You Know I Know This One, I Know This One

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

August is rapidly closing up, which means that September and the official spring is coming shortly. Also that means that school is starting up again, as is normal work so the more normal missionary meeting schedule will be restored. I for one and rather happy with the changing of season, for although I do enjoy the summer here in Russia, I do enjoy the fall much much more, with its changing colors and brisk temperatures.

 

Well I've received my new companion, my new greenie. His name is Elder Merrill, and he is from Salt Lake City, Utah. Interestingly enough he is my first companion that I have served with who is from Utah, much less Salt Lake City. I thought for sure that I was going to serve my whole mission without ever serving with somebody from Utah, which would have been insane, considering the fact that a lot of Mormon's live in Utah, but alas, it was not to be. At any rate, he's a good kid and I've enjoyed serving with him so far. I feel bad for the guy though because he is still so jet lagged and I, obviously, am not, so I think sometimes I kill him with my working speed.

 

Our area has been going pretty good. We've had some good meetings with our friend Andrei, who is 20-something and such a good guy. I really like meeting with him because we are such good friends that it doesn't feel awkward at all to teach or discuss the gospel with him, it just feels like two friends chatting about something important. We've also been meeting a lot recently with Zhenya, who is a way cool guy who is a bassist in a cross-over hard rock band. Me and him have a lot in common and we think nearly the same way, which is really great. Also, we like similar music which gives us a real connection and something to talk about, because we can talk about the real technical aspects of the musical industry. In this situation also, I find it really easy to share our message with him, we even decided one day to show him the Brandon Flowers message on Mormon.org (maybe something a little bit different than usual, but it opened up a great conversation.) I am writing this to tell you that I love when your in a city for a long enough time that the members and non-members become your friends, and the relationship is no longer some awkward teacher-student relationship, but rather the relationship between two friends, one of which being a missionary with a message that can change their lives. Otherwise, we are constantly trying to find new people to meet with and working our hardest. I'm happy right now because for a few weeks it looked like our investigator pool was starting to dry up, but now things are turning back around again.

 

Things in the branch are going pretty well. We continue to work with Vitaliy and help him along. He has been bringing his girlfriend to church and the sister missionaries are teaching her right now. His girlfriend should have a baptismal date pretty soon! Even though I am not teaching her personally, it is rewarding to see that our work with Vitaliy and our friendship with him has payed off in that he trusts us enough to have the missionaries teach his girlfriend. We've also been giving him our old white shirts, ties and belts, and he's started to look rather sharp, like 007, as he says. Otherwise the branch is going well. I decided yesterday that the scriptures should read: "Sunday is a day of rest (unless your a missionary in a small branch in mainland Russia)" because on Sunday I spend my time running around, translating for the senior couples, trying to have at least a small conversation with nearly everybody in the building, going to couples, doing ward finances, explaining scriptures to Brother Kondratev and all sorts of tasks. I am always absolutely exhausted on Sunday! The good thing is that on Sunday we usually go to Larisa, the old crippled ward member who always corrects our Russian, and help her with groceries, bless the sacrament and just help her feel less lonely. Larisa is a great woman with such strong faith, and it is the least we can do for her to be her friends and keep her spiritually uplifted.

 

I am sending pictures today so I apologize that my letter is so short. One thing I would like to note was that the Office Elders, Elder Stegeby and Elder Ayers, were here this weekend. That was a lot of fun since both of them had been in the MTC with me, we all reported on the same day (which seems so long ago) so we all have great stories and things to catch up on.

 

At any rate, have a nice week. Enjoy school all you poor people who have to still study!

 

Live Long and Prosper,

Elder Z. E. Brasier

 Elder Hunt and I in front of the Zanzibar circus sign of absolute creepiness

 Graves at Solochta Monastary

 A beam of light from.. somewhere...

A random guy with a cow

 Elder Hunt, wishing that he recieved mail

Me in the library

My new apartment... haha (just kidding)

 My new apartment, and the Russian squat

 A prosterity pictures: Elder Merrill, Elder Dannenberg (my trainer) and I. I forgot to mention that Elder Dannenberg finished his mission this week. I'm really going to miss seeing him around now.

At the Ryazan stadium as my favorite team scores a goal. Just kidding, nobody else was there, obviously...

  Ryazan Stadium

This cat just chilling on the seats

Vladimir, our member

Valentin, one of our English Club attendees

 Vladimir, with his Pokemon diary, where he keeps all of his important documents

Victor, one of our English Club attendees

Galavanting in the woods

 Ready to put out to sea!

The bus that took us back to Ryazan

 Hot chocolate in McDonalds

Our good friend Lenin in Solochta

 Solochta monastary

Il-76 over Solochta

 

These are all from hiking around in Constantinovo, and I realized that most of these pictures feature me in civilian clothes, but don't worry, these are just P-Day pictures when we were hiking around or doing more atheletic things

 Me being pensive

The Oka River

Naval Adventure awaits!

 To the sea!

 Some crazy Masonic grafitti that I found

Elder Hunt and I on the banks of the Oka

 Me being pensive, once again.

 Il-76 over Solochta

 The same aircraft

Elder Hunt and I in Solochta

 Solochta

 

 

 

 

 

Radiolarians

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well what to say, what to say. This week has gone by pretty normally. Elder Hunt is gearing up to go to Tver and I am getting excited to receive my greenie. On Thursday we'll be going to Moscow to drop Elder Hunt off and so that I can attend the new missionary training meeting. I am pretty excited for that, partly because I get to see a lot of my old friends, like Elder Eliason and Elder Barker who are training, Elder Olsen who has been sitting in Nizhniy for forever and a day and also Elder Stegeby who just received a transfer call to the office (I called him for a little bit of friendly needling, but to my surprise he is incredibly excited to be an office Elder. I must say he has a much better attitude than I did about that transfer.) We will be getting so many new missionaries in our mission over the next few transfers, so the missionary work in this part of the world will be picking up. It is really cool because I can see the Lords hand in how the missions were split and then combined and now the Moscow Mission is taking off. Every missionary and every event of the Moscow West Mission played a critical role in further establishing the stake in Moscow and strengthening the church.

 

In the mean time things here in Ryazan are going along quite well. Right now Elder Hunt and I are trying to emphasize finding and contacting new investigators, since a lot of our old ones have started falling away. This has lead to a plethora of contacting adventures, the least of which being when I contacted a pirate the other day. The man was literally dressed like a pirate, carried a cane, spoke how I imagine a pirate would speak in Russian and also took a Book of Mormon! As I asked him for his number he produced a "business" card with his name and phone number, introducing himself as Adreas von Lepioschkin and garnished with his pirate crest. If I don't end up teaching him I think my mission will be a total failure. Otherwise the contacting is going well and we have found some great people that will be excited to hear the restored gospel.

 

Sasha (the awesome Uzbek who we are teaching English/gospel with) is still doing great. Last night we watched the Joseph Smith movie with him, and the Spirit was so strong in the room, and then Sasha started asking tons of questions about our religion, which was great since we got to explain to him the difference between our religion and other Christian religions. Sasha is amazing, he is so receptive to the Spirit and such a great overall guy. His whole goal in life is to build parks and hospitals for children! Right now he is pretty set on remaining Muslim, but meeting him has really strenghtened my testimony that there are amazing people from all countries, all religions, and all walks of life.

 

Vitaliy is doing great too. He gave us a few letters that we need to forward to Mitt Romney through our contacts with the American embassy here in Russia (we are still working on that....) and has also started to bring his girlfriend to church! It has been so great to see member missionary in action! His girlfriend Angela gave the Sister missionaries her number and they will be meeting with her shortly. I really hope that things work out for them, since Vitaliy is one of our best friends here in Ryazan.

 

Otherwise, the only exciting thing that has happened this week is that we went out to an old monastery in Solotcha, a small town about 30 kilometers outside of Ryazan. In our mission we now have culture nights once every other transfer, and for our culture night, we decided to go out to Solotcha and see what was there. Honestly, it wasn't anything too interesting, just like every other Orthodox monastery/church which I've seen, but the highlights of which were two low level passes of some Il-76 transport planes (of which I got awesome pictures) and an awesome cemetery, which I also loved and took copious amounts of pictures. Next culture night I hope to go to a symphony orchestra.

 

Well, I hope you all have a great week and keep being awesome. Congratulations to Ronald Francis McGhin III and Matt Doxey for finishing their missions! Those guys are awesome!

 

As Always,

Elder Z. E. Brasier

Too Long Till Fall..

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

As my title may have implied I am eagerly looking forward to the fall. It is almost upon us. Right now we are experiencing that delightful time of the year when the seasons experience multiple personality disorder and can't exactly decide what personality they want to commit to. They are like our investigators sometimes, ready to make a change but still holding onto those little habits that are holding them back. At least it's not blazing hot anymore!

 

Today started out eventfully. Our landlords called and decided to do a deep cleaning of our apartment. Of course Elder Hunt and I were a little disappointed about this, so we decided to do it ourselves all morning. So we cleaned, cleaned, cleaned and eventually 10 o'clock rolls around, time for them to come. Well they call and tell us that they are stuck in traffic..... Three hours later they show up. Fortunately we had cleaned likes champs so they didn't stay long but while they were fixing some of our window drapes President Sorenson called with the news of transfers. In an interesting turn of events, Elder Hunt is being transferred to Tver, a city north-west of Moscow on the Volga River (I've been there once, it's a pretty city and has this nice Ferris wheel which Elder Lantukh convinced me that we needed to ride so we had a slow Ferris Wheel ride together overlooking the Volga River. It was really cute...) and I will be receiving a new companion. Not just any new companion, but a greenie, fresh from the MTC! I am really excited. I'm already planning our first meal together (you know, with all the worst Russian foods that take a few months to really get a hang of) and our first P-Day and such. I've also forgot his name already... so that's a good start....

 

Other than that exciting bit of news, this has been a pretty routine week. Just trying to meet with all of our investigators. Since the summer is ending, everybody has decided to take their last minute trips out to The Middle Of Nowhere, Russia or to work an extreme amount of hours before school and real work starts again. Our branch president has left for Bulgaria for three weeks (which has already caused a plethora of problems), our investigator Andrei has been MIA for the last month, and the Sister's lady who was going to get baptized has completely disappeared. On an interesting note, one of our "investigators" Oleg has received permission from the Russian government to start his own religious proselyting organization. Obviously we are meeting less and less with him, but the other night he called us and wanted to plan a "contacting activity" with us where we would hand out Books of Mormon and he would hand out New Testaments. I had to laugh that of all the people who want to assist us in our missionary work the most, it is a non-member. Even our members don't want to help most of the time! Also, Felix is doing good, he is a really great guy, he just is working so often that we are having a really hard time meeting with him. And thus, when our investigator pool starts to thin out, what do we do? We go hit the streets and start calling every phone number we can find in our old area book!

 

I actually had a really cool experience the other day. We were teaching a lady in our branch who has a few problems with her testimony. After pretty much destroying the Sister's during a lesson, we decided to just read the Book of Mormon with her and try to help her build her own testimony that way. We started reading Alma chapter 32 (you know, the really good chapter about faith as a seed) and only got through two verses before she started telling us about some very deep and concerning trials that she had in life. I was shocked that she had opened up to us so much and we were able to have one of the most spiritual lessons that I have had on my mission. After we had finished, we asked her to pray and as she prayed she specifically thanked God for the two missionaries who he had sent to help her out. I really started to choked up. I suddenly realized that I had been in the perfect time and place to help this woman through her issues, and it was a real testimony builder to me that I needed to be her in Ryazan. This has been a challenge my whole mission. I've already learned why I am on a mission, but I've often wondered why exactly I, Zachery Edwin Brasier, needs to be in these cities. We are always told that our personalities and gifts are exactly what people need, but often I feel like somebody else could do the job, if not better. But, on this lesson it was one of those great moments where I realized that for some reason, Elder Hunt and I were needed at that time to help this lady, and it was a really touching and spiritual experience for me, one of the most important I think I've experienced on my mission.

 

Otherwise, I really don't have a whole lot to report. The branch is holding together, we have some problems right now but they'll work out. On the plus side Vitalii is now coming to church again and even bringing his girlfriend! Oh my word! I almost forgot something awesome that happened to me this week. Our investigator Sasha works for this lady whose brother just died. He was a book collector. Sasha told her that he has some friends who like to read, and asked if we could go grab some books, since they would all be thrown away anyways. She agreed and we all went together into an essentially up for grabs library of Russian books. I was blown away! Of course, I looked for rare Soviet books first. I found some Soviet magazines in pretty good condition from 1952, which blew me away. Then I found a Soviet book entitled: "What America is really like." After words I found a treasure trove of Soviet children books, which I made sure to grab because they are incredibly interesting and also much easier to read in Russian, which will be nice after my mission. I found Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Russian as well as some Mayakovskii poetry books. Although I was happy, our member Vladimir (who you saw last week) was in heaven. He entered the building, and exclaimed "I LOVE TO READ!" and emptied three whole shelves of history, classic literature and poetry into a huge box! The man was literally running around in a euphoria of the written word for two hours, scrambling to get anything he could. I had never seen him so excited before! I am super glad that I had that opportunity, because I don't know if I'll have another opportunity again to salvage what I can from a large Russian library, right?

 

Well that is all I have for today. Have a nice week everyone!

 

As Always,

 

Elder Z. E. Brasier

It's Happened Before...

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,
Well this has certainly been a fun week. The problem with this week is that I can't exactly remember if things that I think happened this week actually happened this week or if they actually occurred in the previous week. Honestly this wouldn't be a problem if my journal wasn't so darn non-linear all the time, jumping back in forth between different times and events in a completely random fashion...
I do know that the Zone Leaders came this week, which was quite fun, since I got to work with my good friend Elder Jewkes, who I served with back in the Smolensk days. He's a really good guy and we had a lot of fun. Half of the day was spent on a contacting activity on Victory Square. We recently received a new box of Books of Mormon and so we made a goal to give the whole box out as a district... and we succeeded! For our past few contacting activities we have been running into this 16 year old kid who is incredibly kind and straight forward, but hangs out with a bunch of plastered and high druggies. Every time we see him we want to talk to this kid and invite him to English Club and our activities, but our conversations always get ruined by his friends. Well, this time when we were contacting he ran into us again, but this time with out his druggie friends. In fact, he had been planning to meet them but for some reason they all didn't show up, and thus I got to have a good conversation with him, invite him to English Club and basically get to know him. Honestly, it was a great conversation. Afterwards I was talking about it, and Sister Hawkins (one of our sister missionaries) freaked out! I was shocked that she was so excited about this simple conversation I had had. As I sat there with a quizzical look on my face she explained that that morning she had been praying so that we would meet this 16 year old kid today without any of his druggie friends and thus we would just be able to talk to him. I was absolutely amazed that her prayer had been answered in such an overt and somewhat miraculous way. It really showed me that prayers do get answered.
The next day was VDV Day. VDV is the Russian paratroopers, and Ryazan is the capital of the VDV. The main training school is about 400 meters away from my apartment as a matter of fact. For the past few weeks people have been asking us if we are scared for VDV day. I honestly didn't know it was that big of a deal, but evidently the holiday is well known for violence and terribleness for foreigners. Mostly the problem is the drinking and a main feature of VDV Day is paratroopers attempting to break glass bottles on their own heads (or other peoples heads at times). Thus, we went into spy mode, with no missionary tags and no street contacting all day, for our safety. It was kind of a boring day because we just sat in the branch building and I spent a lot of time playing piano. As I was playing piano I heard a strange roaring sound that sounded a lot like jet engines. I stopped playing and started listening and I realized that it was getting closer and closer and louder and louder. Quickly I sprinted through the branch building, kicked open the door to see the Su-27's of the Russian Air Force Knights fly a few hundred feet overhead! I was blown away, and was even more blown away as they circled around for another low level pass! So yeah, that was pretty exciting, now I can say that I've the seen the Russian Air Force Demonstration Team.
Other than those two things, our week has gone by quite swimmingly. Supposedly this is the last week of summer, so I am just enduring through this last shuttering breathe of the season. By the end of the month fall should be starting, and that is my favorite time in Russia. Our investigators are doing quite well. We've met a ton of people lately and our English Club is getting way awesome. Last time we played a game in conversational group called "Presidential Elections" where one person is pretending to be a politician, and the rest of the class gets to ask him any question, and he has to answer by saying "You are absolutely right.." and then twisting the answer to make him look good. This was probably the funniest game I have ever played on my mission. It was awesome!
Interestingly enough the people we are teaching now fall into three categories: People in rock bands, people not from Russia, and people from Russia who speak English. We have also made a ton of Muslim friends, including Sasha who I've mentioned before and is literally the nicest, most Christ-like person I've ever met in my life. We also found a ton of people from Turkmenistan who just moved to Russia and have been coming to our activities lately. They are way awesome. Last week we started teaching English/Gospel to a guy who plays bass in a rock band, and he liked it so much he is getting his friends interested, so we are spending time with all these 20 year old Russian guys who play in metal bands and have crazy hair and stuff. It really is quite fun. Also Felix came to church yesterday and loved it. It was testimony meeting so whoever wanted to could talk, and at the very end one of our Senior Missionaries got up and bore an awesome testimony, and it really touched Felix's heart. Felix is such a great guy, and is such a great example to me.
Basically that is all that has been going on. I am really loving my life here in Ryazan. The people here are awesome and I'm amazed at all the great people that we have met! Hopefully I'll stay here for awhile!
Well have a great week everybody. Those in warmer climates, remember to hydrate and eat your carrots.

From Russia With Love,
Elder Zachery E. Brasier

Our awesome member Vladimir

 Me cooking (in my sweet USSR t-shirt)

 Elder Hunt and I

  Me+ a tank