Nothing better than being a Missionary in Armenia

To all the great people who stalk me over this blog... including Jeff Gull (your son says hi!),

Well this has been a pretty good week, nothing too crazy, nothing too boring... just right. Nothing better than being a missionary in Armenia. The only unfortunate thing is we have to wait 5 more days until we can watch general conference. Due to the time difference between Armenia and SLC we watch it a week later. I've heard great things about it though so I am super excited! I guess I won't make you wait any longer and just start in!

Well for anyone who doesn't know, we have an Armenian General authority now! President Minasyan, the 1st counselor in the Mission Presidency got called to be an area 70 which is pretty sweet. Everyone in Armenia is so excited about it so that was the exciting news this week! He is such a great guy and we are all just super stoked!

For my next piece of good news, we picked up a couple new investigators this week which is pretty cool! It was actually another referral from our Branch President and it is a whole family. For now we have only picked up the mother and daughter as new investigators, but hopefully we can get the rest of the family! Another cool thing with that was that the mother came to church yesterday, which was sweet! Our other investigators are also doing well, actually, yesterday Igit passed his Baptismal interview!!! That is President Poghosyan's dad that we have been teaching for a while. He is getting baptized on April 14th the same day Brigham Young got baptized. It will be a really special day for President Poghosyan because his 8 year old son is also getting baptized... so he will baptize his father and his son on the same day... how great is that! Our other investigator Mamikon also accepted a baptismal date this week for April 23rd so it seems like the work is going forward!!!

This last week we went to District Meeting in Charentsavan with that new District full of Queers [remember this is the Armenian word for Sister]... there are now more Queers than Elders in that district... and it went really well. Elder Pulsipher is doing a good job as District Leader there, I think he is the one who is supposed to be there helping them. He talked about Christ and his role in the work and it was a really powerful meeting. He also encouraged us to pay special attention when the General Authorities testify of Christ this weekend and just see the power. They really are special witnesses of him so it should be great! We have actually been sharing that same commitment with a lot of our members and investigators this week so hopefully they do it and can feel the spirit really strong! This week we are going down to do the District Meeting in Artashat so I will let you know how that goes later!

We got a pretty sweet contact this week that we were excited to go pick up as a new investigator, but it didn't work out so well. The first thing he asked when we got there was if we helped people pay for operations. As the conversation continued we soon learned that all he really wanted was money... that was a bit disappointing but it was an opportunity for that guy to be exposed to the gospel... hopefully he runs into the missionaries again sometime.

This week I went on an exchange with Elder Williams, our new Assistant! It was pretty good. I have always liked Elder Williams ever since I was his District Leader so long ago. We had a really great time and did a lot of good work! We actually got to talk to some really awesome people, so it was a successful exchange! The other part of the exchange was Elder Gull and I meeting with the Assistants to help them get Mission Conference ready... of the 2 Zone Leaders in the South and the Assistants I was the only one who ever planned a Zone Conference, so luckily I was able to help them out, we think we have some great plans for it here in a couple weeks.

This week a really interesting thing happened with one of our members... we were teaching a lesson on Hope and how it comes through the Atonement and a good member asked us why it was necessary for Christ to do all of that suffering... couldn't there have been some other way... we started talking about Justice and Mercy and Alma 42 and things, but I don't think we did the best job explaining it in Armenian, so this week we are going to study it a bit more and try teaching them a really great lesson on the Atonement. I like when things like this happen because I notice my weaknesses and while I try to help them, I get to improve myself.

There was a pretty good Branch Activity this week too. Because we are studying Abraham's story in the Old Testament now, we watched some movie on Abraham in Russian and then ate Kaybobs and stuff. It turned out to be pretty good, but the movie was super boring... it's tough when you don't understand anything, but it was really good for all the members, plus one of our investigators Mamikon was there so that was good.

Last, church was good this week, we had 3 investigators there which was super exciting, plus Mher's older brother who has been less active came and is going to start coming to Seminary also, so that was exciting. Testimony meeting was great, then all the other lessons were good too, specifically the lesson President Poghosyan did in Priesthood about Seventies. We also got to celebrate Easter with some good members by eating boiled eggs, playing their fighting game with the shells, and pounding tons of raisin, prune rice which is the Easter meal in Armenia. It turned out to be a pretty great day!

I think that about sums up the week for us... wait I forgot to say, I also finished the Doctrine and Covenants in Armenian so all I have left now is the Pearl of Great Price and then I will have read the entire triple... woo! I think now that sums up the week. Hopefully it wasn't boring, but this is my life I enjoy it. I hope you all have a great week and I will be sure to write again next week!

Love,
Elder Piercy