been wearing my fur and leather Russian Shapka (which is just a warm hat with flaps) outside. Jokingly, I asked Elder Melling if he thought it would be a good idea to wear my 1970's Soviet Aviation Leather Helmet outside (on of the sweet souvenirs I've picked up on my Moscow adventures. One cool thing about Russia is that mostly everything is up for bargain, so after about 45 minutes of wheeling and dealing I was able to buy this helmet for half the original price. I was pleased.) We decided it was probably not. Right now though we are working with Vladimir who will be baptized as soon as he gets married and loves the missionaries (also he promised to give me a Russian book on bio-engineering which I thought was a nice gesture considering I will not be able to read it!). We are also working with a man named Anatoly who is a wood carver for the Orthodox cathedral in Smolensk. The other day I just noticed he is missing the tips of three of his fingers, which was slightly ominous. Otherwise, we are hitting the streets and working with our members who really need the help.

 

For Valentine's day we had a little branch activity. The Elder's from Minsk, Belarus came as did the members from Vitepsk, Belarus. I was really happy to see some the Minsk Elders and to meet some other church members. The Belarusian church members are way awesome! It was a pretty chill Valentine's Day, and I ate way too much candy (a similar problem occurred at Halloween). It is always a shock to people how much chocolate I eat compared to my general state of thinness. I guess hiking around Russia all day really helps you lose the excess weight!

 

I had a pretty cool experience on the night train back from Moscow. Actually I had a cooler one before on the way to Smolensk for the first time. I'll relate that quickly. We were waiting on the platform to go to Smolensk and we heard somebody talking in English, so we talked to him. It was this New Yorker named Sam who was going to Smolensk in order to get work experience in a factory here. This was shocking, because I know of very few Americans who purposefully go to Smolensk (I bet 80% of Americans don't even know this city exists) to work in one of the maybe three factories here. So we got his number and will be meeting with him soon. This time on the night train we ran into these two Belarusian singers and guitarists who decided to play us a little concert on the night train. It was so cool. They sang all sorts of songs and we sang along with what we could, like Yellow Submarine and Катюша (Katyusha, and Russian folk song). We went to bed so late that night, but I didn't care because I figured stuff like that doesn't happen very often. Experiences like that remind me how cool it is to be on a mission, and especially a mission in Russia!

Well that is all I've got for today. I hope you all have an absolute splendid week. Stay warm those of you in sub-arctic climates!

 

Indubitably,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,
After my first full week in Smolensk, I am starting to get into the swing of things. Right now the biggest challenge is finding my way around the city, since both Elder Jewkes and I are new here. When I left Nizhny I knew it like the back of my foot, so now I am trying to become as familiar with Smolensk.

Winter is now in full swing here in Russia. Currently the temperatures are around -20 and it snowed all day yesterday. Yes this is quite cold, cold enough in fact that the bottom of my pant legs were frozen with ice last night. Never fear though, I have been keeping quite warm. The key to life in Russia is layers of clothing! I weighed myself the other day and I realized that with all my winter clothes I way about 10 kilograms heavier than with normal clothes on. The Russians also have been getting more and more intense about the weather. As I mentioned before, they take the winter very seriously. Last Monday we played basketball with one of our investigators Dima, so Elder Jewkes and Elder Melling decided to walk to the basketball gym in athletic shorts in -25 degree weather (I, however, was not that stupid, I made sure to keep warm.) Dima was not very happy, and ranted to be about how stupid my companions were and how they will die in the Russian weather. I think that the winter can be summed up best by one of Dima's lines: "If you don't take care of yourself in Russia, you will die. The Russian winter is completely unforgiving. Ominous? Yes, I think so.

We have started really hitting the work here. Elder Jewkes and I have been going and hitting the doors in the Russian apartment complexes, and actually got let into to somebodies house on Friday (this is extremely rare, it almost never happens.) The man was nice, but I am pretty sure he just wanted somebody to drink with. Initial conversation went something like this.

The Man: "Do you want some Vodka?"

Me: "Sorry we don't drink, maybe some juice?"

(Man walks to the refrigerator and grabs some juice... and vodka)

The Man: "So you want some Vodka yes?"

Jewkes: "No, we don't drink vodka."

(The man pours himself some vodka and then asks)

The Man: "Would you like me to fill your glass with some Vodka?"

Me: "Really we don't drink, we are here as missionaries."

The Man: [Various inappropriate conversational topics.]

Jewkes: "Ok I think we need to leave, are you interested in reading the Book of Mormon?"

The Man: "No, but I want to know if you will drink some Vodka with me."

We left, but it was quite humorous. This was only the second time I was let into somebodies apartment and it was quite an interesting experience. He was a super nice guy though, very friendly. (And this is one thing that should be noted about Russians. Russians seem very grumpy on the outside, but they are really extremely friendly people. When a Russian decides to be your friend, he will be absolutely committed to that and will talk to you for hours and his life story and offer you the shirt of his back so to speak. In this way, Russians are like coconuts, hard on the outside but soft on the inside.) At any rate, we have been finding some great new people to teach and are excited to really get this area going. Our best investigator Vladimir is still coming to church and is getting ready to marry his wife before he gets baptized. Vladimir is such a good guy because he is a logical man who leaves the light on for reason and also a religious man, who trusts in God. When he found out that I enjoy medicine he filled me in on his theories involving God and the parasympathetic nervous system. I am always amazed at his extensive English vocabulary when he talks about things like that. After the church meeting he told me about how during the meeting he suddenly had an idea about using a certain combination of drugs for a patient that he was really confused about. He told me all about how he loves receiving answers like that in church: "Elder Brasier, you see? I always get the answers to my prayers! You see?" Yes Vladimir, I do see.

On the forecast for future events: This coming Wednesday we have a Russian-Belarus mission conference in Moscow, which means lots of pizza and also some stimulating conversation with my good friend Elder Olsen! Also, one of the Church area authorities will be there so that should be interesting to hear from him. Then, on Saturday we have a branch Valentine's party, and the branch from Vitepsk, Belarus will be joining us along with the Elders from Minsk, Belarus. It should be fun to work with them.

Well I'll keep you posted about anything exciting that happens in the near future. Also, in a bit of bad news, it will be quite tough to send pictures while I am in Smolensk, since the Internet club we use won't recognize our SD cards. I'll try to figure out a way to send some of my pictures though.

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier