I Wanted To Send Pictures But I Forgot My Camera At My Apartment So You'll Have To Forgive Me For That Oversight

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,
As the title of my e-mail implies, I was planning on just sending a ton of pictures instead writing a huge e-mail this week, but unfortunately I left my camera at my apartment so I find myself somewhat unable to send any pictures. Unless I can somehow figure out some sort of wireless communication technique between my camera and this computer, I guess we'll just have to settle for no picture sending this week. This is an unfortunate turn of events, since I really have very little to report for this week.
A slightly annoying thing happens during the summer here in Russia. At the beginning of the summer all of the students are totally swamped with their exams and their schools. On the other hand, all of the people working and doing other things to contribute to society are spending their time going out to their cottages in the middle of the middle of nowhere near the town of nowhere, Russia. This makes it very hard for them to meet with us. And when I say nearly impossible, I mean that it is completely impossible. But, never fear, in the mean time we are raiding our old area book to find investigators who stopped meeting for some reason. Also we are working a lot more with our inactive members and our members who really need some help in the branch. And when that fails..... We go and hit the streets and hit the doors trying to find those people who have yet to hear of the gospel.
And thus this week has been pretty routine in the fact that we are just contacting a ton, which doesn't really lend well to very exciting e-mails. However, I would like to tell you one story that I thought was rather entertaining when it happened. We have three guys in our branch who are all friends and live together, so we usually go over and teach them once a week.. So two weeks ago we were teaching them about enduring to the end, and chosing righteously throughout our lives. One of the guys, Roman, was getting a little high and mighty and was preaching about something, I can't remember what. Suddenly another, Dima, interrupts and asked us if it is alright to kill someone if we were soldiers in a war. Roman said of course it is wrong, but we explained that it's ok if we go to war in the spirit of defending our families and our liberties and such. Dima really liked that answer but then asked what we should do if a man breaks into our house with a machine gun. He wanted to know if we should act in self defense. Before we could answer Roman said: "No, you can't act in self-defense because you don't know the reason that he is breaking in." Dima responded: "Yes I do, he wants to kill me!". Roman, acting somewhat high and mighty, answered: "Well you would have to talk to him.." Dima, incredulous responds: "WHAT? Talk to him about what!!" Roman explained: "Well you have to discuss with him why he was breaking in, what he wanted, etc. It's important to talk to him before you make any rash actions." Dima, with his eyes literaly buldging out of his head and filled with frustration yells: "TALK TO HIM ABOUT WHAT!!! HE HAS A MACHINE GUN, HE DOESN'T WANT TO TALK TO ME!" That pretty much ended the conversation. I was laughing so hard, but they couldn't tell what I was laughing at. Maybe you won't think it was that funny but I was laughing pretty hard!
So yeah, that is how things are going right now. I am really sorry but I don't really feel in the mood to write a long drawn out letter, since pretty much nothing exciting happened this week. Next week I'll send some pictures!
Sincerely
Elder Zachery Brasier

A Rather Historical Week for the Church in Russia with Elder D. Todd Christofferson

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well this week has been kind of insane. It has also been a very historical week for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Russia, as well as for the Moscow and Moscow West mission. As such, many thing happened this week and I'll try to summarize them the best I can, and maybe even include a few pictures for you to see.

As I'm sure some of you are and are not aware, last year, the first stake of the church was organized in Russia. This is an organizational unit that combines a group of wards and branches into one unit, with a President and real church organization. The Moscow Stake is a pretty big deal, since it is seen as one of the first steps to getting a temple in Moscow. Unfortunately, the stake doesn't cover our cities at all, but it will once the mission re-aligns. So, in not so many words, the whole week was building up to the stake conference in Moscow on Sunday. At least this is what the members were most excited about. As missionaries, we had a different, smaller event on our minds.

Come July 1st the Moscow West mission will cease to exist. Instead, it will be split between the Moscow mission, the Baltic mission, and the Novosibirsk mission. Because I am serving in Ryazan, I will become part of the Moscow mission. On Thursday we had a dual mission conference. In the morning we had our last conference with President Woolley, said some last goodbyes and ate some food. Then in the afternoon we had both the Moscow and Moscow West missions come together to have a special dual mission conference. This was a lot of fun because we got to see all of our old friends in the Moscow mission, which I really enjoyed. But the real excitement came once the conference started.

Fortunately, I had saved Elder Hunt and I a seat in the front of our conference room, because we had some very special speakers come and talk to us. At our conference was the whole Europe East Area President, Bishop Stevenson (the Presiding Bishop of the church), Elder Rasband (the president of the quorums of Seventy) and finally Elder D. Todd Christofferson, of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles). Yes, we had an apostle visit our mission conference and talk to us and it certainly was an amazing experience!

I always like to see General Authorities in more personal settings. In these circumstances you can see a little more of their personality and it's more personal to hear them speak than in General Conference. Elder Rasband is kind of an intimidating man, but also quite funny. Bishop Stevenson is a really soft spoken and loving man. Elder D. Todd Christofferson is pretty awesome. I didn't realize this before, but he is an incredibly well read man, and knows a ton about history and seems to have almost an encyclopedic knowledge of the scriptures. Also he has a very dry sense of humor, which I thought was pretty cool.

Elder Christofferson talked to us about 30 minutes about how the 12 Apostles and missionaries have some of the same roles in church organization and discussed how we work together. One thing he said really struck me. He stated (and I'm paraphrasing a little): "We are all in this job together. In a very literal way, we are your companions. The apostles pray for you every day, and we know that you pray for us. We lift each other up. We would never do anything that would reflect poorly and degrade you. We know that you do the same for us." I just thought it was so cool that he would say something like that, and it really made me realize how important our work as missionaries is, and how much the whole church works together in our roles. It really touched me that he would refer to us as his "missionary companions". After he talked a little bit more about that, he opened up for questions. I instantly started racking my brain for something, assuming this would probably be the only chance I'll ever have to ask an apostle a question. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with anything good. Fortunately though, all of the other questions that people asked were very good, and we were able to hear him talk about a variety of topics, including patience, working hard, and the Atonement. I learned more about those topics in just a few minutes than I had ever learned in my life! What was so impressive to me is that Elder Christofferson had not prepared anything on these topics, he was just answering them, yet every answer he gave was worth a talk or speech in its own right. Also, I think it was the first time that I had so clearly seen and understood in my life that somebody was speaking under inspiration from above. Really, this was truly a great experience, and one of the most spiritual experiences in my life. After he finished we all were able to shake the hands of the speakers and exchange greetings, but that was insignificant compared to the amount of spiritual truth that we had all just received.

In other words, mission conference was mind blowing. As always, I was pleased to see all of my old friends and chat with the other missionaries. I love all the other missionaries, and they are always great to chat with. Also, Elder Olsen found some sweet Soviet tie pins, and I readily purchased one from him.

I returned to Ryazan, and kept thinking about all the great things that I had heard at the mission conference, and finding new things in my memories that I didn't realize or understand before. We had some great lessons for the rest of the week. Alexander Pushkin is doing well. He asked a lot of questions that he had read on the internet. My favorite is when he asked us if Mormon's were Christian (because many say we aren't). I looked at him and said: "Sasha, look at my tag, whose name is one it? (he answered, Jesus Christ), look at the Book of Mormon, what does the cover say? (he answered, Another Testament of Jesus Christ), and what were we just talking about? (he answered, the Atonement of Jesus Christ)" after I asked him these three questions we all started laughing and it was a really big moment for us, because I think it was when we all got on the same page, and he started to realize what the gospel actually meant. Also we had a shocking experience with one of our investigators Misha. We had planned on teaching him some English one day and then doing a really small spiritual thought, about prayer or something because for some reason we assumed he wasn't very interested in the gospel. But when we came in, he asked us right away for the spiritual thought. I was shocked, and asked him if he wanted to do English first. He responded that he really didn't want to study English that day, but wanted to do two spiritual thoughts! So we taught him about prayer and the Book of Mormon. It was a real powerful experience for me to never underestimate our investigators.

On Sunday we went back to Moscow again for the stake conference. We rented a bus and as a branch went up to Moscow. Once again we got to hear Elder Christofferson and his wife talk. The coolest thing is that they had both studied a few Russian phrases to say during their talk. I thought that was so awesome that they both respected the culture enough to learn even a little bit of this very hard language. I was so touched by that amount of care and dedication to the people, when they could have just as easily not learned a little Russian and got along just fine. Their example of going the extra mile really made an impact on me. Before the conference another kind of amazing thing happened. We had told Vitalii that he should think of a question and then he would find an answer when he heard Elder Christofferson talk. For some reason he assumed that we had promised him that he would get to talk to Elder Christofferson face to face. I don't know why he thought that but he did. On Sunday we showed up way early for the conference and I got roped into giving out translation devices for the people who didn't understand Russian. As I was out in the atrium doing this, Elder Hunt and Vitalii were outside talking to some members. Suddenly, Elder Christofferson walks in, without any pomp or circumstance, just like a normal guy, and starts greeting the people in the atrium. And, what do you know, Vitalii got to shake his hand and exchange a few words. Later, he told us: "Look you see, my prayers were answered! You told me I would be able to talk to an apostle this weekend, and I did! My prayers were answered, it's a sign." He didn't tell us what it was a sign of, but I was absolutely amazed that our promise, which wasn't really a promise but more of a misunderstanding, actually happened!

This really was a mind-blowing week for me. That is the adjective I would us to describe the week, mind blowing. It was such a blessing to be in such close presence of an true and living apostle of Jesus Christ, to hear his voice, to see his love and service for other people. My testimony of the church was really strengthened. It almost seems unlikely that so many awesome things happened in one week, but I'm glad that I was hear on my mission to experience all of this.

On a final note, as the stake conference closed, the choir sang: "Hark All Ye Nations", one of my favorite hymns, and I felt such a love for the people I am serving. I am really happy to be on a mission during this historic and exciting time for the church in the great country of Russia.

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

 

PS- Here's another thing Elder Christofferson said to us: "People are praying for your safety all the time. In fact you really should be scared for when you get go home and get released, because life is going to get much much more dangerous for you without all those prayers!!" I thank everybody that prays for missionaries.

A picture of our conference. I'm in the back, near Elder Olsen

 

Untitled #3 (Have You Ever Seen the Rain?)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

If I had to give one nickname to Russia, it would be: "The Home of Extreme Weather Conditions." In Russia we rarely have just a nice, partly cloudy, mid 70's day. Instead we either have pounding snow, blazing heat, dreary overcast, or pouring rain. Pick one of the three! This week the weather decided to rain. One day it was unseasonably cold and the next the clouds above opened up and let it all out. Rain, rain, rain (leading me to make references to many songs about rain. I always sing Banana Pancakes by Jake Johnson when it starts raining and my companions always beg me to stop after about two lines because of my great singing skills. Otherwise I just hum to myself "Rain" by The Beatles or "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.) The rain that we have seen in Russia has been outstanding. A few nights ago Elder Hunt and I got caught in the rain when our bus overshot our stop, thus forcing us to run through pouring rains and shin deep puddles. That was entertaining. Yesterday, we decided to do a contacting activity, and go give out Book of Mormons and a nearby square. In theory, it was a good plan. However, the rain stopped us dead in our tracks. We had walked about half way to the square when the lightning crashed and the rain came thundering down from heaven. Quickly, we found a small awning and hid under that. Imagine it, six American missionaries (two Elders, two Sisters, and a senior couple) hiding under a small awning in the middle of an intense Russia rain storm. Our hiding place worked well, until the wind came, suddenly turning the falling rain into horizontally flying water daggers of death. I felt like the rain was chasing us like the cold would chase the characters in "The Day After Tomorrow" and I couldn't help but thinking about a certain Ray Bradbury short story (you know; the one where the astronauts get trapped on Venus and are driven insane by the rain?) I really feel bad for my friends in the wet forests and islands of the world (and the people in Noah's time), because I feel like I really understand what they deal with. Yes, so our contacting activity was effectively ruined, but we have a good story to tell now (and good pictures, which I would send but I left my camera in my apartment.)

 

Otherwise, the weather is very nice now. Right now is the rare time of the year when Russia has really nice weather two or three days out of the week. With all the rain and melted snow from early months, spring has come into full bloom. The trees are huge and beautiful and everything is green. Russia really is a beautiful country in the spring and fall (and I think the winter as well, but some people would disagree with me). Thus, I am enjoying the great seasonal changes that have been occurring, even though they have come with a few colds and allergy attacks.

 

Missionary work has been coming along here in Ryazan. We do a lot of English lessons because that is what the university kids are most interested in. For English lessons we teach them thirty minutes English and thirty minutes about the gospel, that way we can still teach them missionary lessons while helping them learn the English language. We also run two English clubs, one on Tuesday and one on Friday. Our clubs are a huge contacting tool for us. Once or twice a week we'll go street contacting in normal "civilian" clothes and give out hundreds of paper invitations to English club. So far, it has been pretty successful and we have a developed a pretty solid group of people who come to English Club and also our Sports Day.

 

Our investigators are coming along. Right now we have a few difficulties because when Elder Beckh transferred out of Ryazan many of our investigators stopped meeting with us or have said that they aren't interested. Often times, when a missionary leaves an area after serving their for six months or so, the next missionaries have to rebuild the teaching pool, since some people become converted to a specific missionary and not the gospel itself. However, we still are working hard with our investigators and we have found some great new ones. Alexander Pushkin accepted a baptismal commitment this week so we just have to set a baptismal date and teach him a little bit more. We've had some pretty good lessons with Denis and will soon be having some English lessons with some of the college students. Tonya and Louis are doing pretty good. Today we had a really good lesson with them. We had the senior missionaries (the Storm's) help us out, since Tonya is their translator and Louis speaks pretty good English. At the end of the lesson Louis told us about how his dad died when he was young and recounted his own personal search for God. After he finished his story he told us that he liked meeting with us since we can all speak on common ground about God (also I was able to understand when he asked me what a certain French word meant! Yeah!) Tonya also said that she likes meeting with us because she can feel something different when she talks to us. That may not seem like a whole lot, but that is really big progress for Tonya. They are both really awesome, and their three year old son, Lev, is awesome.

 

Late last week we had a meeting with Vitalii. After telling us about some more of his conspiracy theories and stories (such as his courtship of Barbara Bush which didn't work out) he told Elder Hunt that he had created an operational alias for him. Thus Elder Hunt was nicknamed "Sniper Scout", since he is a hunter. Then Vitalii looked at my name and asked: "What is that name? Is it French?" Of course I responded yes. He continued:' "Well that's easy, your from the Foreign Legion, they are going to go take down Syria soon. You're like the Foreign Legion guy.... That's your name." And thus my operational is "The Foreign Legion" or simply, "The Legionnaire." So I guess I'm set for secret services. Vitalii is easily my favorite member. He is a great guy, and has a really strong testimony, once you can get him on topic. We watched the hour long Joseph Smith movie with him and afterwards he bore one of the most sincere testimony's I had ever heard (after which he told us about how Moscow was going to be destroyed by the World Power Peace organization.) It was really nice.

 

That is pretty much the state of things hear in Ryazan. Sometimes I idly wonder how long I'll stay here.... I guess I'll find out shortly, but the future is still in flux...

 

As always with love,

 

Elder Zachery "The Legionnaire" Brasier

 

PS: Another great Vitalii quote: "Elder Brasier you seem like a smart guy. Smart guys are dangerous, so you're a dangerous man..... I like that!"

Untitled #2 (Ryazan....)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

I assume that lately many of you have been wondering exactly where I am in Russia. Well I am now in Ryazan. This week has been quite an adventure. Early in the week I went to Tula and spent two days there with Elder Hark. That was a fun short jaunt, and I liked Tula a little bit more than the first time I visited the city a few weeks ago. However, my eventual destination was Ryazan. I arrived in Ryazan in the middle of the week (notice I don't use actual days because I have become increasingly unaware of the actual days of the week). My companion there is Elder Hunt, who is from Arizona and a is a pretty cool guy. Interestingly enough, we share the same birthday (April 16, 1992) and have quite a bit in common. He also likes Clint Mansell, which is awesome. I will probably be in Ryazan for the next two weeks after which I will return to the office for at least a week. After that week, my future is quite uncertain since President Woolley will no longer be in charge of our mission, instead our mission president will be President Sorenson. I would really like to return to Ryazan, for reasons that I will detail shortly.

 

When I said I would detail these reasons shortly, I really meant in the next sentence. Ryazan is a pretty cool place. I think that I have received my warmest welcome in Ryazan (even warmer than that in Nizhny). The members even asked how long I was going to be staying for an were disappointed when I said possibly only two weeks. It was really nice to feel welcome. For the past few days I have been able to meet the investigators and members of the area and also participate in normal Ryazan activities, like sports day and English club. Ryazan is a small branch, but the members are incredibly cool. My favorite so far is Vitalii, who is incredibly paranoid and thinks he is a secret agent (he actually worked for the CIA in Columbia during the 1980's). Now I am a pretty paranoid person, but Vitalii blows me out of the water. For some reason he trusted me enough to let me in on the secret societies and conspiracies that he knows about. I have never heard so many connections and plots in my life. Vitalii is awesome, as are many of our other members. Many of the people in Ryazan are engineers and radio technicians, so I enjoy talking to them. We also have some pretty sweet investigators. One of our best investigators is a lady named Tonya who is married to a French man named Louis. Louis is way cool, but I wish I was able to speak French better in order to talk to him. He served in the French foreign legion, lived in South America, Spain and now Russia. He is quite exciting to talk to because as you may be aware, French people get very animated when they get excited about a topic, so they have a way of drawing you into the conversation with their facial expressions and body language. I've really liked all the French people I've met on my mission (actually one of my favorite parts of serving a mission is getting to meet all of the other nationalities that are roaming around. I've almost wanted to keep a score card of all the nationalities I've met, because it would be interesting to see the list.) They also have a little three year old son who is awesome. I felt like I had a little three year old brother again! Most of our other investigators are college students (including one named Alexander Pushkin, which is way awesome, and he writes poetry!). Teaching college students is always fun, because they tend to be more open to new ideas and are less rooted in the past traditions. They are also a lot easier to relate too, since we are the same age.

 

Honestly I don't have a whole lot to report this week because I've been travelling all over the place and it's been scrambling my brain. Also, because I haven't had a real area this week I don't have any interesting investigators stories to tell. I'm very excited to be in Ryazan, and I feel very comfortable in that city. We have a lot of good support from the senior couple there and the branch is a lot of fun. It is a little intimidating because I am the oldest missionary in the city, which means that I have to take a little bit more responsibility. As my mission goes on, this situation is going to become a lot more common. The good thing is that Elder Hunt speaks pretty good Russian for being out only three transfers. Thus, I don't have to carry the bulk of the lesson, only like 60-70% of the lesson. Thus, things are going really good right now. I am so happy to be serving in Ryazan, even though it will possibly be very short. I was really glad to have studied space vocabulary, military vocabulary and mathematics terms, since they have all been useful in my time in Ryazan.

 

Well I'm sorry that this letter wasn't extremely exciting, but I'm quite tired right now from travelling last night to Moscow for Elder Hunt's visa trip. I hope you all have a great time this common week! Take luck!

 

Sincerely as always,

Elder Zachery E Brasier

 

PS- A drunk lady tried to sit on my lap on a bus a few days ago. It was extremely awkward especially when I pretty much had to push her off. Elder Hunt and I had a good laugh after the terribleness of the situation wore off...

 

PPS- I'm considering making a short story series about Vitalii's "adventures" and conspiracy theories. He almost might be giving me an operational nickname soon to disguise my identity (Vitalii's operational name is Wolfie). When we were talking during our lesson Vitalii told us something that he wanted President Woolley to do (I can't remember what). We told him that it probably wouldn't happen but he said: "Just tell President that Wolfie told you to ask him. He'll know what that means..." Yeah, Vitalii is so cool.