New Mission President in the AYM

To all my friends, adorers, family, and stalkers!-

It has been another fantastic week here in the AYM, I really don’t know how we handle all the good times, but we manage! There were actually a few pretty sad things that happened this week, but I guess I will tell you about all the excitement and adventure with my letter. I won’t waste anymore time and will just jump right in!

I believe last week I told you all about our Preparation Day Basketball and what not, but after Preparation Day we had a really good evening. We have decided to start doing a Family Home Evening every Monday night in the church and just invite anyone who wants to come and do it with us. Last Monday was the first time and it went pretty well. Not a lot of people came, but our investigator Emma came and her son Mher, plus her daughter Kiso, and then Lia came also. That was pretty good and we had a good time with everyone who was there. We did a lesson on the Tree of Life and used Mher’s artistic skills to draw it on the board, then we played Spoons and Uno, and finally finished up with some refreshments which was Ice cream and cookies! I thought it was effective and really good for Emma to see we are normal people. We are going to be doing it again tonight and it should be even better!

On Tuesday we went to Komitas for District Meeting and had a really good meeting with all the missionaries there. We ran the whole thing and I thought it went well. We had 3 talks given out: Sister Cornwell spoke on showing love to your companion, Elder Davis spoke on showing love to the Armenian people, and finally Elder Zebley talked about how to develop more love. Then we watched the talk from last conference “You are my Hands” that President Uchtdorf gave, after which we discussed it a bit on how we can apply it to us as missionaries and show more love. I thought it was really effective and from what we heard, everyone seemed to enjoy it! There were a lot of good things said, but one of my favorites was something Sister Cornwell said...”even if the work isn’t going as good as we think it should be, we can still fulfill our purpose as missionaries by helping ourselves and our companions come unto Christ.” I thought that was great counsel for all of us, because lets face it, there can’t always be tons of work with investigators, but we can improve ourselves which is another important part of a mission. One disappointing thing that happened on Tuesday was early Tuesday morning our CES couple, the Shulzs went home. They did a great job here and the Young Single Adults really loved them. I really liked them too and in all honesty I am pretty sure when I am aged, I want to serve a CES mission thanks to their great examples. On Tuesday I also had to say good-bye to President Dunn. It was definitely a hard thing, but the cool thing was I got my first hug from President Dunn that I can remember for my whole mission. He told me that going home is harder than he thought it would be, but we will see each other again for sure. He and Sister Dunn have really done a great job in Armenia and they will definitely be missed.

Wednesday was quite an interesting day and we actually had a really cool miracle happen to us. While we were doing some Street Finding in the morning, this lady was running after us... we thought she was nuts so we just kept walking, trying not to look at her, but then she caught us and started asking us about the book we were carrying and things. She is an Armenian History teacher in a school and just wanted to know what we were doing. We told her about the church and the Book of Mormon and things and gave her a Restoration brochure with our number on it. It seemed like a pretty average conversation, nothing out of the ordinary and I assumed we would never see or hear from her again... boy was I wrong. About 3 hours later we got a phone call... it was her! She said she read the Brochure and was interested in it and wanted to know how she could learn more. We told her we could meet with her and teach her all about it and she was excited about that. She has a lot of work going on right now, but she said after July 6th (tomorrow), she would be free, so hopefully things go well with that! Another funny thing that happened on Wednesday was we met this crazy guy again. Last week in the supermarket this crazy guy flipped out on us and said he was going to kill us and stuff... it was all pretty dumb, but anyways we saw him Wednesday on the street and he said...”hey guys, remember me... I am the guy who is going to cut your throats.” This guy is so dumb and immature, so we just said “we know” and walked away laughing. I don’t know why adults here feel like they need to act like children sometimes... it is really strange. The other crazy thing that happened on Wednesday was a member tried to get us to watch the Twilight movie with her. It is really strange because Elder Gull was telling me this week how his friends in other missions were complaining because the members always tell on them and stuff to the Mission President when they are chewing gum and things, but then here in Armenia people try to get us to watch movies like Twilight and Avatar with them. I guess the church is definitely at different levels in different parts of the world.

Thursday was an interesting day because it was President Dunn’s last day and President Carter’s first day. We didn’t see President Carter of course, he was super busy with President Dunn for the few hours they had together. We had a long day though of walking around. It was a bit of a hard day since nothing worked out for us and we ended up pounding the streets for the entire day, but it was good for us and gave us the time we needed on the streets!

Friday was our first day under the direction of President Carter. President and Sister Dunn left early that morning and now it is all the Carter’s show. We are excited to see how things go and know that nothing bad will come from a mission president switch. Things may be different, but not bad. We were able to get a really good meeting in with Smbat and his family on Friday all about trusting in the Lord, I really enjoy them. Smbat actually said something really nice about me, after he found out I was leaving soon he said...”that stinks, you have a different personality that I really like...” Smbat is a great guy and I am glad that he likes me too, but it is going to be hard to leave behind so many good people soon.

Saturday a lot of crazy things happened to us. After our planning session, we didn’t have any food so we went outside to grab some lunch and when we came back there was a wedding going on in our building. Basically there was a huge parade coming down the stairs and since the elevator is broken we had to wait so long to go back up to our floor, just feeling awkward watching this whole thing go down. The crazy thing was later in the day when we came back for dinner again wedding stuff was going on and this time we couldn’t even get in the building! All the guests were in front of the entrance doing their wedding thing dancing and what not. So we ended up just walking around for a bit until they all left again and we were able to go up to our apartment. Weddings here are so weird, I just wish you could all see what they are like. While we were doing a finding hour on Saturday we also talked to one of our friends at his work place for a while and he had some really good questions for us. Overall, the conversation went well and the guy wants to meet with us, he is just too busy with work so hopefully it will work out soon. He did tell me one weird thing, he said once a year all the Jehovah Witnesses get together and have an orgy. Of course that is not true, but I thought it was so strange that he said that... the weirdest part was on Sunday someone said the same thing to us. I think it is so weird that lies go around about all these organizations, and also really sucky for them, but I guess we just need to make sure we teach the truth. Another crazy thing we saw was while walking we just saw a random furry animal strapped to the hood of a car. We for sure took a picture of it, so hopefully I can include it with this letter. We also felt really good because later while we were walking in Ajapnyak I heard someone yelling my name and when I looked around, I saw the Charentsavan Branch President hanging out a car window waving to me. I was so happy he took the time to say hi and that he wasn’t embarrased to know us or anything! The last meeting we got on Saturday went really well too, with Vika and Ludmilla and I think was needed, because they were both pretty sad about stuff so we cheered them up.

Sunday was a good day like usual. Church went well, except Testimony meeting was a bit strange this week. That tends to happen when you go to Armenian church though... every once in a while the meeting goes a little weird. The rest of the hours were good too, we didn’t have anyone in our Gospel Principles class so we went to the Old Testament class and learned a bit about the first 2 chapters of Ruth. Then for Priesthood I went to the Aaronic Priesthood class were we talked about Patriarchal Blessings which was good. I really enjoy church for the most part here, it usually seems to go well, we did get yelled at by a member for throwing away the Sacrament bread, but whatever. The rest of the day was good meetings, we actually met with Hapet and read Ruth 3 and 4 and 1 Samuel 1, together and talked about it so he would be all ready for the Sunday school lesson next week. We also had a really good meeting with Meri and Karine and their family. Plus, they fed us so we got to break our fast there. I have really come to enjoy most Armenian foods now, whatever soup they gave us was so good and all that was in it was... eggplant, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and just tons of other vegetables... I liked it though.

Well overall the week is going well and things seem to be looking up for us. Unfortunately I have not met President or Sister Carter yet, but on Wednesday we are doing the meeting with them and I will be able to tell you about them more next week. That’s the news from Armenia, I hope that you all have a really great week and I will be writing again same time next week!

Love,
Elder Piercy