Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well this week has been an interesting one. Finally, Elder Jewkes and I are starting to see the fruits of our labors here in Smolensk. It is great that we are starting to see some success from our six hour contacting marathons on the street. We have been having a good time, and I really enjoy serving with Elder Jewkes. He's a great guy and we have had some crazy experiences together that give us something to laugh about. Also, on a slightly crazy note, Elder Jewkes knows Breyden Burley, since one of Breyden's first areas was his home town. One day he was telling us a story about how this volleyball playing missionary from Vegas drilled him in the face while playing volleyball. Out of curiosity I asked him what the Elder's name was and he told me Elder Burley. It sure is a small Mormon world.

 

So here is some of the interesting experiences we have ran into this week, in chronological order. Last Saturday, we handed out a Book of Mormon to a vaguely drunk guy who gave us his number. Then on Sunday we called him to see if he wanted to meet. When Elder Jewkes called he asked for Vladimir but the man who answered told us his name was Ivan. Elder Jewkes was very confused. After not much talking Ivan invited us over to his house because he needed some help learning English. It turns out that this guy is a missionary for a different church who needed help practicing English in order to serve a mission in Africa and just moved to Smolensk! The drunk guy on the street gave us the wrong number and it turned out that the number he gave was a person who actually needed our help. Right now he isn't very interested in the gospel but I don't believe that things like that happen by accident.

 

Then on Wednesday after English Club we had another slightly shocking experience. For awhile this 20 year old guy named Dima has been coming to English Club. Elder Jewkes and I met him on the street but we wrote down the wrong number (do you see a common theme?) so Dima just came to English Club on his own. The guy reminds me of the kid from the movie October Skies and always tells me about his ideas for rocketry and lasers. On Wednesday we talked about travelling to different countries in English Club. Elder Jewkes and I had planned to talk to Dima about the gospel but he left too quickly. However, he returned about five minutes later because he thought he had forgot his camera and out of nowhere asked us what he needs to do to become a missionary for our church! Of course he doesn't understand exactly what that means to be a missionary (I think part of his motivation is he wants to go to Australia) but that is a desire that we are going to work with.

 

Finally, on Friday night we had some interesting door tracting experiences. Usually tracting involves sitting outside of an apartment complex calling on the intercom system until somebody lets us in and then knocking on a few doors until somebody throws us out or calls the cops. I love tracting. I always say that the miracles happen while tracting. Elder Jewkes and I had been tracting for almost an hour and having no success. We had just called all the apartments on an intercom system and had started to go the next apartment building when we heard somebody behind us yell: "Hey boys come back here!" One of the men we had called on the intercom had decided to come out and talk to us personally because he couldn't understand us on the intercom. We ended up giving him a Book of Mormon and getting his contact. The next apartment hallway ended with us getting kicked out and as we were walking out the lady was yelling at us out of her window! She was not very happy. I don't like to get dissuaded by stuff like that, so I went to the next apartment staircase and starting calling people while Elder Jewkes tried to calm down this rather unpleasant lady. The second lady I called let us in. Right as we enter the stairwell I hear her yell down 8 stories: "WHO ARE YOU! WHAT DO YOU WANT!" I was sure we were going to get kicked out again. I yelled back up 8 stories: "WE ARE MISSIONARIES WITH THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS, WE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU ABOUT GOD AND HIS RESTORED CHURCH." Down comes the reply: "I CAN'T UNDERSTAND A SINGLE WORD YOU ARE SAYING!" A little frustrated I yell back: "WAIT RIGHT THERE! WE WILL COME UP TO YOU." Elder Jewkes and I sprinted up 8 flights of stairs and arrived at the top, winded but ready to talk to this lady. We tell her a little about ourselves and we offer her a Book of Mormon. She says: "I don't think that this is a good idea, my daughter works in the cathedral so she won't like if I read this..." I thought we had lost the conversation. Suddenly, this ladies face twists up into a mask of firm resolve and she says: "But I'll hide it! I want to read this book!" and she stuffs the Book of Mormon up her shirt (at this point I kind of didn't want the book back)! So she gave us her number, and we called her to come to church yesterday. Unfortunately she had to work but she told us that she told her family about us and now they are all interested to meet! I'm hoping things work out!

 

And really that is pretty much all I've got for this week. We have been meeting with a lot of our street contacts and a few of them seem like they can become really solid investigators. I think right now has been the most productive and successful I have been on my mission. Also, Vladimir told us that he is finally going to get all the paperwork done and get legally married to his wife, which means he'll be able to be baptized shortly! I am pretty excited for that to happen (and a little scared, because we have no baptismal font, which means we will baptize him in the iced over river!)

 

Oh, and President Woolley called yesterday. Elder Jewkes is going to be the new Smolensk branch president when Elder Melling leaves next month. I'm not quite sure how he feels about that....

 

Well live long and prosper my friends.

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you feel like quite a bit
has happened but you really don't know how to fully explain it because
as you search the recesses of your mind to try and find some sort of
concrete story from your week, you inexplicably come up blank. If you
have experienced something similar to this phenomenon, then you have
an insight into how my week has been. Although I know somethings have
happened, I can think of absolutely nothing exciting to write! So I
will try my hardest, because I realize that I have two options, either
write a small letter and thus cause a slight bit of worry among the
family or write a lengthy letter but dive into areas of abstraction
that could be strange or confusing. I will desperately try to avoid
both of those seemingly inevitable conclusions.

After the rather large shock of the mission conference, things have
been settling back into a normal rythmn of things. The whole mission
boundry change is strange because it is close, but also far enough in
the future that it poses absolutely no obstruction to mission work. At
any rate, I am rather comfortable with this future change, although I
am somewhat disappointed that I will not be able to serve in
Kazakhstan. However, I now have a new goal: Serve in Kaliningrad! (If
you don't know where that is, I don't blame you. It is an exclave of
Russian territory that is located under the Baltic States. Look
closely at the map, you'll find it, and yes, that is inexplicably
Russian territory.)

This week Elders from Tver and Minsk came in. I had a good time with
Elder Jensen from Tver, since we are usually on the same page of
cleverness and some dark humor. Elder Jensen's current companion,
Vova, is a short term missionary from Kazakhstan. If you watch the
video of the Ukraine temple dedication there is a part where two
Kazakhs are talking about their dance number, and Vova is the darker
complexioned quiter guy. We had a good time with them, and also with
the Minsk Elders who got to practice some street contacting (which is
currently illegal in Belarus).

Elder Jewkes and I have been working hard in order to find new people
interested in the church, since we are building our area from scratch.
We have found a few good people, including this old grandma named
Raiyna (which is an extremely strange name). She was overjoyed when we
gave her a Book of Mormon and then came to church on Sunday with gifts
for us: A Dosteivsky novel and a book of Russian poetry, which I
thought was cool (incedently I am building up quite the Russian
library, I just can't read any of it after my mission! Everybody who
finds out I like to read ends up giving me some sort of novel from a
Russian author). We showed Raiyna the restoration movie about Joseph
Smith and she loved it. She also wanted to pray with us, and she
embarked on a half-memorized Orthodox prayer that she kept forgetting
and asking us for help. It was quite funny because Elder Jewkes and I
could not decide if she was done praying or not and confusing ensued.
We'll have to work with her on that.

Otherwise, Vladimir is still working to get married and came to church
yesterday with his son. He also got quite angry at Elder Melling
because Vladimir believes that Elder Melling is experiencing
malnutrition, and gave Elder Melling a lengthy talk about health. I
found it quite entertaining. Elder Jewkes and I have also found a lot
of other people who are potentially interested so we are hoping that
the area will really start to grow over the next week or two.

Russia tricked us today. It was sunny for a few days and the
temperature was warming up! We were all viewing it as a sign that the
winter was past its worst. Today the clouds closed in, the wind
started, the temperature dropped and snow started to fall. And thus,
the freeze is still on.

Also, good news, I have a picture to send you! As I said earlier, it
is practically impossible for me to send pictures while I am in
Smolensk, but President Woolley sent us a picture from mission
conference. You may be confused as too my strange facial expression. I
have an explanation. Elder Olsen and I were talking about making
strange faces during the mission picture, so we did for the first one.
Then the photographer went to take a second one and Elder Olsen was
sure that this was just a back up and thus we could look even stranger
and nobody would know the better. So I did just that, and Elder Olsen
smiled nicely. He later informed me that at the last second he figured
that the second picture was the real one, and decided to smile
normally. He forgot to inform me.
Well I hope everybody has a nice week. Stay frosty my friends!

As Always, Elder Zachery Brasier

(Unfortunately I couldn't get the picture he sent.  I don't know his password for that account.  I will ask him about that.  Sorry.)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

There has been a rumor going around about a change in my mission, and I will set everything strait right now. On Wednesday we had a mission conference in Moscow were one of the leaders of the Eastern European area gave us a pep talk, and also some news. He started by talking about change and how change is good for all of us. Continuing, he foreshadowed the fact that there would be a big change in our mission. He started telling us about how the 12 Apostles all prayed about it and then the President Uchtdorf and Eyring and finally the Prophet Thomas S. Monson. He informed us that they had held a meeting in the Salt Lake temple about this change and even though it wasn't the most seemingly logical option, it was the one they felt inspire to pursue. This build up lasts for almost 15 minutes and I am about to jump out of my seat! With all this build up I was expecting an announcement like: "The Moscow West mission will now be merged with the Manilla, Philippines mission so you will all be on an airplane tomorrow...." or something to that effect. Right before he announces this change, the Elders from Lipetsk show up so we had to organize translation for the Ukranian missionaries. This took about 10 gut wrenching minutes. After the logistics where sorted out, the Area President started to build up again for another 10-15 minutes. (I am purposefully stretching this story out so you can experience what I felt like during this meeting.)

 

Here is the change. On July 1st our current mission president goes home and the Moscow West Mission gets merged with the Moscow mission. Belarus becomes part of the Baltic Mission and Kazakhstan becomes part of the Novosibirsk mission. So what does this mean for me? First of all our mission doubles in size. Secondly I will be able to serve in Moscow and also Zaliningrad, which are both not part of our mission boundaries. I am pretty excited about this opportunity to serve in Moscow, because I love big cities and also it will be cool to have the opportunity to see some of the awesome sights there. And that's the big news, in July the Moscow West mission will cease to exist and is replaced by a huge Moscow mission.

 

Otherwise this week was not very exciting. Elder Jewkes and I are trying to get more people to meet with because we are more or less opening up a new area right now. That means a lot of time on the streets. I finally gave in and bought a pair of Russian boots and have been wearing my fur and leather Russian Shapka (which is just a warm hat with flaps) outside. Jokingly, I asked Elder Melling if he thought it would be a good idea to wear my 1970's Soviet Aviation Leather Helmet outside (on of the sweet souvenirs I've picked up on my Moscow adventures. One cool thing about Russia is that mostly everything is up for bargain, so after about 45 minutes of wheeling and dealing I was able to buy this helmet for half the original price. I was pleased.) We decided it was probably not. Right now though we are working with Vladimir who will be baptized as soon as he gets married and loves the missionaries (also he promised to give me a Russian book on bio-engineering which I thought was a nice gesture considering I will not be able to read it!). We are also working with a man named Anatoly who is a wood carver for the Orthodox cathedral in Smolensk. The other day I just noticed he is missing the tips of three of his fingers, which was slightly ominous. Otherwise, we are hitting the streets and working with our members who really need the help.

 

For Valentine's day we had a little branch activity. The Elder's from Minsk, Belarus came as did the members from Vitepsk, Belarus. I was really happy to see some the Minsk Elders and to meet some other church members. The Belarusian church members are way awesome! It was a pretty chill Valentine's Day, and I ate way too much candy (a similar problem occurred at Halloween). It is always a shock to people how much chocolate I eat compared to my general state of thinness. I guess hiking around Russia all day really helps you lose the excess weight!

 

I had a pretty cool experience on the night train back from Moscow. Actually I had a cooler one before on the way to Smolensk for the first time. I'll relate that quickly. We were waiting on the platform to go to Smolensk and we heard somebody talking in English, so we talked to him. It was this New Yorker named Sam who was going to Smolensk in order to get work experience in a factory here. This was shocking, because I know of very few Americans who purposefully go to Smolensk (I bet 80% of Americans don't even know this city exists) to work in one of the maybe three factories here. So we got his number and will be meeting with him soon. This time on the night train we ran into these two Belarusian singers and guitarists who decided to play us a little concert on the night train. It was so cool. They sang all sorts of songs and we sang along with what we could, like Yellow Submarine and Катюша (Katyusha, and Russian folk song). We went to bed so late that night, but I didn't care because I figured stuff like that doesn't happen very often. Experiences like that remind me how cool it is to be on a mission, and especially a mission in Russia!

Well that is all I've got for today. I hope you all have an absolute splendid week. Stay warm those of you in sub-arctic climates!

 

Indubitably,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,
After my first full week in Smolensk, I am starting to get into the swing of things. Right now the biggest challenge is finding my way around the city, since both Elder Jewkes and I are new here. When I left Nizhny I knew it like the back of my foot, so now I am trying to become as familiar with Smolensk.

Winter is now in full swing here in Russia. Currently the temperatures are around -20 and it snowed all day yesterday. Yes this is quite cold, cold enough in fact that the bottom of my pant legs were frozen with ice last night. Never fear though, I have been keeping quite warm. The key to life in Russia is layers of clothing! I weighed myself the other day and I realized that with all my winter clothes I way about 10 kilograms heavier than with normal clothes on. The Russians also have been getting more and more intense about the weather. As I mentioned before, they take the winter very seriously. Last Monday we played basketball with one of our investigators Dima, so Elder Jewkes and Elder Melling decided to walk to the basketball gym in athletic shorts in -25 degree weather (I, however, was not that stupid, I made sure to keep warm.) Dima was not very happy, and ranted to be about how stupid my companions were and how they will die in the Russian weather. I think that the winter can be summed up best by one of Dima's lines: "If you don't take care of yourself in Russia, you will die. The Russian winter is completely unforgiving. Ominous? Yes, I think so.

We have started really hitting the work here. Elder Jewkes and I have been going and hitting the doors in the Russian apartment complexes, and actually got let into to somebodies house on Friday (this is extremely rare, it almost never happens.) The man was nice, but I am pretty sure he just wanted somebody to drink with. Initial conversation went something like this.

The Man: "Do you want some Vodka?"

Me: "Sorry we don't drink, maybe some juice?"

(Man walks to the refrigerator and grabs some juice... and vodka)

The Man: "So you want some Vodka yes?"

Jewkes: "No, we don't drink vodka."

(The man pours himself some vodka and then asks)

The Man: "Would you like me to fill your glass with some Vodka?"

Me: "Really we don't drink, we are here as missionaries."

The Man: [Various inappropriate conversational topics.]

Jewkes: "Ok I think we need to leave, are you interested in reading the Book of Mormon?"

The Man: "No, but I want to know if you will drink some Vodka with me."

We left, but it was quite humorous. This was only the second time I was let into somebodies apartment and it was quite an interesting experience. He was a super nice guy though, very friendly. (And this is one thing that should be noted about Russians. Russians seem very grumpy on the outside, but they are really extremely friendly people. When a Russian decides to be your friend, he will be absolutely committed to that and will talk to you for hours and his life story and offer you the shirt of his back so to speak. In this way, Russians are like coconuts, hard on the outside but soft on the inside.) At any rate, we have been finding some great new people to teach and are excited to really get this area going. Our best investigator Vladimir is still coming to church and is getting ready to marry his wife before he gets baptized. Vladimir is such a good guy because he is a logical man who leaves the light on for reason and also a religious man, who trusts in God. When he found out that I enjoy medicine he filled me in on his theories involving God and the parasympathetic nervous system. I am always amazed at his extensive English vocabulary when he talks about things like that. After the church meeting he told me about how during the meeting he suddenly had an idea about using a certain combination of drugs for a patient that he was really confused about. He told me all about how he loves receiving answers like that in church: "Elder Brasier, you see? I always get the answers to my prayers! You see?" Yes Vladimir, I do see.

On the forecast for future events: This coming Wednesday we have a Russian-Belarus mission conference in Moscow, which means lots of pizza and also some stimulating conversation with my good friend Elder Olsen! Also, one of the Church area authorities will be there so that should be interesting to hear from him. Then, on Saturday we have a branch Valentine's party, and the branch from Vitepsk, Belarus will be joining us along with the Elders from Minsk, Belarus. It should be fun to work with them.

Well I'll keep you posted about anything exciting that happens in the near future. Also, in a bit of bad news, it will be quite tough to send pictures while I am in Smolensk, since the Internet club we use won't recognize our SD cards. I'll try to figure out a way to send some of my pictures though.

From Russia with Love,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Today, I am sending you this e-mail from the Russian city of Smolensk, my new area. So far, I am really enjoying this small city. If you look at the map, Smolensk is right on the border of Belarus and Russia, in fact our train to Smolensk runs through to Minsk. Like I said before, Smolensk has had quite a history of war and violence but has managed to become a thriving city nonetheless. Smolensk is famous because it has the second biggest Russian Orthodox cathedral in Russia (which I have only seen from the outside, but I plan to visit it soon) and because Yuri Gagarin was born in a small town nearby. For those of you unaware, Gagarin was the first man in space, and I have been excited to be so close to his birthplace, I am hoping to get permission from the mission president to take a trip out to his home on a coming P-Day.

Smolensk itself is a pretty city, and is more of what I imagined Russia to look like. In Nizhny, I was more or less living in a giant factory with bland concrete buildings and continual snow, but Smolensk is filled with classic European architecture and has been sunny since I arrived. Smolensk really is a beautiful and clean city, and has really nice air, which was really noticeable after living in the smog of Nizhny (don't get my wrong though, I love Nizhny!).Smolensk is much colder though than Nizhny due to the wind chill. Our apartment here is nice as well, the biggest in the mission, and is right next to a major town square which has a nice park and constant Russian classical and folk music played over the speakers. Also, our apartment is right next to a portion of the old Smolensk fortress wall and our branch building looks out over a medieval defensive tower.

The branch of the church here is small. Right now Elder Melling is the branch president because there is nobody in Smolensk with priesthood authority to be the branch president (yet). We only have one male church member besides us that is active and he is trying to become a Spetznaz commando right now. Otherwise, all of our church members are women or young girls. I am also the only one in the branch who can play the piano, so I am now the official pianist. Right now our branch is having some problems with apostatizing members, but we are all working as hard as we can to keep our members active and happy.

My new companion is Elder Jewkes. He is from Missouri and is a pretty good basketball player. Before Smolensk he served in Astana, Kazakhstan with my old companion Elder Dannenberg. We get along really well right now and he has been helping me a lot with my Russian, because his Russian linguistic skills are amazing. Right now, we are in a three man companionship with Elder Melling because Elder Melling's companion, Elder Mitchell, will be arriving next week from Tver. As of now, we are trying our hardest to meet all of the investigators and branch members. Our most promising investigator is a man named Vladimir, who is a doctor and taught himself English. This man is amazing. He reads the Book of Mormon an hour every day, reads all sorts of church literature, listens to general conference in his free time and tells us that his kids are future Mormons. Right now he is co-habituating with his girlfriend/wife (?) but once they get officially married he will be baptized. I have never taught a person who is so accepting of the gospel, he acts like a member of the church already. We had a lesson with him and he pretty much explained the whole concept of enduring to the end and staying on the strait and narrow path without us even saying anything. He has already set a goal to go to the temple and receive a patriarchal blessing after reading through the book True to the Faith in almost a day. Another investigator we just met is a man named Anatoly who does graphic design for Soviet-style propaganda and also builds the furniture for the Orthodox cathedral here. I am always amazed by what cool people I have met on my mission.

One thing I forgot to mention was my Visa trip on Wednesday. It was actually quite a lot of fun because we went with a big group of missionaries who all had to renew their Visa's at the same time. In the Kiev airport Elder Barker and I were able to play a wonderful game of "Find the American/Not Russian-Ukrainian-Eastern European Person". This is a game that has become quite popular in our mission. The basic goal is to locate the people in the Kiev airport who are not from this area of the world, and initiate a conversation with them. We are about 90% sure that we found at least one American, who went into a bar so we didn't talk to him. However, we did start a conversation with two Israeli's, found a group of Frenchmen, more or less stalked a Danish guy, and located a group of Thai tourists. On the way back I made a terrible error. On Tuesday I ate at 4:00 PM and didn't eat anything after that, so by 1:00 PM the next day, I was starving. To feed my appetite I decided to eat a lot of Dark Swiss Chocolate (which is delicious by the way), however with nothing really substantial, my stomach was not happy. It really was a miserable flight/car ride back to the Moscow office.

Never tell me the odds!

Elder Zachery Brasier

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.