I wish that I could recite to you all sorts of amazing stories and entertaining anecdotes that I happened to me over the last week. However, nothing really exciting happened over the past week. We had a lot to do but nothing really out of the ordinary or overly interesting to tell. Thus I was considering just writing a few sentences and calling it quits. But, I instead decided to write a little bit about what an normal week is like in our mission in Russia. And so, I will attempt to tell you about a few things that we usually do in our mission and what an average day is like for me here in Ryazan.
As you are all probably aware, we wake up at 6:30 every morning. Lately I've been waking up around 5:00 in the morning because that is when the sun starts coming through our windows. Every morning I suddenly have sun shining in my eyes, and I freak out because I always feel like I overslept the alarm, snap up instantly, check the alarm, sigh and sigh of relief when I realize that it is only 5:00... An extra hour and half of sleep is so nice. Other than that the mornings aren't that exciting, I usually eat granola in the morning with Russian milk. Russian milk is rather strange tasting and bland. I don't know exactly why. Probably because they chalk it full of chemicals and preservatives. Conveniently enough, that means that you don't have to refrigerate it, but the milk still tastes weird. I eat at ton of yogurt. Studies start at 8 (sometimes it's a real struggle to stay awake), companionship study/planning at 9, Russian study at 10, and then lunch at eleven, which I usually make. My favorite food to make is pelmeni, which is a type of Russian dumpling that I fry with soy sauce and rice vinegar in order to make a delicious Asian fried dish. Otherwise I make a ton of pasta, with various sauces that I like to whip up from time to time. So yeah, that is pretty much my morning. After words we hit the streets and go do the work.
CONTACTING
We spend a lot of time street contacting. If we can get 2-3 lessons a day, that is a pretty good day, but that still leaves a lot of time open to go hit the streets. Contacting usually involves us purposefully walking against the flow of traffic and stopping every random person we can see with a hardy: "Hello! Can I ask you something!" This may sound odd in English, but it is perfectly culturally acceptable. About 50% of the time people stop. Sometimes they yell at us, sometimes they yell at us in English, one man put his hand right in my face and said in perfect English: "Sorry guys, I'm a Jew." Now if we get people to stop, that is about a fourth of the battle. After they've stopped we usually ask them something like: "My friend and I are missionaries on church service and we wanted to ask if you are a believing person." We usually get one of 4 answers. 1) "No, I'm an atheist" 2) "No, I'm Russian Orthodox" (that one always confuses me). 3) "Yes, I'm Russian Orthodox." 4) Simply: "Yes". Guess which one we like the best. Following that we explain a little bit about our church, invariably get asked if we are Christian, and if things go really well, we can get their phone number, give them a Book of Mormon and get an appointment later in the week. Other times we try to get contacts for people who are interested in English Club. Every once in a while we do a contacting activity, which means that all the missionaries go on a town square with a box of Books of Mormon and a sign that says: "Free book with a promise!" and try to give out the whole box. This is the closest we get to the street corner preaching that used to be done in old times. Contacting can be pretty fun and pretty tiring at the same time. Too much contacting makes a missionary go insane, so in order to shake it up, we go tract-ing
TRACTING
Tracting is the classic door knocking that everybody knows Mormon missionaries for. In Russia, there are almost no houses, they are all apartment complexes, so we don't really go door to door in the same way that our American counterparts do. Instead we track in Russian a "подъезд".This is pronounced "Pod-yezd". It translates to something like "stairwell" or "entry way", but I think it is best described as a stairwell with all the apartment doors in it, but that just doesn't do a подъезд justice. However, anybody who has lived in Russia realizes that подъезд means so much more than that. They really are quite an adventure. Well when we track we have to get in the huge metal door to the подъезд. I swear that these doors were designed to withstand most nuclear blasts, they are so thick and heavy. Also they are magnetically locked so we have to call every person in the apartment and hope that one of them opens up the door for us. This takes a lot of finesse to talk people into to opening up the door. I usually go with a good ol' : "OPEN the door! (in command form)." I'd say that that works about 32% of the time. Usually though we get the response: "Who is there!" If I'm in a good mood I'll explain that we are church volunteers with an important message about family and we want to share it with them. Unfortunately this tends to be ineffective. If I'm in a more snarky mood I respond: "It's us!" Sometimes that works because people think: "Oh I guess it must be someone I know who wants to visit" (imagine their surprise when it is actually two American missionaries with thick accents... Jokes on you!) Other times they ask: "Who are you?" Dang it..... Back to explaining why we are here. Alternate tracking techniques include such things as pretending to talk on the phone and waiting for somebody with a key to open it up and walk in after them as if you have a friend who lives in the apartment and you were just calling them. Elder Lantukh loved that technique. Tracting is certainly an adventure. Lots of doors get slammed in your face, you get to see some interesting apartment buildings and you learn to really rely on the Spirit, because out of all the apartment complexes in Russia, you have to choose the right one.
ENGLISH CLUB
Every city offers an English Club. The missionaries do this free of charge to help people learn the English language. Then, we always have a spiritual thought at the end to try and find people interested in the gospel. English Club is an extremely effective tool for us because it helps people be more comfortable with the missionaries and is also a lot of fun. In all my cities I have really enjoyed teaching English Club. Here in Ryazan I teach the conversational group for those who already speak English already. We talk about all sorts of topics ranging from mathematical constants to UFO sittings to Tupac Shakur. I really love English Club, it is always very interesting to meet other people and other opinions, especially because the club itself isn't really gospel focused, but the spiritual thoughts always are. We just try to provide a good, clean, free environment for those who want to better themselves and learn another language.
CHURCH
On Sunday we have our church meeting at 11 o'clock. In most branches church is only two hours and we alternate what types of lessons are taught every Sunday. Our branch building here is an old kindergarten that has been refurbished to suit our needs. Usually we get about 30 people to come to the meeting and usually the missionaries speak, and bless the sacrament, and pass the sacrament and sometimes play the piano. Every person in the small branches are important and since the missionaries have the most experience with how the church runs we usually have a lot to do! In Ryazan we have a Elder's Quorum of about 9 men, and a small relief society. We also have a Primary for the branch president's son, Matfei, who is 8 and our only young kid. Unfortunately we have no youth. Sunday is a busy day for all of us. We usually have a ton of leadership meetings to attend, I got called to be the Branch Financial Secretary so I have to do all the finances and we go out to some of our members who weren't able to make it to church. On Sunday we tend to go out to a lady named Larisa, who had an illness that crippled her legs. She used to be the Russian tutor for our missionaries in Ryazan, but since the illness she has been completely immobile. Lately we have been going to her with the Senior Missionaries and a member named Galina, who is struggling a little with her testimony. Larisa, who has a very strong testimony and speaks English, has been trying to get Galina to pray more, but it hasn't been effective. Yesterday we all went over to Larisa's apartment and half way through the lesson Larisa asks: "Galina, my dear, have you been praying?" Galina responds: "Well, no not really..." Larisa suddenly becomes infuriated and raising herself as much as she can from her bed yells: "GALINA! Я убью тебя! I SHALL KILL YOU!", translating for the sake of our senior couple who don't speak Russian. I was laughing so hard I couldn't contain myself, which was ok because suddenly a four way conversation occurs with Galina and Larisa arguing, Elder Ottly (the senior Elder) and Elder Hunt talking about why Larisa said that, Sister Ottly asking me to translate and me laughing uncontrollably. It certainly was quite a funny lesson and ended with Larisa discussing how much she loved President Dieter F Uchtdorf, how handsome he is, how spiritual he is and so on... I really hope that some of my friends who have returned from their missions and served in Ryazan can imagine what this lesson was like, because it was quite hilarious.
So I hope that gives you a bit of a slice of my life on the mission. Things can be quite crazy here but I do like it a lot. Our investigators right now are great and I'm just waiting for the summer to end so everybody can become so tied up in school and work that they can't leave the city and go hang out in The Middle of Nowhere, Russia. Plus, I just don't really like the summer. The winter is much better.
Well everybody have a great week, and here are some pictures so that you can see what we did last P-Day. I do enjoy gallivanting through the fields of Russia.
Live Long and Prosper,
Elder Zachery E. Brasier
Moscow Time
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