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
Moscow Time
Zach is such a great missionary! I love to read his letters.
ReplyDelete