From Russia With Love: If I'm Still Alive This Time Next Year/I'm just the boy with the new hair cut.....

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

After last weeks relative lack of events, this week has been quite exciting for more than a few reasons. As of this week I have officially hit my year mark on my mission. I don't feel like I've been on my mission that long though! But alas, I am now officially one of the old men in our mission, just hobbling along, telling old mission "war stories" and trying to keep up with all the young folks. Well, its not exactly like that, but due to the fact that people age significantly faster on their missions, it seems to me that I am much older than all the new kids who show up. I find it rather funny.

Early this week, President and the AP's were working on the transfers coming up in two weeks. Because they like to keep this somewhat secret, they had shut the door to President's office and were discussing things. Suddenly, Elder Bressler came out and told me to come talk to President for a little bit. Of course I thought I was in trouble for something (but I wasn't). President just wanted to inform me of my coming transfer. Please, strap yourselves in for a quite convoluted transfer. This weekend I will be going to Tula, because Elder Ramero is going to Kazakhstan, and thus Elder Hark needs a companion for a week. During this time, Elder Anisiforov will be going to the office to get trained in office things by Elder Lantukh. After a week, I will return to the office to be with Elder Anisiforov for three weeks while Elder Lantukh goes to the city of Ryazan for three weeks and then ends his mission. When Elder Lantukh goes home I will go to Ryazan and it will be my new area. I will be serving there with Elder Hunt, who is a pretty new Elder. This means that I'll be the senior companion and the most senior missionary in Ryazan, and so I'll be serving as the District Leader as well. It should be a pretty cool transfer. So yes, that is the future for me.

In the middle of the week we had a mission conference. I always enjoy mission conferences because I get to see all my old friends and companions. Thus, I hung out with Elder Olsen, Elder Jewkes and some of my other friends. I was especially excited because I finally got to see Elder Dannenberg! He is finally back from Kazakhstan and is now the branch president of Tver, so he was at the conference. I was so excited to see him because we haven't seen each other for almost 10 months now. I was slightly disappointed though because Voronezh didn't come to the conference, so I wasn't able to see Elder Wadsworth, another one of my friends who I haven't seen for almost 10 months. Interestingly enough, I found out that I have essentially "gone viral" in the mission. One P-Day I was really bored while my companion was sleeping so I came up with some fake mission-related movie trailers using some music I have on me. I decided one day to show Elder Jewkes, and he took a video of my performing these little movie trailer sketches. Then Elder Turner took a video of me doing these little sketches. Both have been showing everybody these two movie trailers that I came up with and so at the conference everybody was asking me to do these sketches live. Unfortunately I didn't have any music so I couldn't do the sketches, but I was shocked that my little P-Day project gained so much fame.

This weekend we went to Yaroslavl, and it was awesome! I was on splits for two days with one of my good friends Elder Barker, and we had a really good time teaching and also seeing the city on P-Day. Yaroslavl is a beautiful city on the Volga river (every city of the Volga river is pretty including Tver and Nizhny Novgorod). It is noted for the amount of Orthodox temples and cathedrals in the city, more than one thousand! We were there on a beautiful weekend, and I really enjoyed the nice weather and the excessive greenery. The branch in Yaroslavl was awesome and I enjoyed teaching some investigators and a Somalian church member. Also, the senior couple in Yaroslavl (the Forsyth's) where way awesome and made us feel really welcome. On P-Day, we all took a tour of the city, and I'll attach some of our pictures of the city and this museum that we toured called the Music and Time museum (essentially it was an eccentric collection of old musical instruments, old clocks, turn of the century irons and gramophones). I enjoyed Yaroslavl and also hanging out with Elder Barker while Elder Lantukh and Elder Kvasnitsky (my old Ukranian companion) went on splits. One thing I really like on my mission is the ability to make friends with people who I wouldn't usually be drawn too. For instance, Elder Barker is a big football player from a nowhere town in the middle of Nebraska, somebody pretty far outside of my normal social circle. But, Elder Barker is one of my best friends because on a mission none of that really matters and we actually have a lot in common and get along pretty well. I always enjoy making friends on my mission that I really would not have otherwise.

Well, it was interesting this week to complete a year on my mission. I guess it's all downhill from here! I am excited for the next year because now I understand how to do missionary work and I can speak the language at an intermediate level, so I don't really have to worry about all the technical aspects of the work (of course I'll continue developing my language and work skills, but I mean that it won't really hold me back anymore). It feels weird to be one of the older missionaries now. All of the younger missionaries look at the older ones and think that somehow we have everything figured out, that we have enough experience to just know how to do things. This is of course not true! We are still trying to figure it all out piece by piece and figure out problems as they hit us. I do know that my understanding of my purpose as a missionary and my understanding of my life in general has increased tremendously. This year has really been a defining year of my life, and I'm looking forward to another year of great (and not so great) times that will help me become the person that the Lord wants me to be.

I hope you all have a great week and those of you in desert climates will stay cool! Live long and prosper!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

PS- I got a new haircut this week. In Yaroslavl I noticed that my hair was too long so I asked Sister Forsyth to trim it a little. Well Sister Forsyth didn't remember that the guard on her clippers was broken. So as she went in to trim the top of my head, the guard popped off! I remember thinking: "OH NO!!!" but Sister Forsyth didn't notice that the guard had failed! Thus, in one swift motion, she gouged a large bald spot into my hair. I was in just a little bit of shock (as was Sister Forsyth). In an attempt to save my hair we hurried to a barbershop but the girls their just laughed when I asked them if they could do anything to fix it. So I have a bald spot that will probably last for the next two weeks. See my attached pictures.

The view of the Volga River