Four Winds Leveling The Pines

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well another week has passed. Another sunny week strangely enough. The sun has been shining nearly all weak and today is a balmy 0 degrees Celsius. That means that the sun is starting to melt the snow, which also means that a winters worth of liter has been finally exposed to the sunlight. The street crews need to get to that sometime soon. But, it seems as though the winter is on its downward spiral. I'm knocking on wood right now to make sure that I'm not cursing myself in anyway.

So missionary work.. how is it? Good. This week we had two lessons with Wu-tao. Unfortunately Mike couldn't come to translate for us. Google Translate go! Google worked pretty well for us, even though some cynical people might think that Google doesn't translate well, it sure speaks better Chinese than I do! Our lessons went well. We talked about eternal families and showed him a ton of pictures of temples. He loved the temples, and literally snatched our iPod out of our hands when he saw a picture of the Washington DC temple. According to Wu-tao (and this will make my parents happy) this is the most beautiful of all the temples. Thus, things are going great with him. We are just waiting for his wife to come back from China until we set a date with him.

Our other investigators are doing great too. We are teaching a man named Sasha who is a super humble guy who is also spiritually minded. On our first meeting he told us that he believes that Joseph Smith was the prophet for our day and that the Book of Mormon is revelation in our times. Yeah, we really like to hear things like that. He still has some concerns, but he really is doing very well, and even came to church!

This week I also became part of what seemed to me to be a spy story. On Tuesday, a man from Smolensk came into our central meeting building asking to see missionaries. Since I was the only one in close proximity who had served in Smolensk I got called in. The man tells us quite the story, which I clandestinely took notes of, and asks us for quite the sum of money to get him on his feet. We could not do anything about this, since we are as poor as the next person so I called a member of our ward bishopric. He calls us back in a few minutes and gives us the number of an American named Grand. I call the number, explain the situation, and he tells me to tell our Smolensk friend to meet him at a certain metro stop at a certain time. I definitely felt like I was in a spy story. Then a few days later, Grand calls us and tells us that if this man from Smolensk tries to call us ever again, we shouldn't speak with him. Rather we should refer the Smolensk man to Grand, and he'll take care of it. Only later did I find out that Grand had a stake calling to deal with these situations, but nonetheless, I felt like I was in a spy story.

I recently wrote a letter to a friend where I listed every single nationality that I have met on my mission, and was really amazed at all the different people I have met. I've come to realize that the gospel doesn't really care about borders. It is jumping over fences and crossing property lines to get to all the Earth. We are teaching a Chinese man. We can not legally preach in his country, yet he is learning about the gospel in his native tongue. Truly the Lord has set his hand to gather his elect from the four corners of the Earth. I am always grateful, yet at times overwhelmed to realize that the Lord has called me to participate in this great and final gathering. I am truly blessed to see the prophesies of God unfold before my eyes.

Well, that is all I have to write today. I hope you all have a great week.

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

P.S. In an unexpected turn of events, my MTC teacher, Jared Porter is now in Moscow with his expecting wife teaching English. I kind of tripped out when I first saw him, now I see him quite frequently.