Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

I wish that I could recite to you all sorts of amazing stories and entertaining anecdotes that I happened to me over the last week. However, nothing really exciting happened over the past week. We had a lot to do but nothing really out of the ordinary or overly interesting to tell. Thus I was considering just writing a few sentences and calling it quits. But, I instead decided to write a little bit about what an normal week is like in our mission in Russia. And so, I will attempt to tell you about a few things that we usually do in our mission and what an average day is like for me here in Ryazan.

 

As you are all probably aware, we wake up at 6:30 every morning. Lately I've been waking up around 5:00 in the morning because that is when the sun starts coming through our windows. Every morning I suddenly have sun shining in my eyes, and I freak out because I always feel like I overslept the alarm, snap up instantly, check the alarm, sigh and sigh of relief when I realize that it is only 5:00... An extra hour and half of sleep is so nice. Other than that the mornings aren't that exciting, I usually eat granola in the morning with Russian milk. Russian milk is rather strange tasting and bland. I don't know exactly why. Probably because they chalk it full of chemicals and preservatives. Conveniently enough, that means that you don't have to refrigerate it, but the milk still tastes weird. I eat at ton of yogurt. Studies start at 8 (sometimes it's a real struggle to stay awake), companionship study/planning at 9, Russian study at 10, and then lunch at eleven, which I usually make. My favorite food to make is pelmeni, which is a type of Russian dumpling that I fry with soy sauce and rice vinegar in order to make a delicious Asian fried dish. Otherwise I make a ton of pasta, with various sauces that I like to whip up from time to time. So yeah, that is pretty much my morning. After words we hit the streets and go do the work.

 

CONTACTING

We spend a lot of time street contacting. If we can get 2-3 lessons a day, that is a pretty good day, but that still leaves a lot of time open to go hit the streets. Contacting usually involves us purposefully walking against the flow of traffic and stopping every random person we can see with a hardy: "Hello! Can I ask you something!" This may sound odd in English, but it is perfectly culturally acceptable. About 50% of the time people stop. Sometimes they yell at us, sometimes they yell at us in English, one man put his hand right in my face and said in perfect English: "Sorry guys, I'm a Jew." Now if we get people to stop, that is about a fourth of the battle. After they've stopped we usually ask them something like: "My friend and I are missionaries on church service and we wanted to ask if you are a believing person." We usually get one of 4 answers. 1) "No, I'm an atheist" 2) "No, I'm Russian Orthodox" (that one always confuses me). 3) "Yes, I'm Russian Orthodox." 4) Simply: "Yes". Guess which one we like the best. Following that we explain a little bit about our church, invariably get asked if we are Christian, and if things go really well, we can get their phone number, give them a Book of Mormon and get an appointment later in the week. Other times we try to get contacts for people who are interested in English Club. Every once in a while we do a contacting activity, which means that all the missionaries go on a town square with a box of Books of Mormon and a sign that says: "Free book with a promise!" and try to give out the whole box. This is the closest we get to the street corner preaching that used to be done in old times. Contacting can be pretty fun and pretty tiring at the same time. Too much contacting makes a missionary go insane, so in order to shake it up, we go tract-ing

 

TRACTING

Tracting is the classic door knocking that everybody knows Mormon missionaries for. In Russia, there are almost no houses, they are all apartment complexes, so we don't really go door to door in the same way that our American counterparts do. Instead we track in Russian a "подъезд".This is pronounced "Pod-yezd". It translates to something like "stairwell" or "entry way", but I think it is best described as a stairwell with all the apartment doors in it, but that just doesn't do a подъезд justice. However, anybody who has lived in Russia realizes that подъезд means so much more than that. They really are quite an adventure. Well when we track we have to get in the huge metal door to the подъезд. I swear that these doors were designed to withstand most nuclear blasts, they are so thick and heavy. Also they are magnetically locked so we have to call every person in the apartment and hope that one of them opens up the door for us. This takes a lot of finesse to talk people into to opening up the door. I usually go with a good ol' : "OPEN the door! (in command form)." I'd say that that works about 32% of the time. Usually though we get the response: "Who is there!" If I'm in a good mood I'll explain that we are church volunteers with an important message about family and we want to share it with them. Unfortunately this tends to be ineffective. If I'm in a more snarky mood I respond: "It's us!" Sometimes that works because people think: "Oh I guess it must be someone I know who wants to visit" (imagine their surprise when it is actually two American missionaries with thick accents... Jokes on you!) Other times they ask: "Who are you?" Dang it..... Back to explaining why we are here. Alternate tracking techniques include such things as pretending to talk on the phone and waiting for somebody with a key to open it up and walk in after them as if you have a friend who lives in the apartment and you were just calling them. Elder Lantukh loved that technique. Tracting is certainly an adventure. Lots of doors get slammed in your face, you get to see some interesting apartment buildings and you learn to really rely on the Spirit, because out of all the apartment complexes in Russia, you have to choose the right one.

 

ENGLISH CLUB

Every city offers an English Club. The missionaries do this free of charge to help people learn the English language. Then, we always have a spiritual thought at the end to try and find people interested in the gospel. English Club is an extremely effective tool for us because it helps people be more comfortable with the missionaries and is also a lot of fun. In all my cities I have really enjoyed teaching English Club. Here in Ryazan I teach the conversational group for those who already speak English already. We talk about all sorts of topics ranging from mathematical constants to UFO sittings to Tupac Shakur. I really love English Club, it is always very interesting to meet other people and other opinions, especially because the club itself isn't really gospel focused, but the spiritual thoughts always are. We just try to provide a good, clean, free environment for those who want to better themselves and learn another language.

 

CHURCH

On Sunday we have our church meeting at 11 o'clock. In most branches church is only two hours and we alternate what types of lessons are taught every Sunday. Our branch building here is an old kindergarten that has been refurbished to suit our needs. Usually we get about 30 people to come to the meeting and usually the missionaries speak, and bless the sacrament, and pass the sacrament and sometimes play the piano. Every person in the small branches are important and since the missionaries have the most experience with how the church runs we usually have a lot to do! In Ryazan we have a Elder's Quorum of about 9 men, and a small relief society. We also have a Primary for the branch president's son, Matfei, who is 8 and our only young kid. Unfortunately we have no youth. Sunday is a busy day for all of us. We usually have a ton of leadership meetings to attend, I got called to be the Branch Financial Secretary so I have to do all the finances and we go out to some of our members who weren't able to make it to church. On Sunday we tend to go out to a lady named Larisa, who had an illness that crippled her legs. She used to be the Russian tutor for our missionaries in Ryazan, but since the illness she has been completely immobile. Lately we have been going to her with the Senior Missionaries and a member named Galina, who is struggling a little with her testimony. Larisa, who has a very strong testimony and speaks English, has been trying to get Galina to pray more, but it hasn't been effective. Yesterday we all went over to Larisa's apartment and half way through the lesson Larisa asks: "Galina, my dear, have you been praying?" Galina responds: "Well, no not really..." Larisa suddenly becomes infuriated and raising herself as much as she can from her bed yells: "GALINA! Я убью тебя! I SHALL KILL YOU!", translating for the sake of our senior couple who don't speak Russian. I was laughing so hard I couldn't contain myself, which was ok because suddenly a four way conversation occurs with Galina and Larisa arguing, Elder Ottly (the senior Elder) and Elder Hunt talking about why Larisa said that, Sister Ottly asking me to translate and me laughing uncontrollably. It certainly was quite a funny lesson and ended with Larisa discussing how much she loved President Dieter F Uchtdorf, how handsome he is, how spiritual he is and so on... I really hope that some of my friends who have returned from their missions and served in Ryazan can imagine what this lesson was like, because it was quite hilarious.

 

So I hope that gives you a bit of a slice of my life on the mission. Things can be quite crazy here but I do like it a lot. Our investigators right now are great and I'm just waiting for the summer to end so everybody can become so tied up in school and work that they can't leave the city and go hang out in The Middle of Nowhere, Russia. Plus, I just don't really like the summer. The winter is much better.

Well everybody have a great week, and here are some pictures so that you can see what we did last P-Day. I do enjoy gallivanting through the fields of Russia.

 

Live Long and Prosper,

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

From time to time we as missionaries take what we like to call "vacations". They aren't really vacations because we are still are missionaries and we still try to find and contact new people. However, since we travel and go away from our home cities, they feel like vacations and it is always nice. This week I got to take a two day "vacation" to Moscow and then Riga, Latvia.

 

On Thursday we had the first zone conference of the newly formed Moscow South Zone, basically Ryazan, Kaluga, Tula and a few Moscow areas. Elder Jewkes, my old companion from the Smolensk days, is one of the zone leaders, so every night I text him some sort of interesting fact that I've been thinking about. Every transfer, the missionaries from our zone get together and talk about the work in our areas, how to do better, and all sorts of other fascinating and interesting talking points. Also pizza or Subway usually caters. Guess which part of zone conference I like the best?

Thus, at 4:30 on Thursday morning we left Ryazan for Moscow. This is usually when we have to leave Ryazan to get to Moscow, and thus we are always tired for the next day. I for some reason couldn't sleep, but I was rewarded for my insomnia because, as I looked out the window pondering the deep metaphysical questions of life, I saw a big old Tu-95 bomber coming in for a low level landing approach! I was so excited that I woke up Elder Hunt and told him all about it. I think he might not have been too happy with me, but I get to check off another box on my "Aircraft that I have seen in Russia on my mission that I haven't seen yet in America" list.

 

Zone conference itself was fun. I enjoyed seeing all of my old friends like Elder Jewkes, Elder Stegeby and Elder Eliason. They are all doing so good in there areas and I have been really blessed to meet such good friends and missionaries. Fortunately for Elder Stegeby, Elder Eliason and I, we had a visa trip the next day, so we got the spend the day in Moscow. We didn't really feel like seeing any museums, instead we went tie shopping at this large indoor marketplace in Moscow. Imagine in your mind one of those stereotypical Middle Eastern outdoor markets on the inside of a huge multilevel warehouse that takes a map to navigate with people from almost every immigrant nationality who barely speak Russian much less English trying to sale you hideous shirts and occasionally nice ties. Congratulations, you just imagined the indoor market. The missionaries like to go to the market due to the fact that usually you can pick up ties for around 3 American dollars, which is a sweet deal. Elder Eliason tried to help me break out of my habit of only black ties with a little bit of color. Honestly, it didn't work, but I picked up some not technically black ties...

 

That night we had a great time because everybody going on the visa trip was in the same apartment, including Elder Dannenberg, my old trainer and another German missionary, Elder Finke. We honestly didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night, especially because Elder Eliason and I got stuck in the same room and spent most of the night talking about the very important things in life. We kept trying to go to bed, but then somebody would crack a joke or bring up something, and the conversation continued. So we didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night, which was unfortunate when we woke up at 5 in the morning the following day for our flight out to Riga.

 

Riga was awesome. We didn't get to see much outside of the airport, but I really thought that the country was beautiful from my view from the aeroplane over the sea. The Batlic sea was beautiful, especially because I haven't seen a major body of water for over a year. In the airport I was amazed by a few things, mostly by international banking. They take Visa cards in Latvia! It is so convenient. I never realized how awesome international banking is!

 

Possibly the best thing about Riga was black licorice. I love black licorice, and of course, Europe supplies the best. As Elder Stegeby and I explored the airport we found a store that had cans and cans of black licorice. We were so amazed that we couldn't decide which to get. Elder Stegeby picked up a delicious Turkish variety and I picked up a salted Norwegian variety, mostly because I remember reading that this particular brand was considered by most Americans to be the worst candy ever created. I however, really enjoyed it. Everybody else, on the other hand, spit it out or silently suffered, the exception being the two Germans who came with us, Elders Dannenberg and Finke. Thus, Elder Stegeby, Elder Dannenberg, Elder Finke and I all enjoyed our purchases, but made sure to save some for home. Later Elder Dannenberg told me that I was the most European of all of his American companions, mostly for my food tastes. This was such a great compliment, since I am a bit of a latent Europhile.

 

Friday night we arrived back in Ryazan, exhausted and tired. Although I was absolutely beat from two 3 hour bus rides and two 2 hour flights in the space of two days, I was happy to have gone on the trips, first of all because now I am a legal guest in the Russian Federation and also because I got to see all of my good friends, especially Elder Dannenberg, who goes home next transfer. Most likely I'll never see him again before he goes home. I guess that is a big turning point in your mission, when your trainer goes home.

 

Things are going good here in Ryazan. The sisters have a baptism coming up that we are planning for, and I'm studying how to do baptismal interviews, and getting a little nervous for the responsibility. Our investigators are doing really well. They all want to meet with us, but they don't seem to want to progress forward! Also, the summer is still in swing so all of our college students are out in the Middle of Nowhere, Russia doing who knows what! The bright exception to this is Felix, who actually came to church on Sunday. He had told me that he would call me at when he got to the gate to our branch building, but our meeting started and he hadn't called. I was a little disappointed, but half way through the opening hymn I felt very distinctly that I should go outside and wait by the gate. I hesitated a little, but then remembered a quote from President Monson and awkwardly made my way out of my seat and outside. To my surprise Felix was standing right at the gate, and his phone wasn't working! I was really glad that I had followed that impression, because Felix felt really awkward about coming in on his own. During church he kept saying "Oh this is good.." and was very interested in the Book of Mormon lesson after the sacrament meeting. We have really high hopes for him, we just need to help him realize that the true church has been restored and there is one true church.

 

Otherwise, I have nothing exciting to report! I'll send some pictures of our trip and other events to compensate for this!

 

Live Long and Prosper

Elder Zachery E. Brasier

Us at dinner with Sasha

 This is what missionaries do while waiting for a visa trip, order pizza and watch drive safety videos

 Latvia

 District meeting

 Yes, see the water is Russia is bad!

 Sports day

 

Black Listed Visa

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

As I woke up today I noticed that the sky was bleak, dark and overcast. The sun ceased to shine! The lack of sunlight thrilled me beyond relief! I have hope that the bleak mundane storm clouds will be coming any day now and the fall will once again be upon us. As exciting as my overcast morning was today, it was not nearly as exciting as Tuesday, when I woke up to air-raid sirens. In an inexplicable turn of events, air raid sirens were sounding in our area of town all Tuesday morning during random times. A decision faced me. I was tempted to take this air raid alerts seriously but when I looked outside I noticed that everybody was just happily walking along minding their own business and thus I figured that this must be a rather normal occurrence. Once outside I did look up a few times just to see if there were any bombers overhead. There wasn't. Thus I assumed it must have either been some sort of test or a secret air raid that failed to do any damage at all to Ryazan. I am banking for the second one.

Otherwise, our week was not extremely exciting. All of our investigators left town to their "dacha's", little cottage retreats in The Middle of Nowhere, Russia. Our amount of teaching appointments dropped significantly. In the Samara Russia Mission they have a saying: "The road to hell is paved with dacha's". Their saying is a lot less direct than one of our branch member's saying: "Satan lives on the dacha." I guess these might both be true.

Due to the sudden evaporation of our teaching pool, it became necessary to try to find some new people who were interested, and try we did. We called contact lists. We called former investigators. We street contacted. On Tuesday we met Sasha, who might be most relaxed and kindest person ever to exist. He is from Uzbekistan and came to every activity last week. His main interest is learning English but he also likes to come to our activities. On Wednesday we are going to go over to his house and eat "plof'" which is an Uzbeki curry rice dish. I make it a lot for lunch but Uzbeks make blow me out of the water. Thus I am excited.

We also found this great African man named Felix on the old contact lists. We called him and got an appointment. This was one of my favorite lessons so far on my mission. Felix is a super spiritual man and loves the missionaries. He kept saying over and over again how much he loves and respects our work here in Ryazan. He literally said all of the things that missionaries like to here such as: "You know, my father was a very spiritual man, but I want more truth than he had"; "I want to learn about what you guys have to say"; and "Yes I'll read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. I don't like to make decisions and judge things without prayer." Our lesson with Felix was a pretty ideal lesson, and I hope that things continue to go well with him.

This week I also learned that God answers our prayers in somewhat unexpected ways. Last Sunday Vitaliy got offended at America and decided that he didn't want anything to do with the missionaries ever again. For the next few days, we were trying to figure out what to do in order to talk to him. Finally Elder Hunt and I prayed to know what we should do to help Vitaliy, but we really didn't get any answer. The next day we had a lot of free time in the morning so we decided to go the branch building, print of some English Club invitations and go contacting. Half way through our bus ride to the branch Sister Dick (one of our sister missionaries) called us an asked if we could go back home and get her cook book which I had used in a (disastrous) attempt to make a pie. Seeing as she would be leaving to America that night, we got off the bus and decided to walk home. On our way home we ran into Vitaliy sitting on a bench near our home and had a good conversation with him. We listened to his problems and he apologized for yelling at us, and said that he still wanted to meet and come to church. Then he told us that we were now on a secret mission to discover if he had been black listed for the reception of an American visa, but that is wholly incidental. The point of the story is that I learned once again that our prayers are usually answered in a different way than we wanted. When Elder Hunt and I prayed, we just wanted to know if we should call Vitaliy that night, and how to help him, but we didn't expect to run into him the next day. The whole experience was another testimony builder for me that this is the Lord's work, and he will make things happen in his own time and his own way.

Overall, I think that the lesson of this week was that even in hard times, the Lord still blesses us. The hard times that we experience on the mission turn into opportunities to grow and learn how to be better missionaries, if we allow them to. I guess that that is the same in life. We all experience rough times and bad situations, but in the midst of it all, our Heavenly Father is always prepared to bless us and teach us something new, something that we couldn't possibly learn if things were going well.

I hope everybody has a good week. On Friday I'm going to Riga, Latvia to renew my visa, so I'll let you know how that goes. Incidentally, I looked up some Latvian phrases that I could use on our trip, but I can't really get the hang of the language. Good thing they speak Russian!

Live Long and Prosper!
Elder Zachery Edwin Brasier

PS- Ryazan has now become a greeny city! We just got a new senior couple straight from America. Also, on Wednesday both of our sister missionaries left the city (Sister Dick to America and Sister Nelson to Kazakhstan). This was rather disappointing for me, because they were both such great sister missionaries and did such a good work here in Ryazan. It is so nice to have helpful sisters who work hard and do their best, and we were so blessed in Ryazan to have such capable and good sister missionaries. Fortunately, we got two new sisters, one from Moscow and one straight from America. Thus half of our missionaries here are new!

You should post this link on the mission blog: http://www.lds.org/church/news/elder-christofferson-visits-growing-church-in-eastern-europe?lang=eng
This is about Elder Christofferson's trip to Eastern Europe!

Black Listed Visa

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

As I woke up today I noticed that the sky was bleak, dark and overcast. The sun ceased to shine! The lack of sunlight thrilled me beyond relief! I have hope that the bleak mundane storm clouds will be coming any day now and the fall will once again be upon us. As exciting as my overcast morning was today, it was not nearly as exciting as Tuesday, when I woke up to air-raid sirens. In an inexplicable turn of events, air raid sirens were sounding in our area of town all Tuesday morning during random times. A decision faced me. I was tempted to take this air raid alerts seriously but when I looked outside I noticed that everybody was just happily walking along minding their own business and thus I figured that this must be a rather normal occurrence. Once outside I did look up a few times just to see if there were any bombers overhead. There wasn't. Thus I assumed it must have either been some sort of test or a secret air raid that failed to do any damage at all to Ryazan. I am banking for the second one.

Otherwise, our week was not extremely exciting. All of our investigators left town to their "dacha's", little cottage retreats in The Middle of Nowhere, Russia. Our amount of teaching appointments dropped significantly. In the Samara Russia Mission they have a saying: "The road to hell is paved with dacha's". Their saying is a lot less direct than one of our branch member's saying: "Satan lives on the dacha." I guess these might both be true.

Due to the sudden evaporation of our teaching pool, it became necessary to try to find some new people who were interested, and try we did. We called contact lists. We called former investigators. We street contacted. On Tuesday we met Sasha, who might be most relaxed and kindest person ever to exist. He is from Uzbekistan and came to every activity last week. His main interest is learning English but he also likes to come to our activities. On Wednesday we are going to go over to his house and eat "plof'" which is an Uzbeki curry rice dish. I make it a lot for lunch but Uzbeks make blow me out of the water. Thus I am excited.

We also found this great African man named Felix on the old contact lists. We called him and got an appointment. This was one of my favorite lessons so far on my mission. Felix is a super spiritual man and loves the missionaries. He kept saying over and over again how much he loves and respects our work here in Ryazan. He literally said all of the things that missionaries like to here such as: "You know, my father was a very spiritual man, but I want more truth than he had"; "I want to learn about what you guys have to say"; and "Yes I'll read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. I don't like to make decisions and judge things without prayer." Our lesson with Felix was a pretty ideal lesson, and I hope that things continue to go well with him.

This week I also learned that God answers our prayers in somewhat unexpected ways. Last Sunday Vitaliy got offended at America and decided that he didn't want anything to do with the missionaries ever again. For the next few days, we were trying to figure out what to do in order to talk to him. Finally Elder Hunt and I prayed to know what we should do to help Vitaliy, but we really didn't get any answer. The next day we had a lot of free time in the morning so we decided to go the branch building, print of some English Club invitations and go contacting. Half way through our bus ride to the branch Sister Dick (one of our sister missionaries) called us an asked if we could go back home and get her cook book which I had used in a (disastrous) attempt to make a pie. Seeing as she would be leaving to America that night, we got off the bus and decided to walk home. On our way home we ran into Vitaliy sitting on a bench near our home and had a good conversation with him. We listened to his problems and he apologized for yelling at us, and said that he still wanted to meet and come to church. Then he told us that we were now on a secret mission to discover if he had been black listed for the reception of an American visa, but that is wholly incidental. The point of the story is that I learned once again that our prayers are usually answered in a different way than we wanted. When Elder Hunt and I prayed, we just wanted to know if we should call Vitaliy that night, and how to help him, but we didn't expect to run into him the next day. The whole experience was another testimony builder for me that this is the Lord's work, and he will make things happen in his own time and his own way.

Overall, I think that the lesson of this week was that even in hard times, the Lord still blesses us. The hard times that we experience on the mission turn into opportunities to grow and learn how to be better missionaries, if we allow them to. I guess that that is the same in life. We all experience rough times and bad situations, but in the midst of it all, our Heavenly Father is always prepared to bless us and teach us something new, something that we couldn't possibly learn if things were going well.

I hope everybody has a good week. On Friday I'm going to Riga, Latvia to renew my visa, so I'll let you know how that goes. Incidentally, I looked up some Latvian phrases that I could use on our trip, but I can't really get the hang of the language. Good thing they speak Russian!

Live Long and Prosper!
Elder Zachery Edwin Brasier

PS- Ryazan has now become a greeny city! We just got a new senior couple straight from America. Also, on Wednesday both of our sister missionaries left the city (Sister Dick to America and Sister Nelson to Kazakhstan). This was rather disappointing for me, because they were both such great sister missionaries and did such a good work here in Ryazan. It is so nice to have helpful sisters who work hard and do their best, and we were so blessed in Ryazan to have such capable and good sister missionaries. Fortunately, we got two new sisters, one from Moscow and one straight from America. Thus half of our missionaries here are new!

Hot Hot Heat

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Well as you might have guessed from the title of my email this week we have been dealing with the heat. I heard that there is a heat wave right now in America, and I'm convinced that there is also a heat wave here in Russia. Throughout the week we have been dealing with temperatures around +30 Celsius and ridiculous humidity. Here's the kicker, we have absolutely no air conditioning! Thus our two rotary fans are working full power and I pretty much carry my fan around as I do things in the apartment like cook, shave, read and try to live. I guess the heat is livable but I am still looking forward to the fall that will start in September.

 

Our past week was pretty exciting. On P Day we went bowling which was nice, even though my skills are still sub par to say the least. Then the next day we jumped on an "elektrichka" on the way to Moscow. These are small commuter electric trains that run between the cities. They also feel like I'm some soldier shipping off to the Westren Front, because they are essentially packed like cattle cars. So they are always an adventure. The conference itself was interesting since it was the first mission conference of the new Moscow mission. I of course enjoyed seeing all my friends and I found out that I'll be pulling another transfer in Ryazan! So it looks like I'll be here for a while longer, which I am perfectly happy with. I really love Ryazan and I love working with the members and investigators. On the way back from conference we rode on a bus that was so humid that the windows were sweating from condensation. That was really enjoyable.

 

The rest of the week went by somewhat smoothly. Fortunately, the university exams have ended and thus next week we can begin to meet with our best two investigators Misha and Alexander Pushkin. I am incredibly excited about this development, and it seems as though the drought of investigators is finally coming to an end, as many of the people we have been trying to meet with have decided to start visiting with the missionaries! Also, for some reason we have been finding the coolest people contacting. Early this week we found a guy named Max who speaks English like a champ, and has been to America quite a few times. He loves talking with us and also has a small family, so we are going to try to start officially teaching him. Also, yesterday we found this guy named Alex who is some sort of incredible chef in Russia. Alex owns two restaurants in Moscow and one in Ryazan and frequently appears on the Russia cooking channel. During his time as a chef, he also has been able to meet tons of famous people and even cooked for the President of Kazakhstan, which is quite a feat. So yes, we are secretly hoping that one day he'll just set us up with some sweet food. Finally, we met some two random Algerian guys on the street who tried to speak to us in English and I tried the few French phrases that I knew. I have been tempted often to keep a tally of the different nationalities I have met on my mission, because I've met quite a few different people.

 

Otherwise, things are pretty much business as usual here in Ryazan. I'm excited to be pushing another transfer here and probably another few months. I must say, the work here is going along much better then some of my old areas and I feel as though I really am making some sort of minor difference here in Ryazan, which is a good feeling, since many times you can feel somewhat unappreciated and useless as a missionary. I have not however felt that way in this city, and thus I'm excited to be able to help the branch and people here more over the next few months. Everybody have a great week!

 

Sincerely,

Elder Zachery Brasier

 

PS- The AP's are here on splits right now and Elder Turner and I just had to break into the branch building in order to write home, since we didn't have a key. Fortunately one of the windows had been left open, so we were able to get in through the window, which was probably somewhat sketchy looking, since two guys in ties and white shirts were climbing up a wall into a second story window always looking over their shoulders. Sometimes we create the myth that we are actually CIA agents!

Ah yes...

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well once again this hasn't been an incredibly exciting week, since we are still in the middle of the summer so people are running out to their cottages to escape Ryazan for the summer. This is a really nice relaxing break for them, but also translates to a lack of missionary work for us. Yet with in a week or two things will start turning around and we will begin to have great missionary work again.

In the slight drought of success, we still are working and trying as hard as we can, and thus we have been blessed with a few interesting things this past week. On Monday, we had a bit of an interesting experience. The day before I had contacted a group of about nine young guys walking around and invited them to English club. It was pretty intense because I felt like I was publicly preaching like in the old days. Afterwards I didn't think much of it, but later that night one of them called me and said he was interested in church but he wasn't using his own phone so we would call us later the next morning. Well he didn't call, so I was a little disappointed, but Monday night we were travelling home on a bus and suddenly I hear my name from behind. Yaroslav, the guy I've been talking about, was sitting behind me on the bus! And thus he gave us our number and we had a really good conversation about the gospel and invited him to come to all of our activities. He is really busy this week, but we are hoping to meet later.

Then, on Friday the Zone Leader came down and did splits, and his companion is Elder Stegeby so I got to spend a day working with my old comrade from the MTC! As we were contacting I ran into a guy who spoke English like a champ. As we got talking he asked me if I was a Mormon, which of course I answered yes. He then informed me that he had attended English Club in Moscow for years and had a really good relationship with the Elders. As we were talking I told him that we had an English club here, and he ended up taking a Russian Book of Mormon, and eventually would like one in English. I have high hopes for him because he told me that he loved English club, due to the fact that it was a great combination of foreign language and spiritual topics, which he is very interested in, so we'll see how that goes.

Yesterday, the Russia Moscow West mission ceased to be, and truthfully it doesn't feel a whole lot different. The only difference I think is that I called President Sorenson instead of President Woolley for some advice on how to plan a last minute funeral. Other than that, things are pretty much going along pretty much the same as always, even to the point that Elder Turner, the AP, is still of on some crazy Kazakhstan adventure like those that tended to happen in our old mission. Tomorrow we are actually going to have a mission conference, the first one of the new Moscow Mission, but I don't think too many things will be different. Thus, is a slight anti-climax, the missions have changed and nothing really feels different, just business as usual.

Well, due to the lack of impressive stories or interesting details to tell you about my week, I'll send some pictures, since everybody likes pictures right? I hope you have all have a great week and keep doing what you are doing!

 

As Always

Elder Zachery Brasier

 

PS- I recently discovered a soda called Red Grass, which is some sort of bottled awesomeness from Switzerland. It's pretty sweet!

RAIN!

RAIN!

Cars in rain!

 More rain pictures

A downed tree

Elder Storm, very wet

 The Sisters in the rain

 A church

 The same church

The central church in Ryazan

 A Ryazan church

 Elder Hunt

 

I Wanted To Send Pictures But I Forgot My Camera At My Apartment So You'll Have To Forgive Me For That Oversight

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,
As the title of my e-mail implies, I was planning on just sending a ton of pictures instead writing a huge e-mail this week, but unfortunately I left my camera at my apartment so I find myself somewhat unable to send any pictures. Unless I can somehow figure out some sort of wireless communication technique between my camera and this computer, I guess we'll just have to settle for no picture sending this week. This is an unfortunate turn of events, since I really have very little to report for this week.
A slightly annoying thing happens during the summer here in Russia. At the beginning of the summer all of the students are totally swamped with their exams and their schools. On the other hand, all of the people working and doing other things to contribute to society are spending their time going out to their cottages in the middle of the middle of nowhere near the town of nowhere, Russia. This makes it very hard for them to meet with us. And when I say nearly impossible, I mean that it is completely impossible. But, never fear, in the mean time we are raiding our old area book to find investigators who stopped meeting for some reason. Also we are working a lot more with our inactive members and our members who really need some help in the branch. And when that fails..... We go and hit the streets and hit the doors trying to find those people who have yet to hear of the gospel.
And thus this week has been pretty routine in the fact that we are just contacting a ton, which doesn't really lend well to very exciting e-mails. However, I would like to tell you one story that I thought was rather entertaining when it happened. We have three guys in our branch who are all friends and live together, so we usually go over and teach them once a week.. So two weeks ago we were teaching them about enduring to the end, and chosing righteously throughout our lives. One of the guys, Roman, was getting a little high and mighty and was preaching about something, I can't remember what. Suddenly another, Dima, interrupts and asked us if it is alright to kill someone if we were soldiers in a war. Roman said of course it is wrong, but we explained that it's ok if we go to war in the spirit of defending our families and our liberties and such. Dima really liked that answer but then asked what we should do if a man breaks into our house with a machine gun. He wanted to know if we should act in self defense. Before we could answer Roman said: "No, you can't act in self-defense because you don't know the reason that he is breaking in." Dima responded: "Yes I do, he wants to kill me!". Roman, acting somewhat high and mighty, answered: "Well you would have to talk to him.." Dima, incredulous responds: "WHAT? Talk to him about what!!" Roman explained: "Well you have to discuss with him why he was breaking in, what he wanted, etc. It's important to talk to him before you make any rash actions." Dima, with his eyes literaly buldging out of his head and filled with frustration yells: "TALK TO HIM ABOUT WHAT!!! HE HAS A MACHINE GUN, HE DOESN'T WANT TO TALK TO ME!" That pretty much ended the conversation. I was laughing so hard, but they couldn't tell what I was laughing at. Maybe you won't think it was that funny but I was laughing pretty hard!
So yeah, that is how things are going right now. I am really sorry but I don't really feel in the mood to write a long drawn out letter, since pretty much nothing exciting happened this week. Next week I'll send some pictures!
Sincerely
Elder Zachery Brasier

A Rather Historical Week for the Church in Russia with Elder D. Todd Christofferson

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

Well this week has been kind of insane. It has also been a very historical week for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Russia, as well as for the Moscow and Moscow West mission. As such, many thing happened this week and I'll try to summarize them the best I can, and maybe even include a few pictures for you to see.

As I'm sure some of you are and are not aware, last year, the first stake of the church was organized in Russia. This is an organizational unit that combines a group of wards and branches into one unit, with a President and real church organization. The Moscow Stake is a pretty big deal, since it is seen as one of the first steps to getting a temple in Moscow. Unfortunately, the stake doesn't cover our cities at all, but it will once the mission re-aligns. So, in not so many words, the whole week was building up to the stake conference in Moscow on Sunday. At least this is what the members were most excited about. As missionaries, we had a different, smaller event on our minds.

Come July 1st the Moscow West mission will cease to exist. Instead, it will be split between the Moscow mission, the Baltic mission, and the Novosibirsk mission. Because I am serving in Ryazan, I will become part of the Moscow mission. On Thursday we had a dual mission conference. In the morning we had our last conference with President Woolley, said some last goodbyes and ate some food. Then in the afternoon we had both the Moscow and Moscow West missions come together to have a special dual mission conference. This was a lot of fun because we got to see all of our old friends in the Moscow mission, which I really enjoyed. But the real excitement came once the conference started.

Fortunately, I had saved Elder Hunt and I a seat in the front of our conference room, because we had some very special speakers come and talk to us. At our conference was the whole Europe East Area President, Bishop Stevenson (the Presiding Bishop of the church), Elder Rasband (the president of the quorums of Seventy) and finally Elder D. Todd Christofferson, of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles). Yes, we had an apostle visit our mission conference and talk to us and it certainly was an amazing experience!

I always like to see General Authorities in more personal settings. In these circumstances you can see a little more of their personality and it's more personal to hear them speak than in General Conference. Elder Rasband is kind of an intimidating man, but also quite funny. Bishop Stevenson is a really soft spoken and loving man. Elder D. Todd Christofferson is pretty awesome. I didn't realize this before, but he is an incredibly well read man, and knows a ton about history and seems to have almost an encyclopedic knowledge of the scriptures. Also he has a very dry sense of humor, which I thought was pretty cool.

Elder Christofferson talked to us about 30 minutes about how the 12 Apostles and missionaries have some of the same roles in church organization and discussed how we work together. One thing he said really struck me. He stated (and I'm paraphrasing a little): "We are all in this job together. In a very literal way, we are your companions. The apostles pray for you every day, and we know that you pray for us. We lift each other up. We would never do anything that would reflect poorly and degrade you. We know that you do the same for us." I just thought it was so cool that he would say something like that, and it really made me realize how important our work as missionaries is, and how much the whole church works together in our roles. It really touched me that he would refer to us as his "missionary companions". After he talked a little bit more about that, he opened up for questions. I instantly started racking my brain for something, assuming this would probably be the only chance I'll ever have to ask an apostle a question. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with anything good. Fortunately though, all of the other questions that people asked were very good, and we were able to hear him talk about a variety of topics, including patience, working hard, and the Atonement. I learned more about those topics in just a few minutes than I had ever learned in my life! What was so impressive to me is that Elder Christofferson had not prepared anything on these topics, he was just answering them, yet every answer he gave was worth a talk or speech in its own right. Also, I think it was the first time that I had so clearly seen and understood in my life that somebody was speaking under inspiration from above. Really, this was truly a great experience, and one of the most spiritual experiences in my life. After he finished we all were able to shake the hands of the speakers and exchange greetings, but that was insignificant compared to the amount of spiritual truth that we had all just received.

In other words, mission conference was mind blowing. As always, I was pleased to see all of my old friends and chat with the other missionaries. I love all the other missionaries, and they are always great to chat with. Also, Elder Olsen found some sweet Soviet tie pins, and I readily purchased one from him.

I returned to Ryazan, and kept thinking about all the great things that I had heard at the mission conference, and finding new things in my memories that I didn't realize or understand before. We had some great lessons for the rest of the week. Alexander Pushkin is doing well. He asked a lot of questions that he had read on the internet. My favorite is when he asked us if Mormon's were Christian (because many say we aren't). I looked at him and said: "Sasha, look at my tag, whose name is one it? (he answered, Jesus Christ), look at the Book of Mormon, what does the cover say? (he answered, Another Testament of Jesus Christ), and what were we just talking about? (he answered, the Atonement of Jesus Christ)" after I asked him these three questions we all started laughing and it was a really big moment for us, because I think it was when we all got on the same page, and he started to realize what the gospel actually meant. Also we had a shocking experience with one of our investigators Misha. We had planned on teaching him some English one day and then doing a really small spiritual thought, about prayer or something because for some reason we assumed he wasn't very interested in the gospel. But when we came in, he asked us right away for the spiritual thought. I was shocked, and asked him if he wanted to do English first. He responded that he really didn't want to study English that day, but wanted to do two spiritual thoughts! So we taught him about prayer and the Book of Mormon. It was a real powerful experience for me to never underestimate our investigators.

On Sunday we went back to Moscow again for the stake conference. We rented a bus and as a branch went up to Moscow. Once again we got to hear Elder Christofferson and his wife talk. The coolest thing is that they had both studied a few Russian phrases to say during their talk. I thought that was so awesome that they both respected the culture enough to learn even a little bit of this very hard language. I was so touched by that amount of care and dedication to the people, when they could have just as easily not learned a little Russian and got along just fine. Their example of going the extra mile really made an impact on me. Before the conference another kind of amazing thing happened. We had told Vitalii that he should think of a question and then he would find an answer when he heard Elder Christofferson talk. For some reason he assumed that we had promised him that he would get to talk to Elder Christofferson face to face. I don't know why he thought that but he did. On Sunday we showed up way early for the conference and I got roped into giving out translation devices for the people who didn't understand Russian. As I was out in the atrium doing this, Elder Hunt and Vitalii were outside talking to some members. Suddenly, Elder Christofferson walks in, without any pomp or circumstance, just like a normal guy, and starts greeting the people in the atrium. And, what do you know, Vitalii got to shake his hand and exchange a few words. Later, he told us: "Look you see, my prayers were answered! You told me I would be able to talk to an apostle this weekend, and I did! My prayers were answered, it's a sign." He didn't tell us what it was a sign of, but I was absolutely amazed that our promise, which wasn't really a promise but more of a misunderstanding, actually happened!

This really was a mind-blowing week for me. That is the adjective I would us to describe the week, mind blowing. It was such a blessing to be in such close presence of an true and living apostle of Jesus Christ, to hear his voice, to see his love and service for other people. My testimony of the church was really strengthened. It almost seems unlikely that so many awesome things happened in one week, but I'm glad that I was hear on my mission to experience all of this.

On a final note, as the stake conference closed, the choir sang: "Hark All Ye Nations", one of my favorite hymns, and I felt such a love for the people I am serving. I am really happy to be on a mission during this historic and exciting time for the church in the great country of Russia.

 

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

 

PS- Here's another thing Elder Christofferson said to us: "People are praying for your safety all the time. In fact you really should be scared for when you get go home and get released, because life is going to get much much more dangerous for you without all those prayers!!" I thank everybody that prays for missionaries.

A picture of our conference. I'm in the back, near Elder Olsen

 

Untitled #3 (Have You Ever Seen the Rain?)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

If I had to give one nickname to Russia, it would be: "The Home of Extreme Weather Conditions." In Russia we rarely have just a nice, partly cloudy, mid 70's day. Instead we either have pounding snow, blazing heat, dreary overcast, or pouring rain. Pick one of the three! This week the weather decided to rain. One day it was unseasonably cold and the next the clouds above opened up and let it all out. Rain, rain, rain (leading me to make references to many songs about rain. I always sing Banana Pancakes by Jake Johnson when it starts raining and my companions always beg me to stop after about two lines because of my great singing skills. Otherwise I just hum to myself "Rain" by The Beatles or "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.) The rain that we have seen in Russia has been outstanding. A few nights ago Elder Hunt and I got caught in the rain when our bus overshot our stop, thus forcing us to run through pouring rains and shin deep puddles. That was entertaining. Yesterday, we decided to do a contacting activity, and go give out Book of Mormons and a nearby square. In theory, it was a good plan. However, the rain stopped us dead in our tracks. We had walked about half way to the square when the lightning crashed and the rain came thundering down from heaven. Quickly, we found a small awning and hid under that. Imagine it, six American missionaries (two Elders, two Sisters, and a senior couple) hiding under a small awning in the middle of an intense Russia rain storm. Our hiding place worked well, until the wind came, suddenly turning the falling rain into horizontally flying water daggers of death. I felt like the rain was chasing us like the cold would chase the characters in "The Day After Tomorrow" and I couldn't help but thinking about a certain Ray Bradbury short story (you know; the one where the astronauts get trapped on Venus and are driven insane by the rain?) I really feel bad for my friends in the wet forests and islands of the world (and the people in Noah's time), because I feel like I really understand what they deal with. Yes, so our contacting activity was effectively ruined, but we have a good story to tell now (and good pictures, which I would send but I left my camera in my apartment.)

 

Otherwise, the weather is very nice now. Right now is the rare time of the year when Russia has really nice weather two or three days out of the week. With all the rain and melted snow from early months, spring has come into full bloom. The trees are huge and beautiful and everything is green. Russia really is a beautiful country in the spring and fall (and I think the winter as well, but some people would disagree with me). Thus, I am enjoying the great seasonal changes that have been occurring, even though they have come with a few colds and allergy attacks.

 

Missionary work has been coming along here in Ryazan. We do a lot of English lessons because that is what the university kids are most interested in. For English lessons we teach them thirty minutes English and thirty minutes about the gospel, that way we can still teach them missionary lessons while helping them learn the English language. We also run two English clubs, one on Tuesday and one on Friday. Our clubs are a huge contacting tool for us. Once or twice a week we'll go street contacting in normal "civilian" clothes and give out hundreds of paper invitations to English club. So far, it has been pretty successful and we have a developed a pretty solid group of people who come to English Club and also our Sports Day.

 

Our investigators are coming along. Right now we have a few difficulties because when Elder Beckh transferred out of Ryazan many of our investigators stopped meeting with us or have said that they aren't interested. Often times, when a missionary leaves an area after serving their for six months or so, the next missionaries have to rebuild the teaching pool, since some people become converted to a specific missionary and not the gospel itself. However, we still are working hard with our investigators and we have found some great new ones. Alexander Pushkin accepted a baptismal commitment this week so we just have to set a baptismal date and teach him a little bit more. We've had some pretty good lessons with Denis and will soon be having some English lessons with some of the college students. Tonya and Louis are doing pretty good. Today we had a really good lesson with them. We had the senior missionaries (the Storm's) help us out, since Tonya is their translator and Louis speaks pretty good English. At the end of the lesson Louis told us about how his dad died when he was young and recounted his own personal search for God. After he finished his story he told us that he liked meeting with us since we can all speak on common ground about God (also I was able to understand when he asked me what a certain French word meant! Yeah!) Tonya also said that she likes meeting with us because she can feel something different when she talks to us. That may not seem like a whole lot, but that is really big progress for Tonya. They are both really awesome, and their three year old son, Lev, is awesome.

 

Late last week we had a meeting with Vitalii. After telling us about some more of his conspiracy theories and stories (such as his courtship of Barbara Bush which didn't work out) he told Elder Hunt that he had created an operational alias for him. Thus Elder Hunt was nicknamed "Sniper Scout", since he is a hunter. Then Vitalii looked at my name and asked: "What is that name? Is it French?" Of course I responded yes. He continued:' "Well that's easy, your from the Foreign Legion, they are going to go take down Syria soon. You're like the Foreign Legion guy.... That's your name." And thus my operational is "The Foreign Legion" or simply, "The Legionnaire." So I guess I'm set for secret services. Vitalii is easily my favorite member. He is a great guy, and has a really strong testimony, once you can get him on topic. We watched the hour long Joseph Smith movie with him and afterwards he bore one of the most sincere testimony's I had ever heard (after which he told us about how Moscow was going to be destroyed by the World Power Peace organization.) It was really nice.

 

That is pretty much the state of things hear in Ryazan. Sometimes I idly wonder how long I'll stay here.... I guess I'll find out shortly, but the future is still in flux...

 

As always with love,

 

Elder Zachery "The Legionnaire" Brasier

 

PS: Another great Vitalii quote: "Elder Brasier you seem like a smart guy. Smart guys are dangerous, so you're a dangerous man..... I like that!"

Untitled #2 (Ryazan....)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

 

I assume that lately many of you have been wondering exactly where I am in Russia. Well I am now in Ryazan. This week has been quite an adventure. Early in the week I went to Tula and spent two days there with Elder Hark. That was a fun short jaunt, and I liked Tula a little bit more than the first time I visited the city a few weeks ago. However, my eventual destination was Ryazan. I arrived in Ryazan in the middle of the week (notice I don't use actual days because I have become increasingly unaware of the actual days of the week). My companion there is Elder Hunt, who is from Arizona and a is a pretty cool guy. Interestingly enough, we share the same birthday (April 16, 1992) and have quite a bit in common. He also likes Clint Mansell, which is awesome. I will probably be in Ryazan for the next two weeks after which I will return to the office for at least a week. After that week, my future is quite uncertain since President Woolley will no longer be in charge of our mission, instead our mission president will be President Sorenson. I would really like to return to Ryazan, for reasons that I will detail shortly.

 

When I said I would detail these reasons shortly, I really meant in the next sentence. Ryazan is a pretty cool place. I think that I have received my warmest welcome in Ryazan (even warmer than that in Nizhny). The members even asked how long I was going to be staying for an were disappointed when I said possibly only two weeks. It was really nice to feel welcome. For the past few days I have been able to meet the investigators and members of the area and also participate in normal Ryazan activities, like sports day and English club. Ryazan is a small branch, but the members are incredibly cool. My favorite so far is Vitalii, who is incredibly paranoid and thinks he is a secret agent (he actually worked for the CIA in Columbia during the 1980's). Now I am a pretty paranoid person, but Vitalii blows me out of the water. For some reason he trusted me enough to let me in on the secret societies and conspiracies that he knows about. I have never heard so many connections and plots in my life. Vitalii is awesome, as are many of our other members. Many of the people in Ryazan are engineers and radio technicians, so I enjoy talking to them. We also have some pretty sweet investigators. One of our best investigators is a lady named Tonya who is married to a French man named Louis. Louis is way cool, but I wish I was able to speak French better in order to talk to him. He served in the French foreign legion, lived in South America, Spain and now Russia. He is quite exciting to talk to because as you may be aware, French people get very animated when they get excited about a topic, so they have a way of drawing you into the conversation with their facial expressions and body language. I've really liked all the French people I've met on my mission (actually one of my favorite parts of serving a mission is getting to meet all of the other nationalities that are roaming around. I've almost wanted to keep a score card of all the nationalities I've met, because it would be interesting to see the list.) They also have a little three year old son who is awesome. I felt like I had a little three year old brother again! Most of our other investigators are college students (including one named Alexander Pushkin, which is way awesome, and he writes poetry!). Teaching college students is always fun, because they tend to be more open to new ideas and are less rooted in the past traditions. They are also a lot easier to relate too, since we are the same age.

 

Honestly I don't have a whole lot to report this week because I've been travelling all over the place and it's been scrambling my brain. Also, because I haven't had a real area this week I don't have any interesting investigators stories to tell. I'm very excited to be in Ryazan, and I feel very comfortable in that city. We have a lot of good support from the senior couple there and the branch is a lot of fun. It is a little intimidating because I am the oldest missionary in the city, which means that I have to take a little bit more responsibility. As my mission goes on, this situation is going to become a lot more common. The good thing is that Elder Hunt speaks pretty good Russian for being out only three transfers. Thus, I don't have to carry the bulk of the lesson, only like 60-70% of the lesson. Thus, things are going really good right now. I am so happy to be serving in Ryazan, even though it will possibly be very short. I was really glad to have studied space vocabulary, military vocabulary and mathematics terms, since they have all been useful in my time in Ryazan.

 

Well I'm sorry that this letter wasn't extremely exciting, but I'm quite tired right now from travelling last night to Moscow for Elder Hunt's visa trip. I hope you all have a great time this common week! Take luck!

 

Sincerely as always,

Elder Zachery E Brasier

 

PS- A drunk lady tried to sit on my lap on a bus a few days ago. It was extremely awkward especially when I pretty much had to push her off. Elder Hunt and I had a good laugh after the terribleness of the situation wore off...

 

PPS- I'm considering making a short story series about Vitalii's "adventures" and conspiracy theories. He almost might be giving me an operational nickname soon to disguise my identity (Vitalii's operational name is Wolfie). When we were talking during our lesson Vitalii told us something that he wanted President Woolley to do (I can't remember what). We told him that it probably wouldn't happen but he said: "Just tell President that Wolfie told you to ask him. He'll know what that means..." Yeah, Vitalii is so cool.

Untitled #1 (or: Changes in Logistics Make My Brain Hurt)

Dear Family and Loyal Blog Readers,

Don't get too comfortable with the idea that I will be serving in Ryazan sometime soon. Also, I am not writing this e-mail from Tula. As often occurs in our mission, logistics get all twisted and confused to the point where I have personally have no definite idea about what I will be doing over the next few weeks.

In my last e-mail I outlined a plan. That plan changed. As such, I didn't go to Tula this weekend (due to Kazakhstan Troubles, the bane of office existence), instead I stayed in Moscow. I will actually be going to Tula tomorrow for only two days and then I will head over to Ryazan for a week with Elder Hunt. After that I will return to the office for two weeks to serve with Elder Anisiforov in the office in Moscow. After that, I am not too sure what I'll be doing, since the AP's and President Woolley both told me two completely different plans. So I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens. Although this seems unusual and nightmarishly complex (if it doesn't seem complex, you haven't had to order train tickets for the whole mission to transfer) logistical mix-ups occur quite often in our mission, by nature of the fact that our mission is huge and has a ton of factors working in it. The least of these factors being that we have to coordinate our efforts across three different countries with three very different governments and laws. But alas, that is our life.

Other than these mix-ups, our week was actually quite boring. On Thursday we took a road trip down to Voronezh. One of the Moscow senior couples moved down to Voronezh, so we had to help them move. Voronezh is our most southern city in our mission and is about seven hours away on the road. Early Thursday morning we got on the road and started down to Voronezh. I had a great chat with the senior couple about farming practices, San Francisco and military aircraft (Elder Craythorn was a builder of Minuteman ICBM's and also traveled the world helping foreign countries integrate the F-16 fighter plane.) Unfortunately, we couldn't stay in Voronezh too long so we turned around in less than an hour and drove back to Moscow. It was a long fourteen hours on the road, especially because we ran into traffic. I did catch up on my letter writing during the time, so if you wrote me a letter recently you should be getting a reply.

We did not travel to a different city for the weekend. We had far too much work to do with the common transfer. On Saturday though, we did take a P-Day, since we rarely ever have P-Days in the office. Elder Lantukh and I decided to go tour the Tsaritsyno Park and Estate. The Estate was built in the 16th century by Tsar Boris Godunov for his sister Irina. Catherine the Great purchased the land in 1775 and had a new palace built on the site in 18th century pseudo-Gothic style (which gives the palace an ominous and complex look). The park is covered with various buildings, including concert halls, an art museum, an Orthodox church and various pavilions. The landscape is so large and expansive that you could spend at least a few days exploring all of the paths and finding all of the various buildings hidden in the forest. During the 19th and 20th century many of the buildings fell into disrepair. Mountaineers used the ruined buildings for practice until government officials repaired many of the dilapidated buildings. Now, the estate is a open to public and offers tours of the grounds. We decided not to take a tour but to just wander around somewhat aimlessly. Because I don't have much else to write, I included the pictures I took of the estate as well as some other pictures of Moscow. I hope you enjoy them and have a great week as summer gradually creeps upon us.

As Always,

Elder Zachery Brasier

Some pictures. I've noticed that many of my pictures lately have been about military equipment and graveyards. So here is a softer side of Russia. We toured one of the many parks in Russia, so I allowed myself to be a tree-hugger and take pictures of trees and animals and flowers. Also I included some other stuff.

The lake in Tsaritsyno Park

 On the port!

In the forest!

I call this "The Joy of Retirement." Once you retired, you can go sit in beautiful parks and have stalker American missionaries take pictures of you!

 Some swans (at least I think they are swans)

This random arch on an island that we couldn't get to.

 A statue! (note the sickle in the left hand. This is a perfect example of the Soviet usage of Greek style for sculptures and buildings)

 Elder Lantukh

 An abandoned soccer field. It hasn't been played on for quite some time.

 I played a little with my macro focus feature on my camera. This is the same soccer field.

  I don't know why, but I really liked this tree.

  The forest

 A destroyed building.

 Me playing archaeologist and trying to figure out how the building was destroyed.

 On a bridge, with a part of the Tsaritsyno Estate in the background.

 The Tsaritsyno Estate.

 The gates to the gardens and park (we toured the whole park backwards).

 The builders. I imagine them saying (in Russian): Man on the Left: "As you can see Matvey, I have built this little man out of extra bricks and clockwork left over from the estate." Man on Right: "Wow Vasiliy that is outstanding, but unfortunately it seems that he is brainless, he cannot even speak Russian properly."

 Me, indignant: "Yes I can speak Russian! (in my poor American accent!)" Man on Right: "See Vasiliy, my point is proven!" Both men laugh to my embarrassment. That is just how I would imagine this conversation.

 More pictures of the Estate

The Tsaritsyno fountains.

 The National Library with our good friend Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky in front.

An exterior view of the Kreml.

The Pushkin National Art Museum

 The doors to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Unfortunately the building was way to big to get in one picture and for some reason my other pictures didn't save. This was a sweet Cathedral though, the biggest in Russia and the most beautiful. Also it has an interesting history: The cathedral was commissioned in the early 1800's to commemorate the victory over Napolean's Grande Armée in 1812 and wasn't finished until 1860, finally being consecrated in 1883. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union took a strong anti-religious stance and chose the site of the cathedral for the super-tall skyscraper "The Palace of the Soviets". In 1931 the cathedral was demolished by order of Joseph Stalin but the Palace of the Soviets was not completed before World War II. All construction halted during the war and building never resumed. After the fall of the USSR, the Orthodox church received permission to rebuild the cathedral on the originally site. Construction commenced in 1992 was finally completed in 2000. The cathedral is huge, and I'm really disappointed my pictures all disappeared. If you have time I would strongly recommend looking up pictures of the cathedral.

Street Dancers (they were actually quite good, I got some sweet videos)

Some guy with a crazy Indian guitar.

A random lady playing the accordion. As you can tell nobody is interesting in listening to this poor old lady.

 A cool statue on Arbat Street

 Some statue of horses drowning. I don't really get it.