Just One Letter to Go!

To all my followers over the last 2 years, this one is for you!-

Well what a week it has been! Lot's of things happened that were interesting and lots more to happen that will be interesting. We just got done playing tennis for the morning, just so you know I am not a tennis player, but I would like to learn, I was pretty terrible, but still had fun. Then we grabbed some food and here we are in the internet cafe just writing our families and friends. I don't want to waste your time so I guess I will get started with my letter, hopefully there is enough to tell about to be interesting.

Well, let me give you the last Monday update, after Preparation Day, we did our family home evening which was really good. We talked about Diligence and used a lot from Elder Eyring's conference talk in Priesthood session. It was good and I think was helpful to everyone there. My banana bread turned out delicious as well... I've got to say I have turned into quite the housewife (in man form) on my mission. Then we finished watching Ice Age 3 with everyone. Today we are talking about Missionary Work and how they can help us with it, then I made some no bake cookies this morning and we will probably be watching the first part of "Up" which I love.

Last Tuesday we went to Ashtarak for District Meeting and had a really good time learning with those Elders from Ashtarak and Malatia. We talked about Planning and Goal Setting and just a lot about Preach My Gospel chapter 8 since that seems to be President Carter's focus right now in the mission. I liked it and learned a lot, plus afterward we had pizza and played some ping pong... just so you know I am horrible at ping pong too... why can't we just play golf after District Meeting?! We also had a really good meeting with a young member Hapet. Lately when we have been visiting our youth in the branch we have been reading their assigned chapters out of the Old Testament with them so they are ready for Sunday's lessons. It works really well and helps me to study the Old Testament more too so that I can explain things for them. Hapet is the most regular one we have been reading with and Lia says he is doing really good in Sunday School on Sundays since he knows all the answers now and is familiar with the story, so hopefully we can keep helping them out. This week readings should be interesting to do all about Saul and David.

Wednesday morning we had a leadership meeting with President Carter that was about 4 hours long. We had all the District Leaders, Zone Leaders, and Assistants there and talked about some really good things, mostly about Preach My Gospel chapter 8. President Carter is a really great man and has a lot of experience and insight into missionary work that is really good. He really is just trying to help us reach our full potential and become the people the Lord will need later in life. One of the things he actually taught us at the meeting started out with him saying "I'm telling you this so that when you are all Bishops..." It was kind of funny that he said that but I guess we could all potentially serve in any calling so he wants us to be ready to serve our best. It was an interesting meeting and really helpful to get everyone on the same page with how everything should be going. One disappointing thing is that he keeps talking about new Preach My Gospel training lessons the church has prepared on how to be better teacher. They will be released to missions in August, so I will miss out on that, hopefully I can get someone to fill me in over email from the mission after I get home. We also had a good meeting with Mher on Wednesday.

Thursday was a cool day since we made Davtashen history. We got to go over to one of our members houses, Lia. She is the only one in her family who is a member and said that her mom didn't want missionaries over, well we finally got invited and it went really well. Her mom really liked us and we had a really enjoyable time with them. They invited us over for lunch and we talked about really good stuff. The best part was her mom asked Lia why we don't come over more often... so good! I think just giving her family positive contact with the missionaries is going to be great! We also got to meet with Nina and her daughter that day. We actually found out that some of our members think that there is more than one true church out there, so we are going to have to work on tackling that problem but overall it was a good lesson. We really want to get Nina's daughter active again, but she is going to France soon, I think, so we will see what happens.

Friday was another busy day, but also kind of stressful. In the morning we had a good meeting with Vika and her mother Ludmilla, the only problem was they started gossiping a bit about some members, so we had to shut that down. We also met with Mher again after English Class which was good. He hasn't come to church for the last few weeks since he has been having trouble getting up on Sundays. The only problem was afterwards while we were playing he got mad at us for some reason and was refusing to leave the church when we had to leave. He said we needed to just close the door and leave him in there. After a while of pleading and asking him to leave with us he left, but was still mad and said he didn't want anyone to go home with him. Someone usually rides a marshutni home with him, but he just wanted to walk. Luckily Lia volunteered to follow him home from a bit of a distance away to make sure he got their safe. I was grateful she did that otherwise I would have been worried about him. As of Sunday though, he was still mad at us since Lia followed him home, but hopefully it gets better.

Saturday we went down to Artashat for a Baptismal Interview and I probably did my last baptismal interview for quite some time. It will be nice to lose that responsibility. The lady was really cool though and passed and will be getting baptized on Saturday! We got back to Center then headed out to Ajapnyak, were we met with Emma, Mher's mom. We had a good lesson talking about the first part of a Plan of Salvation with her, and we actually got the idea of watching "Together Forever" with her to really solidify the ideas of eternal families in her head.

Sunday was a really great day. Church was good like usual and the best part was we got 2 referrals... who both came to church!!! They aren't new investigators yet since we didn't meet with them, but we should be picking them up this week! We also had a good Branch Council meeting planning all the stuff for the Lake Sevan trip on August 4th which should be so fun and a great way to end my memories with the branch. We did do a lot of walking though, but it was fine, it was needed. One other funny thing that happened was our Branch President asked me to give a sort of farewell talk next week in church, I reminded him it was fast Sunday and he seemed bummed. He had thought it was the 31st and I could speak my last Sunday. I promised I would bear my testimony though... so hopefully he can be satisfied with that.

Overall it was a good week, lots of good things have been happening for us. We did have a bit of a trial of our faith this week since we have been planning better than usual with the new PMG chapter 8 focus, but more meetings and stuff have been falling through then ever before, we stayed strong to planning well though and got blessed at the end of the week with those referrals! It should be a really good week coming up and I am also super excited because I get to go on exchanges with Stix (Arman, my old mini) on Tuesday so that should be great.

Well, I will end this I guess since I just don't have a lot more to talk about, but I hope things go well and that you all have a great week! You can expect one more email out of me... but that is probably it!

Love,
Elder Piercy