Pictures!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Unfortunately I have a lot of things to get done today and not a lot of time to do them! Also really not much has happened since I last wrote so I will just write some full letters next Monday. I am sorry for the inconvenience that this might cause you in having to wait a few extra days, but in order to make this up to you, I will send pictures!

Me, using an old telephone.

Me, about to turn off the power for a whole factory floor at the Doll Factory!

A Factory Floor at the Doll Factory.

The Dining Room of My Apartment.

A gigantic spoon (my hand is inside of the spoon, for scale)

MOTHER RUSSIA!

 The Russian National Crest

Sochi 2014 Olympics!

The Family of our young branch President, President Borodin (top row, third from the left)

Paranoia!!!

 "Ploshet Gopkova" (Gorky Square) at night

 Sketchy apartment!

Elder Olsen and I, piloting a hover craft

Elder Olsen and I, piloting a jet car

Me, in a tank

Elder Olsen, in said tank

Elder Olsen, in what I call "Forward to Victory" or "Epitome of Epic"

Statue of Maxim Gorky, hero of Nizhny Novgorod

 There is an active street artist in Upper Nizhny who paints one-eyed sheep. This is one of his pieces

Elder Bressler, Anna, Zhenya, and Elder Olsen at Thanksgiving

Me and Victor at Thanksgiving with the Branch

Intense High Five at the English Club Elder Olsen and I taught

The Zone. On the Left of the Car, front row (left to right): Sister Owens, Sister Cianflone, Sister Frankom. Back Row: Sister Gay, Elder Gay, Elder Foutz, Sister Foutz, Elder Kvasnitsky, Right Side of the Car: From front to back: Sister Talakh, Elder Bressler, Me, Elder Olsen

Elder Olsen, Me, Elder Bressler, Elder Kvasnitsky

Me and Elder Olsen on the "Night Warren" (the car that the KGB used during the Soviet Era)

Same Car, more mysterious pose.

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Before I forget I must tell you some very important news. Our P-Day is changing to Monday now. That means this following Monday will be a P-Day for me and then after that no more P-Day's on Thursday. This is very important to know, since new posts should be going up on Monday and any e-mails that are sent to me need to be sent before Monday (from my point of view.)

Ok so now that the logistics are over I can talk about my week. I must be honest with you, this has been a rough week. Our baptismal date with Olga will have to be moved back since she is having the hardest time making it to church on Sunday and if she doesn't come to church two more times over the next two weeks we are going to have to keep moving the date back, which is quite unfortunate because we were hoping to have her baptized by the end of the year, and it is looking increasingly less likely that this will happen. Also one of our promising investigators dropped off the face of the Earth, another decided that she doesn't want to meet with us as much because she doesn't like Elder Kvasnitsky and a ton of other problems have been occurring.

On a more positive and interesting note, transfer calls came in today. It looks like I will be staying in Nizhny Novgorod for at least another six weeks and I will be receiving a new companion, Elder Melor. Once he is my companion I will have officially served with every possible nationality at this time: Russian, German, Swede, Ukranian and finally American with Elder Melor. I am excited to serve with him especially because he is a hard worker so we are really going to be able to progress our current investigators and find new ones. An unfortunate side-effect of the transfer though is that Elder Olsen is leaving to Tula, which is quite unfortunate since I really enjoyed having him around in Nizhny Novgorod. I am hoping that I will be able to serve with him sometime down the road, or at least be in the same city again.

Christmas is in swing her in Russia, which actually isn't that different from the rest of the year. For Russians Christmas is a secondary holiday to the New Years, so they don't go all out like the Americans do and make everything Christmas themed and such, but on New Years I hear that they go nuts. So I'm excited for that. It is just weird for me to not have everybody get excited for Christmas and see a bunch of Christmas lights and such. Interestingly enough though, I think in a way this is good, because with out all the commercial and outwardly ornate parts of Christmas I have been able to truly focus on the meaning of the holiday, that is the birth of Jesus Christ.

I really don't have much more exciting things to tell you right now. Today we went to the GAZ car factory in Nizhny, which was set up by Henry Ford during the 1920's to manufacture knock-off Model A cars in Russia. GAZ is now one of the major car factories in Russia so we got to see their whole history and toured a huge show room with a ton of Russian cars in it, which was awesome. In the very back of the show room that had a big GAZ Armored Personnel Carrier, which was open and you can look inside. Being missionaries, we of course wanted to climb inside this APC, but we weren't quite sure if it was allowed. So we just waited until nobody was around and then Elder Olsen, Sister Cianflone and I took an internal tour of a Russian APC. I got some sweet pictures of us sticking out of the hatches and just pretty much being dumb 19-20 year olds in a tank. Also, we learned all about the car that the KGB drove in the old Soviet times, known colloquially as the "Night Warren" and always painted black. Yes, this was a quite ominous car.

Well I'll probably be writing again on Monday, but I'm not too sure. So everybody have a great week and enjoy the Christmas season!

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Thanksgiving And Other Fun Things!

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well this has been a busy and somewhat exhausting week! We have had two Thanksgiving Dinners, a two day Zone Conference and a lot of lessons and all sorts of other missionary work.

On Friday we celebrated Thanksgiving the first time. What we decided to do as a Zone is have a big American-style dinner at one of the Senior Missionary Couple's house and each companionship would have to invite one investigator or else they could not come. So of course I made an effort to find somebody to come, and ended up inviting one of our investigators Viktor who is a great friend, loves America and also 60's Rock, so we talk all the time about classic rock bands. It was a quite nice Thanksgiving dinner, I prepared carrots and corns and we had a huge attendance that night! We got to spend a lot of time talking to our investigators and having a great time as friends. I was really happy to see that the Sister missionaries brought a girl named Anna to the dinner. Dannenberg and I had contacted her aunt Elza and invited her to the German Club we were running, and when Elza came, Anna came too. Not much ever came of Elza since she is so busy, but Anna is a great investigator and is really interested in the gospel. I also enjoy talking to her about medicine since she is studying to become a doctor and speaks English, so I spent a good portion of my Thanksgiving talking about the endocrine and lymphatic systems of the human body. It is crazy how that one contact that I got months ago turned into nothing but opened the pathway for somebody else to know the gospel.

The next night we had the branch Thanksgiving party, which was fun, although not nearly as delicious. Viktor came to that party too since I think Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday now. Also President Woolley was in Nizhny at the time and came to the party. And thus, I had two Thanksgiving's in a row and spent a lot of time talking about what I was thankful for, so I am very comfortable now talking about blessings in Russian.

President was scheduled to be in Nizhny from Saturday until Tuesday, which meant the Assistants to the President where also in town. I was excited because on Saturday I was able to work with Elder Hassbuilan, who is a really funny guy from Rostov-au-Daru, which is a city in Southern Russia. Then on Sunday I had to translate for President which was tough because I had to translate a meeting about preparing branch histories, a topic I had never studied in Russian. Somehow I was able to effectively translate (probably with some divine help) but I was completely wiped out for the rest of Sunday. For the next two days we had training meetings, which I don't really like because I just don't really like meetings in general, and I'd much rather be out on the streets than in a two day long meeting. At any rate, I ate some good food and Elder Olsen and I developed some pretty good jokes out of the meetings. Then to finish off a busy week, today we went to a factory that makes Russian nesting dolls and other Russian traditional wood work. I will have to send some pictures to you possibly next week. An unexpected source of entertainment was all of the old style Soviet machinery and electrical equipment, so I have a lot of pictures of Elder Olsen and I pretending to flip huge electrical switches and levers (secretly). I was also able to purchase a sweet Russian traditional plate that I was very pleased with. It might be my first non-Cold War related purchase of souvenir in Russia.

In other news, our investigators are doing decently. Olga is preparing herself for her baptism on December 17th which is so close that we have been frantically trying to teach her and get her to come to church more often. I am really hoping that things go well for her and her family will not keep her from being a great church member! And of course we have found some promising new investigators and continue to work with our old investigators, but Olga has been the forefront of my thoughts lately.

And also, check out this article on LDS news! I don't know how many of you have seen this but our zone is now famous for a contacting activity we did in October. Read all about it (even though my name has been terrible butchered)! http://lds.org/church/news/unique-missionary-approach-prompts-questions-for-god-in-russia?lang=eng

Well my friends, keep up the great work. As the Russian's say "Продолждай!"

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

PS- Thanks for the mail that you have been sending. I am replying as fast as I can, and I know for sure that there are letters in the mail, the mail is just slow. Specifically, Taylor Jensen, I have gotten all three letters, yours is en route. Rachel and Anne Marie, yours are also en route.

PIctures!!!!

Me and Dannenberg right before transfers.

Me and Dannenberg being Russian Generals

No comment

Defend the Motherland RISK!

 Tracting

USSR bar!

Statue of Maxim Gorky, founder of Nizhny

Protoslavnic church

Elder Olsen as the T-1000 (Halloween)

African Night

Food at African Night

District Meeting, Me, Elder Olsen, Elder Dannenberg

District Meeting Dinner

Me as Harry Potter- Halloween

Me, Dannenberg, Joseph and Kenneth

Happy Thanksgiving From Russia

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Happy Thanksgiving to all my good friends and family members in America. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and I hope you remember then sacrifice that the noble turkeys have made for you. If they hadn't given their lives for the cause of Thanksgiving, you would not have a delicious meal. I propose a moment of silence for the Turkey's..... alright, moment over moving on.

It was weird for me to wake up today and realize that it is Thanksgiving and I am not celebrating it until tomorrow. Who would have guessed a year ago that I would be waking up on Thanksgiving morning in a small apartment in Nizhny Novgorod and the I wouldn't be celebrating the holiday until tomorrow with a bunch of Russians. Crazy right? It will also be weird to not be eating turkey on Thanksgiving. Unfortunately we were not able to locate an adequate supply of turkey so we have had to substitute chicken instead of turkey. I guess we just have to make the best out of what we have. So today I am actually not with Kvasnitsky. He is in the city of Kaluga with Elder Bressler baptizing one of his old investigators. That means that today I am hanging out with Elder Olsen, which has been awesome. Elder Olsen is a champ and we have been having quite a bit of fun so far. Next P-Day we are going to that nesting doll factory so I guess it is two awesome P-Day's in a row.

Speaking of baptisms, we challenged our investigator Olga to get baptized! It was a crazy lesson because we did it at her home and her whole family is very against the church, so they kept interrupting and trying to get us to drink black tea and just being really distracting. I thought that it was almost like the forces against us were conspiring to make the lesson go badly. Things were disorganized and our plan for the lesson had been completely destroyed. But then, we started talking about baptism and I could tell that Olga was very interested in baptism and what it means, since she had read a little bit about it in a pamphlet we gave her. So at the end I just felt like I should go for it and started to give her the commitment to be baptized. I think that I spoke in the best Russian I had my whole mission and she accepted an invitation to be baptized December 17th. She is going to need a lot of work, but I know that she can do it. One thing that a lot of missionaries have a problem with is that they never have enough faith in their investigators. My rule is, how can we ask our investigators to have faith in the gospel and Jesus Christ if we aren't willing to have faith in them? That same day, a man walked into our English Club who had read the Book of Mormon three times and had prayed about it and knows that it is true and Joseph Smith was a prophet. We are probably going to challenge him to baptism as well.

It has been getting quite frigid here in Nizhny Novgorod. Today it was -10 degrees C in the morning and last night it was around -12. The winter has officially come and will probably get colder. I have developed a system of coldness and how much clothes I need. Right now I am at level 3 (Extremities frozen and body comfortably chilled). I still have four more levels of clothes combinations I can use and a few emergency levels (like put on all my sweaters and suit coats and my overcoat). Hopefully I can survive the winter. Incidentally the Russian language has a verb that literally translates into "to survive a winter." I thought that was awesome, and evidently the Russian's do need a word to describe winter survival. While I am on the topic of the Russian language, I learned a new Russian idiom yesterday. In English we use the phrase "throw somebody under the bus". The Russian's have a very similar phrase to that. They use to phrase: "throw somebody under the TANK." To me it seems extremely Russian to substitute bus for tank.

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday. Our investigator Stalina thought that we were trying to brainwash her. Missionaries have a habit of leaning forward and using a different tone of voice when they start to testify on a certain topic. Also when they are the most solemn and serious they tend to lock eyes with the investigator and sometimes not blink. Well Stalina thought that we were using hypnosis when we do that in an attempt to brainwash her. It was a very interesting conversation as we tried to explain that missionaries do that only because they want to be serious when they testify and they want investigator's to feel the same. I am glad she brought this up because she has been meeting missionaries for more than a year now and has been thinking we practice hypnosis this whole time, and she has just had a strong enough mind to stop it. I had to try really really hard not to laugh.

Well so that's my week. I'll be sending pictures so I hope you enjoy those. Stay frosty my friends and have a great Thanksgiving!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been getting cold here in Nizhny Novgorod! Not cold enough to freeze the inside of bones, but still chilly enough that your skin is numb after a few hours outside. Interestingly enough I get a forwarded e-mail from my friend serving in a part of Siberia and for some reason it is colder here than it is in his city. I am still trying to figure out how that works out. I am happy that it is winter, since I like the cold and snow, and I also like that I've finally had to break out the winter jackets and scarfs. Unfortunately that also means breaking out the hats (which is unfortunate because I don't like wearing hats), because if I don't then Russian people yell at me for not wearing a hat. They take the winter very seriously here.

This has been a great week for our investigators though. Tonight we are meeting with Natalya and are going to answer all of her questions about LIFE and also talk to her about Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon. Since our lessons with her are in English I had to go back and re-memorize Joseph Smith's account of his First Vision in English, which was weird because I've been doing it pretty consistently in Russian. I am hoping our lesson with her goes well. We have also been meeting a lot with Olga, who is the relative of one of our branch members. She seems to be taking the lessons very well, she takes notes and also writes down every scripture we use so she can study them later. So we taught her two lessons which went great and we were going to commit her to be baptized, but she called us before the meeting and told us her husband was going to be on the lesson! We decided to go back and reteach the first lesson and talk about Joseph Smith so he would know. It was an awesome lesson because he committed to keep meeting with us and Olga was pretty much teaching him the doctrine for us. Then at the end we asked Olga's husband if he wanted to pray. He said no, but then Olga was like "Here, I'll teach you how to pray!" So she taught her husband how to pray and told him that they were going to pray together at night and read the Book of Mormon. It was a great lesson and I am excited for Olga and her husband, because I have very high hopes for the both of them. That same day we had a lesson with a guy who wants us to help him stop using drugs. I am a little nervous about that one because narcotics is quite a serious problem and I am going to need a lot of divine help to help this man with his problems.

Otherwise I have not a whole lot to report from this week. I am trying to work as hard as possible lately because I have a feeling that this might be my last transfer here in Nizhny Novgorod, mostly because Elder Kvasnitsky told me that it probably was my last transfer, and since he worked in the office I am more inclined to believe him. At any rate, I have been really trying to put in my very best effort, more than usually. A great thing is that my Russian skills have been improving quite a bit. For the most part I can understand people, and can hold pretty good conversations with them. The problem is that my vocabulary is still incredibly limited, so I can't fully express myself and end up repeating myself quite a bit. Fortunately though my grammar is improving and I am starting to pick of simple idiomatic expressions so that I can better relate to the Russian people.

The next few weeks are going to be fun. Next P-Day we are going to a factory where they make the Russian nesting egg dolls. I have been there before on my second P-Day in Russia, but unfortunately my camera wasn't charged, so I didn't take any pictures! It is a little weird though because when I think back to that P-Day I realize that everybody who went with me last time is gone to other cities and in some cases other countries. I am officially the missionary (besides one of the senior couples) who has been in Nizhny Novgorod the longest. Also next week we are going to be celebrating Thanksgiving with a dinner for us and our investigators. The condition is that to come to the dinner you have to bring an investigator, so I am probably going to invite our investigator Viktor, who loves America and will love celebrating an American holiday! Hopefully he can get off work. Then the next day President Woolley comes to Nizhny for a zone conference, which means that next week I will be eating very well.

So that is about it, I have really nothing else to report for the week. I am still trying incredibly hard to work with my companion. I have officially decided that patience is one of the hardest and most painful Christ-like attributes to work on. I am trying really hard to get along with him because we need to at least have a nice relationship in order to teach and we need to be able to teach with all these important investigators we have. I am just hoping that my next companion will be someone who I can easily be friends with.

Well have an excellent week my friends and compatriots. I pray for all of you often!

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

I want you to imagine that winter is personified in a grumpy old man, and that grumpy old man has been asleep for a long time because his alarm clock wasn't working. And then suddenly, he woke up on his own and realized that he was late in bringing the winter to Russia, so in order to make up for that he dumped all of the coldness and snow he could on Russia all at once. Yep, that is what happened this week.

Last week was a unseasonably warm week, around 0 degrees Celsius, and then this week started with a brisk -14 degrees Celsius. Finally, on Monday, the snow came, and it hasn't stopped since then. Now Russia is starting to look like what I always imagined it to look like. Snow and gray clouds all the time, which I actually have really been liking quite a bit.

Otherwise though this has been an incredibly unexciting week. The good thing is that we got two new investigators this week, one of which we teach in English because she prefers to talk English and likes meeting with our Senior Missionaries here, who don't speak Russian (Kvasnitsky is actually pretty angry about this, he is really annoyed that we are teaching somebody in English cause he can't understand what is going on.) We also are now meeting with the aunt of one of our branch members, who seems really promising, especially because we have the help of a great family in our branch. And of course we are still teaching our Seven Day Adventist friend Mikhail who is reading the Book of Mormon but still has a huge concern about us worshipping the Sabbath Day on Sunday. I think I have read literally every scripture ever written about that topic by this time.

My new companionship is going decently. Kvasnitsky doesn't speak very much English so I speak mostly Russian now, which is really helping me a lot. Kvasnitsky is also teaching me some very important and consistent lessons in patience... And that is enough about that.

I feel bad right now that I have nothing really exciting to report right now. I have really started to get into the routine of living in Russia which is good and bad. Good because now I know what I am doing most of the time (except for last night when this lady pushed me off a bus so I got stranded at a bus stop while my companion travelled on. We eventually met up and he had some extremely kind words to say to me about the experience, I thought it was hilarious though!). The flip side of this is that because I am in a routine now I feel like I can't think of anything truly exciting to tell all of you!

Well hopefully this coming week will provide some good stories for me to tell you. Stay excellent as always!

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

This has officially been a really long week. Sometimes in the mission field a time warp opens up and stretches the days out to be weeks and you end up on your next P-Day feeling extremely exhausted. Other times, the time warp makes the days seem like only a few hours and you end up wondering where your week went! Those darn mission time warps, they just really mess up your week.

Thursday night I left for my first Visa trip of my mission. We had to ride on a night train to Moscow, which was.. interesting. I must say I am not a huge fan of night trains since the people who ride them are usually quite drunk so you always get into a cabin with two drunk Russian men who smell like beer. So yep, that was fun. On Friday morning I arrived in Moscow and got to see my old MTC companion Elder Stegeby and my good friend Elder Mitchell. I was really happy to see them both again and we got to spend a lot of time catching up on what has been happening over the last three months. In Moscow our plane got delayed quite a bit and even got delayed on the tarmac, which would have been quite annoying except that I got mysteriously upgraded to first class! I have no clue how but when we printed my ticket it was for a first class seat so I got to fly like a big-shot to Kiev. I think the meal on the airplane was one of the better meals I have eating on my mission! (of course I jest, but it was pretty good). However, when we arrived in Kiev we found out that because of the delay we had missed our flight back to Moscow and had to book another one. This meant that we had to wait and extra five hours in the Kiev airport, which is pretty much a warehouse with one restaurant in it. It's a good thing I like Elder Stegeby and Elder Mitchell a lot because I would have got quite bored. Eventually I made it back to Moscow and took another night train back to Nizhny. I was absolutely exhausted when I returned, and the whole time just felt like one incredibly long day.

On Saturday we had our branch Halloween party which was awesome. We spent all day preparing decorations, calling people, and pretty working hard for the party that night. I was put in charge of making fake gravestones and other decorations so I happily started making gravestones for a multitude of people: Michael Jackson, Mufasa, Steve Jobs, Ian Curtis and of course, myself. After a few hours of making decorations I ran out of good ideas so I just started making vintage video game characters, so that our branch walls bore the effigy of Pac-Man, the Pac-Man ghosts, Mario, and Space Invaders. When the party eventually got started all the missionaries dressed up and were in charge of games, I chose to be Harry Potter, since it seemed like the easiest thing to do! Anyways, it was a great activity, a ton of our investigators came and a lot of the ward members, including our awesome African brethren. Everybody had a great time and we had so much candy that we were literally giving it out by the hand fulls when people left. I was surprised how readily the Russian's enjoyed Halloween, since it seems like an incredibly American holiday to spend a whole night eating candy and getting sick, but they absolutely loved it!

Last night Elder Dannenberg left for Astana. I am pretty excited for him, but I am going to miss him because we became really close friends the last few weeks we had been together. That night my new companion arrived, Elder Kvasnitsky. Do you remember a few e-mails ago when I mentioned that Elder Beck was going to come to Nizhny with his Ukrainian companion who doesn't really like me? Yep, that Ukrainian is my new companion! We've been having a good time so far and it's crazy to me that five transfers into my mission I have yet to serve with an American! I've served with a Swede, a German, a Russian and now a Ukrainian. When I eventually serve with an American I'll have collected all the possible nationalities in my mission (excluding French, because the French missionary is a sister missionary).

Well so that has been my busy week. I had a lot of meetings this week because everybody wanted to meet with us as soon as they found out that Dannenberg was leaving. We must have travelled the whole width and length of Nizhny twenty times over last week! I will be sending some pictures of the African and Halloween party as soon as I can and I'm sorry that this letter is somewhat devoid of funny stories or interesting details. I don't know if you can tell over the medium of electronic mail communication (probably not, since you can't see my body language or hear my paralinguals) but I am absolutely exhausted!

Stay excellent my friends.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Imagine to yourself a train sitting on a platform in Nizhny Novgorod. It is midnight and the train is about to leave to Moscow when suddenly two young men in black jackets come running out of the station frantically looking for a train conductor to talk to. They finally find a young train conductor and hand her a large package and explain to her in thick American and German accents that this package needs to be delivered to Moscow. They explain that in the morning, an Ukranian and an American will meet her at Moscow station and she needs to give the package to them. She is given strict instructions not to open the package because it contains important documents, but the American and the German promise her that she will be payed for her trouble in Moscow. After all of this is said, the American and the German leave the station and mysteriously disappear into the night. Sounds like a spy movie right? Well actually that was Dannenberg and I, last night.

Our little spy adventure was the cumulation of the events that started when Elder Dannenberg got a transfer call. Next Thursday he will be leaving to Astana, Kazakhstan and I will be getting a new companion, who I don't know yet. Due to the fact that the mission office didn't have his passport though, Dannenberg and I needed to send his passport to Moscow as soon as possible to secure his Kazakhstani Visa. President Woolley likes things done quickly, so we were instructed to find a train conductor on the Night Train to Moscow and pay him or her to courier Dannenberg's Visa. So as you read above, we completed that transfer, and I felt very much like a spy, and thus I am calling our little adventure Dannenberg and Brasier and The Night Train to Moscow. Sometimes things can be pretty crazy in Russia.

Another interesting thing that happened yesterday is that Dannenberg and I met with business men who tried to get us into the Amway pyramid scheme. We had met a young guy on the street who told us he was really interested in what we were doing and told us that we could meet. Of course we were excited so we met with him last night. We got even more excited when he brought friends with him! However, they soon brought us into a room and began giving us the presentation about how Amway was going to make us rich. It was quite funny because they asked us what we liked and I told them I like mathematics. They got really happy and said: "Splendid! Then you see that this business will make you rich!" Of course, I kept my silence but was laughing because in actuality I could see how I would loose a ton of money through this business! One cool thing that happened is we ended up being able to testify about our message and it was crazy how quickly the Spirit entered the room. Suddenly everything got calm and quiet as Dannenberg and I solemnly testified about the truthfulness of our message. They weren't extremely interested and neither were we in their business so we left on affable terms. I made sure though to get a picture of the time we were recruited for a pyramid scheme!

Otherwise things have been going really normally. We have got some great new investigators and we are going to ask Mikhail to be baptized next time we meet with him. We are hoping that with Dannenberg leaving it will change something for him, since it usually tends to happen that way with investigators. When the missionary they first met leaves, they suddenly start to really consider making changes in their life. So I'm hoping that things go well with that. Unfortunately I have nothing else new to report, since for the most part this week tended to be relatively uneventful. OH I ALMOST FORGOT! We had a sweet "African Party" on Saturday where we had our African friends come and talk about their countries and invite all of their friends. It was sweet because I got to talk with people from Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, Cameroon, Zaire and much more. I really love African people, they are way awesome. It was also funny to see how the somewhat racist Russians handled everything. It was pretty funny, and a good experience for all who participated.

Well have a great week!

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Pictures!!!!

Working hard and drinking a delicious "Chuda"

Me and Elder Lantuk calling people.

Me and a La-7 (a fighter plane from World War II)

From Left to right: Elder Bressler, Me, Elder Wadsworth and Elder Olsen (background) in front of the bridge for the C-13 submarine

Me and Elder Bressler: Just another day at work in Russia!

 World War II memorial in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.

  My "O Nizhny" picture....

Me and Elder Wadsworth in front of a T-34 tank. Almost all Russian moments involve World War II equipment.

Nizhny Novogorod from the Kremlin.

 Nizhny at night from the Avtozavodskaya apartment. Black and White with 8 second shutter delay. Probably my favorite picture of the city I have taken so far.

 Me and Lantuk with babushka Irena, an awesome babushka who always feeds us a ton of food!

 

Some explanation is required here. In the Park of Culture near the Avtozavodskaya apartment there is this rock.

It is not very big, but it is in the middle of this huge sandpit, and although you can't see in the picture it is surrounded by floodlights

All of this is for one solitary rock. I was pretty baffled by what was so important about this rock, so I sat on it and took this picture.

Zone Conference last week. From left to right. Front Row: Sister Cianflon, President Woolley, Sister Woolley, Elder Fautz,

Sister Fautz, Sister Tagart. Middle Row: Sister Lovett, Sister Gay.

Back Row: Elder Hoffman, Elder Wadsworth, Elder Dannenberg, Me, Elder Lantuk, Elder Olsen, Elder Bressler, Elder Lovett and Elder Gay

First snow in Nizhny! Me and Elder Hoffman on companionship exchanges.

One of my favorite families in the branch, the Berdnikov family. Left To Right. Foreground: Me, Elder Dannenberg, Ilya Berdnikov.

Back ground: Brother Berdnikov, Elder Gay, Sister Gay, Sister Berdnikov, and Natasha Berdnikov (their young daughter) in the far background.

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

It is always interesting for me to write these letters, because things that seem like they are old news are actually new for you, considering the week delay that we have. The reason I start this blog post with this observation is because right after I wrote last weeks letter, I got transferred back with Dannenberg because Lantuk and Wadsworth got their Visa's and headed off to Kazakhstan. I just think its funny that for a whole week you have thought that Lantuk has been my companion, when in actuality it has been Dannenberg. So maybe it is not that funny for you, but I just thought I would make that comment.

Basically me and Dannenberg are working together again, which has been nice. Unfortunately I had to leave my really nice apartment in the Avtozavodskaya region of Nizhny Novogorod and move back to the somewhat tiny Leninskaya apartment, but I am really happy to be working with Dannenberg again. The really good thing that happened is that now we have more people interested in learning the gospel then before due to the work that both companionships were able to accomplish. Me and Dannenberg are currently working still with Mikhail (I don't know if you remember him, he was the one dissecting the Book of Mormon) who still has a major concern with us observing the Sabbath Day on Sunday, since he believes it is on Saturday and always unloads a menagerie of Biblical scriptures whenever we bring it up. We are also working with a man named Viktor who absolutely loves America, a man named Alexander who broke his leg and is in the hospital, a woman named Stalina who has a huge fear of being underwater (a problem for missionaries who teach baptism by immersion) and a really nice family that we met tracting. When we don't have appointments, of course we are talking with a ton of people out on the street.

Halloween is coming up and it should be a lot of fun. The branch puts on a Halloween party which the missionaries help set up and run. Rumor has it that this party is always a lot of fun. Unfortunately my Visa expires on October 31st so I hope I'm not in Ukraine when it happens. Me and Dannenberg have been getting ready for Halloween too. Next week we are going to buy pumpkin juice (like Harry Potter) and Dannenberg has been carving out apples since we don't have any pumpkins and putting them on our flashlight. Its like a Jack-O-Lantern, but with an apple.

One thing I can't believe I never mentioned is the crazy lady me and Dannenberg met one day. It happened about a few weeks ago but has become something of a legend in Nizhny Novgorod. One day we were talking to this man who wasn't very interested and this lady came up from behind him and exclaimed "I am here to save your soul!" After he promptly ran away the lady started talking to us by stating how much she loved everything. To quote: "I love the sky! I love the cars! I love the roof on the houses! I love that man! I love this speck on the ground!" The list gets exhaustive. To stop the list from continuing we asked her what her name was. She responded: "People call me Elena, but my real name is:" and she started to sing a song about how the galaxy was a giant pearl. And then she grabbed my hand and started singing a song about how much she loved me. It was really quite odd and I just wanted her to stop holding my hand. Finally we told her we had to leave and she gave us a really interesting pamphlet that would "save our soul." I spent a week of language study trying to translate it and I'm still quite unsure what was going on. It was a weird contact but the story has become something of a legend in Nizhny.

So that's about all I've got for now. Stay excellent my friends.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well this was a pretty good week for us, mostly because it started out with General Conference! For missionaries, General Conference is akin to the Superbowl. We all got together on Saturday and Sunday, bought a ton of chips, cookies and soda and spent a combined time of 10 hours in front of a TV. It was really funny for me to see everybody get so excited when speakers were announced, like when Elder Jeffrey R. Holland was announced as the first speaker for Priesthood session. I thought we were all going to explode because of how excited we were. And what a great talk he gave, it fired me up a ton to go out and work. I hope all prospective missionaries watch that talk again and again to get ready for the work. Also Russia got mentioned twice, and both times we were super excited, to the point of standing up and cheering!! What a great General Conference. We are so blessed to have living apostles and a prophet on this Earth today who give us such wonderful direction and council. I took so many notes from their talks, I think I understand now when the scriptures say "Feasting on the word of God," because I was definitely feasting. I think my favorite talks where Jeffrey R. Holland's in Priesthood Session, President Uchtdorf's in Relief Society Session (yes we watched that too), President Monson's in Priesthood Session and President Eyring's talk on Sunday. I also really liked Elder Bednar's call for the youth to become involved in Family History work. If I was home right now I would be all over that, but I hope that all the youth heed that prophetic call.

After Conference on Sunday, we had a great contacting activity on the Nizhny Novgorod Walking Street, which is basically like an outdoor shopping mall. We set up a table with a big piece of paper and had a large sign that said "If you could ask God one question, what would it be?" and then people could write it on the paper. It was a huge success, unfortunately me and Lantuk showed up late because we had an appointment (that was incredibly unsuccessful) but for the 3 hours that the other missionaries manned the table they gave out 50+ Book's of Mormon and had 27 people give their phone numbers for more information. That is a huge success for Russia! I was a little disappointed though because I got absolutely no success in the hour I talked to people, but as I was walking home depressed, we ran into a group of people performing Hare Krishna, which was incredibly awesome, so it cheered me up substantially!

For the rest of the week it was pretty normal missionary work. I've been a little sick recently because I drank some bad water. I distinctly remember the moment too. I drank some water and thought "Hmm... that water tasted like rust, I hope it wasn't TOO dirty..." Yeah, I guess it was pretty dirty. So I was sick from Tuesday to today, and now I'm feeling a little better. Unfortunately I haven't been able to work too hard, and I really was only able to work really effectively yesterday where I concluded the day with a three hour door tracting session where a white supremacist (not sure on the spelling there) threatened to break my nose because I was American. It was pretty awesome. Also me and Lantuk are getting more people interested in the gospel so that has been really nice to start really teaching again. Our relationship is getting better, but still struggles. I am trying the best I can but he can be really tough to work with. It's been making me really miss working with Dannenberg! But alas, I still have to push onward because the work is more important than petty differences.

Anyways, that's about all I've got for now. I hope everything is going delectably wherever you are when you read this blog post. Keep doing what you are doing and remember that God loves you and cares about you individually!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well this has kind of been an up and down week for me. The beginning of the week was great because we had two baptisms, Anton and Fidel, one of the African students here in Nizhny Novgorod. It was a really good double baptism and we are excited to have both of them in our church. I'm pretty excited because the African students will be putting on some sort of African cultural night soon, which sounds pretty awesome and I'm way pumped to learn about some African culture from my African brethren. I was also really honored on Sunday because Anton asked me to help give him the gift of the Holy Ghost in church meeting, which was such a great experience for me. Doing that really helped me increase my testimoney of the work and the importance of what we are doing here in Russia. Anton is going to be a great church member and future leader of the growing church in Russia.

Unfortunately I had a little bit of companionship troubles this week. On Tuesday Elder Lantuk decided to unleash a relatively hypocritical speech of hatred against me. Basically it was this long rant about how I am a terrible person and an even worse missionary. I was of course relatively shocked since I thought we were getting along pretty well. And then I got angry when he told me he had been texting the mission president about how terrible of a missionary I was almost every night, instead of actually bringing his concerns up with me and letting me fix them. Yes, I was filled with lividity. But I remembered a story that my MTC branch president told me that I will tell you now:

" One day there was a donkey, which fell into a deep well. When the owner of the donkey came and found the donkey in the well, he decided that the time and the money it would take to get the donkey out of the well was far too great, and it was better to cut his loses and just buy a new donkey. So him and his friends got some dirt and shovels and elected to bury the donkey alive in the well. As they started shoveling the donkey got annoyed because dirt was falling on him, and kept shaking it off his back. Eventually the dirt built up around his feet, so being a smart donkey, he stepped up on the growing pile of dirt. He kept doing this until eventually the pile of dirt grew to the point that he made it out of the well." THE END

I decided that I needed to take the oppurtunity and step above the dirt. Some of the stuff he said was valid criticism so I took that and have decided to work on it, and otherwise just shake off the hatred. After a very tense Tuesday and most of Wednesday I just started to talk to him about himself, because I figured everybody likes talking about themselves right? Eventually we were joking and happy again, and even though I don't trust him at all anymore, we are working together again and today the sun came out for the first time in two weeks on Nizhny Novgorod. Once again, the mission teaches me an important life lesson.

Otherwise the work is going well. We have some new investigators that we are working with and have been doing a ton of street contacting and door contacting. Also my Russian is actually getting quite a bit better, even though I still have a pretty thick American accent and for some reason a lot of Russian's think I'm a Jew because of my accent (or Armenian, which I don't get at all because I definitely do not have an even vaguely Armenian accent). At any rate, thats pretty much been my week. I hope all is going well and I'm pumped to here General Conference in a few days!

From Russia With Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well its been a pretty uneventful week this week. Me and Elder Lantuk are still together while we wait for him and Elder Wadsworth to get their Kazakhstani Visa's. The reason that this week has been relatively uneventful is because unfortunately me and Lantuk inherited an area that hadn't been worked for almost two months due to an unfortunate logistics nightmare involving Elder Erikson. So that basically means that we have no investigators and no clue where to start working the area, especially because we know that our time together is really only temporary until Lantuk moves to Kazakhstan, so any work we end up doing will be kind of pointless. With that situation me and Lantuk have just been doing a ton of door knocking and street contacting.

That being said, I am having a great time with Elder Lantuk. It is interesting for me to see the difference of style between Lantuk and Dannenberg when it comes to work. Lantuk is much more relaxed so its been kind of nice to work with him. Plus he is one of the weirdest persons I have ever met, so I never know exactly what he is going to do from time to time. We have been having quite a bit of fun though. It has also been fun to have Elder Olsen and Elder Wadsworth in Nizhny (even though Wadsworth will just be temporary). Those two were a lot of fun in the MTC and are a lot of fun here in Nizhny, especially because we all like the same movies and same music so we end up talking about that a ton. Also this week we had a baptism so Elder Erikson returned from Kaluga because the baptism was one of his old investigators. I was way happy to see him and it was a blast having him back in Nizhny for a day. On Saturday we have a double baptism for two investigators (one of them an African student) so Elder Bitner (with his companion Elder Winters) and Elder Beck (with his Ukranian companion who doesn't really like me all that much) will be coming to Nizhny that day. I am excited to see them and their companions.

One fun thing about having Lantuk as a companion is that I've been eating a lot more Russian food (and junk food) than I had with Dannenberg. My Russian culinary knowledge has been expanded and I've got to eat some of the more interesting foods of Russia. What has been blowing my mind recently has been Russian Lays Potato Chips. You would think that they would be the same flavors as in America right? Wrong! Of the choices of Lay's chips in Russia you have the following flavors: Onion and Sour Cream, Mushrooms and Sour Cream, Red Caviar, Pickle, Crab, Green Seasonings, and just cheese. I am very partial to the Mushrooms and Sour Cream flavor and am trying to get used to the Red Caviar one (it is very strange).

Well that's all I've got for now! Stay excellent my friends.

From Russian with Love,

(Dr.) Elder Zachery Brasier (Esq.)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Unfortunately it took a while to send the pictures on from my camera so this is going to be kind of short, but I hope you enjoy the pictures that I sent and enjoy seeing some of the cool sights of Russia and some pictures of my friends and my companion.

So basically here is what happened this week.  I have a new companion for two weeks because his Visa to Kazakhstan didn't go through.  His name is Elder Lantook and he is from Vladivostok, Russia, which is way cool because now on my mission I have served with a Swede, a German, and a Russian, making me one of the most ethnically diverse missionaries in the field.  I just need to serve with a Ukrainian and an American now and I'll have served with every possible nationality in our mission.

The cool thing is that we moved to the other Lower Area apartment, which is the second biggest in the mission (after the Smolensk apartment which has cathedral ceilings).  What is interesting though, is that our apartment is directly across the street from an extremely low security women's prison.  It's very interesting and we see them do roll call and other such prison related activities every morning.  The bad news is that we have almost no investigators to work with so, we have just been doing a ton of street contacting and visiting inactive members.

So that's about it, I'm running short of time so I'll answer some questions,  First of all I've got a question about if there are any Russian desserts that are like American desserts.  The closest one is these waffle cookies that are pretty much the same as the ones you can find in America.  Otherwise they are pretty different and mostly based on bread and fruit.  Also to answer the question about if Mikhail likes the Book of Mormon: He does, to a degree.  He is an extremely intelligent man so is super-analyzing it.  He has made about six pages of questions for us to handle.  We have our hands full!

Sincerely,
Elder Zachery Brasier

Pictures From Moscow and Nizhniy Novgorod

Red Square on my first day in Russia.

Me and Anatoly

Elder Dannenberg my companion

Nizhniy from my window.

Nizhniy Novgorod