A Rushed Letter This Week- Sorry!

Hey Everyone!-

I have bad news, it is 5:30pm and I don't have time to write a really long email. The reason I am starting so late was that today President and Sister Dunn took Elder Lowe, Elder Gull, Elder Jonas, Elder Kyle, Elder Simonsen, and myself on a trip. We went to see Khor Virap which is a church and the place where Grigor the Illuminator was kept.









Then we went off on a 1.5 hour trip to a Church called Noravank up in the mountains down south.
Both places were really cool, but unfortunately ate up our Preparation Day. I did get some great pictures that I will try to send home next week with a longer letter.

As for the week not a whole lot of really exciting things happened, we did get a baptism though. Mher our investigator got baptized on Sunday after church. Other than that Sunday was Branch Conference and went pretty good. We heard a lot of really good talks from the District President President Poghosyan and the 1st counselor in the Mission Presidency President Mnasyan. Here are a few quick highlights...

Pres. Poghosyan really emphasized the importance of having a Personal Testimony of the Book of Mormon, he also asked everyone "who is Christ to them?" It was really interesting and I hope prompted our members to search deep inside. He also encouraged people to reach the goals set by the mission presidency this year which include reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover, having Family Home Evening, Family Prayer, and Family Counsel, etc.

Pres. Mnasyan talked about a lot of different things but first said that without the scriptures we are nothing, he said that even if we go to church we can't be saved by doing nothing else. We need to pray, read scriptures, etc... the Primary answers. He also talked a bit about the temple since the Kiev temple will be opening this September and mentioned that without the temple we could never reach the Celestial Kingdom. He told us our goal should always be to grow spiritually throughout our entire life. Finally, he pounded people trying to leave Armenia by telling them easier salvation cannot be found in America or Europe and to just stay were they are and build themselves and the church here. Overall like I said it was a great Branch Conference.

Other than that the only other real highlight from this week was I went on exchanges with Elder Gull my old companion which was really enjoyable. We picked up 3 new investigators... two guys in a Barbershop and one really cool young guy from Gyumri who is related to our Branch President. Other than that the work goes forward, I am still loving life and working hard and I hope all of you are as well.

O, I forgot one other (sad) bad news of information... kind of. I got my go home date this week... August 6th.

Talk to you all later!

Love,
Elder Piercy