People of Nizhny

The Sun!

Elder Mellor, Kolya Chernov, Me

Me, Stalina, Elder Mellor

Brother Kilemenchenko, Brother Vladimir Balabanov, Me, Boris Vlasov

Elder Mellor, Clava Isaeva, President Borodin (branch President) Ilya Berdnikov

Me and Konstantine Kutsnitsov

Babushka (grandma or old lady) Smirnova, Babushka Fiana, Me

Me, Sister and Brother Koribednikov

Hatalya and the Nizhny Primary Children, and Me as well

Sister Frankom, Ira Borodin, Rita, Sister Hansen

The Bagachev/Chesnakova family! We spent Christmas with them! Elder Mellor, Me, Brother Bagachev, Sister Bagachev, Sister Chesnakova, Natasha Chesnakova (in the foreground). This is Olga's relatives who have helped us out a ton with missionary work.

The Nizhny youth drew a pictures of me

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Things were going along somewhat uneventfully this week when suddenly on Friday, I get a call from President Woolley. I have been transferred. This Tuesday I leave Nizhny for good and head off to my new area, the city of Smolensk.

And thus my week has become quite hectic as I have been rushing to pack everything I need and also try to get lessons with the people I cared about the most while serving here in Nizhny. Honestly, I think it is harder to leave a city then to leave home on your mission. At least leaving home you know that you will see everybody again, but it's been hard to think that this might be my last time to see all of the people in the city. I really am going to miss this city. Nizhny has been a big experience in my life. I came here as a new missionary who could not speak Russian and am leaving with significantly more language skills and a ton of experiences that have really changed my life for the better. But, now it is time to move on and go see a new city in Russia and have a gamut of new experiences.

Here is what I know about Smolensk: Smolensk has been demolished by nearly every invasion of Russia in history from the Mongol tribes to Napoleon and even the Nazi forces during World War II. Somehow, Smolensk always ends up on the invasion route of Russia's enemies. As such, there is a lot of history in the city but there is also a general distrust of foreigners and a little bit of anger towards God for all the things that have happened there. Interestingly enough, Smolensk is also one of the main cities for the Russian Orthodox church, and in fact the second biggest Orthodox cathedral in Russia is located there (the biggest being in Moscow, which I've seen [it was awesome]). There is not many church members there, approximately 15 to be exact, and most of them are youngish girls. I will be companions with Elder Jewkes, who got transferred from Kazakhstan (just if your curious things have been very interesting in Kazakhstan lately. The government signed a new religious law that should help us get missionaries into the country. The problem is that nobody knows what the law allows so our missionaries have been unable to get proselyting licenses and thus most of our Kazakhstan missionaries are leaving the country since they are not allowed right now to talk on the street) after serving with Elder Dannenberg, my old trainer. We will be sharing the apartment with another companionship of Elders, Elder Melling and Elder Mitchell (who was in my MTC group). Elder Melling is the branch president and it should be interesting because neither Elder Jewkes or I have served in Smolensk before so it will be new for both of us. The cool things is that we will be in the biggest apartment in the mission, and it should be a party because I know all three other Elders and they are all awesome guys.

Because of my transfer I have been going around giving my "dying testimony" to members and investigators. On Sunday I gave my farewell talk in church which was interesting because afterwards members came up and talked to me about how they could understand nothing I said my first Sunday but now they could. I was really touched by all of the compliments that the branch members said (especially when they kept telling me to thank my parents and friends for sending me to Nizhny) especially because most of the times I don't feel like an amazing missionary, but the simple humility and love of the members really touched my heart. It seems so weird to be leaving, but I am also excited to be in a new area especially one that has a lot of work to be done and is considered to be one of the harder areas in the mission.

And thus, on Tuesday I leave Nizhny on a night train. Wednesday I have to go to Kiev to get my new Visa (three months have passed since by last Visa trip! Time goes by so fast!) and on Thursday Elder Mitchell, Elder Jewkes and I leave Moscow and head towards Smolensk. I'll be sure to let you know how things go next in my next letter. This really will be quite the adventure.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Even More Pictures!

The momument to a very famous Russian pilot

 Elder Mellor and Elder Bressler on a night train from Moscow

 I found an accordion.

Kolya and Elder Bressler making borshch (Russian beet soup)

More Pictures!

Our Christmas tree! Decorated with used batteries!

Elder Bressler, Elder Hasbuilin, Elder Hoffman, and Elder Bitner at the Nizhny New Years Party

Star Wars novelization in Russian

The onomatopoeia for R2D2's sounds in Russian (Second hyphen from the top)

 A monument!

Metro Leninskaya (the metro near my apartment [this picture was taken very secretly])

On the night train to Moscow, Elder Mellor and I

Dodgeball at the mission Christmas party (note Elder Olsen directly to the left of me!)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Unfortunately not a whole lot happened this week. We are trying to get more investigators and work to teach people. But otherwise, I really don't have a whole lot to report except that it is getting way cold here! At any rate, since I don't have much to say, I'll send pictures instead!

 An Airplane

 In the Russian Forest!

Tracting a sketchy apartment where none of the doorbells seem connected to the apartments!

Christmas Party in the Branch

Clava, Kenneth, Zhenya and I

Left to Right: Sergei, Me, Ilya and Natasha, in the foreground (some of our youth)

The Youth of our branch!

Elder Mellor and I

Elder Bressler, this kind of crazy singing lady and I

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

All in all this has been a relatively unexciting week with the exception of our mission Christmas party (more on that later). Because of this relative lack of excitement, I decided that I would send you a large packet of pictures and such. However, in an unfortunate turn of events I left my camera in my apartment and since I don't have the time nor patience to go all the way back to my apartment, I have no pictures to send you. And thus, you will just have to wait until next week to view my awesome photographs of the coming and goings of the holiday season in Russia.

On Wednesday night I boarded I night train heading to Moscow (which is somewhat unfortunate because I am not a big fan of night trains since the last time I was on one this drunk guy decided to keep sitting on my legs for nearly 45 minutes. This time Elder Mellor and I got a compartment all to ourselves, which improved conditions tremendously. Another significant improvement was the fact that we were on new model night train with longer beds, so instead of having to curl up in a little ball like on the Soviet night trains, I could stretch out and my feet only hung over the edge of the bed just a little bit) for the mission Christmas party, which was pretty awesome. I am a huge fan of large mission meetings because I get to see all of my old friends and meet the other missionaries. I was able to meet up with my old MTC companion Elder Stegeby which was awesome. Also, I was able to meet with some of my old friends, like Elder Erikson, Elder Mitchell, Sister Taggart and especially Elder Olsen! Elder Olsen and I had a great time catching up and sharing all of our random facts and knowledges. With Elder Erikson we established a "Nerd Table" and ended up talking all about advanced physics and a myriad of other topics. Other than being able to nerd out with my old friends, we had good times playing dodgeball and watching skits. Dodgeball was exceptionally exceptional due to the fact that the floor was extremely slippery allowing for amazing slides and other dodging techniques. Take my word for it, dodgeball was great. And thus the mission Christmas party came off without a hitch, and we even were given brand new leather bound Russian Bible's for Christmas from our President. (I also learned that reading the Bible in Russian is significantly harder than reading the Book of Mormon, so I'll probably be sticking to Book of Mormon reading for now.)

I also have been getting everybodies Christmas cards and Dear Elders. I was really happy to recieve the Christmas card from the Albright's and the Doxey's and also from Aunt Joanne and her extended family. Also thank you Mrs. Maxfield for your letter, I appreciated it quite a bit! Also I received all letters from my Grandparents, which made me so happy! And from my friends: Kristina and AnneMarie your letters are en route, and Taylor I received your reply to my original letter, I will be starting to draft my correspondance shortly. I feel like I need to confirm which letters I recieved because the Russian mail service is so sketchy sometimes.

In further news: Olga is continuing to insist she isn't ready and says she no longer wants to meet with us. This is unfortunate. In better news, all of our other investigators are coming back into Nizhny so I'm excited to meet with them again, especially this man Alexander who comes back in two weeks and is absolutely awesome, one of the greatest guys I have ever met. So I am pumped to see a lot of my old friends again.

And finally Elder Hoffman went home so now Elder Bressler is with Elder Melor and I for a week and a half before he gets a mini-missionary to serve with. This has been a blast.

Thus, that is all I have, sorry this week wasn't exceptionally exciting. Till next time,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Happy New Years! It has sure been a crazy holiday here in Russia, for nearly two nights straight now that skies have been filled with fireworks and the constant sounds of explosions. Russian's truly love New Years, and celebrating New Years in Russia is certainly a blast. For New Years, we had a zone party of sorts with all of the missionaries in Nizhny Novgorod and also the Assistants to the Mission President. After a few very intense games of Pit and Uno we were able to watch a movie, since in our mission we can watch approved movies on New Years. Thus, we decided to watch the Pixar film Up, which was great, but so weird at the same time. I could feel my movie analytical part of my brain starting to work and I was shocked by how fast moving movie are. At any rate, we left the Senior Couples apartment at 11:00 and went to other Elder's apartment. On our arrival we realized that a problem had occurred. All of the windows in that apartment are blocked by trees! So, being ingenious Elders, we decided to climb up onto the roof of the apartment building. Unfortunately only three of us (Elder Hoffman, Elder Hasbuilin and I) got on the roof before some drunk guy started to harass the other Elders and almost violently forced them out onto the street. However, I was able to get on the roof, which was sweet because we could see the whole city and all the fireworks going off around us. I took the time to briefly reflect on the year. 2011 began as I was sitting in Yukon, Idaho waiting for Freshmen orientation to start at BYU-I and ended with me standing on top of a Russian apartment complex in Nizhny Novgorod while my friends were being yelled at by a random drunk guy. What a year it has been! Our celebrations ended with a wonderful viewing of The Fantastic Mr. Fox and copious amounts of soda and chips. Needless to say, going to bed at 3:30 in the morning really made me tired the next day.

On an unfortunate note, Olga did not get baptized this week. We had set up the baptismal interview but she called and cancelled on us the day of. She told us that she did not feel like she was prepared to be baptized and no longer had the desire for baptism. Also, her health had been bad so she felt like she could not handle a baptism at the time. I was incredibly disappointed to say the least. Never fear, Elder Melor and I are extremely persistent missionaries and we are going to make absolutely sure that see is able to get baptized, because we know that it is the path that will truly make her happy and eventually give her an eternal family. We both care too much about Olga to give her anything less than eternal happiness so our resolve is set and we will be working as hard as we can these coming weeks with her!

Wednesday night starts our trip to Moscow for the branch Christmas party. I am concerned that I won't be getting much sleep that night because it will be all four Elders in one room on the train, and we tend to not sleep much when we all get together. I'll have to let you know how the Moscow trip goes. Moscow is a sweet city, and I love every opportunity I have to go the city. Moscow is more or less the Russian version of New York city, except it only has seven sky scrappers. The city itself is huge, and holds a large portion of Russia's population. The city uses an extensive and complex Metro system with outstandingly artistic stations. Moscow is also one of the most Western European cities in Russia, and thus Moscow looks a lot more of what people traditionally think of when they think of Russia. I really just love the energy and excitement of Moscow and the complexity of the whole infrastructure.

Well I really don't know what more I can report at this time. This week has been hard to work because everybody says to call them after the New Years and we were confined to our apartments for most of yesterday and the day before, because lots of drunk people can get a little dangerous for twenty year old Americans. But, it really has been a great holiday season and as I was standing on top of a Russian apartment in Nizhny Novgorod I had one of those moments were I really realized and understood how outstanding a mission is. I realized that at that time I was experiencing something unique and unreal in a way, something I would never have the opportunity to do again. Being on a mission really is a great blessing and adventure, one which I am so happy to be a part of. I truly love being here among these people and I am glad to have a new year to rededicate myself and try to do better.

I hope you all have a great New Years and a nice winter. Thank you for all the support and love you give me. Also, your Christmas cards are starting to come in, I just received the Doxey's card, which was awesome. It seems like Matt is doing great in South Africa and I am way excited for when I can see all my old friends again and swap crazy mission stories. That is going to be a blast!

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

It has been a while since I have written a more proper blog post, but alas, here it is! Things have changed a lot recently around Nizhny Novgorod. Elder Olsen left for Tula, which was more disappointing for me than the Fourth Indiana Jones movie and Sister Cianflone left for Kazakhstan, which was extremely lucky for her, since they are not sending very many Americans Kazakhstan right now, the Visa's have been bit of a mess. Anyways, I've got a new companion Elder Mellor, who I have been getting along with pretty well. He is from California and is a pretty precise missionary, also he agrees with everything that anybody says, which has been funny for me so far. But, things are going well and I think we are going to get along great this transfer, which will be nice since I believe my time in Nizhny is coming to an end. I've been here for almost five months now and usually missionaries don't stay much longer in a city then that amount of time. We also got a new missionary fresh from the MTC this week, which has been fun since I can see how bad my Russian was back in the day. I also found out from her that one of teachers, Brother Tate is going to be a father in a few months. It is crazy how life flows on!

Christmas is coming rapidly, I think this has been the fastest December of my life. We have a Christmas tree up in the branch building, I received my Christmas package from the family and our district is planning our skit for the mission Christmas party (which will be a take on Lord of The Rings). Unfortunately our baptism date with Olga fell through again, because she was sick and could not come to church on Sunday. And so, we will be baptizing her on the 31st of December, just in time to make our goal for doing a baptism before the end of the year. Yes, we are cutting it a little close! However, Olga is really ready to be baptized as soon as she comes to one more church meeting. I am so excited for her, and if things go through it will be my first baptism on my mission, which I am stoked about.

And so I'm sure that you would like to know what we are doing for Christmas here in Nizhny. On Christmas Eve we are having our ward Christmas party, which is going to be relatively entertaining, unfortunately most of our investigators including Viktor will not be able to make it (Viktor will be busy holding a political rally against Putin, which I told him was not nearly as important as feeling the spirit of Christmas! But to each his own I guess) but I'm sure it will still be great. I think we might even be putting on a Christmas Nativity Scene for the branch, which should be fun, even though our Senior Missionaries here said that I couldn't be Herod Agrippa during the play. I guess I'll just be a donkey instead. After that we will be having a special Christmas themed church meeting on the 25th and finally the missionary party on the 5th, which I am excited for, especially because I will be able to see my good friends Elder Mitchell, Elder Stegeby and Elder Olsen yet again. Also, President allows us to watch a movie as a mission, and Elder Olsen, Elder Wadsworth, and I have been campaigning pretty hard to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox. We are almost considering giving bribes to get our way.

For some reason the weather here has been somewhat bipolar with just a hint of paranoid schizophrenia with a dash of Multiple Affective Personality Disorder for flavor. Lately, the weather has decided to alternate rain and snow off and on which wouldn't be too bad except for the fact that this pattern always produces much ice, and especially the black variety. And thus, I have been doing quite a bit of slipping and sliding. My record right now is 8 falls in one day, which was quite a feat if I had to say so myself, I had to work really quite hard.

Really that is the current state of affairs here in Nizhny. I have found myself falling into a comfortable swing of things as of late, and I am really enjoying having new people in or zone and a lot of promising investigators and lessons. At the beginning of the year one of our investigators Alexander is coming back from Arzanas, which is extremely exciting for me because he is true one of my favorite people I have met on my mission. Overall, I am trying to make the most out of my time here before I get deracinated within a transfer or two. I am sure that there is still work that I need to do here in Nizhny and I won't be transferred out until I do the work that I am supposed to do. I truly love serving here in Nizhny, and I'm excited that I get to be here for Christmas! Everybody have a great Christmas and have a great time celebrating the birth of our Savoir with your family and friends. Rock the Holidays my friends!

From Russia With Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

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.