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.
Moscow Time
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