Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,
First things first. The weather. I can't get the hang of the weather. It has been off and on snowing for the past week and today we are getting a pretty heavy rainstorm. I will be excited for the spring once it comes. In the meantime, the streets of Russia and becoming inudated with water, since the country hasn't really developed an incredibly effective way of draining the water, mostly because usually the soil absorbs it all. But for now, we have to deal with the puddles. Now I understand why both Napoleon and Hitler had a hard time in this country. The weather is less than ideal for prolonged military campaigns!
The week was, in all honestly, not too promising. We have lost contact with both Wu-Tao and Sasha. We know that Wu-Tao will be back eventually (he is enrolled in a university here, you can't just leave that on a whim) but Sasha's disappearance has been troubling, especially because he has a baptismal date! Hopefully he'll show up once again. Other than those two, we met with Vladimir (the man who had his Book of Mormon epiphany) a few other investigators, but mostly our investigators were too busy to meet with us, for varying reasons; hospital trips, work, and in one case a cabin that burnt down. Oh well, there is always next week.
Other than that, I don't have a whole lot to write this week. Transfer calls came in and it looks like Elder Kelly and I will be staying together for the rest of the the next transfer, barring any unforeseen circumstances. I am pretty excited about that because Elder Kelly is awesome and we have really enjoyed working with each other thus far.
A few days ago we were teaching Vladimir and I had one of those moments when you realize how crazy it is to be on a mission. He had some questions about something he read in the Book of Mormon and it involved the Plan of Salvation, so I briefly explained the related doctrine but it was obvious that he didn't really understand. We had only about 15 minutes left before we had to get to another appointment, so I ended up explaining the whole Plan of Salvation in that time. He loved it and said that it was a huge revelation in his life, but wanted to check in the Bible if the doctrine was written there, so I showed him some Biblical verses really quickly and we left. Afterwards I was thinking about the lesson and realized how crazy that was. I had explained in less than 15 minutes, in understandable Russian, to a 60 year old man who lived under the Soviet Union and with Biblical backup the plan of God for him. I could not have even imagined doing that even a year ago, much less a little more than two years ago before I even started my mission. I realized how blessed I have been that God has helped me gain the ability to teach his gospel and help these people. I have truly been blessed.
Well, I just realized that this weekend was Easter in America. We have Easter here in a few weeks, because we use a different calender. I'll write more about it then. Also, as a note, I heard recently that this has been the longest, on average coldest and wettest winter in Russia for the past 130 years. Yep, we're pretty hard core here.
Well, live long and prosper,
As Always,
Elder Zachery E. Brasier
Moscow Time
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