Oh! Svefn-g-englar!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well I am afraid that I am a source of a little bit of logistical confusion about transfers and stuff. Last week I mentioned that my companion would be Elder Edwards and that we would be having a miniature two week transfer. The short transfer is due to the change in MTC time for the new Russian missionaries, and thus we will have a two week transfer than a normal six week one, but it will basically be one big eight week transfer. Also, my companion is not Elder Edwards. On Tuesday morning President called me and told me that at the last minute they had to change my transfer scheme and so instead I got Elder Kelly. Elder Kelly is from West Chester, New York; a suburb about 30 minutes outside of New York City so for all intents and purposes he is from NYC. He has been on his mission for about eight months and just came from Yaroslavl, the site of my unfortunate hair cutting accident from last spring. I really like Elder Kelly, we have the same sense of humor and like the same things, even some of the more obscure things that I like. He is majoring in film production and wants to be a film editor, so that is super cool.

This week has been a very interesting one. We had our transfers on Thursday, a formerly crazy investigator seemed to have an epiphany and has now started to like us and one of our sister missionaries has had some serious head trauma that has landed her in the hospital. So it has been a bit of a roller coaster of a week.

Transfer meeting was the last day of many of my mission friends. Elder Eliason and Elder Palmer specifically finished their missions. That was really weird to say goodbye to my friends who I've served with for so long. But I'll be seeing them again, so it wasn't too sad, just really surreal.

On the topic of missionary work, things have been going good. We've hit what I like to term a "Business as Usual Stretch" (if I was cool I would turn it into the acronym BUS, but I've never been that cool, so the idea is wasted.) Basically this means that everything is going well, we have a routine going, people are getting taught, but nothing especially outstanding has occurred, or at least nothing outstanding that warrants a mention in a letter home. I'm alright with these stretches, because the work is going forward and we are really helping people. As I mentioned in our previous paragraph, we had an investigator who was kind of crazy. He contacted us on the street by running up to us and yelling: "JESUS IS GREAT!" We had met with him a few times but it seemed that he just wanted to teach us. Finally we decided to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon with him, specifically 3 Nephi 11 when Christ appears to the people in the Americas. Vladimir (the investigator) loved it and the next day read 20 chapters in the Book of Mormon due to a convenient head cold. Once again the Book of Mormon saves the day! Otherwise, we weren't able to meet with Sasha this week due to his work schedule and we are still waiting for Wu-Tao to come back from China. Hopefully that will be soon.

This week we did spend a lot of time in the hospital visiting our sister missionaries. Sister Isenhour has something wrong with her head that is causing splitting headaches and forcing her to essentially be immobile and her companion Sister Jolley wouldn't leave her side. So we brought them food and other things to try to make the hospital stay a little bit more bearable. I am terrible in hospitals because I find all the technology and terminology so interesting. Sometimes I think I'm not all that comforting! On a hospital trip I also scared the security. Here is what happened:

Since Sister Jolley was sleeping on the floor using rolled up towels as a pillow, we decided to bring her one of our extra ones and some pens, paper and books. Unfortunately I couldn't fit it all in my backpack so I decided to use an Elder Lyons technique and just put everything in the pillow case and just carry the pillow around.

I felt like a fool in the Metro.

When I got to the hospital I hung up my coat and we started toward the elevator when I got stopped by a security guard wanting to know what was in the pillow. I told him: "A pillow... and paper and books." I was told to wait as he called the head security guard! I could overhear him talking and was thinking: "What does he think I'll do? Smother the patients? Use the paper to slice all of their IVs?" After a few minutes the chief of hospital security shows up and the following conversation ensues:

Him: "Whats in the pillow?"

Me: "A Pillow, and some paper and books."

Him: "Why did you bring a pillow into the hospital."

Me (thinking that that was a dumb question): "Well I have a friend who is here sick and her sister (see my play on words there? He didn't realize I was talking about a missionary sister. I was proud of myself for that.) is sleeping on the floor without a pillow, so I'm bringing this to her."

Him: "What is the name of the patient."

Me: "Taylor Isenhour, fifth floor, sixteenth room."

Him: "Who?"

Me: "Taylor Isenhour."

Him: "I don't believe that that person exists."

Me: No comment, I just stood there kind of dumbfounded by this whole situation.

And so this security guard essentially drags me to the front desk and demands that I tell the people there who I am looking for. I tell them. The receptionist, with a sigh, tells the security guard that I had already visited the hospital, Taylor Isenhour exists and that I am just a nice American boy. Huzzah! I am free! and on the way to the elevator I could hear the guard starting to lecture the receptionist about the importance of security. See in Russia things are weird. A train station has no security at all, I walk through the metal detectors with phones, coins, belt buckles and as the metal detector is having a seizure of beeping the police just let me through. Airports are a little more tight with security, but getting into a hospital has always been a huge hastle! Oh inverted world!

Thus is my life. Things are going well. The last two days have been a blizzard essentially. That is terrible. But metaphysically, spiritually, morally, psychologically, and geometrically, life is good.

Ok, I'm done writing.

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier (i.e. The Infamous Pillow Infiltrator, security threat #1 of the European Medical Center).

P.S. I'm still indignant.

What's Left of the Flag!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Because I wasn't able to wish you it on the day that it happened, I am now taking the time to officially wish you a happy Saint Patrick's Day. I hope that you had a day filled with great Irish fun. Also happy Pi day (3/14). I hope that the diameter of your life is always unevenly divided by a circumference of happiness. Ok, enough of that.

The weather here is schizophrenic. Here is what has been happening. Things were good through Tuesday, which caused me to have a heart attack. Wednesday brought the cold, and it snowed from Thursday to Friday. The winter strikes back. Saturday brought a thick fog and we were lost in the cloud, once again. Sunday was nice, and today it snowed. Oh how I wish that the spring would just come. Even though I love the winter, enough is enough.

Our investigators are doing good through all of this. Wu-Tao had to go back to China in order to renew his visa and we tried to find a church branch in his hometown for him to attend. Unfortunately the only branch was an English speaking foreigner branch, which he can't go to due to certain religious laws in place in China right now. He'll be back in a week or two. Then on Saturday we set a baptismal date with our investigator Sasha! He is great and such strong faith, but we found out that he lives in a different area and is zoned for a different ward! No.....

Transfers are soon and I'll be getting a new companion. His name is Elder Edwards. I don't know him at all because he has spent his whole mission (all two transfers of it) in the isolated island of the mission known as Voronezh. The next transfer is a half formed midget of a transfer that will only last for two weeks. Then after that we have a normal six week transfer and than that is it...

This week we had a pretty cool English Club. Our topic was leaders and we had everybody discuss the positive and negative leadership qualities of various world and historical leaders, such as George W. Bush, Elizabeth II, John Lennon, Beckham, Ivan the Terrible, Stalin and many others. I really enjoyed our discussion and I realized that I rather like teaching people about these topics. It is quite fun.

And now it is time for some thoughts from the week. Buckle up.

I don't think that I ever told you about how Sasha found out about the church. A while ago he had a good coworker who he was very close to, who died. After this man's death, Sasha found out that he was Mormon. The man had lived such an inspiring life that Sasha vowed to find out more about the church he had joined. Thus, he found us. I am so thankful for the silent example of a man who without fanfare lived the Christan life that we are all trying to live. His example made a profound influence on Sasha's life, even though at his death, this man probably did not even know it. Once again, this is a testimony to me that we never know how much good the little things we do in life bring about. I am convinced that after we pass to the next sphere, we will only then realize the impact that our life had on the people around us.

Good luck and enjoy this unfortunately holiday deprived week!

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

Tell the Other Phantoms

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

It does not some that long ago that I wrote you, probably because it really wasn't. The unfortunate thing about changing a P-day to the middle of the week is that when you get around to the normal P-day once again, you don't have a whole lot to write, since not a whole lot has happened since then.

Basically the end of this week was business as usual. I went and did my first round of missionary exchanges in Mitishi which is a suburb of Moscow that has a really Japanese sounding name. We have a set of Elders out there, and since it is in my district I get to do splits every transfer. This week I did splits with one of the Elders there, Elder Davis who is a really good guy. He is about a year younger than me on the mission, but we have both been serving in the Sokolniki district for the same amount of time and have become good friends. I enjoyed serving with him in the day, trying to find an inactive member (who actually wasn't inactive, our records were just wrong) and teaching a somewhat crazy guy who just wanted to talk to me about all the "fun" things that you can do in Las Vegas. We still ended up teaching him the Plan of Salvation though. This is something funny in Russia. People here get really really off topic and a lot of time we'll spend 45 minutes to an hour just listening to them talk about everything, since the Russian people are quite friendly and outgoing in close personal settings. Then, even with all the distractions, we still end up teaching a full lesson. No one we hear a lot about learning to take control of the teaching situation.

Lately I've been getting a lot of questions about the influx of missionaries after the mission age change. Basically all that happened to our mission is that our mission compliment increased by about 20-30 missionaries. Over the next few months (until July 1st, when President Sorenson goes home) we will be loosing around 35 of our old seasoned missionaries and getting them replaced by almost 50 new missionaries. So, the biggest change that is happening is that our mission is going to become a very young mission. A year ago almost every outer city had only two missionaries in them, but now all have between 4 and 18 (the biggest being Nizhniy Novgorod. I remember when we only had 10 missionaries there!) Our mission is just getting bigger.

The civil war between the spring and winter is continuing going along. Usually I like the winter but this year I can't wait for the spring to come. I am actually pretty happy right now and I can't pinpoint exactly why. Maybe it is the prospect of an exciting future, a great companion or the advent of spring. I think it might be because the coming of spring is my favorite time to think and reflect and ask important questions: Who is Russia? Why is Lenin? Where are the Elders of yesteryear? People are out on the streets more and we contact amidst scores of couples finally unleashed on the world with the perpetually concerned girlfriends clutching newly wilting flowers gifted to them for the celebration of International Women's Day. It is much better for us when everybody is out on the streets.

And thus spring is coming. I hope it comes sooner than later, for I am ready to thaw out!

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

Mr. Blue Sky?

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

T.S. Eliot once wrote that April is the cruelest month, but I am starting to think that he really meant that March was the cruelest month. Here in Russia, March is the month of the change of the weather, which means that on one day the weather is above freezing and the sun is shining, then the next day we'll hit -10 C with snow. Last Monday we had a great P-day. We pretty much gallivant about Moscow enjoying the nice weather and taking lots of pictures in the center of the city. Then, two days later, Moscow had a snow storm. Basically we are just waiting for the weather to decided when it wants to turn to the spring.

 

This week we decided as a district to take our P-day on Wednesday so we could see the famous Tretyakovskii art gallery. That is why I didn't write on Monday. I hope that that didn't cause any undue concern. I did not get hit my a meteor.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot to write about the last week. We had a really great conference with Elder Randall K. Bennett the Second Quorum of the Seventy. It was very much like the conference that we had last year when he announced that the mission was being split and that we would be in the Moscow mission. Really, I'm having a hard time believing that that was a year ago that I was in Smolensk with Elder Jewkes, it really seems like it was only a few months ago. But, the conference was good, it got everybody fired up for missionary work and gave Elder Stegaby and I a lot of ideas that we have implemented in order to become more effective missionaries.

 

The rest of the week was good. We had quite a few lessons and we have some great investigators, just nothing really spectacularly out of the ordinary occurred.

 

We met with Sasha on Saturday. He is doing super great. He actually had quite a few questions about temples, which usually puts us on edge, since most of the anti-Mormon tracts seem to focus on our temples, and it is usually a sensitive subject for our investigators. But we explained what the temples are for and why they are important to us and he really liked it. At the end of our lesson he said that he could see a light in our eyes when we talked about our temples, and he feels like that the doctrine of them is true. Sasha is doing super good.

 

Wu-Tao is wanting to meet with us more and more frequently now. Often he tells us that he is praying and reading the Book of Mormon and has a bunch of really good questions. I can really see his understanding of the gospel grow, and especially his testimony of Jesus Christ. It has been really exciting to see his opinion of Jesus Christ change from somebody that the Christians talk about to a really powerful man and teacher and now to his Saviour. Also, Wu-Tao's English is getting a lot better, which is good since Mike can only come and translate for half of our lessons nowadays. A funny thing though is that Wu-Tao can't really pronounce faith. He says fish instead. Thus, we asked him to read Alma chapter 32 and the next meeting he said that he really liked the chapter because: "My fish is a seed.. and it can grow to a tree... I can have strong fish." Yeah, that took us a few seconds to figure out. Now, Elder Stegaby and I usually just say fish when we mean faith when we talk to each other and the other day I told him (quoting Star Wars): "I find your lack of fish disturbing." Oh, good times..

 

Otherwise, I have nothing new to report. Things are going really well right now and as always I am happy to be here in Russia.

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

 

PS- The other day I was thinking about the difference between English and Russian, and it made me laugh to think that when I write that I said something, you probably end up imagining me saying it in English. And so when I say that we bore testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith we obviously don't say: "I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God..." we say: "Ya zhayu shto Dzhosef Smit byl prorokom Boga..." I don't know, I was just thinking about that and laughed to myself. Russian is a cool language.