E-Mail We Received Today!

We received the following e-mail today:

We, the area doctor and area mental health advisers enjoy having our district 

here in our home for district meeting. He makes great pizza. 

Sister Sond

Me: Thank you! He hasn't been able to send me pictures since he has been in Moscow! This made my day!!!! At least I know I taught him one thing!!!!

 

You taught him many good things. It is amazing to see 6 male teenagers around the table along with 2 21 year old sisters and the senior couple. They all act like adolescents. Then they move into the living room for their district meeting and they become the next world’s leaders. And your son has it organized and assigned. Quite a young man he is.

You have bragging rights,

Sister Sonda.

 

 

 

 

Why is the night so long?

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Today I woke up to a full moon. It blew my mind how bright the moon was this morning and because it doesn't get light until ten o'clock I was able to observe it for such a long time. I took some sweet pictures, but I can't figure out where the SD card port is on this computer so I won't be able to send them to you. Sorry.

 

This week has been kind of a business as usual week. The area has really started to move forward. We are developing a pretty steady pool of investigators that seem to be coming out of nowhere. This is a huge blessing because street contacting is notoriously difficult in the winter and since tracting is illegal in Moscow, we don't really have that option for finding people. Overall though, I can't complain, since things seem to be going really well and looking up.

 

We had three really cool experiences on lessons this week. Maybe they won't seem that cool to everybody else, since really they are small and simple, but I've learned on my mission that these small experiences usually turn into great spiritual moments.

 

U-tau: We were able to teach U-tau this week with the help of Mike from Taiwan. It was super cool to hear them both speak in Chinese to each other, but also a little bit intimidating because I could not understand a single thing, although I start understanding words like repentance, baptism and Holy Ghost. Teaching was kind of funny because sometimes U-tau and Mike would just talk to each other about a principle for five to ten minutes and I would just be sitting there thinking: "What are they talking about?" Then Mike would say to me in English: "He had a question and I resolved it" and then move on. I trust him but it was really awkward having no idea what my investigators concerns were. I guess I should learn some more Chinese!

 

Anton: I hope you all remember Anton, who looks like Harry Potter. We had a really good lesson with him this week. Lately his problem has been that he doesn't really understand why he should read the Book of Mormon. We planned to teach him a little bit about our purpose of life and such, and when we found out he hadn't been reading, we decided to read with him. So we read Alma 34 with him. After we got done he just sat there thinking, and silence ensued. Earlier in my mission I would have just jumped in and started expounding doctrine, but now I have come to realize that silence is a good thing. After a couple of minutes sitting there, he started asking super profound and thought provoking questions. It was an amazing lesson, and we cleared up a ton of his concerns, and we even got him to pray at the end! It was such a great experience that taught me the importance of patience and letting our investigators ponder.

 

Leonid: I don't know if you remember Leonid. He had a baptismal date at the beginning of December, but things didn't go through. One of our big problems is that he never came to church. Well this Sunday, near the end of the meeting Leonid strolls into the building, and I don't even think we called him! He stayed the whole three hours and at the end of Sunday school even offered the closing prayer. We asked him why he felt the need to pray and he said: "I felt the Holy Ghost, and when I feel that, I know that I should offer a prayer." That was amazing! Hopefully we'll see some progress with him in the near future.

 

So yeah, the work is progressing. I'm excited for what we'll see in the future, and I'm hoping to see more success and miracles!

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

Chinese Translation

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

It feels like only a little bit ago that I was able to write you. Since Wednesday the sickness came back again and I was done until Saturday. This time the mission doctor officially grounded me. I was at our church building waiting for a lesson and slowly dying, when he saw me there. He was not too happy that I was out trying my hardest to struggle through lessons while still sick, so he used his powers to ground me. In a bit of frustrated humor he exclaimed: "Missionaries are the hardest to deal with!! They never want to worry about themselves!"

 

Now, I'm all better now. Officially. However, because of the fact that most of the remainder of the week was spent at home in bed, I have very little to write, so I'll write about probably the most interesting thing that happened to me during this week.

 

The sisters for a while have been teaching a Chinese couple. The wife, Zhunzhun (and my Chinese name spelling is approximate so forgive me Mandarin speakers) has been taking the lessons from the missionaries for some time and has wanted to be baptized, she just wanted to be married first. Last year she got married, so the sisters were able to get a hold of her and start teaching her and her husband U-tau, who is also Chinese. Zhunzhun had to go back to China for a while so U-tau is pretty much just stuck here in Russia without his wife, and sisters obviously can't teach him because sisters don't teach men.. And thus we step in! In the end of March U-tau also goes to China for a little bit and so we will be teaching him and keeping him on track till then.

 

I am personally super excited about this. U-tau is so cool. Unfortunately he doesn't speak Russian and barely speaks English. I don't speak Chinese, so our conversations involve lots of sign language and drawing. But, I feel like we have already become good friends and I'm super excited to spend time trying to help him learn the gospel. We will be employing a Taiwanese member to provide some Chinese translation services.

 

I think that is about all that I have today. Sorry it was relatively boring and not that interesting. Next week should be much more interesting.

 

As always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

In A Deep Deep Sleep

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well friends, sorry I didn't write on Monday. Truth be told I picked up some sort of intestinal virus that knocked me out for a few days, so today was the first day that I have been able to leave my apartment. Don't worry though, I'm perfectly fine, just a passing thing really. I'm just excited to finally be able to eat again. At any rate, being sick on the mission isn't nearly as fun as being sick at home. No movies to watch (besides church released videos and Preach My Gospel training DVDs [which all recently Returned Missionaries probably remember, especially for their groundbreaking quotes such as: "If you don't understand the Area Book.... you don't understand the Atonement of Jesus Christ". Thanks Preach My Gospel....]) and not a whole lot of musical options as well. Sleeping was nice though... kind of.... Anyways, I'm back in action.

This past week and a half have been pretty exciting. On Thursday I went to Riga, Latvia for my final visa trip. They finally gave me a 3 year multiple re-entry humanitarian visa, which to me sounds like a cross between a legal document and something that NASA developed during the Cold War. I was honestly kind of tripping out to be on my final visa trip. And then when I get back to the office President Sorenson jokingly calls me one of the old, soon to die missionaries. Thanks President...

Our visa trip this time was pretty uneventful. Our plane got delayed due to weather. Then we sat on it for an hour waiting for them to die-ice the wings with what looked like cream of tomato soup. But before that, Elder Eliason and I made a goal to explore the extent of the airport. We ate at a great Latvian restaurant that was serving a fruit drink from heaven, found my favorite Norwegian salted black licorices, a book about existentialism making the case that existentialism and religion can work together, a pizza place that had a passport control booth guarding the entrance, and a 400 Euro John Lennon special edition fountain pen. These were indeed good times, and I looked out my window a little wistfully to be leaving Riga behind for what will probably be the last time.

On the missionary work side of things this week was pretty good. We taught the most amount of lessons that Elder Steele and I have taught together during our time together and had a ton of people at church. I had to play piano because the pianist got sick (I have about 3 hymns I can play without practice, and they have gotten really good use on my mission). This week we also had the privilege of teaching two great new investigators: Anton, who has an uncanny resemblance to Harry Potter and grasped the Great Apostasy shockingly well; and Wahid, this really cool guy from Pakistan who found our website and requested a lesson with the missionaries. We gave him a Book of Mormon (and he gave us a Koran as a present) and we had a great discussion. He even wants us to come over to his house and meet his young family. While we were talking he told us that his brothers and sisters are spread out all over the globe and his sister met our missionaries in Los Angeles. She was very complementary of us and told Wahid that we are humble, honest people who genuinely want to do good. I think that her analysis really helped comfort Wahid and we had a great discussion. I mention this because I highly doubt that those missionaries in America realized that their demeanor and I assume general spirituality and Christlike example was able to influence to course of a lesson half the world away. It just is a testimony to me that our actions on the mission have such a wide spread effect that we often never know the extent of our effect for good in this life.

Well that is about all I've got. I'm hoping to feel 100% in the very near future. Until next week, live long and prosper.

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

PS- OK grammar Nazis, tell me if I used the semi-colon correctly in paragraph 4! I'm trying to integrate it more into my writing, although Kurt Vonnegut will be rolling in his grave.

Merry Christmas From Zach!

We got this in the mail today!

 

Dear Family,

 

This is my Christmas card!!!  We took it in front of the biggest Christmas tree we could find.  Also my eyes are closed and I look like a borderline mentally ......gopher:  My bad.

 

Anyways, I hope this card arrives in time for Christmas, or at least Orthodox Christmas. If not, blame the Russian mail.

 

I love Christmas because it is the time to think about our Savior and emulate him by serving others. It is suck a great time of year!

 

Have a Great Christmas!

Elder Brasier



In Review

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

In all honesty not a lot happened this week. Just one of those weeks I guess! The only big interesting thing that happened was the Mission Christmas Party, which was a lot of fun, especially to see all of my old friends from the various and diverse cities of my mission. Otherwise, we are basically just doing our business as usual, and waiting for the post-New Years break from work ends.

 

Due to the lack of interesting news, I have decided to spend a little bit of time explaining exactly what is going on in Sokolniki these days. I realize that in my previous e-mails I have been focusing less on actual concrete details on more on thoughts and ideas. Thus, I'll tell you some concrete details.

 

Sokolniki is now the biggest district in our mission. We have my companionship, a companionship of sisters, a companionship of Elders in a suburb of Moscow called Mitishi and recently we recieved Elder Olsen and Elder Jewkes who reopened another area in our boundaries. I was way excited to have Elder Jewkes and Elder Olsen in my district, since those are two of my favorite people in the mission. It is weird however because they are my previous Zone Leaders and I can't quite get used to getting statistics from them. It just feels backwards. Basically, the Sokolniki branch has become inundated with missionaries.

 

We have a pretty big ward here (sorry if I use branch and ward interchangeably, them essentially mean the same thing and I can't really get used to the difference). It has been challenging for me to be in a big ward because I don't know all of the members, where as in Smolensk and Ryazan, I new everybody who came to church and most of the inactives. In Sokolniki we do have young single adults, and it has been fun to talk to Russian members who are my own age once again, especially the RM's who are awesome.

 

Another big change is the presence of a stake. The stake president, President Yakov Boiko is in his mid-30's and is way cool. He loves the missionaries and will often invite us to have lunch with him or to just share a spiritual message. It is really cool to see a stake here in Russia and be under stake leadership.

 

The work here in Moscow is quite a bit different. First of all we have the Metro to contact on. Sometimes we just ride the Metro for an hour or two and talk to everybody we can on the train. Also, it is a little harder to get lessons because everybody seems so busy. There is much more energy in Moscow and just overall a different feeling of business and high paced life. Also, we do a lot of contacting activities with other districts, since there are about 40 missionaries in Moscow proper. This has been fun since I get to see a lot the other missionaries often.

 

Right now we have some pretty good investigators. We have this one guy named Sergei whose brother in law is in the stake presidency. Sergei has been coming to the church for years and for all intents and purposes is a member. On Sunday we had a great lesson with him. We were able to openly and spiritually talk about his concerns with baptisms and clear up some misconceptions that he has had. We are hoping to give him a baptismal date shortly. Our other good investigator is Lay, from Haiti who I already talked about. He'll be progressing as soon as we can convince him to leave his apartment and brave the cold to meet with us and come to church.

 

Well I hope that answers some questions. To end, I want to share a super cool story. Our Gospel Foundations Sunday School teacher is a formal fighter pilot. He was a Colonel and commanded a frontline MiG-23 fighter squadron tasked with nuking a certain airbase if the Cold War ever got hot. A few years ago, he met a certain Elder Oaks, or the Quorum of the Seventy (not the apostle Elder Oaks). After some chatting they realized that our Sunday School teacher's target was the airbase that Elder Oaks was commanding during the Cold War. After this somewhat shocking revelation, Elder Oaks jokingly said: "It doesn't matter that we were your target, you wouldn't have gotten through." Our teacher (and he always ominously chuckles when he relates the story) responded: "You didn't know us... I would have gotten through, I know I would have!" I really like that story to show that history, nationality, culture is not important, what is important is that all us members are striving to live the gospel and return to God. Enemies once, but brothers forever.

 

I hope you all have a great week! Live long and prosper!

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

So this is the New Year!?

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well I am writing you on the first day of 2013 from an internet cafe in the middle of Moscow and I think that somebody spilt Coca-Cola on this keyboard because my fingers are sticking to the keys!

 

The week leading up to New Years was pretty low key. Most people weren't able to meet because they had a lot of things to do or were planning to spend a lot of time going and hanging out with their families. Thus we did a ton of singing contacting, nearly everyday actually, and got a lot of good contacts that will help us rebuild our somewhat struggling investigator pool. I'm excited to kind of restart our investigator pool and get some new life in the area, since it has been not struggling so to speak, but has been stagnating.

 

New Years was a lot of fun. Our whole district and some other Elder's went over to Elder Olsen and Elder Jewkes's apartment in order to stay safe and have a good time. Since it was New Years we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at Chili's. We of course ordered pizza, bought lots of chips and soda (specifically kvass and tarkhun, two Russian drinks). It was a great time. Our mission president authorized us to watch some Babylonian Disney movies, and I was quite pleased to watch The Incredibles with everybody. The actual New Year rolled around and we had a pretty good view of the city and the fireworks, even though the city was rather foggy and it was pretty hard to see far. Nonetheless we could see the clouds light up with explosions. In Russia, they don't really have a giant sponsored fireworks show like on the Las Vegas Strip, but people make up for it by lighting off their own fireworks. It is pretty exciting because the commercial fireworks don't really attain a high altitude so they explode about level with the buildings. Overall though, it was a pretty chill uneventful night, and I really enjoyed it.

 

In many ways I can't believe that it is already 2013. It always takes me a little bit to get used to a new year. I can't believe that 2012 is already past and that I spent the whole year on my mission! Anyways, 2013 is going to be a pretty interesting year for me and I was glad to welcome it.

 

One of my favorite talks that a general authority has given is "Remember Lot's Wife" by Jeffrey R. Holland. I was really struck by some of his remarks about a new year and not looking back with a desire to live in the past. The past is of course meant to be learned from but not lived in, and I'm going to try this year to really apply that principle, and focus even more on the now and the future, and let the past be the past. Like we read in Genesis 19:17 "look not behind thee". I plan to do this during this year and I'm excited to see what this year brings.

 

Everybody have a great week! Live long and prosper!

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier