Michael's Mission Blog

Welcome Home Michael

2010-08-08T21:53:00.001-07:00

Paige and Peyton held the welcome home sign. Paige was feeling shy!

Michael was scheduled to arrive at 6:43 Friday August 6, His plane was right on time but we arrived a few minutes early. Chase Halcomb (Michael's first companion) and his wife showed up to share in the celebration.

Heather was the first to greet Michael, it was a sentimental moment. Both Michael and Heather had to wipe their eyes.

Michael was met by family. Chase Halcomb and his wife Madison and Paul Diamond (Michael's best friend) joined us to welcome him home.

Michael grew one inch while in the mission field (6'4") He lost 45lbs, he'll have to try and find them.

Friday evening we visited and Michael sat with a glazed look, He did meet his nephew, Liam.

Saturday we had a nice family dinner, Michael offered the blessing in Armenian. We had BBQ steak and fresh strawberry pie.

Sunday, Michael gave his report in sacrament meeting. Still trying to figure out how to put the audio recording on here. Any suggestions?

Final E-mail from Armenia

2010-08-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

I am just going to dedicate this email to everyone....because I love you all,

Well, I am going to tell you all the truth, I am so happy I never have to write an email again as a missionary... it is fun but also really tiring recounting my life. So I think for this one I am just going to hit you all with some highlights from this last full week, and then I will just talk a bit about Armenia. I guess I will get started now because I've got some bowling to do in a little bit.

So we were super blessed this last week in terms of investigators. If you remember last Sunday, not yesterday, one of our members Venera brought a friend to church, Nelli. Well we went and saw Nelli on Tuesday, had an amazing 1st with her and picked her up as a New Investigator!!! Then Friday when we went to go see Nelli again she had invited her daughter-in-law over, Marietta, and we taught both of them and picked her up as a New Investigator too!!! Then for the last few weeks we have been inviting one of our English Students, Varam, to church and on Sunday he came, loved it and said he would come every week... another New Investigator!!! For those of you counting that was 3 new investigators for Elder Gull and I this week... needless to say we were pretty stoked! The Lord really blessed us this week, we have been going through some rough times, but in the end... the Lord poured out the blessings upon us since we did all we could. All of these investigators are really good too and we have high hopes for them.

Our family home evening went so good on Monday; we talked about missionary work and then watched "Up". Plus my No Bake Cookies were pretty tasty. Today should be really good too, I made Chocolate chip cookies yesterday, which by the way was really hard to do while I was fasting, plus we are going to be talking about temple work for the dead in honor of the Kiev temple opening at the end of this month... after which we will finish "Up".

Well this week at District Meeting we joined Elder Stutz's district and had a really good meeting with them. We talked about teaching a first and really got pumped up to teach the best first lessons ever, I think that is why Nelli's went so well on Tuesday because we had just talked about it. My favorite part of District Meeting though was "The Love Circle". It is this thing where one person is picked and everyone in the room says why they love that person... since I was almost dead, Elder Stutz put me in the love circle and everyone just said super nice things, I felt like I was walking on air afterward!

Another great thing from this week was that I got to go on exchanges with Stix! We had such a great time together; it brought me back to the Nork days. We were in Davtashen and I really just love being around him and am going to miss him for sure when I go home. I can honestly say that Stix is one of my close friends! We had a really good time and just pounded it together for a few days. It is actually really funny because Elder Gull and I have this tradition, when we get a New Investigator we dance that night... Stix and I danced on Tuesday in the dark with Glo-sticks and then on Friday Elder Gull and I danced in the dark with Glo-sticks! Missions are just a great place to make new friends and have a good time.

Church on Sunday was also a really great day. It was my last church in Armenian... it was hard but it was such a great Fast Sunday. Testimony Meeting was really good... almost all of the testimonies were really powerful. The best part was so many people who I have never seen bear their testimonies, like Sedrak and Lia and Smbat, did it and I was loving it. I also bore my testimony and I have to admit, I got choked up and almost cried. I haven't cried for a while I don't know if I ever really have since being on my mission, it was a really great meeting.

Well, those were the main things from the week so I guess I will just finish my mission reminiscing a bit about all the good times.

First off I want to tell you all how much I love and appreciate all the companions I have had and all that I learned from each one of them. They are all wonderful men and I am so grateful I got to serve with them. Elder Halcomb, Elder Harris, Elder Gull, Elder Grigoryan, Elder Garner, Elder Lystrup, Elder Ellison, Elder Carlson, Elder Simonsen, and Elder Gull (round 2). I hope to stay in touch with all of these great friends I have made on my mission and will always cherish the crazy memories.

For those of you who don't know too much about Armenia, it is a really special place. It is just a small Christian country in the middle of 3 Muslim countries (Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Iran). The history is filled with sadness and difficulties but they are still going strong. The culture is rich and the people are just wonderful. Plus, they have deep spiritual roots having been the first country to accept Christianity as its official religion in 301ad... they tell us that a lot, lol. It really is just an amazing place. Traveling around and seeing the sights you just get a sense of how much history there is here and just how old everything is. There are so many special places in Armenia, 3 of my favorites are Alaverdi, Vanadzor, and Yerevan (especially Nork and Davtashen)... I can't figure out why though, lol.

The people here are very special; they just have so much love. I have always been stunned my whole mission just how loving they are, it is going to be really hard to say good bye to so many friends who I love so much and who love me. The Armenian people even love complete strangers! You don't know how many times I have been invited off the street into someone’s home that fed me so much food and just wanted to show their love. An Armenian would give you their last piece of bread and die rather than think of not "guest loving" you (giving refreshments). They are such a great people, it is hard not to love them... maybe I feel like that because I was called here as a missionary and the Lord has blessed me with that love, but even getting yelled at on the street you still have those feelings of love and disappointment when they just can't comprehend our message.

I have learned so much in general and about myself over the last 2 years. Armenia has changed me forever, and has changed me for the better. I can't wait until the day I can return and see all my friends and experience all of these emotions again. I really will miss this place and a piece of my heart will always be in Armenia.

I guess I will end this email now, I hope you all enjoyed it and I hope that I will hear from you all again. Have a great week, and by the end of it I will be with you all in America.

Love,
Elder Piercy (soon to be just Michael)

Just One Letter to Go!

2010-07-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

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

Elder Piercy's 3rd to Last Mission E-mail

2010-07-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

This one is going out to all the followers!-

Well, it is hard to believe that these emails I have been writing for so long are coming to a close... I have to admit, I am a bit happy about that. Writing letters is fun for a little bit, but then it almost turns into a chore. I am willing to keep writing for a little longer though so that all my fans can see me finish strong! All is well in the AYM, we had some excitement this week I will report on so, I guess I will just start the letter.

Last Monday after Preparation Day, we were actually able to get a meeting in before Family Home Evening, since we cut Preparation Day a bit short (I will explain why later). We met with Bella and helped her plan a bit and get ready for the Lake Sevan Branch Activity on August 4th! Basically we just found a bunch of questions we can ask people about the Book of Mormon for a game. Then our FHE was really fun. We did a spiritual thought on Moral Agency... a talk Elder Christoffersen gave a while ago and overall I think it was interesting and helpful for everyone. I also made some brownies as refreshments so we pounded chocolate brownies... with frosting, and Banana juice... so good! Then finally this week instead of doing a game, we just watched a movie. Our members made the choice and they chose "Ice Age 3" it looked pretty funny and they laughed a lot, but I had no idea what was being said... it was in Russian. I feel like it was a really good FHE overall. Just as a side note, I've turned into quite a baker, for tonight's FHE I made Banana Bread this morning... so good!

Last Tuesday we went down to Artashat for District Meeting. Elder Gull and I did the meeting. We decided to talk about commitments because it always seems to be something we can do well. Whether it is just always giving a commitment or being more bold and clear with commitments, whatever, there is always room for improvement. We did a repeat of something I learned from Elder Wolfley way back in the early days of my mission... "The Spiritual Kiss of the Dragon" and I made a few additions to make it even better. It is basically just a step by step process of giving a commitment to kill the natural man in our investigators and members. It was fun because as I was demonstrating the move, I got to give my son a wet-willy! After that District Meeting I stayed down in Artashat for an exchange with Elder Larson. We had a good time together and Elder Larson is a really cool, interesting Elder. I have never been on an exchange with him, or been in Artashat, so it was lots of new stuff. It is really, really hot in Artashat though. I have a new respect for the missionaries down there. The other difficult thing was our meetings didn't work out too well so we ended up just walking a lot. We got to talk to some cool people though, including a woman who lived in America for 30 years got sick of it and came back to Artashat, Armenia. Plus, we also got to talk with Elder Minasyan for a bit which was pretty cool too. It was a good exchange, but going back to comfortable Yerevan was nice. The best news was Elder Gull and Elder Andersen met with that lady from the streets, Larisa, and picked her up as a new investigator!

Wednesday morning after we switched back and I was with Elder Gull again we had a pretty good day. We got to meet with Emma, Mher's Mom, and had a really good lesson with her. We finished watching "The Testaments" and then were just bearing testimony about Christ and the Book of Mormon and stuff. It was super powerful and cool because the Menu on the disc plays "This is the Christ" so that was playing in the background during all of this. I felt the spirit really strong and I hope she did too! I think she enjoyed the movie too, at the end after Christ appears to the Lamanites and heals the dad, she was crying, so it must have had a good effect on her!

Thursday we had a good meeting with some less actives, Zoya and Luiza, the best part was Luiza came to church on Sunday so it must have had a good effect on her! We also had a really good meeting with Smbat, one of our members who is just such a great guy! I like him a ton, I just wish he would grasp the gospel better and go at it with full heart. We decided next time we meet we will talk to him about diligence and really try to get that fire going in him to be the best member he can be!

Friday, we had a bit tougher day... our plans didn't work out too well, so we walked a lot. We did get to meet with the Navasardyans though, and that was a good meeting. Their daughter is actually coming home from her mission today if I remember correctly. That is so weird since she left about 6 months after me, but it makes sense too. I am excited to see how she will help her family and if she can really get them to love the gospel again.

Saturday was a cool day, we did our Weekly Planning Session like normal, but then we went to Vernisazh which is an art market in Yerevan that happens only on Saturday and Sunday. That is why we took time off our Preparation Day on Monday so we could go on Saturday. I ended up buying 3 things there and was pretty happy with all the purchases. We always hear about how missionaries get screwed because everyone just jacks up all the prices since we are Americans, but we had a good idea to avoid that. We had our member Lia come with us and she just walked behind us a bit and when we saw something we liked we would let her know, and then she would go barter down the price and buy it for us. I ended up getting things a lot cheaper than if I would have done it, so I was really appreciative of her help. I ended up buying a Nardi board that looks really nice, it is wood and has a picture of Ararat on it. I also bought a little wood thing to hang on the wall that says "God bless our Home" only in Armenian. Then, the last thing I bought was a little Nativity thing made of wood that was really cool. I got everything I wanted and I really can't think of too much else to get before coming home. I really liked the market though and there was tons of cool stuff... I just don't know what I would do with any of it. I also found out this week that Elder Simonsen and Elder Stephenson were able to get me "The Hobbit" in Armenian in Vanadzor so I have that to add to my book collection now too! For the rest of our Saturday we met with Lia after the market and went through Preach My Gospel Chapter 3 Lesson 1 with her and just helped her prepare for her mission she will be going on soon. She is going to be a really great missionary and we actually found out she is going on a mini mission soon too, that will be so great for her! Our last meeting of the day was with Meri, which was great since she has been working so much lately, plus we were able to talk about some good scriptures from the end of 2 Nephi about being a good member and responsibility.

Sunday was a really great day! Church was soo good! We had Larisa, our investigator there, tons of members, and even quite a few less actives. It was the fullest I have seen Sacrament Meeting I think! All the talks and things were really great too, my favorite was President Poghosyan's talk on obedience which was really powerful and really good, I learned a ton! Larisa also got up and publicly apologized to everyone during Sunday school for ever thinking bad things about Mormons, because now she sees that we are good people. She really liked everything at church, the only problem is her husband might not let her come back. We are going to be praying for his heart to be softened so hopefully things work out well for her and she can embrace the gospel.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable week and we had a lot of good stuff happen. One new thing that started was since it is so hot in Armenia now, President Carter has made lunch 2 hours long on days when it is over 100 degrees so we can eat for an hour and then study Preach My Gospel for an hour. That is pretty cool, so we can just focus on the basics of PMG and not die in the heat. Also we don't do Nightly Phone calls anymore, which clears up our evening a lot, so those are 2 big changes that have happened this week.

Things are going well in Armenia, I love it, I love the people, and I love being a missionary. I hope you all have a great week, I hope this email was interesting, and I will be writing again next week!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Elder Piercy's Release Letter

2010-07-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

Last Friday (July 9) we received this letter from President Dunn.
Click the image to enlarge

A Meeting with President and Sister Carter

2010-07-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

To all my wonderful followers of my Mission stories-

It has been another week full of fun and excitement, I don’t have a ton of time, so I might be giving the condensed version this week, but I will try to include enough to keep you interested and entertained.

Last Monday was a pretty relaxing Preparation Day, we just did some shopping for things I wanted before I come home. I bought a new belt to go with my suit and bought a hat to go golfing in. Plus I got 2 books The Lord of the Flies and The Fellowship of the Ring both translated into Armenian so that was cool. Basically the only thing I have left to buy is a Nardi board so that’s good. Our Family Home Evening at the church was pretty fun last week too, the lesson was good on 2 Nephi 31, 32, and 33… plus then we had Pudding and Jell-o for refreshments. I like doing this with the branch on Mondays; I just wish we could get more people to come.

Tuesday we went to Charentsavan’s District Meeting and had a really good time with that District. Elder Crawford did the meeting and talked about repentance and it was really enjoyable. He talked mainly about how we need to invite people to repent more often as a commitment, since that is really what our purpose is, to invite others to repent and come unto Christ. I thought it was a great lesson and I was excited to go out and work afterwards. We then ran some errands in Center like getting donuts for the big meeting on Wednesday and stuff. We also had a Branch Activity kind of thing on Tuesday evening… it was a Yoga class and it was pretty weird. That was Tuesday.

Wednesday we had our big meeting “Get to know President and Sister Carter.” It was a really enjoyable thing and I have a lot of respect for President and Sister Carter already. They are different people and I really liked President and Sister Dunn, but I am going to try to let President and Sister Carter into my heart for this last bit of time. I had an interview with President Carter on Wednesday, it was pretty intense. It was nothing like an interview with President Dunn, but it was still good. I had made brownies on Tuesday night, so I brought some brownies to President and Sister Carter and they seemed to really enjoy that. My interview was focused a lot on the Zone and how I can be a better Zone Leader so I am excited to do the things President Carter asked and improve on myself. Another crazy thing that happened on Wednesday was some random dude gave me a hug on the street when I told him that Christ was resurrected and lives today.

Thursday we had a really busy day; we ended up just going from place to place but did a lot of good things. We saw an old investigator Armine to see if she was ready to resume the discussions, but we decided not quite yet. We got to visit with her family members who are less active so it was all pretty good. We also did our Yoga thing again, which was lame, but also entertaining. We then had a chance to meet with Lia and start going through Preach My Gospel with her so that she would be ready to go on her mission soon. Finally we had a good meeting with a couple of ladies from our branch.

Friday nothing super interesting happened, we visited Silva and I got to spend a lot of time playing with her kids again, which she appreciates. Plus she gave me a great compliment by saying that I am going to be a good dad. We also met with our investigator Abgar, but we are probably going to drop him, he just doesn’t seem that interested.

Saturday we woke early, President Poghosyan picked us up at 6:30am to go out to a village and work for a few hours reaping. I was stunned, it was way harder than I ever thought and now I have a new found appreciation for D&C 4. We ended up doing it for about 5 hours and it was tough… but fun… I have some pics I will send home. The rest of the day we did our studies and planning and things and worked in a meeting with a less active member Nvart which was good.

Sunday, church was good; we had an enjoyable Sunday despite the fact that we did all 3 hours in the Sacrament room since there were so few of us. The problem was it was Water Day so everyone was afraid to come. We got soaked so bad, that was lame, but funny too.

Well sorry this letter isn’t very good this week, but we lost the connection at the internet café so I have to save this on my flash and email it from somewhere else, so hopefully this was at least a bit enjoyable, I will write again soon though.

Love,
Elder Piercy

New Mission President in the AYM

2010-07-05T08:01:00.001-07:00

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

A Big Change is Happening This Week

2010-06-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

This one is to everyone who happens to read my blog this week!-

First off, let’s see... Happy (U.S.) Independence Day on July 4th, Happy Canadian Independence Day on July 1st (no mom I have not forgotten your singing of the Canadian National anthem that day), and a shout out to my brother Happy Birthday on July 1st. I think that covers all the major stuff. It’s been a fun week full of good stuff, I will try to catch you all up on my weekly happenings, but time is short so I better begin.

Well today, this morning we played some intense Basketball, I’m kidding it wasn’t that intense, but it sure was hot! It is worth it though just to hang out with a bunch of the missionaries and have some fun! That’s the main reason why we are all writing a little bit late, but don’t worry I will give a good report.

Also this will be an exciting week, but a tough one. We have a big change happening here on July 1st... President Dunn leaves and President Carter comes in. It’s hard to think what things will be like not hearing all of President Dunn’s wisdom and getting to see him all the time, but change has to happen at some point and we are getting excited to see how the transition will go and to meet President and Sister Carter. They actually wrote a note in our newsletter this week so that was fun to see! I will let you all know more next week after we get to meet them!

Well as for this week lets see... last Tuesday we went to District Meeting with the Shengavit District and had a really good time with them. Elder Stutz did the District Meeting and it was all about being sincere and not fake in everything we do. I really liked it and we did some great learning activities. One of my favorites was to go around the group and tell our companion sincerely why we love them. Elder Gull said some really nice things about me. I love Elder Gull a lot and I'm way happy we got this opportunity to serve together again! We also made short videos of teaching so we could see if we stayed sincere on camera... overall it was really interesting and really fun! I then went on exchanges with Elder Lusk in Davtashen, which was a great opportunity! I really like Elder Lusk, and I enjoyed our time together, he is an awesome missionary and is just not afraid to talk to anyone, which was really neat. It was fun to be with him on the streets.

Wednesday was a pretty fun day, we decided to try to do some Soccer finding, since we had planned to play with these kids... but they didn’t show. We ended up playing Basketball and a bit of soccer with some other kids, the bad news is they kicked our Soccer ball way up in a tree and we couldn’t get it down... what can you do.

Thursday was the anniversary of the day Armenia was dedicated for Preaching the Gospel, so we all gathered at the Mother of Armenia statue on Thursday morning and read the dedicatory prayer with members and got to have a really good experience with that. In the Dedicatory Prayer there are some really great and powerful blessings and it just gets me excited for the future of the church here and makes me want to do all I can to make that happen sooner! That prayer just has a powerful influence. I hope the members present were able to feel the power also! We also got a free taxi ride on Thursday from one of our neighbors so that was cool! The last cool thing that happened was a personal revelation I feel like I got. I have been a little concerned as of late about the work here, it is hard, and seems to be a struggle for us so I was just pondering about it and I really feel like we need to focus on helping our members because a lot of our potential work is going to come through them. I think that is needed, so this week we will be focusing more on talking with members and encouraging them to help us with the work. We had a really neat meeting with Susan. She is a pretty old member and saw the church back in the beginning and feels like things were better then. We met with her and talked about acting, not being acted upon, and got some great ideas of how to strengthen the branch again.

Friday we had two good investigator meetings, one with Abgar, and another with a new contact. Actually we had one good meeting and one disappointing one. The one with Abgar was okay but I don’t know if he is ready for the gospel... he is kind of weird. The other meeting was with this new contact Arman and we thought it would be great but his Armenian Pride came out way hard and we were not able to pick him up as a new investigator. As we discussed the apostasy he informed us that the apostasy happened everywhere except in Armenia and just would not accept the fact that a Restoration was necessary. The meeting wasn’t bad though and it ended on a good note with us giving him a Book of Mormon and inviting him to read and pray about it... so hopefully he does that. If he really wants to know if the Restoration was needed, God will tell him.

Saturday we got to have a really good meeting with our investigator Emma, Mher’s mom. We went over and decided to watch the Testaments to help her gain a better understanding of the need and purpose of the Book of Mormon. In the beginning she didn’t really seem too interested, but by the halfway point when we turned it off... to continue next time, she seemed annoyed and asked if we would get to finish it. I think she has some really great potential to be a wonderful member and help her family a lot; she just needs to get fully committed. We also had a really great meeting with a family Venera and her 2 daughters. We talked about trusting in the Lord and looked at 4 examples from Nephi’s life: getting the plates, getting wives, making 2 records, and getting the interpretation of Lehi’s dream. I think it really helped them out and it helped me realize we can all do better to trust in the Lord... probably it helped me most of all.

Finally on Sunday we had a good day of church. Elder Gull gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting on Missionary work with a bit of a different spin for our members. I really liked it and thought it was great so hopefully our members enjoyed it too. Church here is just so great... even when crazy stuff happens. It was funny because we were planning a Summer Branch Activity to go up to Lake Sevan some time and just relax for the day as a branch and they wanted to make sure I would be able to come with them, so they planned it for August 4th. That means that I will go to Lake Sevan for the whole day, then the next day I will be in the Mission Home, and the day after that on a plane. It will be an interesting last few days but I can’t think of a better way to spend it than with my favorite branch and some of my favorite people!

Well, things are still going well here, I love Missionary life, I love the people, and I just love everything about what I am doing right now. I hope you all are having a great week and that the coming week is full of exciting and fun things for you. I will be writing again soon and I hope you will all tune in next week!

Love,
Elder Piercy

New Missionaries Arrive in Armenia

2010-06-21T07:41:00.001-07:00

Well, this is for all my great dedicated readers!-

I must say it has been a fantastic week... mostly because I got to do awesome stuff and... MEET MY GRANDSON!!!!!!!! Elder Garner got his son this week Elder Ervin... so I got my grandson... he is so great and I am so proud, hopefully I can get a picture sent home. I also got to go on a cool trip with the new missionaries and President Dunn, etc., but I will talk about that later. For now I will just start my letter. [left to right: Elder Piercy, Elder Garner, and Elder Ervin]

Well today we are writing a bit late because in honor of the World Cup we got together a group of missionaries this morning and played a rousing game of soccer. We had 3 teams of 4 each and every time a goal was scored the losing team rotated out... it was fun and we were all able to keep our energy up well. Then we all had lunch at our house in Davtashen and finally made our way to internet... hopefully I have time to write a descent letter today.

Well last week for Preparation day, we didn’t really know what to do so basically Elder Gull, Elder Carlson, Elder Williams, and I just went to Center institute and played ping pong for about 3 hours... it was pretty fun, but I did learn I am absolutely terrible at ping pong... what can you do though, I just wasn’t blessed with that talent, lol.

Tuesday we went down to Artashat for District Meeting, which went really well. We just sat and enjoyed Elder Larsen’s meeting on how to more effectively use Preach My Gospel, and I thought it was all really well put together and presented very well. We can always use Preach My Gospel better so overall it was great and there are a lot of things I want to do better now. Good thing I have plenty of time to use Preach My Gospel better! We went on exchanges with the Assistants on Tuesday, through Thursday which was sooo fun. It was Elder Carlson and Elder Piercy together again pounding Davtashen! We had a lot of fun and I think we both enjoyed our time talking and hanging out again.

Thursday morning we spent a lot of time talking about the south Zone with the assistants and getting on the same page. We also discussed some great ideas for everyone on how we can work better together and take care of everything in the best way possible. We also reflected a lot on leadership and exchanged ideas of how we can all be better leaders. I really enjoyed it and thought it was effective. Elder Gull and I also went to Charentsavan for a Baptismal Interview. Elder Gull did the interview and it sounds like the guy was a big stud and will be really good for the Charentsavan branch. We also had a very cool meeting that evening. Our Branch President invited President and Sister Dunn over for a good-bye dinner and they also asked us to come. It ended up being a really great dinner appointment. First of all the food was great! Plus, the entire family of our Branch President was there and it was really fun to be with President and Sister Dunn. I am always amazed at how great a man President Dunn is and how he is always just super polite and presents himself very well! It turned out to be a really nice evening.

Dad… I found out you posted my comments on the apostolic visit on the website from President Dunn... I was stunned... but whatever, I guess I am just getting really famous on the Internet.... started with my Blog and now I am hitting the big time writing articles for websites. [I posted Michael’s comments from last weeks letter on the AYM Alumni website to report on the General authority visit to Armenia]

Friday I had a great opportunity because the new missionaries came into country Elder Davis and ELDER ERVIN!!! New missionary orientation covers 2 days and they get to go to the Mother of Armenia statue, the Genocide Memorial, and Ejmiatsin. Well I have never been to Ejmiatsin so I asked President Dunn if it would be okay for us to go along. Usually it's just President Dunn, the Assistants and the new missionaries... he said it would be fine and it sounded like a great idea. So not only did I get to finally see Ejmiatsin, but I got to also go to all of the other places with them and get to know my grandson better. So turns out I knew all about my grandson before Elder Garner, yes! It was really fun and I will try to get some pics sent of all that too!

Saturday we had a new missionary meeting, where again I got to see my grandson and my son together this time! Elder Gull and I had to give a talk on how to learn the language when you are in country... and it seemed really good. Hopefully Elder Davis and ELDER ERVIN were able to learn something from it! I am impressed with them both already though... such studs! Oh also I did lose my temper on Saturday evening which was bad. We had a lot of plans fall through during the evening, well that didn’t bother me much... the problem was it seemed like all our street conversations were really dumb and pointless, people just kept saying stupid things and talking about silly stuff so I started to get frustrated. We saw this drunken kid like 3 different times and every time we saw him he would grab my arm and not let go and just do stupid stuff. I was trying to be patient but then after the third time when I was trying to walk away and he was holding my arm so I looked at him and told him I would beat him if he didn’t let go. He let go and walked away, but I felt really stupid and bad afterward. It really made me realize how much improvement I still have because that was definitely the wrong way to represent Christ. Hopefully I will see the kid again sometime and apologize, but I was really disappointed in myself after I did that.

Finally, Sunday was a good day like usual, church went great, we had a lot of good things said in Sacrament Meeting that I wrote down. I have a new goal to take notes in Sacrament meeting when I go home, so I figured I needed to build the habit now and it’s going well. I really think I am getting more out of the meetings since I have done that and I have already found some things that really helped me. Sunday was also Elder Simonsen’s Birthday so I will have to give him a Birthday shout out in the Blog!!! “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELDER SIMONSEN!!” Other than that things are going well.

We had a great meeting with our investigator Emma, Mher’s mom on Friday, she seems to be doing well... the weird thing is I won’t see her get baptized. I always thought it would be weird setting baptismal dates with people who I won’t actually get to see baptized, but the important thing is she is doing well. We have a few other potentials who are doing well also, so we will see how they go.

I guess that is about it for the week, sorry if I bored you, but I will try to do better next Monday. Well I hope you all have a great week, I will write again, same time, same place next Monday.

Love,
Elder Piercy

An Apostalic Visit to Armenia

2010-06-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

To all the Blog Fans out there!-
Well it certainly has been quite an exciting and interesting week for us here in the AYM, but what a great time it has been. Elder Gull and I had a busy, busy week, but it sure was fun and worth it. I guess I will just end my little intro so I can get to all the good stuff that happened, hopefully it will be entertaining to you.

Well last Monday I already told you we went to Garni and Geghard, but I am bringing it up again because I have some pictures this week. Geghard is the big Armenian Church which had some cool stuff and was quite pretty… Garni is the big Pagan Temple. I hope the pictures are enjoyable. It was a busy trip but well worth it!

Tuesday we went up to Charentsavan and had our District Meeting with all of our friends up there. Elder Gull and I again did the District Meeting that we have been doing with everyone… watching that movie ["An Ensign to the Nations"] and it went really well. The missionaries all really liked it and they even made the comment afterwards… ”let’s just end this so we can get out and preach, I am pumped!” Overall I feel like it was a success and now Elder Gull and I don’t have to watch that movie anymore. Over the last month we have watched it 5 times! It was good, but it does get a bit old after a while. We also got to meet with our investigator Emma and we had a really good meeting with her talking about Joseph Smith again and watching “The Restoration” movie. We are really feeling good about her and think she is really starting to open up and accept our message!

Wednesday was a really fun day. The Primary had an activity at the Zoo and they invited us to go along and help. We got approval and just had a really good time with them. We have some good pictures from that as well. My personal favorite was on the way out when we saw the Zoo guys just hacking up animals to feed to the lions and stuff. The activity was great though, because we went fairly early in the morning and all the animals were out doing stuff… it was neat. We even got to see a few animals being fed! The best part was just watching and hanging out with all the kids though! They had a really good time and it was just fun getting to be a part of all the joy!

Thursday also turned out to be a neat day, we got to meet with a member Nina, her less active daughter, and 2 of Nina’s relatives. We had a really good meeting about apostles, what they do, who they are, etc. and invited them to the meeting on Sunday. One of them said she would come for sure, so that was pretty exciting! What an experience it was, hopefully she enjoyed it. She lives in Center though so the plan is to pick her up as an investigator and then transfer her to Elder Jonas and Wainwright in Center.

On Friday we got to have a meeting in the morning with the soon to be Trainers... MY SON! That went really well and we also got to hear a bit about the new Elders coming next week, which is so exciting. I can’t believe I am going to be a Grandpa in about 4 days... nuts! It was really cool too because I have been feeling like we are just not doing a good job in our area since we are struggling with finding new investigators but then on Friday President Dunn just walked up to me at one point and shook my hand and told me I was doing a great job. That was really comforting to me and helped me realize we are doing our best in our area. I am so glad President Dunn is such a great guy and was able to follow that prompting. The rest of the day was Planning Session, since we aren’t doing it tomorrow, English class, picking up Elder Allen and Elder Steele (Georgians) from the office and then one meeting with Meri and her family. I have to admit I was a bit distracted during that meeting, the first World Cup game was on TV with South Africa and Mexico and I found myself staring occasionally. Overall it was a good day though.

Saturday very well could have been the best day of my mission. What an opportunity and great meeting it was for just us missionaries with Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, Sister Rasband, President Paul, and Elder Minasyan! I couldn’t believe all the greatness! Before the meeting started, we got to go through and shake everyone’s hand and introduce ourselves which was really neat and a cool experience. Then the meeting was just sooooo good! I don’t even know how I can do it justice with a recap but I will try my best.

Elder Scott ran the meeting and he started out by instructing us on how to take proper notes he said we should write down...
• that which we feel
• that which we see
• that which we hear
in that order of importance. He explained what people say is not as important as what we feel because those feelings are Personal Revelation to us from the Lord. Elder Minasyan then bore us his testimony and talked for a bit and it was just so powerful! He has a great story of coming into the church and it was really interesting to hear how all that happened. Elder Paul also got to talk a bit and bear his testimony. President and Sister Dunn both talked briefly and I was amazed because it was the first time I had ever seen them appear nervous. It didn’t show much, just President stumbling over a few words, but then Sister Dunn couldn’t even open her scriptures, it was amazing. Elder Scott also had us go around and say the attributes we admire in President and Sister Dunn separately and he made the comment that it showed we really love them and that we can’t even imagine how much they love us. Sister Rasband gave a testimony after that and talked with us for a bit. Then Elder Rasband spoke and told the story of when he was in Armenia 20 years ago at the start of the Huntsman Concrete factory and really the churches entrance into the country. It was super interesting and he even told us how he was present at the meeting where we were allowed to meet. They were at Lake Sevan talking about the Concrete Factory in the Gorbachev suite when the Prime Minister asked Brother Huntsman what he could do for him since he was helping the Armenian people. Bro. Huntsman responded that the people who would work in the factory wanted a place to meet and worship outside of the Armenian Church. The Prime Minister then raised his shot glass of Vodka and said “effective immediately the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can meet in the nation of Armenia.” I really liked everything Elder Rasband said, he is just a great guy that I really respect a lot. The last hour of the meeting was just opened up for us to ask Elder Scott any questions we wanted which was super interesting and a great experience. I could not believe how quick and how knowledgeable he was. It was an amazing time. Then at the end of the meeting Elder Scott said... ”I will no longer address you as Elder Scott, rather now I am an Apostle of Jesus Christ... ” Then he bore such a powerful testimony of the Savior it was amazing! I don’t think I will ever forget this meeting and I am glad I have notes of my feelings, seeings, and listenings.

On Saturday we didn’t get to sit in on the Priesthood session but we helped out a lot with the logistics so we were present for the entire thing and actually got to see Elder Scott and shake his hand a few more times. I think it was worth it for sure.

Sunday was another great meeting, we had so many members we filled the Marriot conference room. All the talks were wonderful and we got to hear about a rescue visit Elder Scott did on Saturday to a non-active former Branch President which was amazing. Again at the end of the meeting Elder Scott gave a testimony that just filled me with the spirit. It was probably more powerful than the one he did on Saturday... if that is possible. One thing I will never forget was when he said... ”I know the Savior loves you, because I know the Savior.” It was nuts! I am sorry if my recaps aren’t that good, but it is just really hard to summarize all that happened it was really just the experience of a lifetime. The rest of Sunday I just felt like I was on fire it was so great.

Well, I guess that’s about it for my recap of the week. I hope it was enjoyable for you, but if not sorry. I will be writing again soon though, so I hope you all tune in next week. Have a great week.

Love,
Elder Piercy

A Trip to Geghard and Garni

2010-06-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well, this one is to my great friends, followers, and family!-

Unfortunately I don’t have a ton of time to write today since we went on a trip this morning that ate up a lot of the day and I need to get going to a haircut appointment but I will let you know a bit of what is going on with us!

Like I said today we went on a trip out to Geghard a Vank [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geghard] about 45 minutes outside of Yerevan that turned out to be pretty cool! There were some cool caves and rooms and stuff plus it was right next to a little waterfall and other things. I enjoyed it and got some nifty pictures. One cool thing is this Natural water spring that runs through one of the rooms in the church that people love to drink from and stuff... half the church is built into a mountain so it was neat. Plus we got to see a pretty cool sacrificial table... yes in Armenia they still do animal sacrifices... not really sure why but whatever. Then after that we went out to Garni, about 20 minutes away, which is a really sweet Pagan temple! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garni_Temple] We got some funny and cool pictures all around and in the temple and plus we got to see what is left of these really old Roman Bath Houses so that was neat too. There is actually remains of a hand painted tile floor that was pretty neat! Overall it was a fun trip and worth the time plus we got to hang out with Elder Carlson, Elder Williams, Elder King, Elder Santo, Elder Jonas, Elder Wainwright, Elder Stutz, and Elder Zebley! Overall it was cool but I don’t think I have time to put pics up this week so I will definitely try to get them home next week! [photos are from the internet, hopefully I will post Elder Piercy's next week. If the links above don't work just copy and paste, they are valid url's]

As for other news, we are frantically trying to prepare for Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, and Elder Powell... all of whom are visiting this Saturday and Sunday! The coolest part is I think that I will get to be a part of all 3 meetings that are happening with these great men. Of course I will be in the meeting for missionaries on Saturday morning and the big Sunday meeting... but also the meeting that is only for Branch Presidents, District Presidents, and both their counselors... President Dunn is having the Assistants and the Zone Leaders usher that meeting so we can also be a part of it... what an experience that will be. I am just so excited to have these great men here in Armenia with us and I am sure I am going to learn a ton and really be edified by their words this weekend! I will be sure to report on it next week in my letter!

Another really quite frightening thing happened this week... the new newsletter came out and my obituary was in it!? [The missionary spotlight] I was shocked, but I guess it is getting close to that time so it had to happen. I really did enjoy it though, it was good, humorous, and I don’t think made me look too bad, lol. If you have an opportunity I know that the newsletter is posted online somewhere, but maybe my dad can post it on the blog for everyone. [right hand column under LDS WEB LINKS, click on Armenia Yerevan Mission Newsletter June 10]

Well the week went well here, unfortunately no big news. We are still working with 2 of our pretty good investigators which is exciting and things just keep going forward. Elder Gull and I are loving Davtashen and having a great time with the people here! I went on a really good exchange with Elder Stutz in Davtahshen this week, which was quite a good opportunity. I really like Elder Stutz a lot and he is just such a great missionary. He makes me want to improve and be better and overall he just really impresses me with his dedication and diligence as a missionary. Other than that nothing else super interesting we did hear some funny things from Armenians, but unfortunately I don’t have time to tell about them today... maybe next week if I remember.

Well I hope you all know that I think about you and hope you have a great week and for sure I will be writing next week to give you all an update on how the conference went with our General Authorities! Let the work of the Lord go forth and I will write again soon!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Elder Piercy's Last May Update

2010-05-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

Again, I write to all those viewing my blog and others who may receive this email... I only write for all of you-

Well it has been another good interesting week in Davtashen for Elder Gull and I. We had some good experiences with President Dunn, and the work is still moving forward with our investigators so that is always good news. I don’t have any amazing stories this week, but I will still try to entertain you all for the next few minutes. I won’t waste any more time, so lets begin!

First off I have good news for everyone... my suit is finished! I did my final fitting last week after internet and now all I need to do is go pick it up! It looks so fly... I am for sure going to bust it out when Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, and President Powell come soon! Speaking of that, we are all getting really excited for that visit! On Saturday the 12th of June we will all be having a 3.5 hour Mission Conference meeting with Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, President Powell, Elder Minasyan, and President Dunn. We don’t know anything of what will be happening at that meeting except the fact that it is going to be amazing. All of the missionaries are getting really excited and it should be a cool experience for us. Then after that meeting the General Authorities will be doing a meeting with all the Branch Presidents and Counselors and also the District Presidents and their counselors... the Assistants and Zone Leaders will be ushers for that meeting. President Dunn is hoping we will be able to talk to Elder Scott a bit during that time as well which will be amazing! I still remember in the MTC when I got to shake Elder Scott’s hand and just feel his spiritual strength. After all that, on Sunday 13th of June, we have our huge Armenia/Georgia Conference at the Marriot Hotel with the General Authorities which I am sure will be an awesome experience for the members and us! What a great opportunity for all the people of Armenia to listen to the words of a living Apostle! I hope the members here are getting as excited as all of us are!

Well I guess I will tell a pretty funny story that happened to all of us this week. Last Preparation Day, we all went to Taco Maco... our favorite restaurant for lunch. There were about 8 of us there and we had some good food as always. Well it turns out Monday night was a rough night for me, just such bad diarrhea. I never even knew that Elder Gull was sick either until about 3am when we started overlapping and having problems. It is really hard to wait to use the restroom when your companion is in there with the same diarrhea problem. The next morning was really funny too because Elder Gull was in the shower and I just got hit with a need for the bathroom. I tried to hold it for as long as I could but then had to ask Elder Gull to hurry in the shower. He was nice and complied and got out quickly so we were safe. About halfway through the day we were better so it didn’t last long. The funny thing was that in the morning we found out that all 8 of us who went to Taco Maco had the same problem... super diarrhea all night. It was a good memory, but I will be honest... it won’t stop me from going back to Taco Maco. I have eaten there plenty of times without getting sick so I figure my odds are pretty good! Hope you enjoyed that graphic story.

On Tuesday we went to the Shengavit District and did a really good District Meeting with them. It seemed to go well and it was another good meeting that I hope got us all pumped up to do great work! I also got a really nice compliment from Sis. Poghosyan on Tuesday when we visited her. I always play with the kids at church after church gets out and one week Sis. Poghosyan’s daughter gave me this little braided yarn thing that I usually hang on my glasses and put behind my ear and call my hair while I play and the kids really like it. Well on Tuesday I was playing with Sis. Poghosyan’s kids and pulled out the string from my wallet and hung it behind my ear. Silva said that I was going to make a great father for holding onto something like that just to keep a good connection with the kids. I felt pretty good after she told me that so hopefully I really can be a good father someday!

Well Thursday we did a Zone Leader/District Leader Correlation that went well! We got to hear some good reports of how people are doing and then Elder Gull and I taught a lesson on how we can apply the Be Attitudes from Matthew 5 to help us be better more effective leaders. It was really interesting and everyone seemed to respond positively to the talk. I know I myself learned a ton from it and feel like there is tons that I can improve on still... I guess life is all about consistent progression though.

Friday we had our last Zone Leader Council with President Dunn. I also had my last interview with President Dunn.... weird. It is strange to think that in about 4 weeks President Dunn is going to be gone... kind of stinks, but we are getting excited for President and Sister Carter too! I really just think it will be interesting to see how the transition goes. President Dunn said some really nice things to all of us in the meeting and also in the interview I had. He really has just had a huge effect on my life even though I really haven’t spent a ton of time around him... but I guess it would be hard to dislike your Mission President.

Saturday we had a pretty good Branch Activity! Elder and Sister Pincock, the employment specialists came, and they taught about how our members can find jobs and use their talents to get work. It turned out really effective and there were some good games and activities we all played which were good as well! It seems like we do lots of Branch activities here, but I am not hating it, it is a good opportunity for our less actives and investigators to get involved.

Sunday went well, church was interesting but not bad. I got to teach a lesson on the Priesthood Organization in Sunday school out of the new Gospel Principles Manual... so nice! Other than that it is all going well.

O, I remembered something else funny that happened this week. So on Wednesday we are in English Class and I am “teaching” English to our new member Mher and we are doing handstands and walking around and racing each other and stuff. It was pretty fun, but one time I started falling forward and thought I was going to break my face so I threw my legs backwards to save me and just slammed my knees on the tile. Well anyone who knows about my knee situation knows that it is not good for me when stuff like that happens. A few minutes later I had a golf ball lump on my knee, I drained it the next morning using a knife and then I wore my brace for a few days and now it’s all better. I took a picture of it this morning that I will send to show just how well it is healing up. Don’t worry mom, I am fine, I promise.

Well I think that is about it for the news this week our investigators Emma and Nara are doing good which is exciting and the mission is still fun and an all around great experience. I am tired of writing now though, so I think I am going to end this. I hope you all have a good time and I will be sure to send a letter out next Monday.

Love,
Elder Piercy

Zone Conference, District Conference, and an Organ Recital

2010-05-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

This one is again for all my faithful followers and stalkers!-

It has definitely been an interesting week full of ups and downs and fun and work... aren’t missions just awesome, but all is well in the end and we just keep having a great time doing the work of the Lord! We had some great things happen this week... Zone Conference, District Conference, Organ Recital, etc. so I guess I will stop boring you all with my intro and just move into the fun!

Well, last Preparation Day was a bit busy, it always seems to be when we are trying to prepare for Zone Conference, just so many errands to run... getting haircuts, food, setting up rooms, etc. but luckily we were still able to find some time to get some great Indian food at Karma for lunch and get my suit fitting done. I need to tell you all, my suit is looking “fly”! I hope it just looks so good in the end, actually I know it will so that isn’t even a concern!

We were also able to have a great meeting on Monday with our investigator Emma, who is doing well and we had our MP Lia’s help, which is also really useful. We took things really slow and just talked about scriptures (Bible and the BofM), specifically focusing on why we have them, what is in them, etc. and then we talked about prophets just to help her understand it all better. The meeting seemed to be good, especially because her daughter came in at the end and was able to just testify about the Book of Mormon along with us, so hopefully she was touched by the spirit!

Tuesday, Zone Conference, ended up being a great day! Our Zone Conference went really well, and I think everyone enjoyed it. People actually told us that it was the best one we have had in a while so that was exciting! I guess I will try to give a quick recap, the only unfortunate thing was I was doing a lot of translating this time around so I didn’t get a lot of notes, hopefully I can remember most of it. This conference was a bit different because we took an hour off the start and the end, so they aren’t so long, so it was just 11-5, but still seemed really great and effective.
President Dunn’s morning talk was a lot of business on Emergency Preparedness and things that he wants to cover before the new Mission President arrives so he doesn’t have to worry about it. Then we had quite a few talks from different missionaries. Let’s see, my son Elder Garner spoke on Finding the Elect, Elder Reece talked about using faith to get through difficulty and adversity, Sister Ferguson talked about serving with all your heart and mind, Elder Stutz gave a great talk on the Gift of Tongues, Elder Clark covered measuring our Diligence and improving it, Sister Bishop had a interesting topic on how we can know that our planning and goal setting is moving the work forward, and finally Elder Chaney gave a great talk on Beware of Rationalization. We felt really good about all the talk assignments we gave out to the missionaries and they really covered what we wanted and made the meeting go well.

Our lunch was ordered from a place called Top Table that delivered really delicious Sandwiches, baked potatoes, fruit salad, and Carrot cake (which was pretty darn good). After lunch rather than have the Assistants and us give separate talks we decided to put our time together and play a game. It was something different and people really seemed to get excited and enjoy it, plus, it was effective! We made a Jeopardy board with 5 categories and 5 questions for each, worth different points. The teams got to pick the category the question/concern they wanted and every team then got to pose an answer and we had Elder and Sister Shulz judge. We worked really hard on coming up with concerns we face in the work and I think it was helpful, effective, and a great activity. If I remember the categories were... Investigator Concerns, Less-Active Problems, Doctrines of the Missionary lessons, Christlike Attributes, and Questions of the Soul.

Our snack was Ice Cream Bars, which was easy and refreshing, and then it was President Dunn’s turn. I really liked President Dunn’s talk as usual, it was called “To Change, or not to Change” and focused on making a decision to change for the better and always work toward that for our entire life. This was probably President’s last talk to us so he wanted to make sure it would be really meaningful. I actually translated President Dunn’s talk and think that it was super helpful for our Armenian guests too since it wasn’t particularly focused on how to be better missionaries, rather how to be better people. Finally the meeting ended with testimonies, which was enjoyable as usual. I have to say I left Zone Conference feeling pretty good and pumped up... plus I don’t have to plan the next one because it will be a Mission Conference in 4 weeks with Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, and President Powell! I guess that’s the recap, sorry if it was boring for you.

O, I forgot to tell you the other thing that happened to me on Tuesday morning! Well we wake up and Elder Gull starts telling me how he went to the bathroom last night and saw the biggest cockroach he had ever seen in his life... I laughed because that is gross, but didn’t think much of it. I showered first and went in the bathroom and looked at the floor, didn’t see any roach and figured it was gone so I am just in the shower doing my thing you know and I felt something on my leg, I figured it was just water and ignored it... but then later I felt it again higher on my leg... this time I look down and the biggest cockroach I have ever seen is just crawling up my leg... needless to say I freaked, smacked it off and then spent the next 5 minutes trying to wash it down the drain... he put up a good fight... in the end I got him. For the rest of my shower though I did have one eye on the drain. I got out and told Elder Gull the story and then he mentions that he forgot to tell me he saw the roach on the tub not the floor of the bathroom. It was pretty disgusting, but also a pretty funny story, I thought you might all appreciate it.

After our Zone Conference we had a meeting with our investigator Nara, but it didn’t go as well as some of them have in the past... something just felt a bit off, I guess we will see though. We taught about the first half of the plan of salvation and thought it was just great but, something just didn’t click I guess. We all felt the difference, Elder Gull, Lia and I... but we hope our next meeting will be better. Unfortunately we didn’t meet with her after that, but we are hoping to see her today so I guess we will see how that meeting feels.

The next exciting thing that happened this week was an Organ Concert/Recital, I don’t know what I am supposed to say, that happened on Friday. President Pearce, the Branch President in Malatia, works at the American Embassy and his mother in law came to visit them. I guess she is a really well known organist who plays with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and she ended up doing a free concert for about an hour in Center during her visit. It was a really cool thing and she actually played a few songs I have played in High School Band, which was cool, specifically 2 John Philip Sousa marches. She also did one song where her 3 grandsons (4,6, and 8 years old) played with her so that was cool. Overall it was a really enjoyable time and we had a lot of good members come and also some investigators from lots of missionary companionship's. Friday night, I started losing my voice though, which was interesting... probably from all the screaming and cheering at the concert (KEESE!!!)... but it only got worse later.

Saturday, I could barely speak, my voice and throat was just in rough shape. I don’t really know what got me sick... an Armenian said it was because I drank too much cold water, but either way we went out for part of the day after planning session, then in the evening I just came home and slept.

Sunday was our District Conference and it went really well, I enjoyed it. We had an Area Seventy from Moscow visiting... Elder Reshitnikov, and he gave a great talk! It was interesting though having him speak Russian and having a member translate it into Armenian. Elder Gull and I took our young new member Mher to the meeting and I learned that it’s pretty hard to keep a kid quiet and occupied for a 2 hour District Conference. I was kind of listening with one ear to the talks and using my other senses on Mher. I still had a good time though and was able to learn a lot. Again President Dunn also gave a really good talk here and just really gave some good last words to the members since he doesn’t know if he will have time to speak in 4 weeks at the Conference we will have with the members and Elder Scott. My voice was still pretty messed up yesterday... actually I was supposed to help the Assistants translate for the Senior couples but I wasn’t really able to do that, but I did get a Priesthood blessing from Elder Gull, Elder Carlson, and Elder Williams, so I am already feeling better. Plus our Branch Missionary Lia gave me some Armenian remedies that I am sure helped out as well, one was Blackberry Preserve Tea and the other was eating a Lemon. The lemon one wasn’t so fun, but I just wanted to get better so I tried it. I feel pretty good today and my voice has gotten a little bit better, so hopefully I will be good to go in a couple days! The rest of our Sunday was spent in meetings, no rest for me since I rested on Saturday, and everything seemed to go pretty well.

Our new investigator search is going to continue this week, since we would really like to get busier with investigator meetings, and I am sure I will be having miracles to report on next week. We have a referral from our member Vika that hopefully will work out well, and we are just going to pound the streets and seek out the elect!

Well I guess this is kind of long so I will wrap up my letter now, I hope you all have an amazing week. I will be writing next week same place, same time!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Last Prep Day was Really Lame

2010-05-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

I think I am going to dedicate this letter to everyone who is free from school and work for the summer!-

Well the week went by pretty fast for us here. I can’t remember anything super cool that happened, but luckily it’s all written down in my planner so I can just look back and give you the highlights from my week. The weather has gotten warmer that is the good news; the bad news is these white shirts are giving me a TERRIBLE tan line really high on my neck and on my arms. It’s pretty funny when just your face and arms get tan... but what can you do... we have to make sacrifices to get blessing right?! I guess I’ll just jump into my letter!

Last Preparation Day was really lame, probably one of the worst ever, but what can you do it is bound to happen sometimes. Plus, now I can just appreciate the good so much more after seeing the bad. The plan was to go get my second fitting for my suit, but the tailor wasn’t ready... hopefully he is ready today. Then we went to play basketball at this cool indoor gym in Yerevan that some Persians told us about... but it was full and we couldn’t. We then went to find an outdoor court and it rained. So we gave up on Basketball and decided to do internet. At the normal place the power was out, and then another one we went to was full. Elder Gull and I had had enough, so since we had to cut our Preparation Day short anyway we just went back to Davtashen, did internet and sat around our apartment. That was actually pretty relaxing, so I don’t really have much to complain about. After Preparation day was tough too, everything just kept falling through, even the stuff we had planned and we ended up just visiting Vazgen at the end of the night. It was good to be on the streets though, we gotta find the elect!

Tuesday was a pretty good day, but we lost a lot of it since we had to travel down to Ararat for District Meeting. That is such a fun Bus trip, nothing like standing in a hot bus for about an hour and 15 minutes, with a bunch of people staring at you the whole time. I really just think that kind of stuff is going to be the funniest memories looking back on my mission. The District Meeting went well, Elder Gull and I did it and we decided just to get people excited for the work here in Armenia. We ended up watching this movie called “An Ensign to the Nations” which is all about how the church has just grown and exploded around the world, it was about 1 hour and then afterwards we talked about it and just tried to get people excited so we can add our own chapter concerning Armenia to this history of growth in the church. It turned out really well and I got excited and pumped so hopefully they all did too. My son made some really great comments, which made me happy, and overall it was just a good chance to imagine where the church in Armenia could be in a few years! The rest of the day was a lot of Finding, and then we met with our investigator Nara! We brought Lia, our Branch Missionary, to this meeting with us so it wouldn’t be as awkward and it turned out to be a really good meeting. We taught a 3rd lesson and really focused on what is needed for Baptism. The Spirit was really strong and the lesson was great. The 3 of us were teaching really well together and it just seemed like everything went right. Afterwards Elder Gull and I were even talking about how we had never taught a 3rd using those examples or doing those things before, but it just worked great! I love meetings like that, you just feel like a great tool in the hands of the Lord!

Wednesday, after our trial of faith the first 2 days of the week we started getting meetings again and had some good things happen. We almost picked up 3 new investigators from 3 separate meetings, but it didn’t quite work out... we will get them next time though! The day started out with us meeting the Assistants to get our Zone Conference ready. We want to switch things up so rather than give 2 talks, we decided to put our time together and we are going to play a hopefully fun Jeopardy like game about concerns we run into as missionaries, I will be sure to let you all know how it goes next week. After English class we had a good meeting with Ashot, a guy who comes to class. He said he was an Atheist, but then told us stories of times when he has prayed and things worked out for him. I think he is just a bit mixed up about everything, so we committed him to read some things from the Book of Mormon and really try to find out if there is a God, then hopefully next time we meet him we can pick him up as a new investigator. After that Center brought over a guy they have taught a couple times who goes to their English Class but lives in our area. He seemed cool, but he said he didn’t have a ton of time right now to meet since he is trying to get a job... but he did seem sincere so maybe we can meet up with him and pick him up as a new investigator this week. Finally we visited a member Vika who had a referral for us and the plan was to contact the referral that day with her, but it didn’t work out so hopefully next time we can do it. Something really weird happened in that meeting though, she just told us how good we looked today and then asked us what she could do to please us... we didn’t know how to answer so we just told her to play the piano... so awkward, but so funny!

On Thursday we had a really good meeting with Mher’s Mom Emma, one of our investigators, but we feel like a lot of it went over her head. She knows pretty much nothing about church things, so telling her all the stuff about the Restoration and things probably overwhelm her. We had Lia there helping us, but we will have to see how much she can remember next time we meet with her, hopefully today! The important thing was just encouraging her to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, if she remembers nothing else from the lesson I hope it’s that. This week our plan to help her out is to just talk about Prophets and Scriptures and what they are and then watch the Restoration movie to review a bit about Joseph Smith. It should be good though because she is willing to listen and seems pretty sincere about everything! We also met with Mamikon and tried to pick up his wife as a new investigator... it didn’t work, but there is progress, I think she wants to join the church, she just has a hard time coming to church since she has leg problems and can’t sit very long. She has already read the Book of Mormon... I am sure we will get her to come around eventually!

Friday nothing too interesting happened, we just went down to Malatia and did a Baptismal interview with one of their investigators. He passed! I got to do the interview and had a really great time and a good experience with him. He is a big stud, the husband of a member, and I think that getting baptized is going to be great for their family!

Saturday was just meetings as usual, we did have a good meeting with this member Susan and her son though on Preserving the Heart’s Mighty Change, a talk from November 09 conference and it seemed to really help us all. Lia was able to help us a lot too with some personal examples she had after her conversion to keep the mighty change in her heart always going. I really enjoyed that talk and that meeting, it really shows that it only takes doing the little things regularly to keep us spiritually healthy and moving forward in the gospel.

Sunday, yesterday was a pretty good day. Church went well, we had a random guy show up whom we didn’t pick up as a new investigator, but we did get his number and are going to be meeting with him, hopefully tomorrow to teach a 1st. He stayed for all 3 hours of church and then later that evening when we had a Seminary/Institute activity at our Branch he came to that too! It should be sweet; he is a 26-year old man who could be a great Priesthood holder for our branch! We also went to that Seminary/Institute Branch Activity since our Branch President asked us too and it was really good! We got to watch my favorite seminary video on Free Agency... that was translated into Armenian, and then we got to listen to a great lesson by President Poghosyan! It was a good experience and I think that our soon to be new investigator really enjoyed it since he was signing up for institute classes for next semester afterward!!! Overall it was just another great Sunday. Oh, I almost forgot the great news... we finally got new Gospel Principles Manuals in Armenian yesterday!!! They only arrived 5.5 months late! They are really cool and nice though... I think they are going to be a great help so all our members become firmer in the faith!

Well that was my week! I finished the Book of Mormon again this week, which is exciting; I have really just come to love that book a ton on my mission. It seems like it has so much power and I get pumped to start it again when I finish. I’m going to be taking a small break though to finish off the Doctrine and Covenants and then I will be back to the Book of Mormon. I regret not appreciating the scriptures more before my mission, I always found time to read them a bit and I enjoyed that, but I never appreciated them like this. I see all the growth I have had in knowledge and understanding from reading the scriptures on my mission and I just wonder how much more growth I could have had if I would have studied them before my mission too. I guess there is no reason to dwell on the past but I definitely have a goal to continue, “feasting on the word’s of Christ” when I come home.

I can’t think of too much else and this is starting to get long so I guess I will bring this letter to a close. I will write again next week. You will all get a Zone and District Conference report then! I hope you all have a magnificent week!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Excitement, Miracles, Golf, and even talked to family

2010-05-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

Dad-
Well, I really appreciate your email. When I told you I would be writing yesterday even though we spoke on the phone, I thought it was because I would actually have people to write.... but I lost my desire to write because I only got 1 e-mail this week, from you. However I will try to be a good writer and still do my blog e-mail... the stuff I do for people, lol.

This one is for Everyone who likes to know about my going-ons!-

Well it has actually been quite a good week, we had some excitement, miracles, golf, and even talked by phone to family so where is the bad... there isn’t any. Today we are a bit short on time because we have to make our Preparation Day a bit short since we had a golf activity with President Dunn on Wednesday but I will still try to give a good report.

Well last Monday was a good-bye thing for Elder Harris, Elder Ellison, and Sister Fisher. (going home this week) After our writing letters, we grabbed some grub and all went bowling. It ended up being a great time, there were tons of us there, we took up all 5 lines and they turned out the lights and went Cosmic style for us. We didn’t play as well as last time, no free cokes left and right, but it was still a great time and I got a couple of good action shots of me bowling thanks to Elder Gull’s fine photography skills! One is going through my legs maybe you can’t tell, but the other is just some fine bowling technique... it was probably a strike... KEESE! It was all around a good time but it stunk having to say good-bye.

That day we also had a meeting with Mher and his mother, we tried to pick her up as a new investigator, but it didn’t go so well. We had a branch member (Lia) there helping us, and we were glad for that- but it didn’t end the way we hoped.... however later in the week, well I will talk about that later! We did pick up a new investigator after that meeting! Our Branch President called to let us know that he had an investigator for us who already wants to be baptized! We went over and it turned out to be one of our member’s (Vachik) wife. When Elder Carlson and I were together we had tried to teach her a few times but it didn’t go so well, now I guess she is ready. Her baby is a bit bigger and I guess now she feels like she can meet with us and learn… so that was awesome news!

Tuesday was another good day; we started out by going to Charentsavan for District Meeting. We didn’t do the meeting, we just sat in and observed and enjoyed it all. It was a really great meeting all about loving the people and how to do better. I really enjoyed everything in the meeting, especially all the different talks people had and it was just an all around great time. We were also able to go back and see the lady in our branch with the less active daughter on Tuesday, luckily Lia was able to come with us... otherwise we would have been in trouble not knowing Russian, but it turned out okay. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet with the daughter but I think the woman was happy we came because she probably doesn’t get visited much. We also met with Nara our new investigator, Vachik’s wife, and that went great! We taught her a first and she accepted everything very well, and the coolest thing happened. We were teaching her about the Holy Ghost and trying to explain how it could feel... and while we were doing that she just stopped us and said that she was feeling it right then and already knew how it felt!!!! That was such a sweet moment. We have a lot of hope for Naraso it should be good. The last meeting we got that day was with our old investigator Narine... we gave her a blessing last week and it seems like she is starting to show interest again, so we will see.

Wednesday was a great day and a big miracle in and of itself. The weather has been terrible for a week and a half just rain, rain, rain, well Wednesday morning from about 10 to 3 the weather was sunny and beautiful and we were able to go out golfing with President Dunn and Jim. We were planning on playing the course, but it was too muddy so we just did a Driving Range contest again. It was about a year ago that we did this and again we ended up beating Jim and President Dunn. Elder Gull and I were actually hitting the ball very well which is surprising since we haven’t picked up clubs since last time. We had a slow start but then it got fun! Since President Dunn and Jim lost again they took us out to lunch at Taco Maco to celebrate Cinco de Mayo! President Dunn is such a great guy, he does so much extra for us that he doesn’t have to do and it just makes us respect him and appreciate him so much more. I am really glad I have had the opportunity to serve with him and get to know him. Nothing else too terribly exciting happened on Wednesday, just visiting people as usual and we had a good meeting with Sis. Poghosyan which was nice!

Thursday was transfer day so there were a few changes, we got one new District Leader. Elder Pulsipher went up to Gyumri and Elder Crawford is now down with us in the South Zone. Also my son got transferred to Ararat where he will be training in 6 weeks! THAT MEANS I GET TO SEE MY GRANDSON!!!! I am turning into a Grandpa already... wow. Elder Ellison and Elder Harris went home, so now Elder Simonsen and I are officially the oldest Missionaries in the mission with... rough, because I still feel like a greenie. We got to meet with Nara again which was nice because we were able to teach a really solid lesson on the Book of Mormon, its history and why it is important. We have really good spiritual meetings with her so that is good.

Nothing super interesting happened on Friday. We were doing some less active finding and found this cool old member Anzhela, who said she would meet us again, but then later when I called her to set up another meeting she was rude and didn’t want to meet anymore... what can you do. I did find out that I will be the Giant Teddy Bear on Children’s Day June 1st and will basically be playing with all the Primary Kids for a Branch Activity. I think they assumed I was qualified since every Sunday after church I spend about 30 minutes running around the building playing with all the kids. It’s really fun, plus it is a way to build a good relationship with all the kids!

Saturday was a fairly normal day, most of our Planning Session was spent worrying about Zone Conference but we have a large portion of it together now. We just need to knock our talk out and get food plans finalized. We also did a Football finding hour again that was okay, not as successful as last time, but still good. Then we went to a Bistro by our house and the funniest thing happened... we usually go in ties and white shirts, but this time we just went in T-shirts and shorts (after Football) and this girl just walked right up to us with a huge grin and said...”you guys look really pretty today!” I didn’t even know what to say... how do you answer that without flirting back so I just kind of walked away awkwardly, luckily Elder Gull said thanks, but the rest of the time was really awkward, she was just smiling and staring at us. I don’t think we will be going there anymore in sport clothes, lol. The other 2 meetings we had that evening went well and I was actually able to give two more blessings. Nina, a less active member wanted one for health, and Nelli, our member who recently got married wanted a blessing of comfort because she is having problems with her new family... specially with her mother in law. Overall it was a good day and things just keep going good here.

Finally, yesterday was another great day at church. I really think that the Ajapnyak Branch is the best branch in Armenia, I just enjoy church so much. All of the talks were great in Sacrament meeting, especially Astghik’s... one of our Branch Missionaries. She talked on how we should love our enemies but did it in a really interesting way using lots of examples from the life of David. The other 2 hours also went well and I just feel like I learn when I am there. We had a miracle after church too! We went over and visited Emma, Mher’s mom, with our Branch President and Lia and suddenly she has a desire to meet with us and will progress toward Baptism. Mher, our new member is so good too just helping us teach and reminding his mom how she cannot do certain things like drink coffee, so now we are just way excited to start teaching her. We also saw something crazy on Sunday. We went to a member’s house (Nina) and she was giving herself an IV! It was crazy. I guess in Armenia you can just go to a Pharmacy buy a bag and stick your own IV, it was pretty funny because Elder Gull was a little uncomfortable and kinda grossed out by it.

Other than that it seems the work here is still going well and moving forward. We are getting excited for some of our new prospects and everything should go good. I also had a great time talking to my family on Sunday, but now I guess it is time for me to end this letter. I hope you all have a great week. I will be writing again in 7 days!
Love,
Elder Piercy

I'm Talking to my Family on Sunday

2010-05-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

This email is going out to all the great people who love reading about my Mission Life-

Well first, I must admit, I really don't have much desire to write this email since I'm talking to my family on Sunday... but I will try to do a good job so that everyone who reads this who isn't family can still get a weekly update from me. I'm going bowling today so hopefully I have time to be thorough.

For District Meeting this week we went to Ajapnyak. Elder Gull and I did it, and it seemed to turn out well. It was similar to the one we did in Shengavit, but we made a few changes and focused it more specifically on this District and how the Power and Authority of our Calling allows us to bring down the blessings of Heaven. I felt like it was a powerful meeting and it pumped me up!

Well, another cool thing this week, I went on exchange with Elder Zebley (Elder Stutz's son from Ashtarak). We ended up having a really good time together in Davtashen, I really liked him. I must admit when this new group came to Armenia I thought they were weird but they are all really fun to be around. I have been on exchanges with both Elder Andersen and Elder Zebley and I really liked them! I was super impressed this last week with Elder Zebley's language ability. He is new, but he is doing really good at saying things in meetings and stuff which was really cool. We had to thrash Armine (again) this week and basically decided if she didn't come to church we were going to drop her. She didn't, but hopefully one day she will decide to come to the church. I have been working with her on and off for about 6 months now, so until she comes to church and shows us she is ready we are going to be done, it stinks but sometimes that's what is needed. For the rest of the exchange we did a lot of walking, Less Active Member finding and just trying to get some new investigators so the work will move forward again in our area.

On Thursday we had a Zone Leader/District Leader Correlation meeting. It went pretty good and it was helpful to hear about how everyone was doing, especially the trainers and trainees. We also had a talk focused on losing yourself in the work to get the Zone pumped and pushing again which went well. I really feel like all these ideas we have are just meant to help me, but I hope they help others too. We had each of our District Leaders give a short talk and it turned out well. Elder Jonas talked about not falling into routines, Elder Stutz talked about being a missionary on Preparation Day, Elder Clark talked about finding joy in service, and finally Elder Pulsipher talked about what he was doing on his mission the time he was most lost. I really liked it and just thought it went great! That day we also did a Basketball Finding Hour with one of our Young Men in Davtashen, Hapet. It turned out to be soooo good, we talked to a ton of guys around his age and were able to teach about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration and everything. I think 2 Americans playing sports is turning out to be a good way to get people interested in us... maybe we will keep doing it once a week!

On Friday we had a Zone Leader Council that was really, really interesting. We talked about problems and solutions in the mission and new policies, but then President Dunn gave a super interesting talk. It was basically about how lying is okay sometimes. I guess actually it was about how in life there needs to be a different code of Ethics for different situations. It was a really interesting talk and is going to take a lot of care to be able to correctly do everything he talked about. The main warning was that there are different codes of Ethics, but also we need to be aware of Rationalization. I am definitely going to have to give it more thought and really see how I can apply the things we learned. Before the council I also had an interview with President Dunn, that went well and I found out Elder Gull and I will probably play golf with President Dunn and Jim on Wednesday if the weather gets better... unfortunately it doesn't look like it will. I had to get a new Temple Recommend on Friday since it was the last day of the month that mine was valid. I now have one that is in Armenian and my Branch says "Ajapnyak" and my District is "Armenia Yerevan". I guess that officially means I am no longer an American... I have turned into an Armenian, lol! It's pretty cool though. However my recommend is only good until August because President Dunn did not want to step on President Carter's toes so I will have to get another Temple Recommend from President Carter right before I go home. Friday we also had a small Branch Activity that went okay... lots of interesting problems, but still okay.

Well, Saturday was an interesting day because during our Weekly Planning Session Elder Gull and I realized that the next Zone Conference was coming soon and that we needed to plan it, so we got started. We were not able to do the entire thing but we made a good dent in it! The cool thing is after this Zone Conference, the next one will be a 3 1/2 hour meeting with Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, Elder Powell, and Elder Minasyan... it will be amazing! We did a lot of less active searching on Saturday too, we found one guy but he doesn't want to be visited anymore... what can you do, he has his agency.

On Sunday we had a pretty good day. Church was good, Testimony meeting was okay. I usually like it a lot in Armenia, but I guess we just had a bit of an off week, what can you do, it will be better next time. After church we had a really good Branch Missionary Meeting and were able to narrow down 5 names to focus on in the branch to help bring back to church. I was also able to give a blessing to an old investigator Narine who wants to meet with us this week so that was cool. Our Family Home Evening with the Galdunts' was really great and Sis. Galdunts made Dolma! I love it so much.

Well the weather is dismal and rainy, but we are not letting that get us down. We are pushing forward and still trying to do the Lord's work zealously! I sure hope sun happens to come out on Wednesday though so we can beat President Dunn all over again, but we will see.

I guess I am just going to end this so that I can move on to other things. I hope it was enjoyable and have a fantastic week! [Sorry no photos this week]

Love,
Elder Piercy

Another Pretty Good Week

2010-04-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

To all my wonderful friends and family-

Well it has been another pretty good week for me here in the AYM! We had another baptism, some fun, and just an all around good time. Time is short today since we played Basketball this morning and Preparation Day is coming to a close, but I will try to summarize the highlights of my week for you.

This week I went on an exchange with Elder Jonas which was very enjoyable. I was in Center with him from Tuesday, after District Meeting, until Thursday morning. I really like Elder Jonas and think he is just a great missionary so I consider myself lucky when I get to go on exchanges with him. Exchanges are supposed to be our chance to train other missionaries, but I always feel like I learn more from the person I am with than I could teach them. On the exchange we had some really cool meetings and this guy actually let us into his house off the street, fed us a bunch of food, and let us talk about the gospel. It was a really cool meeting and made all the trouble of the day go away. I had a rough experience on one of the Marshutni's. In this one about 5 Jehovah Witnesses got on and were just trying to verbally fight with me. I talked to them a bit and explained some things we believe and they just kept telling me I was a representative of Satan. Overall it was pretty messed up but I think on my mission I am finally starting to understand the whole persecution thing. We also had a meeting with a member in Center who made so much good Dolma [a family of stuffed vegetable dishes] for us... I could barely walk afterward I ate so much... I just love Dolma... what can I say. Overall it was a good exchange and a good learning experience.

Friday was another really good day for us, since we had Mamikon's baptism. The other good victory for the day was we were able to convince our Branch President to baptize him. It was our Branch President's father in law so he needed to do it but for some reason he was against it... in the end though after some pressing and prodding he agreed to do it. The service went pretty good, there wasn't a lot of people but it was still good. I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. When planning they always seem to go better but I guess I can't really judge how it turned out. I did a different spin on my talk and used a lot of things from Elder Scott's October 09' Conference Talk on feeling promptings. We are super excited to have had so many baptisms, but now we are just about out of investigators so we need to really focus on finding.
Saturday was the Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide so tons of people went to the Memorial and laid out flowers. Elder Gull and I decided not to go because we thought we wouldn't have time but I kind of regret it now, I wish we would have gone because other missionaries said it was really neat. What can you do though... I guess just live and learn. Some of our members were a bit annoyed we didn't go and "mourn" at the memorial either... oops.

We did decide to do a Football finding hour on Saturday that went really well. People were so confused at what we were doing and were floored at what that weird ball was. It was kind of funny that no one new what a football was, but also really good. We actually ended up getting contact info for two 17 year old kids so hopefully we can meet with them again, they seemed genuinely interested in the Book of Mormon.

We had a branch activity on Friday that was really good too. We watched the second part of that movie on Abraham. This one was better because even though it was in Russian, one of our branch missionaries Lia translated the whole thing for me... into English, so she could practice her English. I was impressed because she really spoke very well, and I was also very grateful that she was willing to do that so I could understand. It ended up being much more enjoyable than last time and we had a descent amount of members come. That night we went to the Galdunts' house and had dinner with them. Plus Sister Zohrabyan, a member from Nork, was there so we got to hear the updates of her 2 kids (Jennifer and Zohrab) serving their missions. Overall it was a pretty good day!

Sunday was a good day of church! I had a surprise and ended up giving Mamikon the Holy Ghost which was nice. Elder Gull gave a really good talk on the Aaronic Priesthood in Sacrament meeting which was another highlight. I think my favorite thing was our Sunday School lesson though. The chapter we were on was The Life of Christ in the Gospel Principles manual so we just decided to watch the movie Finding Faith in Christ since it covers all the major events and talks about that. It ended up being really good and spiritual. We finished by reading one of my favorite verses of scripture in the Book of John, last chapter, last verse... which basically says that if everything that Christ did was written down the world wouldn't be able to contain all the books which just put a great cap on the lesson.

The 3rd hour went well too, for some reason we did a combined lesson and talked about resolving conflicts between spouses and parents and children and just all relationships in general. It was pretty good and I guess came up because Elder and Sister Shulz, the CES couple here did a lesson on that a few days ago. I also got to give Hasmik (a member) a blessing on Sunday which turned out to be a really spiritual experience that I hope helps her out. The stinky thing, they just took her son from our branch and made him the 1st counselor in the Branch Presidency of Ashtarak... that is good because he is going to help the branch, but stinks that we are losing him because he is a great guy.

That's pretty much the highlights for the week. We are down to just 2 investigators right now and neither is really progressing, but we will see what we can do. The main focus for the week is going to be finding some new people to teach so Elder Gull and I will probably pound the streets really hard. We are doing a lot of Less Active work too off of our Branch list. So we are staying busy and doing work, but we just want to do more effective work.

I got a terrible letter in my mailbox this last week, I wasn't happy to see it but I guess it has to come eventually. There was a letter with the caption... "Instructions for Departing Missionaries". Can you believe that, what a joke, I've still got soo much time I don't want to be seeing or thinking about that kind of stuff but I guess eventually my mission will have to end. Don't get me wrong I am going to be excited to come home, but I just really love Armenia and don't feel like I want to leave. I better just live it up pound it and work hard to the end and everything will go well.

I can't think of much else to write about for this week, everything is going well and the work moves on and the church stays true, so that is what is important! I hope you all have a great week and I look forward to writing again soon!

Love,
Elder Piercy

2010-04-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

This letter is for all the wonderful people out there who love me-

Well it has been quite a week for Elder Gull and I, we are having quite a bit of success lately, so we hope it keeps going strong for us... I think it's time to take it to the next level though and pound it even harder. We were supposed to go to Garni and Geghard today, the van we were going to ride in broke down, so hopefully we can do it next week. The back up plan was playing Basketball, but then it had to rain so hopefully we can do something fun today... it will probably just be chilling back and watching a movie. Anyway, I will get started on the week.

Last Monday for preparation day we all went bowling... since all the Georgian missionaries came down for mission conference. The only problem was the Georgians arrived late and didn't actually go bowling, so it was just Elder Gull and I, the elders from Center, Malatia(our sons), and the Assistants. It turned out to be a pretty fun time though like usual... I love bowling. Plus I got a free coke for bowling a turkey!!! [Three strikes bowled consecutively are known as a "turkey"] I'm thinking about going pro when I get home... but we'll see. After bowling, while still waiting for the Georgians, we watched a movie at the office..."Passage to Zarahemla." It was probably the worst movie I have ever seen in my life, but whatever, it was something different and beggars can't be choosers. When they finally arrived Elder Gull and I hosted Elder Bennet and Elder Coltrin. I really like Elder Coltrin and I have never really talked to Elder Bennet so it was an all around good time!

We had a really crazy thing happen on Monday too. So Igit and Hovhannes (President Poghosyan's father and son) were supposed to be baptized on Wednesday and then all of the sudden on Monday Igit's wife (President Poghosyan's mother) wants to get baptized too! We have tried teaching her before but she never seemed very interested, but she came to General Conference and I think it touched her so then she wanted to get baptized with her husband. She has attended church and we found out she knows tons about the gospel... so we called President Dunn and he gave us permission to do her Baptismal interview the day before the baptism (usually they are supposed to be about a week before). She passed and we had a very good Baptismal service, President Poghosyan got to baptize his Father, Mother, and son... so good!

Tuesday was our Mission Conference and I thought it went great and I really enjoyed it. It was a different schedule and set up than other Zone Conferences but still good. The Area Doctor came and he and his wife gave a presentation on Missionary Health which went OK, the only problem was the projector was acting funny so I spent the entire time messing with wires and trying to get it to work. President Dunn for his first talk showed the talk by Elder Douglas Callister called "Our Refined Heavenly Home" it was a BYU devotional a few years ago, and then all the Zone Leaders talked about it. I talked about being refined in speech and the missionary application for 2 minutes... it went well. President was really impressed that all the Zone leaders did a good job with the 2 minutes he had assigned and still covered the material well. It is a really great talk and President Dunn made a goal to show it to every missionary he served, so since he is leaving in July, he decided to take part of Zone Conference for it. I have a lot of good ideas of things I want to do when I get home and start my own family. I would encourage everyone to go check the talk out. There was a shorter version in the Ensign a while ago but you can probably get the whole thing at speeches.byu.edu.

We also had a lot of other good talks on a number of different subjects relating to missionary work: our vision for ourselves, learning the language, having the faith to find, etc. Then we watched the movie "To This End Was I Born" which is a really good church produced movie about Christ's life, which just got us all pumped to go be better missionaries mainly from the way it ends with the scripture 2 Nephi 2:6-8.

6 Wherefore, a redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.
7 Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.
8 Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise.

There was an activity that was good too, all about street skills. Elder Gull and I talked on sacrificing 3 things (on the streets): our fears, our pride, and our negativity. Overall it went well I think. The best part of mission conference by far was President Dunn's second talk. He talked all about how to study the scriptures... the what, why, and how. It was a really good presentation and just made me want to study so much better. He went through Doctrine, Principles, and Practice of it all and then gave lots of examples. The entire presentation was based on a few talks by Elder Bednar... it really pushed me to do better and I totally revamped my Personal Study Plan last week. I really enjoyed everything and the only bad news is now that that its over Elder Gull and I have 5 weeks until Zone Conference, so we better start planning again.

That night after conference Erna, Igit's wife passed her interview and we were able to have an enjoyable time with Silva and President Poghosyan.

Wednesday was a fantastic day, mainly because we had the baptism. Our morning didn't go as planned, and after lunch we had some extra time so we just walked to the Mission Office for the Baptism. It was a good walk and it was nice to walk through some parts of the city I have never walked through. The Baptismal service went really great, the talks were good, music, everything was perfect and President Poghosyan was just sooo happy! I got some pictures so I will send those home so they can get up on the blog to
accompany this email.

Oh, we also sent the Georgians back Wednesday morning, it was fun to have them around, but they had to go back to their areas I guess.

Thursday nothing super exciting happened, we started teaching an old investigator again, Armine, so hopefully we can get her to come to church this time around, then also we met with a really neat Less Active family we found a few weeks ago.

Friday morning we headed up to Charentsavan to do a Baptismal interview with Elder Pulsipher since it was his first one and that went well, the woman passed and we were able to get back in time for the rest of our meetings. We also did a Basketball finding hour which was good, we were able to talk with a lot of people and Elder Gull impressed everyone with his mad basketball skills.

Saturday was a very busy day after our Weekly Planning Session but a good one. We went to a baptism for Center, Shengavit, and Arabkir they had for 4 people. It was funny because we did the baptismal interviews for all 4 people that got baptized. It was a really great Baptismal service and I really enjoyed it a lot, plus that means at least 7 people joined the church this week which is soo good for Armenia! After that we ran around and were able to get 4 meetings in and met with 2 of our investigators. We finished preparing Mamikon for his interview and also met with Anahit who wants to be baptized now!

Sunday turned out to be a great day at church, we had 3 people get the Holy Ghost! I gave the Holy Ghost to Hovhannes, Brother Galdunts gave it to Erna, and Elder Gull gave it to Igit. All the meetings at church ended up being really good and after church we talked about making branch mission plans in our sort of branch council meeting. We were also able to meet with Armine our investigator again and give her children blessings since they were sick. Mamikon had his Baptismal interview and passed so his baptism will be on Friday and then we ended the night with a meeting at the Galdunts'. It went great, they made dolma for us... which I love and then we gave a spiritual though on Anti-Christ's and how the same Doctrine they taught in their time is still rampant today and we need to be ready to counter it.

Overall it was a good week, I hope I didn't bore you with the day to day recap but it seemed to be the easiest way to do it this week. Our investigator pool is running a bit low, but hopefully this week Elder Gull and I can pound the streets and find those waiting to hear our message.

Well, I hope you all have a great week and I will write again next week for sure!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Feeling Good after a General Conference Recharge

2010-04-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

To all my adoring fans...you are all adorable just so you know!-

It has been another superb week of fun and mayhem mixed in with conference which was amazing! I loved every minute of it and now I have so many great ideas about how to be better... it is just so cool! I think my favorite line though was when Elder Holland told us all that "the Internet was a cesspool that blows permanent craters into your brain"... pretty cool! Of course he was talking about porn not the Internet but either way what strong words? It was all just so great and powerful I just am so glad to have gotten to watch it. Anyways I guess I will dive right into my letter and not make you wait any longer.

Last week for preparation day we had a really good time, we took a small trip with a bunch of Elders to the Erebuni fortress. It was really cool, it was mostly just ruined walls, but the small hike was fun and we could see practically all of Yerevan which was cool... plus Ararat was so clear... it was just beautiful. Overall it was a nice relaxing and enjoyable trip all around. I got some really nice pictures too that I will try to send home for sure!

Today, the Georgian missionaries are down since it is Mission Conference tomorrow so we are all going to go get our bowl on again and hit the alleys! I'm pretty sure I'll bowl a 300, I'll let you know how it turns out next week!

Last Tuesday we went down to Artashat for District Meeting and had a really good meeting down there. Elder Gull and I felt like we should talk about Sanctification again, so we did a similar lesson as last time in Ajapnyak... it went well. Another cool thing, we went on exchanges! Elder Gull stayed down in Artashat with Elder Clark and I had Elder Clark's son Elder Andersen up with me in Davtashen. It was really enjoyable and Elder Andersen is a really neat kid. It was overall really enjoyable and I felt like I learned a lot from him and hope that I was able to teach him a few things as well! We were on exchanges until Thursday, we got some good meetings in with our investigators and prepared Igit's baptismal program! Just so you know he is getting baptized on Wednesday... hopefully with his wife, but we still have to double check that!

Thursday we did a Zone Leader/District Leader correlation that went good. We took the November Conference talk... "More Diligent and Concerned at Home" by Elder Bednar and applied it to Districts. I think it will help the District Leaders be more Diligent and concerned in their Districts and it will also help us with the Zone. It is just so great how Conference talks can apply to so many different things.

I heard a funny Armenian legend... they call April "parvi ule" because apparently April used to be a really beautiful month weather wise, but once upon a time this old grandma took her calves up into the mountains to feed and a storm started that was really bad... basically all the calves ran away and got lost and the grandma could never find them again. So now in April the weather won't be normal until the woman stops mourning the loss of her calves and calms down. Kind of weird, but I like hearing things like that, they are just soo interesting! The weather really is crazy here in April though... it's sunny and hot in the morning, then by afternoon it is a rainstorm, then hot again at night... it keeps things interesting though.

Of course on Saturday and Sunday a large portion of our day was spent watching conference. It was really fun though because we watched it in a different room in English and we even had some Armenians with us which was sweet. We had our 2 branch missionaries Lia and Astghik (they both went to college for English degrees), then we also had Vazgen who just got back from his mission in Georgia and speaks English quite well now. They really seemed to enjoy hearing it in English and getting to hear the actual voices of the Prophets and Apostles. We take things like that for granted but just think of how much emotion and other things are lost in translation... I have just learned to be so much more appreciative of some things on my mission... experiences like this just open up the eyes.

Saturday I did a baptismal interview for one of Center's investigators, Adam. He was an awesome guy and it was actually the first interview I have done in English which was cool. He speaks English well so I asked him if he would rather have it in English or Armenian and he chose English. I had to translate a few things but overall I was really impressed by him and his testimony. Then on Sunday I also did a baptismal interview for the Assistants that went great, the woman was wonderful and she and her husband are getting baptized together. They are such a cute couple and have some great little kids. It was just a great experience and I was glad to interview her.

Well, like I said hopefully we have 2 baptisms this week, then also a baptismal interview so we may have one more next week! The work is going forth and things are staying exciting.

I can't really think of too much else to talk about this week so I guess I will end this but I promise to write again next week to fill you all in!

Love,
Elder Piercy

The caption reads "Kabobs that looks like poop but tasted really good" [I'm trying to analyze the photo, looks like hash browns on bottom with kabobs on the side, bacon, onions, and a sunny side up egg on top. Actually it does sound delicious, now I'm hungry]

Nothing better than being a Missionary in Armenia

2010-04-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

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

Life in the Armenian Mission Field

2010-03-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

To all my great family, friends, followers, stalkers... whatever!-

To start out, today we all went and played Basketball to begin our Preparation Day, but I think I still have enough time to write a good email for everyone. I sure enjoy playing sports for P-day, it just makes you feel good, especially when Elder Gull and I are schooling everyone on the court with our mad B-ball skillz! But anyway, it has turned out to be quite an exciting week, so I guess since I'm short on time I will jump in and start explaining.

Last Monday we watched the Joseph Smith movie for P-day, I don't know how we have a copy of it since it is still in Visitors Centers, but whatever we watched it and it was great. I don't know why but just learning all about Joseph's life pumps me up to go do even better missionary work... the message of the Restoration just instills a fire in me... I guess that's why it is our central message! After that it was just a good evening of work.

On Tuesday we joined the Ajapnyak District at the office for District Meeting and we did the meeting this time. It turned out really well and I was actually really excited for it to come because I felt like it could really help and get all the missionaries super excited. The Central message of the meeting was on "Taking it to the Next Level" and the assignments we gave out went really well. Elder Pulsipher talked about motives, Sister Crego talked about personal evaluation, then [our son's] Elder Gull's and mine Elder Lusk and Elder Garner talked about becoming the 4th missionary. Finally we put the cap on the meeting by discussing how we can all become sanctified... it turned out great and it at least got me excited to do better, so hopefully it helped everyone else in the District also. Unfortunately after that meeting we went to see one of our investigators and she thrashed us... she told us that she could not betray the Armenian Church because it has done too much for her in her life. The thing was all the examples she told us just showed how God helped her in her life, not the Armenian Church... whatever, we bore testimony and tried our best, so now I guess we will see what happens later in life, hopefully someone can go by again and touch her heart. We did have a sweet meeting with Mamikon our other investigator about the Book of Mormon and he is loving everything so that was exciting!

Wednesday turned out to be a pretty normal day, we did do a cool finding hour with Mher, we played basketball and football with him and a bunch of other people. We got lots of conversations out of it and it seemed to be pretty effective, so hopefully we can do it again sometime. We also found a cool Less Active family on Margaryan street who was really open to us and said we could come back again! I think going through the branch list is turning out to be a really effective thing!

Thursday was cool, we had some good meetings and did some finding that went well, we talked to a lot of good people, but still nothing like a New Investigator. We did find this less active lady who was crazy though...she tried to ask stupid questions and fight with us. Luckily we didn't participate so we just talked about our families and things. She has gone to every church pretty much and now she believes in some Indian religion (not Native American). I don't know specifically what, but she talked about reincarnation and junk like that. It was a bit disappointing because a lot of our Less active finding has been more successful, but now we can sort the good from the bad and we know who to focus on.

Friday was my Birthday and it was pretty good, but also pretty busy. We got to meet the new missionaries: Elder Zebley, Elder Andersen, Elder Dericott, Elder Thornton, Sister Deaver, and Sister Hallewell. We had the new missionary meeting and it went well. The new missionaries seem to be pretty solid and excited for the work so it just gets me pumped. I am super jealous of all the trainers though... I would love to train again... but what can you do. The meeting went well Elder Gull and I gave a talk on the Importance of Effective Studies and President Dunn gave a talk on a lot of things, but specifically Christlike attributes. I just want to become a better person every time I listen to that man speak... he is amazing. After the meeting there was the Charentsavan Baptism that I got to be a part of since Lilit asked me to baptize her and everything went well with that. It was fun wearing white and baptizing on my Birthday.

After the baptism we had to go to Nork and help the Queers learn the area. Sister Christenson and Sister Ferguson just got double transferred in and didn't know anything so we took them through and showed them a bunch of stuff. It was funny though because just a bit under a year ago, Elder Gull and I were in that Area serving together... cool. Well we showed the Queers important things like the church, members houses, old investigators houses, and generally tried to get them feeling more comfortable. One meeting was cool we went and saw Emma(a old Grandma) and she freaked when she saw Elder Gull and I. She started crying and kissed us so many times. I seriously think she kissed us over 30 times that whole meeting and that is not an exaggeration. Other members in Nork were excited to see us as well and I was just glad that I left an impression there on some people, it makes me feel good. Birthday wasn't bad though, I got some good Congratulation calls from missionaries and from Sister Dunn so all in all it was good. Plus Elder Carlson announced it in our meeting so that made me feel special too.

Saturday was our Weekly Planning Session, then we were in Nork with the Queers for a couple hours to finish up showing them stuff. After that we got back to our area and were able to get a few good meetings in. We did have a huge miracle happen on Saturday. I guess in the Marshutni to Nork my phone fell out of my pocket and I thought I lost it... well luckily I knew the route ending place in Nork and we went there, found the marshutni, and by some miracle the phone was just sitting on the seat and we were able to get it back. That was a big blessing because I don't know what we would have done without a phone... plus when we got a new one we would have to get the phone book all filled up again which would be a hassle, so I was glad to find it again! It was a miracle that helped out a lot.

Sunday turned out to be a pretty standard day, unfortunately our plans got messed up pretty good, but we were able to get 3 meetings in. And one was with our investigator Mamikon who is a stud. He loves church, loves the Book of Mormon, and loves the gospel. We are super excited for him and just hope that he can stay strong until baptism. Now, I think we will be having 2 baptisms in April so that will be exciting! Vazgen [a member] got back from his mission in Georgia and is now in our Branch which is sweet! Also our branch missionaries had a Birthday cake for me on Sunday which was super fun and really tasty! It was a good day!

Overall a pretty good week, however really busy... but that is more fun. Other than that there is no news in the mission... well there is some but we can't say anything so just pay attention to General Conference... Oh and remember Armenian last names end with "yan". I don't really have too much else to say this week, but I hope you have a great week and I will write a letter to all of you again soon!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Michael Turns 21 on Friday

2010-03-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

To everyone who keeps track of my great mission life!-

It has been a great and interesting week for sure, we have been doing good work and also have seen some amazing miracles! I guess I won't waste anymore time and will get to the action!

Last Preparation Day was pretty good, just sharmas for lunch and hanging out with other missionaries, we actually watched the Emma Smith movie which was actually pretty good, I enjoyed it. Maybe that is just because it was something new, I had never seen it before.

Tuesday was another interesting day, we went to Center for that District meeting. It was Elder Jonas' first meeting since he is our new District Leader, and he actually did a really good job! I was impressed with how it all went. I was translating for Stix (Elder Grigoryan) since he is Elder King's mini now, but I was still able to learn a lot from everyone's portions. It was all about planning and the faith to find so it was just all around a great time. The rest of the day was good because we were able to get some good meetings in especially with this less active family Zoya and Luiza. I have gained a testimony of teaching the Restoration to spark peoples testimonies again so that is what we have been doing with all these less active members we find.

Wednesday was a super interesting day, the first of a few miracles for the week. The morning was a bit rough we just did a long finding hour in the morning walking the streets, but after lunch we were able to get in a meeting with our Barbershop guys. Unfortunately they are no longer investigators, just not serious enough, but we will meet with them once in a while to keep a positive relationship going. After that we had a branch activity. It was the anniversary of the Relief Society so our Relief Society put together a great activity and invited tons of people including our District Choir and President and Sister Dunn. Overall the Activity was a ton of fun and even better because all Elder Gull and I had to do was take lots of pictures! The miracle came afterward though! A member of the Choir from Center branch came over and told us she had a relative in our area who wants to be baptized! Well we went with her to the relatives house, taught a really great 1st lesson and picked up a New Investigator, Greta!

Thursday was another huge miracle, we had another rough morning of Finding on the streets, then after lunch we did some unsuccessful less active finding with the Branch list. Well I finally got frustrated and decided we should just go home and make a list of people to see in Address order. The Branch list is in Alphabetical order so we would look for similar addresses, but we were wasting a lot of time going back and forth and in circles around places, I figured the time would be better spent organizing the branch list. Well we had been home for about 5 minutes when our home phone rang, it was a lady who wanted to meet with us. She heard about us from her friend Nvart. Well, we went over and met her right then and had a good 1st and picked up another New Investigator, Julia! It is crazy too because Nvart is less active so maybe this can help her get back to church too.

Now, I am sure you won't believe this but Friday we had another miracle! First, Friday was a super busy day because we were at the office for a long time, we had a Trainer Meeting and then after that a Zone Leader Council. The meetings went really well, I am excited for those missionaries who will be training and for the new missionaries coming out on my birthday. Our Zone Leader Council was also great. President Dunn gave a great talk on the choice of Repentance and Rationalization that I really enjoyed. I also got an interview with President Dunn and that went really great too. He just is good at making people feel really good about themselves. I hope I can develop that attribute too and just make people feel great! Well that evening when we were at our Branch President's house he let us know that his dad was ready to hear about the gospel, so, we went next door, taught a first and... another New Investigator!

Saturday was pretty standard except we went to Charentsavan to do some Baptismal interviews... all 4 passed, and the funny thing is one of the ladies I interviewed wants me to baptize her. I am not against doing it but it was just kind of funny because I don't really know her... but on Friday, my birthday, I will be baptizing Lilit so that is pretty fun.

Finally on Sunday church was all pretty standard except Mher our 11 year old member had a talk on Primary and all he really talked about was how I play with all the kids and chase them around and try to eat them, but how they know I am just playing and not really a bad guy. O and he mentioned that they learn about Jesus too. It was just really funny and I was just proud to see him up there in Sacrament meeting not scared of anything.

Well as you can see I thought it was a great week! The only down side was that I had to say good-bye to Elder and Sister Dutson... hopefully I can see them again someday though, they sure are great. But other than that the work goes forward and we are having a great time. After 4 weeks without a new investigator we were able to pick up 3, 3 days in a row, isn't the work of the Lord great!

Well I guess that's about it for me I need to go eat All You Can Eat Buffet to celebrate my Birthday! I hope you all have a great week and I will write again next time!

Love,
Elder Piercy

A New companion

2010-03-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

To all the great people who keep track of my Blog!(I find there are more and more each week)-

It has definitely been an interesting and exciting week, especially with the change that happened to my companionship... but I'll get to that later. I always try to do things like this to keep people in suspense, but you all probably just get annoyed... anyway, I hope I hold your attention for the next little bit with my blog update for March 15th!

First, last Monday was pretty relaxing just having Preparation Day, we actually ended up watching Saints and Soldiers again... I think I have seen that 3 times on my mission now, but it isn't bad, just hanging out with the other missionaries is the fun thing. We ended up cutting the day a bit short though and going out to work. We ended up just doing a long finding hour and then getting a couple meetings in with Mher... the stud, and the Galdunts family... that leads me into Tuesday though.

Tuesday was another terrible day of my mission... I got sick again. I guess I must have eaten something that wasn't good at the Galdunts' house but I woke up in the middle of the night with diarrhea and puking. My puke was actually super colorful and full of potato chunks and other things I ate that night... I actually took a picture of it so maybe I will send it home for the blog. Other than that the next day was rough, I think I got out of bed at about 2pm, and realized I had missed the District Meeting we were supposed to go do in Artashat. Hopefully Elder Clark will forgive us since he had nothing prepared... we were going to be doing it, but I really don't think I could have made it. Basically we spent the entire day inside because I couldn't go too far from a toilet... the diarrhea continued most of the day. It was a great opportunity to clean and organize our entire house which was nice so now it looks really good! At the end of the day we were able to squeeze one meeting in with Narine our investigator when I was feeling better but that was about it.

On Wednesday morning we got a very interesting phone call from the Assistants... actually Elder Simonsen got an interesting phone call, he got transferred to Vanadzor. So now I have a new companion! It was definitely a surprise, I am now on my 4th companion since arriving in Davtashen... Elder Ellison, Elder Carlson, Elder Simonsen and now... Elder Gull! I am really excited to be serving with Elder Gull again though, we did so well last time together I am sure it will happen again. Look out Davtashen- Piercy/Gull round 2 in the house!

Elder Simonsen and I had to renew our Residence Cards on Wednesday, I now have permission to be in Armenia until February of 2011, maybe I should stick around a little longer, but I don't think President Carter (our soon to be Mission President) would allow it.

Thursday the exchange happened, there was a really good leadership meeting in the morning after which everyone went to their new areas. The meeting went really well, first of all it was just fun seeing all the Elders from all over the mission, specifically the North again and the talks and things were all great. President took us through 1 Samuel 16-17 and broke down all the great leadership attributes David had, then warned us that he still fell and we need to be careful the same thing doesn't happen to us. It was just really inspirational and good. Unfortunately this first day with my new companion I did not get to serve with him because the Assistants came and did an exchange.

I was with Elder Carlson and Elder Gull and Elder Ellison were together since Elder Ellison knows the area pretty well. It was great being with Elder Carlson again, we had really great lessons and conversations on the streets. We just teach really well together and it is such a joy to do it! We had some really great meetings with Karine and a potential investigator, and just had a really great time together. The next morning we ended up talking about the South Zone and getting on the same page with everything and it ended up just being a really effective exchange.

Friday I finally had my first day with Elder Gull, we ended up doing pretty good, we found 2 less actives on the Branch List who are willing to meet with us and just hope we can reactivate them in the church.

Saturday we did not have a ton to do, no meetings really worked out for us but we showed our faith by spending a lot of time on the street and talking with a lot of people. We ended up getting 2 meetings and 28 gospel conversations! Still no new investigators yet though. We did get offered a job to work at a car wash... they said since we are both so tall they could use us to clean the top of cars... unfortunately we had to decline.

Sunday was another good day of church, President Dunn came to our branch and talked about some really great things and tried to get all the members excited for Elder Scott's visit in June... apparently the last time an apostle was here was when Elder Holland came in April 07'. He reemphasized that in the scriptures whenever the Lord repeats himself we should pay special attention and referred to 3 Nephi 9:2 where he says "wo" 4 times in one verse and then the first chapter of Joshua where he encourages Joshua to be strong and of good courage 4 times, overall it was a really good and interesting talk. The other talks were really good too, overall just a top notch Sacrament meeting.

Well, overall I think it was a successful week, I am looking forward to pounding it with Elder Gull and I will write again next week. I hope you all have an awesome week and I will keep you informed again in 7 days.

Love,
Elder Piercy

2010-03-08T01:36:00.000-08:00

Hello to everyone out there in Other lands!-

Well, what a week it's been... it has been difficult but there was also a lot of really fun things that ended up happening. I guess I will just jump into everything and share the roller coaster ride of excitement and fun that is my life. Maybe it can entertain you all as well!

Let me start with last Preparation Day... what a time it was at the Ararat Golf Club. The big North Vs. South soccer game didn't work very well because there was just sooo many people there. We actually ended up having 2 games of soccer, 1 game of football, and 1 game of Basketball all going at the same time. Overall it was really
enjoyable and it was a lot of fun for everyone I think! The South Zone played every sport better than the North just in case anyone was wondering though. I ended up playing Football and Basketball mostly, but I got a few Soccer kicks in. The cool thing was since the Georgians were down we got to have a companionship at our house and go on exchanges with them. Elder Peatross and Elder Johnson were nice enough to grace us with their presence.

Monday night, I was with Elder Peatross and it was a pretty fun evening, however doing missionary work alone is really interesting and hard. Working with the Georgian Elders is worse than training because since they don't speak Armenian they don't even try to speak... at least trainees want to try. It was fun translating everything though and it was cool to have them speak Georgian for the Armenians and watch them get really amazed. Tuesday night I was with Elder Johnson and that was really weird too, but still a ton of fun. Monday was also Elder Johnson's birthday so we want to the Supermarket and got him a cake to celebrate... you know you have to look out for and encourage your brothers in the mission field!

Tuesday for District meeting we went to Komitas and had a really good meeting with the Ajapnyak district. Elder Stutz ran the meeting and it went really well. I was translating the entire thing for Sis. Movsisyan but I still thought it was a good meeting and was able to take good things out of it. After the meeting we also had cake that I baked for my son Elder Garner since it was his birthday last week. It's a good thing my parents sent me 3 cakes because I used one on Mher for his birthday 2 weeks ago, 1 on my son this last week, so now I have one left for my birthday... Perfect!

On Wednesday morning we had to take the Georgians back to the office so they could return to Georgia... other than that nothing else really happened.

Thursday was an interesting day though, we had a Zone Leader/District Leader Correlation that went really well. The main part of it was a talk Elder Simonsen and I did using the Conference talk Elder Ballard did in Priesthood Session on the relationships between fathers and sons. We used the same basic principles but made it the relationship between District Leaders and District Members. We felt like it went well and will really help the District Leaders have a better more helpful relationship with their districts. Afterward Elder Stutz, Elder Christensen, Elder Simonsen and myself went to the Matenadoran. Almost all the museums in Yerevan are closed on Monday so we are taking some time off our Preparation day today since we went last Thursday. It was interesting though, it's the museum of ancient manuscripts and had very old books. I think the oldest one I saw was from the 5th century, but overall it was really neat! I am glad I went and got to see the stuff. One really funny thing was that the things were written in such old Armenian that I couldn't understand much of anything that was written. I could read the letters but I had no idea what it was saying. Other than that it was a normal day as usual.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on Friday or Saturday... oh except one thing. Saturday for dinner Elder Simonsen and I ate barbecued Bunny Rabbit. We found this restaurant in our area that had bunny rabbit signs, so we decided to try it. It was a little bit expensive, but really tasty so I think it was worth it. It tasted unlike any meat I have ever had before though. Anyways there was also a lung that I ate. It wasn't super disgusting... it actually didn't have much taste at all, but the texture was horrible. Overall it was fun to say that I have now eaten bunny lungs and bunny meat.

Sunday was a pretty normal day of church, except I bore my testimony and I really felt the spirit. I think as missionaries we sometimes get in the habit of just saying the same things over and over and they begin to lose their power, but on Sunday I really felt my words had conviction again. I need to make sure my testimonies are always like that from now on. Igit our investigator also came. We actually taught him about keeping the Sabbath Holy this week and he said he worked super hard and long on Saturday so he wouldn't have any work to do on Sunday and could come to church. He is a 78 year old man out doing farm work all day and he was saying when he got tired he would just pray to God to give him the strength to keep going so he could keep the sabbath holy... what a stud! I love this work so much!

Well, that was about it for the week. It was a really hard week for Elder Simonsen and I because we didn't have very many meetings and mostly just walked the street everyday... we just didn't find any new investigators. I guess we just need to do something a bit different in the work. We wanted to have 85 gospel conversations this week and 3 new investigators... we got the conversations, but not the new investigators. It was interesting though because at church 3 random people showed up, 1 of them didn't want to meet with us right now, he felt he wasn't ready yet... then the other 2 left right after Sacrament meeting before we could talk with them. I think the Lord was showing us that he will help us reach our goals, maybe we just weren't doing something right to get the investigators. I'm going to look inward this week and see if I am doing all I can to be 100% obedient. It will get better for sure.

I guess that's about it for me, I hope you all know that I love you and hope you enjoy reading the letter every week. Of course I will write again next Monday. Have a great week and enjoy being you!

Love,
Elder Piercy

First P-Day in March

2010-03-01T06:19:00.000-08:00

To all my great family, friends, fans, etc!-

Well first off hopefully I can say everything I need to say in a short amount of time because we have something epic going down today, actually pretty soon. You all know that we had South Zone Conference last week so tomorrow is North Zone Conference... because of that everyone in the North will be down in Yerevan today for Preparation day so... we organized a huge North versus South Soccer Game! Elder Simonsen and I rented out a field and everything! It is going to be great because even Georgia is going to be there so I will get to see all my good Georgian buddies... plus I get to see how well the British actually play socceer... Elder Lucas is going down! I actually anticipate that soccer won't last very long so I brought a football too, that would probably be more fun anyway...

Well now that I have bored you enough off to the important things!

Our Preparation Day last week was full of busy preparation for Zone Conference, but we were able to get everything done and it turned out great. I know you probably don't care but I am going to give you the Zone Conference report because I think it is interesting... so here we go!

Well we started out with announcements and things as usual but since it was Elder and Sister Dutson's last Zone Conference we gave them a little bit of time to bear their testimonies and give us some advice and things... the awesome thing was that Sister Dutson bore her testimony in Armenian!!! It was one of her goals to be able to do that and she did great! Afterward she asked me how many mistakes she made but I didn't notice any because the Spirit was so strong! After that Elder Simonsen did a little skit thing regarding the transfer game, it was humorous and a bit silly but the sad thing was it is really that bad right now. We also gave some advice on how to avoid playing the transfer game. For those who are unaware of what the transfer game is basically it is when missionaries waste time and effort trying to guess and worry about were they or other people will be going or who they will be serving with and things for the next transfer... basically it's a big waste of time and President Dunn hates it... that's why he asked us to address it. Anyway after that President Dunn talked for about 30 minutes and told us a bit about our new Mission President. I don't remember his name, but I wrote it down... I think you can actually find it on the Newsroom, [President Reese A. Carter] but anyway he is pretty young... 55 [ Michael is so kind] and President Dunn thinks he will do great!

After all that the talks started and like usual everyone did so great with the topics we assigned... it just blows me away how good people are at speaking and teaching and things like that... I almost feel inadequate... but anyway. Elder Stutz started out our talks with blessings he receives from being obedient to mission rules. Next, Sister Crego very creatively and interestingly taught us how to have an effective Companion Study, followed by Sister Cornwell teaching us how to have an effective Language Study. Then, Elder Pulsipher taught us all how to use goal setting to reach the Standards of Excellence that President Dunn has given us. Next, Elder Gull and Elder Jonas did a little activity teaching us how to plan an effective meeting based on our investigators needs and helped us practice a bit. The next round of talks started with Elder Lusk teaching us about the power of the Spirit in conversion, followed by Sister Bishop showing us how to use the Book of Mormon to give our teaching power. Finally the first session ended with Elder Chaney teaching us about holding ourselves personally accountable and Elder Clark sharing with us how to find joy in Missionary work. It was busy action packed but a super good first session.

Our lunch went really well, we went down to Gold's Gym and had Hamburgers, fries and fruit salad. It all tasted great. After lunch our Second session started out with Elder King and Elder White giving us a great musical number. They said they had a hymn planned and although it wasn't a hymn it was still good, they did a little Simon and Garfunkel for us all. Then we talked to everyone about making Personal Covenants and how we can use those to have miracles happen in the work and just be all around better missionaries. I felt like it went really good and the general consensus is that people enjoyed it and are now trying it! Next the Assistants talked about the Consequences of Willful Disobedience and just did a great job. I really enjoyed it even though I felt like I had so much to improve on... that's life, constant improvement. Our snack went great we had all the brownies that Elder Simonsen and I made with Ice Cream on top and everyone said they were super tasty... YES! Next President Dunn gave us his presentation called "Arise and Shine" it was basically part 2 of his last presentation "Crossing the Rubicon" and was awesome! He pulled a lot of ideas for those 2 presentations from a book called "Leadership" by some old Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve back in the day... sounds like a sweet book I wonder if I can find it someday! Anyway we ended with a good testimony meeting and that was it.

Overall I just felt like it was a phenomenal zone conference. We were really pleased because President Dunn had nothing bad to say about it, he just gave us a lot of praise! The best thing is the next Zone Conference in 7 weeks I won't even have to worry about planning! Since it will be a Mission Conference, it will all be on the Assistants... we get a break!

As for the rest of our week nothing super out of the ordinary or exciting happened, just work as usual. A few of our investigators are doing super good especially Igit, Narine, and Karlen! The best thing is that Karlen accepted a Baptismal date for March 27th so hopefully we can help him continue to progress and reach that. We are still in
a big finding mode, so hopefully as we apply all the great things we learned at Zone Conference, we will find success and miracles.

Well, I am sorry most of this letter was just a Zone Conference report, but I can't really think of anything else to write so I should probably just end this. I hope you all have a wonderful week and keep on keeping on!

Love,
Elder Piercy

18 months, Hard to beleive so much time has gone by!

2010-02-22T06:35:00.000-08:00

Hello to all my wonderful family, friends, fans, and whatever else!-

This week was quite a busy week for me but nothing super interesting, hopefully I can hold your attention for about 5 minutes though and put a little February cheer into your hearts.

First, the weather has been so beautiful here... for the last few days it has been about 60 degrees during the day and we just go out in suits. The Armenians are all amazed because it is supposed to be winter, but I love it. Unfortunately there is a big snow storm in Russia that they think will come down to Armenia but we will see... hopefully not.

As for the week, last Monday after email we went to a wedding. Our branch missionary Kiso married a guy from Center branch Grigor. It was actually a really cool ceremony and President Dunn even walked Kiso down the isle which was super cool! I like them both a lot so I am excited for them, however we lost one of our branch missionaries... what can you do though she has moved on to bigger and better things.

Last Tuesday we went to Center for District Meeting and were able to enjoy Elder Gull's lesson. It was actually full of other people doing things so it was entertaining and really quite effective. I expect nothing less from Elder Gull... he probably learned all of his good attributes from his second companion (Me)! After District meeting we did an exchange and I was with Elder Gull in Center for 2 days. It was really fun and just like old times. It was also really interesting because that was the first time I had ever done missionary work in Center. Overall we had an exciting couple of days meeting with investigators, getting yelled at by people, doing service and just all around enjoying the Armenia Mission Life. I did meet the oldest lady ever in Erebuni on one of the days... I don't even know how she was alive. While we would be talking to her she kept falling asleep and passing out and stuff. It was actually kind of sad. On a brighter note we did go see a really cool member who fed us dolma! She was on the translation team when the Book of Mormon got translated and now she does some of the conference talks and things. She was a really cool lady and from what I hear from other people one of the best members in all Armenia.

On Thursday we had a really good Priesthood Activity for our branch. I have to admit I was not really looking forward to it since most of them are really poorly planned and carried out but I was really surprised and enjoyed this one. We had about 11 people come which was great! We had talks on a few different topics given which I think were well prepared and could really help the branch. One was on Home Teaching(sort of), one was on using the Priesthood and the last was on just using the scriptures in general to improve our life. Plus after we ate tons of Kabobs which are super tasty here and just got to talk and have a good time with all of the good men in the branch. It was actually probably the best Priesthood activity I have been to in Armenia!

The rest of the week we have been frantically trying to prepare for Zone Conference. We have Zone Conference tomorrow and have a lot to do. We feel like our talk is going to be really good though. We are going to talk about how to make Personal Covenants with the Lord and why we would want to. I think it could really improve the work and make everyone really excited to go out and pound it again. We are also serving brownies and ice cream for our snack so the last few days Elder Simonsen and I have just made tons of trays of brownies... they are sooo good though, we rock. Ad usual I will be sure to give you the Zone Conference update next week.

Well last, we had a really great lesson in Sunday school given by Silva. She said a few really interesting things, she said don't ask "why" because you will never find a satisfactory answer, there can always be more "why"s. Instead she said we should ask "how". It all came from the Cain and Abel story and comparing Cain to Enoch later on
and how they differed and things. I really enjoyed it and feel like I learn so much from her. The mission is just amazing and that is that!

O, I almost forgot on February 20th I had my one year and a half mark so I burned some pants... it was sweet, just so you know. Hard to believe that so much time has gone by and I am so old now, but I think it is time to work harder than ever and just pound it to the end.

Well hopefully I was able to entertain you all for a bit, but now I ran out of things to say and have to go prepare more things for Zone Conference anyways, so I hope you all know I love you, I wish you the best, and I will write again next week of course!

Love,
Elder Piercy

The Missionaries from Michael's MTC group: Elder Piercy, Sister Woolf, Sister Davis, Sister Fuhriman, and Elder Simonsen. Sister Woolf and Sister Fuhriman completed their mission this month. Elder Piercy, Sister Davis and Elder Simonsen will go home in August.

New e-mail Address

2010-02-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

Hello to all my Spectacular, and ever interested Fans!-

I hope that reading my email will not take away from your Winter Olympic viewing, but I will try to keep it just as interesting!As a side note, I didn't even know that the Olympics were going on... weird. Anyway, I won't make you wait any longer, let's begin
the roller coaster ride- my mission life!

Well before you all get excited, to tell the truth it was not a terribly exciting week... at least for me, hopefully something of interest will be here.

For anyone who is interested, my email has been changed. The church finally got rid of myldsmail and updated to google mail! So here is my new email address.

michael.piercy@myldsmail.net

I think the old one still works and will forward me my emails, but use this from now on!

Last Preparation Day a bunch of us went bowling with Elder Kyle to wish him off to America, it was super fun like usual, but also a little bit sad. It was even worse because afterward Elder Simonsen and I had lunch with our MTC group and had to say farewell to Sister Woolf and Sister Fuhriman who also went home. It's weird to think they are gone now, but, hey life goes on!

Tuesday we actually did not have District Meeting due to the transfer so we had a whole day to do Missionary Work! We had a really good meeting with a member Lusine where we reviewed "The Living Christ" and bore our testimonies to go with the First Presidency and Apostles, it was a really cool and powerful meeting. We also had a
really good meeting with our investigator Igit about the Word of Wisdom and the Priesthood and things, he is still doing really well, but unfortunately he missed church again this week. That's 2 weeks in a row now, I am not worried, but it stinks because all this stuff keeps happening to him that is keeping him from church... Satan stinks.

District Meeting got moved to Wednesday due to transfer and Elder Simonsen and I went down to Artashat to visit with that District. We actually did the meeting and we felt like it went well, I just hope the District Members accepted our advice. We talked about Street Skills, specifically: Mindset, Planning, and Conversation techniques. We felt like the things we said were inspired so as long as they apply it, the will see improvement and progression, I know it! We did not end up doing an exchange since the Artashat companionship was changed and they had only been together for about a day so... we let them stay together.

Here is where the unfortunate thing happened, nothing else really happened this week. It was a tough week for us... none of our investigators were able to meet, we just struggled finding new investigators on the street. The maddening thing was we felt like we had a super good planning session last Saturday and that the week was going to be great! The problem was, when we started to put forth the effort (all our plans for finding and things...) it fell apart. I personally think it was a test, just to see if we would have a good planning session again this week. Well, two days ago, we had another amazing planning session so I expect this week will be fantabulous!

We did see a light of hope on Sunday when our stud investigator Karlen finally got back from Gyumri and came to church again. He really seems to enjoy church and I expect him to continue progressing until Baptism! The unfortunate thing was he was the only investigator at church, but what can you do, I was happy that he came.

The talks at church where also pretty interesting! It was overall a good meeting, but one of our members Brother Galdunts said something really funny. He was talking about Patriarchal Blessings and he said that they are like a fortune teller for us telling us what we need to do and can do in our life. I guess it makes sense if you think about it really simply, but it probably wasn't the best analogy... At least people understood though.

On Sunday we also found out that a lady we had given a blessing to a few weeks ago has just totally changed. It was a less active girl and her mother told us at church that she is just amazed at how much she has changed and was wondering what was said in the blessing. This was the lady who only spoke Russian that we visited with Brother Galdunts, that is why she asked what was said... being a missionary sure is cool!

Well as for everything else nothing much happened this week, hopefully next week will be more exciting and I can keep you better entertained! Today I am going to a wedding which will be cool. Mher's older sister is getting married to the guy that baptized him, so hopefully I can tell you all about that next week!

I guess that's it, I hope you all have an amazing week and just keep being yourselves and improving!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Yes I know I look like a ninja, But Hey- it keeps me warm!

Trapped in an Elevator for 45 Minutes

2010-02-08T06:35:00.000-08:00

To all the fans at home!-

It has been a fairly uneventful week, but I will try to hold your interest at least a little bit. I could write about last week since I missed but, we are going bowling in a few minutes so, maybe you can just read my journal someday, sorry! Let’s begin!

Well I told you last Monday we went on a way cool trip with President and Sister Dunn, it was really fun and I hopefully will get some pics sent home, but the "myldsmail" website is not very good. The first photo (Left) is Michael on top of Noravank. The second is Michael entering Grigor's hole. [Grigor is considered the father of Christianity in Armenia. Trdat the Great, ordered Grigor imprisoned for twelve (some sources indicate fourteen) years in a pit on the Ararat Plain under the present day church of Khor Virap located near the historical city Artashat in Armenia.]

This last week we went to Ajapnyaks District Meeting and did a good meeting on Planning to Find and Planning Meetings so they are effective and make the best use of time. Other than that we just struggled getting meetings and trying to work with our investigators who just won’t help.

On Wednesday, you will never guess what happened. We were going to a meeting and while we were going down the elevator it broke. We were seriously trapped in our elevator for about 45 minutes. Luckily there was a bunch of advertisements so I just wrote down all the words I didn’t know so I could learn them later. Eventually some guys got us out by going to the floor above and prying the elevator doors open. Something really funny happened though, the first kids to find us were a bunch of young punks who thought it was really funny, then whenever someone asked if there were people in the lift they would say “yeah, the 2 gay guys from the 5th floor.” Aren’t reputations a great thing. It annoyed me at first that they thought we were gay, but eventually I just thought it was really funny.

We went on exchanges this week with the Assistants, which turned out pretty good. Again I was in Davtashen with all 3 of my Davtashen companions. This time it was Elder Ellison and I together since I was with Elder Carlson last time. We had some really great meetings and even got an old investigator back and fired up to learn again. It was fun teaching with Elder Ellison and getting convos on the street. I almost wish I could have served with him longer just so we could have seen what we could do together. I guess this is what the Lord wanted though to move companions a lot. Luckily I have been with Elder Simonsen a while now, and I don’t picture us changing anytime soon.

On Friday, we had a Zone Leader Council, which turned out to be a really great effective meeting. We saw the transfer which looks pretty good, I think things will really pick up with the new companionships that are forming this exchange. I also know that Elder Simonsen and I will for sure be together for 6 more weeks. Afterwards it was really neat too because Jim from Gold’s Gym got us into this new Restaurant Buffet that opened for free! Basically we had an hour to eat whatever we wanted, and then just had to fill out a survey about the food… it was so cool and so smart, because the restaurant is right next to the internet café we go to every week so I will probably go there every Monday from now on.

As for the rest of the week, it was all just pretty normal, it was good church , but nothing out of the ordinary or particularly great. We did have 2 investigators there which was pretty nice.

Our investigator situation is not bad right now, we have 4 pretty good ones that we are working really hard with. The first is Karlen, a ~25 year old guy who is related to our Branch President from Gyumri. He is really interested and accepts everything we say very openly, the only thing is we have to help him quit smoking and just make sure he has really gotten a testimony. The next investigator is Igit, President Poghosyan’s dad. He is really loving the things we teach and has his Baptismal date still sure in his mind and is just a dream investigator. We are still working with Narine who came to church which was exciting, the trick is just going to be getting her to make a decision to be baptized or not. She is afraid because of her boyfriend, but I think she just needs to drop him and get salvation! The last good investigator is Armine. She was a lady Elder Ellison and I worked with a lot back in the day that we visited and got her really excited and back on track. We are basically just going to start over with her and treat her like a new investigator to help her get a testimony of everything from the start. That is our investigator situation.

O, I forgot, last night we picked up 2 new investigators which was pretty cool! It was a dad Hamlet, and his daughter. I felt pretty bad though because woman in this country are basically born in to slavery and we were sitting there talking to Hamlet and he made his 14 year old daughter serve us Borsh and tea and do all sorts of stuff, basically a slave. But, they are willing to listen to us more which is exciting.

I just cannot think of anything else super interesting to talk about his week, I am sorry, but what can you do…that is how it goes.

I hope you all have an awesome week and I will be sure to write again next time!

Love,
Elder Piercy

A Rushed Letter This Week- Sorry!

2010-02-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

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

Changes in Mission Policy

2010-01-25T06:03:00.000-08:00

Hello to all of my Great Fans at home!-

As usual it was another week full of mayhem, excitement, hard work, and madness… maybe not, but nonetheless it was a good week of missionary work.

First, I have bad news for all the blog viewers… [The Europe East Area Presidency has asked us that we no longer view blogs, photobucket, or any other websites not missionary related. So I won't be viewing my blog or anyone elses anymore. Sorry, but I need to be obedient and be a good example for everyone else] unfortunately I will no longer be able to post pictures on photobucket, so they will probably be coming more rarely, but what can I do. Other than that though, letters will keep coming and telling you all the going ons. On to the week…

We went down to Ararat for District Meeting last week, it was fun, plus we got to know Elder Reece, one of the new missionaries a little more, overall it was a good meeting and really interesting. Elder Clark talked about how we can learn our mission language better and focused on Language Study plans. I really enjoyed it and have some new ideas for how I can learn the language better, so hopefully I apply them and get better and better. It was a funny trip though, Elder Simonsen and I didn’t budget very well this month so we have been super poor the last few weeks, about 1000 dram/day(~$3), so we took a bus down to Ararat… it was cheap and a pretty good adventure! It took a really long time though and killed most of our day… too bad, we just had to make up for it the rest of the week.

We had a Zone Leader/District Leader Correlation this week and it went really well. It was a chance for us to discuss problems in the Districts and share ideas to fix them, as well as just inform Elder Simonsen and I about what is going on with everyone. We also had a good discussion on what we can apply from Zone Conference to be better, and then specifically what we can do to be all around better leaders. Last, Elder Simonsen and I gave a short talk on how we as leaders need to be examples in : Spiritual Maturity, Work in our Areas, and Obedience. It was good, successful, and we seem to have gotten positive feedback from all the District Leaders.

I also went on exchanges this week after our correlation, I was in Davtashen with Elder Jonas and Elder Simonsen was in Artashat with Elder Clark. It was a really good time, Elder Jonas and I spent 2 days together and did a lot of really good work and found a lot of success. Elder Jonas is an amazing missionary, he is super humble and just really sincere in everything he did. We had some great meetings and just a lot of cool things happened to us while we were together. It was also just really good to be able to build a relationship with someone else in the mission so that I can now be an even better leader and friend.

We had a pretty successful week as far as picking up New Investigators! The first and best news is that President Poghosyan's dad wants to be baptized and now we are teaching him and his wife! We also got a free new investigator from Malatia because she moved out of that area and into ours. Her name is Fayna, the only concern we have is she is super dependent on Elder Garner, she just loves him a ton… then again, who doesn't, he is my son after all. We just hope she hasn't been listening this long just because she likes Elder Garner. It is good though that we are taking her now so that she has an opportunity to really get a testimony of the gospel and accept it herself. We will just keep hoping and pushing that with her.

This week we also went over to Hasmik’s house (one of our members). It was awesome! First because she fed us a ton of good food, but also we had a really cool conversation with her non-member husband. He is not really interested in the gospel yet, but I definitely think there is hope. He has actually read the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. He likes things, but I think it is just hard for him to change his way of life. It was a good chance to begin building a relationship with him though. Now I guess we will see what can come from it!

Saturday was an exciting day for us! We went down to Center and I did a Baptismal interview for one of Elder Gull’s investigators that went really well! She passed and has just a really cool story. She has been investigating the church, and coming to church for 1 year now, and just has not been able to quit smoking all this time. She finally decided to quit… and now since then has been preparing for baptism! She is going to be a great addition to the Center branch and I was glad for the experience to talk to her and interview her. As for us we also had a Baptismal interview this week, our investigator Mher passed! He is going to be baptized on Sunday! One of the coolest things is he is going to have his soon to be brother-in-law baptize him and give him the Holy Ghost! I like getting to see Armenians use their Priesthood rather than just the missionaries all the time! I will let you all know how it goes next week!

Finally church was pretty good yesterday, I really like the Ajapnyak branch and we have a lot of really good members! One notable thing though was that one of our members Kristine was giving a talk and said something really funny, but true. First off I guess I should tell you that in Armenia when a kid is very active, they say that he is char(evil), it is just what everyone says and is normal. The cool thing was Kristine was talking and said that children are not char (evil), they are active and we should all stop saying that they are evil. It was kind of random, but also really cool, I thought it was a cool statement.

Other than that, not much news, Elder Simonsen, Elder Garner, Elder Stutz, and I are going to a museum today in Yerevan so that should be pretty nifty, but everything else is just trucking along.

I hope you all have a great week and really enjoy yourselves and I will be sure to write again next week!

Love,
Elder Piercy

A Great Zone Conference

2010-01-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

To all the great people who like to follow my stories!-

How is everyone doing, I know you can’t answer so I don’t know why I write this but I am going to assume that you all said “good”. As for other things, hopefully I can hold your attention for a bit today, I have a couple things to tell about from the last week. Today we played basketball so that took up our morning, but I think I can fit everything into this email anyway.

I guess I will just start out with the exciting and talk about Zone Conference. Maybe it actually isn’t exciting for you, but I like it so hopefully you do too. The whole meeting ended up going great, President Dunn gave us a great compliment when he told Elder Simonsen and I that it was as good a Zone Conference as he has ever seen done. I thought that was a pretty good compliment. Anyways we had lots of great talks, we had our 3 brand new missionaries give short talks on a Missionary Example from the scriptures and what we can do to become more like that person. They were all really good, but I specially liked Elder Reece’s words on how Samuel, a lamanite(Helaman 12:2) became Samuel, the Lamanite(Helaman 16:1). We had Sister Davis address us on how we can be more accountable to the Lord in everything; Elder Gull talked to us on how we can use Preach My Gospel better to find people to teach; and Elder Stutz taught us about Effective Personal Study, by giving us Satan’s 5 steps of ineffective Personal Study. Our other 2 District Leaders Elder Williams and Elder Clark did an activity on how to teach from the Book of Mormon so that our investigators learn to love it which went great too. Finally right before lunch we had Sister Woolf, Sister Fuhriman, and Elder Kyle address us. We didn’t give them a topic, just their dying words since it was the last Zone Conference they are going to be at. Overall everything was just amazing during the morning session! Really uplifting and great.

For lunch, Elder Simonsen and I had KFC deliver and then we had some Senior Couples make Potato Salad and Pasta Salad. All the food was super tasty and great. After lunch the Charentsavan district gave us a Musical number, then we addressed everyone. Elder Simonsen and I gave a talk on how we can be better converted to: the Scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and The Missionary Handbook. It went well I think and I hope it inspired everyone to rise to a new sense of commitment in everything. Next the Assistants addressed us and talked about making our will and the Lord’s will one, so that we can be more effective. That was also great! We had a snack of Yum-Yum Donuts… basically Dunkin Donuts which was good and finally President Dunn addressed us. His talk was also great, it was all about Crossing our Personal Rubicons. He used the story of Caesar as an example, how when he crossed the Rubicon the world basically changed forever and he didn’t hesitate or look back. President Dunn wants us to be firm in all our decisions and really be converted to the gospel in general. We shouldn’t hesitate, we shouldn’t look back just make the right decision and go at it. It was a really inspiring talk that I enjoyed a lot and he even gave all the Zone Leaders and Assistants a copy of his PowerPoint which is amazing because he never does stuff like that. Basically it was just an amazing Zone Conference.

I also got to translate a lot for Zone Conference which was really fun as usual, however the Assistants kicked my bum at one point in the talk when they told a story about some girl heading west with the pioneers and all the problems. The problem was they were running low on time and talking fast so I was trying to go fast to keep up and it just didn’t work out well. Other than that I think I did pretty good. Plus I got to translate for Arman Grigoryan (my old companion) and hang out with him at Zone Conference so that was another plus.

As for the rest of the week we had some cool things happen, so I will get to those.

Wednesday we did a lot of less active work, we are basically just trying to update our Branch List and get rid of people who moved and get the address correct, etc. Plus we want to bring all our less actives back, there are 347 people written on our Branch List and about 30 come to church normally… not good odds, hopefully we can help with that.

We did have a lot of good meetings with investigators this week and 2 came to church! One Mher has a baptismal date for January 30th which I am pretty sure he is going to reach so that is really exciting! Another investigator Anahit we hadn’t seen for a while since New Years, but we had a miracle and just happened to get on a Marshutni she was in and were able to make contact and get her back on track with us. We have started working with that great old investigator Elder Ellison and I had, Armine, again. We are still working with getting Narine to baptism as well. We also picked up a really cool new investigator this week named Marietta, the only problem is we are afraid she just wants welfare because everytime we see her she asks us about it. Even if that is the reason why she first came to us hopefully as we introduce the gospel to her she will change and realize the greatest welfare she could have is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If not though, we will just have to thrash her and move on. I think that is the investigator update for us.

Something super amazing happened this week too, actually last Friday. Elder Simonsen and I were in our apartment at lunch just talking and what not and I pretended to get mad and kicked a hole in our trash box… the amazing thing was candy flew out. I of course ate it (don’t worry mom it was wrapped still) the thing was we couldn’t remember ever throwing away candy… I think it was just a magic pinata thing, but it hasn’t worked since.

I guess the last really amazing thing to talk about this week is church… what a day it was, it was full of miracles and excitement. First, there were tons of people there, probably over 50! Plus a bunch of less actives came, and Vachik came for the second week in a row! Plus all the talks in Sacrament meeting were great! Venera talked about Gossip and sad something really interesting… she said “that gossip doesn’t bring anyone blessings.” Then Laura, the Branch Presidents wife talked about pride and said it was the thing that destroyed nations through ugliness. Finally Hasmik gave a talk on Personal Study for members which was really helpful for them all I think. We also found out that President Poghosyan’s dad wants to be baptized so now we are going to start working with him! The last really cool thing was that Mamvel, Meri’s son came to church totally healthy and fine. That is significant because when we visited them on Saturday night he was really sick and I gave him a blessing… I guess it worked. God is so awesome and being able to do his work rocks!

Well, this letter probably seems pretty mixed up and confusing, but I hope it was at least interesting. I will write next week as always and until then, enjoy yourselves!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Nothing Super Amazing Happened

2010-01-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

To all my Family and Friends!-

Well, unfortunately after my long letter last week this will probably seem pretty short, but nothing super amazing happened or super interesting, plus we have Zone Conference tomorrow and Elder Simonsen and I have a ton to do still so hopefully I say what needs to be said and nothing more, lol(that is for you dad).

Last Preparation day was pretty good, we ended up watching Singles Ward 2, quite entertaining. I have watched so many of those Mormon movies on my mission now, but I think they are entertaining.

Tuesday we went to Center for District Meeting, and I was super impressed with how well Elder Gull did, I actually really enjoyed it and thought he did a great job with everything. There was a ton of participation, assignments, etc. just a really solid meeting… I am so proud of my old companion. Anyways after that though, we went back to Davtashen and did exchanges with the Assistants. It was actually really funny because I was in Davtashen with all of my Davtashen companions (Elders Ellison, Carlson and Simonsen. The exchange was great, I was with Elder Carlson and we rocked it… pounding everything and just had an amazing time together. The real purpose of the exchange was at the end during the night and next morning were we did a lot of talking about the Zone and just got on the same page… so I say it was effective.

Merry Christmas… Wednesday (January 6) was Armenian Christmas, but it really is nothing different, just more New Years fun. It is actually really funny because most of them don’t even know it is Christmas they just call it little Easter… I guess whatever chance we have to celebrate I will take. We actually had meal appointments that day and ate the traditional rice and raisin plaf… actually quite tasty! The funny thing was I learned there were 3 things you are not supposed to do that day and I broke them all, you can’t eat meat… I ate meat pizza, you can’t drink milk… I had cereal for breakfast, and you can’t bathe… of course I showered! So basically I did the worst things ever, but my Armenian Christmas still went well!

Thursday and Friday were just pretty normal days, nothing amazing happened and nothing terrible happened, Elder Simonsen and I are struggling with work right now though… what can you do though, just keep trying. Hopefully now that all the Holiday stuff has passed our Contacts can meet and our investigators will be more willing to meet with us… we will see, no worries yet.

Saturday was a busy day, we had to go to Center first thing for a Baptismal interview, the Queers have a woman gettting baptized, but because she was taught by Elder Gull first, I had to sit in with him to make sure everything went well. It was great she is an awesome lady with a really firm testimony and she will be baptized this week. After that we went to the Mission Office and spent a few hours getting Zone Conference ready, specifically our talk. We are going to be talking on how as missionaries we need to get converted to: the Scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and The Missionary Handbook. We think it will be great but we have tons to do with food and stuff today. I am getting excited though, I always love Zone Conferences and just the opportunity we have to come together as missionaries and inspire and uplift one another.

Yesterday was a great day, just a lot of cool stuff. First off a less active member finally came to church, first time since I have been here… Vachik. His mother is Azniv the lady that came a couple weeks ago… I fell out of my chair when I saw him walk in though, I was very happy. He usually works on Sunday so I don’t know how he was able to come, but either way I was happy to see him and just hope he felt the spirit and the importance to continue coming to church. For the second hour we went to the Youth class like we usually do and I really enjoyed the lesson. To tell the truth it was the first time I think I have really learned something from an Armenian Sunday school class, I am not trying to be mean, but this lesson was just great. President Poghosyan’s wife Silva is the teacher and she taught Moses 1 really well. She also said a really interesting thing that is changing my view of the Old Testament, she said that if you want to understand the New Testament, you need to first understand the Old Testament. I am excited now to start the study of it this year, should be good. We had a meeting also with a less active after church who we found out has been kicked out of school 3 times for various pranks and shinanigans, hopefully we can get him coming back to church. His sister, Kiso, is a way good member, and we are working with her brother to get him baptized too, hopefully they can help him come back to church. The last great meeting of the day was with a less active named Karine. I don’t know why but I really just like her a ton. She wants to come to church it's just with her work schedule she never knows when she will be working so hopefully that can all get resolved and she will come back. The thing is for some reason whenever I am around her I can’t help but smile, she is just such a positive good person. It was a miracle we met with her too, I have been trying and trying for about a month and she always seems to be busy or in a village, but we just showed up last night and the minute she answered the door her face lit up. She didn’t know how we knew she was home, she had actually just come back from the village that day and just minutes before came up from one of her neighbors houses. The crazy thing is she was going to be busy for the next few days so we really just caught her at the exact time we could. What a miracle, I just love doing the Lord’s work because he helps us out and just gives us way cool stuff like that.

Well that was pretty much the week, the only thing that I am not sure if I told you last week was that our Branch Presidents son, Sedrak, got his mission call and is going to Toronto, Canada! So, cool- if I already told you sorry, if not here is the news. I am just way excited for him. It was funny because I told him that my Mom was from Canada and he wanted me to tell him all about it… what do you say about Canada? It’s cold…

Anyways I should end this, Zone Conference is tomorrow I will tell you all about it next week, hope you have a great week, know I love you and wish you all the best.

Love,
Elder Piercy

Random Photos

A natural Ice Sculpture

Michael's Christmas Tree, one ornament, just a few lights. You work with what you have.

Jim (Gold's Gym) on the cover of Ararat Magazine.

Ludmilla, Me, Vika and Kristina: Members of the Davtashen Branch

Oh the stress of preparing for Zone Conference!

Happy New Year

2010-01-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!!-

Well, it has been 2 weeks and I have a ton of catching up to do… hopefully this won’t bore you all too much, but I do hope your Christmas and New Year went great! Mine was actually really fun and pretty good so far. I am amazed that it is 2010, I am even more amazed because I left on my mission in 2008, which means I come home in 2010… but let’s begin!

Oops, I just realized we started a new planner today so I don’t have my old one… I wonder how well I will remember all the shinanigans… I'll try.

Last week, the Tuesday before Christmas, I went on exchanges down in Ararat. It was actually really fun because I have been down there before but never served, plus I was with Elder Clark which is always a lot of fun. Elder Simonsen and I did the District Meeting in Artashat, then Elder Clark and I went to Ararat and Elder Simonsen and Elder Stevenson went to Artashat. Overall it was a really enjoyable exchange, plus we had some crazy things happen. First, when we were out to this village I had my first negative encounter with an Armenian Priest. I have always heard horror stories, but all the Priests I have met have actually been pretty cool… but this guy was not. He was yelling and screaming at us and telling us we had no Doctrine and had no rights… etc, etc, just a lot of dumb stuff. We ended up telling him that we weren’t doing anything wrong, just trying to help people, and walked away… it was a pretty funny experience. One thing I don’t understand though is why these people who believe in Christ and are supposedly the leaders of “his church” don’t try to emulate him or even follow his teachings. Hopefully one day they will figure it out and maybe even just be nicer to people.

Another cool thing that happened was later we were walking back from the village we started talking to this guy who took us over to his friends and we actually ended up getting a free ride back to the village in his car and 3 gospel conversations out of it. The guys were pretty cool, but I don’t think they are quite ready for the gospel… they were just joking around about stuff, hopefully we prepared them for a missionary later on down the road though. Wow, that night we also bought this Armenian Strawberry and Chocolate milk to try… well when we got home we noticed they were both expired but decided to try them anyway. The Chocolate was horrible, I wanted to puke… I guess sour Chocolate milk is no good, however the Strawberry was still pretty good. The weird thing was it just tasted like Pineapple milk, so I guess when it goes sour it turns into pineapple flavor, it did have a funny aftertaste, but I drank the whole thing anyway. The best part was I didn’t get sick! Overall I thought it was a very successful exchange, we ended up with 3 good meetings (one with their really cool investigator family) and 16 gospel convos. Hopefully I was able to be a good example and help in some way.

The next day we had our Trainer Meeting, which was just an opportunity for all of the soon to be mothers and fathers, the Zone Leaders, the Assistants, and President Dunn to get together and talk about what is expected as the new missionaries arrive and what they can do to best help them. This is actually a really interesting group that came because there are 2 Elders and 3 Sisters. My 2 queers who go home in February are training, Sis. Fuhriman and Sis. Woolf, that's cool. Overall the meeting went really great and was enjoyable. It was a surprise when we found out that Elder Kyle would no longer be the AP and would be training though, luckily I dodged a bullet and didn’t have to be AP which was what everyone thought, instead Elder Carlson is our new AP! I feel bad for him though, it is just a ton of extra work and stress, etc. I will try to help him out and lighten his load so he doesn’t go crazy.

On Wednesday we also met with this crazy guy! Some random dude called me and wanted to meet so I got excited and we went to the church. The guy saw a thing on TV about us and was interested… KEESE!!! All the guy wanted to do was use the church to start a business, it was actually really weird, he kept saying that it was charity work and why the church should help, etc. Basically we told him we couldn’t help him but could teach him about the gospel and our church. Well, the minute he found out we weren’t going to give him money to start his business he didn’t want to talk anymore and just left. It sucks when people reject the gospel, but hopefully he comes around and listens again someday.

Well, the next really fun thing that happened this week was our Branch Activity on Christmas. It was seriously probably one of the most fun days of my mission so far. I was of course Santa Claus… that was sweet, but overall the whole activity was just really good. Our Branch Missionaries organized the whole thing and it turned out to be really fun. In the beginning, all the kids called for Santa Claus, but I didn’t come, my Snow Maiden came though and explained to everyone that the Lamanites had kidnapped me and wouldn’t let me go. The rest of the activity was talks and musical numbers and things… and then I finally came in and thanked everyone because their talks and other spiritual things softened the hearts of the Lamanites and they released me. Then we played tons of games, I gave out presents, we ate, had a dance, and overall just had a really great time. I have about a million pictures from the thing, Elder Simonsen was my photographer so I will throw them up on Photobucket and you can find the good ones. One of the really cool things was that after the activity, our Branch President took me around to some member houses who weren’t able to come and we had Santa Claus visit them too! It was just a really fun and enjoyable day and evening… it was just nice getting to see all of those happy people and help them be happy. We even went into some random guys house who wanted us to go see his daughter! Overall again it was just great.

Well, of course we got to talk to our Families on Christmas which was awesome, and for the record, I do miss my family… I’m just dumb or whiny about it. Enough of that though it was good to talk to everyone and hear their voices.

I actually had a Christmas miracle… my packages came on Christmas eve, so I was able to open them on Christmas and Elder Simonsen did his too, it actually kind of felt like a Christmas by our little Christmas tree.

We also went to Charentsavan this week for a Baptismal Interview. It was fun getting to see all the people I know plus we got to teach a good lesson which was fun. Elder Simonsen did the interview and the young man passed. The missionaries in Charentsavan are just doing a great job turning that place around!

That was about it for all the excitement of last week, we had a random lady come to church who we met with and picked up as a new investigator which was great! I sure love when stuff like that happens just reminding us that the Lord is in charge. Other than that I guess I will start on this week. Unfortunately it wasn’t as exciting.

Well last Monday of course I didn’t write, our Preparation day was moved to Friday as a result of New Years, but we still did a lot of good work.

We had a bit of a struggle meeting with people this week because everyone was preparing for New Year, so nothing super exciting or interesting happened in the beginning of the week. Basically a lot of walking and talking to people. We did go to Malatia’s District Meeting which was enjoyable. It was good and Elder Stutz taught about resolving investigators concerns. I was impressed.

The big excitement happened on movie day. I actually didn’t look forward to it as much this year as I did last year, which is weird because last year I had seen all the movies and this year I hadn’t seen any, but I just wasn’t that excited. The movies ended up being pretty good though. We started out by watching Harry Potter 6, which I thought was very good! Then we watched Up, which was super cute, super funny, and I really loved it a lot. We followed that with X-Men origins, Wolverine… it was a pretty good action movie, not the best story but still interesting. Then we watched Night at the Museum 2, which was entertaining, it wasn’t as good as the first but still fun. Then finally we ended it all with Angels and Demons, that was a sweet movie, it was pretty intense but way good! We just had time for those 5 and I was pretty satisfied. It was nice to get back to missionary work the next day though.

As for the rest of the week it passed without too much excitement. I have been stuffed with food out of my mind at every house for the last 2 days… hopefully I don’t get fat again. It's great getting all this good Armenian food but it is also miserable because they make you eat and eat at every house. Luckily all the food has been excellent this year, even the garlic matsun wasn’t too bad. The members really enjoy having us over too!

Church was pretty normal yesterday, the coolest thing was our investigator Anahit came which was really exciting. Because of New Years, not many people came, we had about 20 there, but Anahit came which was exciting.

Well, I am sure I forgot something, but I am tired of writing, this was a long email this week, I hope you all have enjoyed it so far and that you have a good week. I will write again next week and will fill you all in again.

Love,
Elder Piercy

We Love You Michael

2010-01-02T18:44:00.000-08:00

No letter from Michael this week

2009-12-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Michael will not have preparation day this week until Friday (News Years Day) and will be watching movies (News Year is not a good time for missionaries to be on the streets) so he will not be sending an e-mail till next Monday. We spoke to him on the phone Christmas eve and he sounded just fine. I think he sounds very mature and confident. Heather asked if he missed us this time of year and after a rather lengthy hesitation he responded, "Yea, I guess so" which to us meant- no not at all. Michael did not have problems with homesickness like many do, he attributes that to the fact that he spent two consecutive summers in Germany during high school so he had already adjusted to being away from home. [I think it was the same for me (Michael's Dad) since I spent a summer in Hawaii before my mission, so I think I probably agree with his logic].
Anyway all seems well and we will wait for next weeks report. Happy Holidays to all who read this Blog, Thanks for your continued support.

It's Christmas, Smile!

2009-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

To all my Friends and Family-

Well it has been another good fun week here in Armenia. I really love my mission, I love all the Armenian people, and I love all the great missionaries and people I get to serve with! I am really glad I am here and I hope you are all happy wherever you are and whatever it is you're doing… it is Christmas after all, who can’t smile!

First, let me say I didn’t have the most exciting week in the world, but there were a few highlights. The first being we have a Branch Activity on Friday and guess who gets to be Santa Claus… me! It will definitely be interesting and I will be sure to take lots of pictures and fill you in on the excitement in 2 weeks. On that note, I will not be writing next week… it is New Years, so we will be moving our preparation day to Friday and we will be watching movies… so no time for email, sorry!

We went to Nork’s District Meeting this week which was fun, I got to see my old District again even though only 2 of the missionaries were left… Sis. Fuhriman and Elder Williams, but still fun. I also went on exchanges with Elder Crook which went well, it was a good training experience and I think I was able to help him out a lot. It was an enjoyable experience being back in Nork. It was a lot of fun on the exchange too, we chopped tons of wood and even almost cut our hands off a few times. The problem was we were cutting kindling so it was logs getting smaller. And, well you know 20 year old boys with sharp things… we aren’t careful. We actually did get our hands a few times, but no big deal! [Such a nice thing to mention to your parents, we hope Michael comes home with all his appendages]

Thursday was a rough day, I lost my companion, Elder Carlson was transfred to Vanadzor, and I was on exchanges with Elder Stutz until the evening when Elder Simonsen arrived. We had a huge transfer in the mission, literally every companionship was effected by it. In the south we also got 3 new District Leaders which I am excited about… Elder Williams, Elder Gull, and Elder Stutz. I have lots of great hope in these Elders and I know we are going to work great together to turn the South Zone around!

Elder Simonsen and I are getting along great, it's fun reminiscing about the MTC days together. For those who don’t know we came to Armenia together and were in the same group in the MTC so that is fun.

Other than that we had a few small miracles yesterday at church, first off this random lady just walked in and said she was looking for peace and decided to come in our building and see what was going on. She ended up staying for all 3 hours, really enjoying it and now we are going to meet with her today! Her name is Anahit by the way. Also at church we got a Referral from a member and we went and saw them last night… it was a way cool willing family… 3 New Investigators! It was just a lot of fun and a good reminder that the Lord really is involved in the work and is helping us out a ton. Another really cool thing that happened was this less active member who I have been working with a ton since I got here finally came to church yesterday. Her name is Azniv, and we have taught her tons of lessons to try to get her to come, then a couple days ago we just reviewed the Joseph Smith story and the restoration of the church with her and I think it just sparked her testimony again because there she was at church! Plus there was extra time in the meeting so the Branch President asked her to come up and talk a bit, so she talked about temples and it was actually an amazing talk! I just love missionary work!

O, I forgot, we went to a baptism from Shengavit on Saturday. Elder Simonsen just came from Shengavit so that was cool. Plus, I got to give a talk at the Baptism. I seriously don’t think I have given a talk at a baptism since my Alaverdi days… cool.

Other than that, not much else to my week. Sorry this is short and lame, but nothing else to say. In 2 weeks I will have tons to write about so just wait until then!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I love and miss you all and appreciate your letters and support! Remember the real meaning of the Holidays and I will write again soon!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Merry Christmas

2009-12-20T16:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Michael: Just wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hope you don't forget about us while you are having so much fun in Armenia. I put the photo up so you won't forget what we look like. Oh and what a Christmas tree looks like also. I guess you notice a few people missing in the photo, we're going through downsizing right now so there may not be a position for you when you return. Love, Us

To all my Great Friends, Family, and Blog Viewers!-

2009-12-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

First, I hope you are all having Happy Holidays and a soon to be Merry Christmas wherever you are! It seems like the Holidays just do something to people to put a little cheer in the air, so I hope you are all finding that cheer in your lives.

Other than that I guess I should get started since everyone is going to President Dunn’s house today for a Christmas party. Sister Dunn made tons of Turkey soup apparently from the leftover bones and meat of the 8 turkeys she made for our Zone Conference meal! I am looking forward to it. I guess we don’t really understand how much preparation and care so many people take in our lives just to help us have an enjoyable holiday season… I will work to thank them and I hope every one of you will show your thanks to the people who help and make a difference for you.

Anyways I guess I'll start my week. Let me just tell you their has been another change in my mission but I will get to that later.

Last Monday was interesting, turns out it was the 20th anniversary… I think of the huge Earthquake that devastated Northern Armenia (Gyumri and Spitak) there wasn’t a ton going on in the city though, probably because it wasn’t effected as much. I remember last year in Alaverdi we saw a huge memorial gathering thing. Other than that it was just a normal day, we went to Gold’s Gym to eat and talked with Jim which is nice… the unfortunate thing is it seems he will be leaving soon now that the Gym has a foothold, someone else will be coming in to run it… it's unfortunate but I have enjoyed my time seeing him.

Tuesday was a good District Meeting we went to Elder Larson’s District Meeting, it went well, then at the end I think we gave a really good thought on attitude and how a good attitude will change each person and how they do missionary work. I just hope people accepted it and will try some things we talked about. Leadership is just a hard thing, we are always worried about others and trying to find ways to help- so I just hope when we do give suggestions people accept them.

Wednesday was a pretty good day, we did well with all our meetings, our planning has been a lot better this week so there hasn’t been quite as many fall throughs lately, and our investigators are all doing well. Other than that it was just a pretty standard day. I did make the greatest meal I have ever made on my mission- Sweet and Sour Chicken. I totally made it up and it turned out amazing. I cooked some chicken breasts, cut them up while I made a sauce of Bell Peppers, Onions, Pineapples, Orange-pineapple Juice, Ketchup and Hot sauce. I mixed the chicken and the sauce and then put it all over rice and believe it or not it smelled and tasted exactly like real Chinese food! Overall I have just really found I enjoy cooking on my mission and I am actually pretty good I think.

Anyways, Thursday it finally snowed. I have been saying how cold it has been lately and Elder Carlson told me to wait until snow and then it will be warmer… KEESE! It did not get any warmer… at least it has melted now, I thought it was still very cold. Other than that we saw a cool miracle. We got on the wrong bus, then didn’t have enough coins on us to take another one so we walked to the place we needed to go… on the way we met this really cool guy who was accepting of us and willing to meet so we got his Contact info… I know the Lord puts these people in our path. We also had a meeting with our investigator Narine and her sister Nelli said the closing prayer and it was so cool because the girls are all kind of less active but are starting to be active again, Nelli just gave the coolest prayer asking to have courage to share the gospel and asking for knowledge and strength so she could be more like us… it was just really cool and we are seeing the growth in her as well as Narine as we teach them all together. We also picked up a new investigator from a neighbor of a member. We were visiting a family and they invited their neighbor down who really liked us and wants to hear! That was another miracle.

Friday was a bit of a disappointing day. We had Zone Leader Council which went really well, we had a lot of good things to talk about and we heard a great talk from President Dunn on Crossing the Rubicon. It was a shortened version of the Zone Conference talk he will be giving later in January so I will just wait until then to tell you about it… it was good though. The unfortunate thing was we also saw what happens on the next transfer cycle… Apparently I'm getting a new companion again… no joke. I don’t know what I am doing but I just cannot keep a companion since being trained. Elder Carlson is going up to Vanadzor to be with Elder Harris and Elder Kyle Simonsen will be my new companion. That will be good because Elder Simonsen is from my group so that will be cool, but I am definitely going to miss Elder Carlson a ton. I guess I just have a lot to learn from a lot of different companions because they have all been way short.

Saturday was another pretty normal day, I did go out to do a Baptismal interview in a village for Elder Simonsen and Garner which went well, she passed and it was a fun interview to do. She was a younger girl, but knew everything really well I was super impressed. Other than that we also helped a member prepare a talk for church but he got mad at us because we wouldn’t just write it for him, we were just helping him… whatever.

As for Sunday it was another interesting (good) Sunday. Church was OK except once again they did the 3rd hour in practically all Russian since they were reading from that Russian Welfare guide… what can you do though. We did pick up a new investigator which was great! He is an older guy who was super accepting of everything, that can be really good, but also kind of bad… I guess we'll see. He said if Joseph Smith really saw God and everything, it would be the biggest thing ever, so its cool he recognized that.

Other than that, everything is going well our investigators are doing good, we are helping build strength in the branch and I am happy, healthy, and well. I hope you have a great holiday and an amazing week, talk to you again soon!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Mission Conference and Turkey Dinner

2009-12-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

To all my Friends and Family-

Let me start out today by letting you all know that we played Basketball this morning for P-day and it was way fun. 5 on 5 good competitive fun, however we always seem to realize that we all get winded very easily and are looking forward to being able to play longer than 5 minutes when we get home. But for real it wasn’t that bad we played for 2 hours and were all pretty strong through it.

Well, I guess I will get to my week.

Last Monday for the end of my Preparation day Elder Carlson and I went to Nork and hung out with my old mini (and brother) Arman (it was his birthday). It was a way good time, and I am glad we were able to go out there and hang with him for a while… plus his mom made some really tasty cake, like always! It was fun, the problem was it went by too fast since we had to be back at the office by 6pm to pick up Elder Lucas and Elder Bennet… the Georgians who were staying with us.KEESE!!! That is the next story, one of the Georgian taxi’s broke down and the 4 that where in the broken one were going with us and the Assistants, so we waited a long time for them. They finally made it to the office at about 12am (midnite)! Luckily Elder Kyle, Ellison, Carlson, and I found some couches to sleep on for about an hour so it wasn’t too bad. We sure were happy to see them when they finally came though! Plus I got to hang out with my favorite Brit Elder Lucas again!

Tuesday was our mission conference. A mission conference is just like a Zone Conference except we have both the North and South zones there, just in case you were wondering. It went super well, we had an activity, where I taught about Referral lessons and the best ways to go about getting those, then we had a talk by President and Sister Dunn, both were really great! Sister Dunn talked about developing Christlike attributes. Then President Dunn talked about Preach my Gospel a bit. After that President and Sister Schwitzer addressed us. Sis. Schwitzer gave a really good talk on how if we are going to be here… be here, which was great; and finally Elder Schwitzer gave a talk on being sanctified. It was really interesting (true) because he said one of the main reasons to be on a mission is to sanctify ourselves and if we don’t do that then really a large part of the 2 years we spend out here goes to waste. I guess I definitely have a new goal to work on… note to self: get sanctified. After his talk we had another amazing Thanksgiving lunch! Turkey, mash potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, the works. Holidays aren’t bad at all on a mission!

After lunch Elder Schwitzer gave another talk on the Book of Mormon and interesting things from it. The main purpose he said was to show that General Authorities really have a testimony of the Book of Mormon and really believe and use it’s words. It was a really powerful and super cool talk. What a pleasure it was having those 2 at our Conference.

After the conference, I got the opportunity to have a short interview with Pres. Schwitzer which was really cool. He basically just asked if I had any questions and asked me a few. The coolest part though was he promised that if I continue doing the things I do and improve on the things I see are my weaknesses, I am going to be a very successful, good missionary. It also made me feel good because Elder Carlson had his interview after me and he said Pres. Schwitzer said I was a really great guy and a really good missionary! It is nice to hear compliments from people, I am going to try to give more compliments to others.

Well, as for the rest of the week, it was another hard week of Missionary work. Unfortunately we had to thrash most of those boys since they won’t ever meet with us, but hopefully they come back one day. On a good note we picked up 2 new investigators this week. One of them is a girl named Narine, she is the sister of Marine and Nelli, two of our members. We don’t really know why she was never baptized, but we are working with her now and taught her a really great lesson on recognizing the spirit many different ways this week. We have a lot of faith in her though and hope she can work out and join the church! As for the other investigator, it was this guy named Meruzh who just came into church on Sunday. We had a short little lesson with him about Joseph Smith and the Great Apostasy, and the coolest part was when we told him that the Priesthood was taken from the earth, he said “Yeah, I agree with that, it was taken.” He is a really cool guy who I guess has been studying every church for a long time and isn’t satisfied yet… all he has left is us and the Jehovah Witnesses. Hopefully we can say something to prick him and help him feel the spirit so he recognizes the truth here.

Other than that the work is going on, we try to talk to a lot of people on the streets, we meet with a lot of our less active members, basically we are just trying to really help build the branch. We did get a really good compliment from one of our members this week though, Lusine. She has been a member for about 15 years… basically since before this was a mission and said we are only the 3rd set of missionaries she really enjoys having at her house. She says it is because we bring the spirit, try to help, and have lessons with her. That is really exciting for us but also crushes us that there have been so many missionaries who haven’t given their best… what can you do.

Well the final cool thing from this week was at church. It was fast and testimony meeting, of course, and Meri got up and bore her testimony! It was so good, she is a great member and just loves everything about the church, I am really glad I got to be a part of her conversion to the gospel. Plus, we got to hear a lot of great stories from people since a group of members just got back from the Switzerland temple 2 days ago. What an experience it is for some of them to go all the way there and have those great opportunities. It will be nice next year though when the Ukraine temple opens up and it is not as expensive and more people will have the opportunity to go!

Well I lied, there is one more cool thing. President Schwitzer gave the missionaries here 2 pieces of counsel , they are interesting but for sure we will do them since they came from an inspired General Authority. First, he told us that every missionary should bear his testimony in Fast and Testimony meeting on Fast Sundays. That's interesting I thought it would be more important to give the members the time if they are going to use it, but for sure I will be up there doing it now. The other, was to use our Priesthood as much as possible to help the Armenian people. That was really interesting because this week Elder Carlson and I have given so many blessings to people (we gave 3 in one meeting last night), it is really fun but also really spiritually exhausting. But, you bet we will keep looking for more opportunities to do it, if President Schwitzer says we should, God says we should, so we will do it!

For real, this time I think I'm done, sorry if my letter was a bit long or boring this week but I really just like trying to keep all the people I love informed on what is going on with me. I hope that you all have a great week and just keep enjoying life to the fullest.

Love,
Elder Piercy

A note to Arman Grigoryan

2009-12-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

Arman: Happy Birthday! We received your wonderful letter and would love to respond. Please post a comment to this note and give us your personal e-mail address, I will not publish your comment so your e-mail will remain confidential. Thanks so much. We anticipate your reply. The Piercy Family

Elder Piercy's Update

2009-11-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

To all my great friends and family!-

Well, what a week of excitement, fun, and hard work… plus some disappointment too, but I won’t waste your time and I will get to it!

Well last Monday was pretty fun, we didn’t really do anything but go to the office and watch “Saints and Soldiers” which actually was a pretty good movie, I enjoyed it. Next week we are playing Basketball, it is going to rock (don’t worry Mom, I will wear my brace). We also got a lot of convos and stuff, just to show people that you can get convos on P-day.

Tuesday we went to Shengavit for District Meeting. It was good. It was fun seeing Elder Simonsen and Sister Davis, but it doesn’t really seem like anyone wants to hang with us anymore… whatever, the loneliness of leadership right?! Well as for the rest of that day we had a way cool miracle! When we got home we grabbed a basketball and went to the court by our church and shot some hoops in missionary clothes. It was our creative finding tool for the week and it worked! A bunch of kids came over, and we played Ball for a bit, then we actually went into our church and had 2 different meetings and picked up 4 New Investigators. The kids are all kind of punks, but I think the 4 NI’s have a lot of potential… they were pretty genuine and seemed to really have good questions. The Charentsavan Queers just baptized a really big punk who turned around a ton, so I have some hope for them. We also had a cool meeting with our Branch President Tuesday to find out how we can help him with the Branch which was good.

On Wednesday we went and did Charentsavan’s apartment check which went well, I really enjoyed seeing Char again… I miss all this stuff that used to be so normal to me. I am not going to continue with this daily review because nothing really that amazing happened the rest of the week, well except Thursday!

Well I am sure most of you know Thursday was Thanksgiving, last year if you remember I had Rotisserie Chicken and French Fries… this year was better. We ended up going to the Dow’s apartment, one of the Senior Couples here in Armenia… it was amazing! Sis. Dow had found a turkey at the Supermarket, plus we had Mashed Potatoes, gravy, stuffing, etc. It was the works and awesome. Plus for desert we had Ice Cream and this apple pie stuff and some chocolate pie stuff too! Overall it was great and for a couple of hours I just felt like I was actually in America. It was really cool of the Dows to let us all come over and it really might be one of my most memorable thanksgivings ever.

For the rest of the week we basically thrashed all of our old investigators that Elder Ellison and I had… they just can’t meet and we can’t keep wasting our time, so basically we are starting from scratch. It was fun though, Elder Carlson and I spent tons of time on the streets and actually ended up getting 109 gospel convos this week! It was awesome!

I am still really enjoying serving with Elder Carlson, we are focused and pounding it!

I guess the last really notable thing to write about is some of the cool stuff at church this week. First of all in Sacrament Meeting, Pres. Poghosyans 2 kids had talks that were soooo good! The amazing thing is that Hovhannes is only 7 and his little sister Emi who also talked is only 5! I was so amazed, they are such studly kids. We also had a musical number of “As I Have Loved You” sung in Armenian, Russian, and English… given by our Young Woman in the branch… it was cool! The worst part of church was for the combined 3rd hour we read from this book of a talk Elder Hales gave on welfare that was all in Russian so Elder Carlson and I didn’t understand a thing. O, one other cool thing one of our members "Marine" came to church and was not sick at all… the cool thing about that was the day before I had given her a blessing that she would get better and by the next day she was already fine! I love being a tool for the Lord working to help these people!

Well other than that there isn’t too much else to say, o wait I forgot there is a General Authority here right now Pres. Schwietzer or something, I think he is in the Seventy, but he is part of our Area Presidency and is here doing a mission tour so that is cool. We also have a combined Mission Conference tomorrow, I forgot to mention that, he will be there too! Plus I get to be interviewed by him since I am a Zone Leader which is going to be pretty cool!

Well, for real, this time I have nothing else to ramble about, so I hope you have a great week and weren’t too bored from my letter this week. I love you all, I miss you sometimes, but I will write again next week!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Another New Companion???

2009-11-23T05:13:00.000-08:00

To all my Friends and Family!-

Well, here it goes, another week full of changes, and another week to report on. It has gone way too fast. So I won’t waste your time, I'll just jump into it.

First, let me just tell you I once again have a new companion. I thought Elder Ellison would be my long one but, nope, I served with him for exactly 3 weeks. He is now one of our AP’s and I am serving with Elder Aaron Carlson in Davtashen. I am way happy though and he is such a big stud we are just going to pound it. I have loved this Elder forever he is in the group after me and now I am way happy to serve with him.

Me and Elder Ellison

Well, let me tell you a bit about our bowling experience. IT WAS STINKIN AWESOME, PROBABLY LIKE ONE OF THE STINKIN FUNNEST P-DAYS EVER!!! The best part was everyone was there, we had the whole place rented out and then out of nowhere they turned out the lights and made it cosmic bowling! I didn’t even know they could do that but it rocked. It was seriously just a way fun experience to hang with everyone and party it up.
Well on Tuesday we went to Artashat for District Meeting and got to meet the Senior couple from Ararat. They are cool and that District is doing great and Elder Stevenson is doing a great job leading them. We also checked both Artashat and Ararat’s apartments… everything was good.

That was also the day we found out about transfers… it was definitely a surprise, but maybe now Elder Carlson will be a long companion of mine. I guess I am so untolerable that I always have to get moved around… what can you do, lol.

Well Wednesday was my last day with Ellison so we saw a lot of members and investigators and took pictures and what not. It was good because we thought that our investigators were bad but we were able to meet and keep them going.

Thursday was my first day with Carlson, it was awesome! Friday was also great… just pounding it and just working hard and pounding the area. Unfortunately the investigators have been hard to meet with the last few days, but we just walked a lot.

Saturday was great because we had Meri’s baptism… it went so good, one of the coolest things was Mnatsakan came and saw it and I was talking to him and he was so happy to see me. The coolest thing was he told me that he prays for me everyday! I love that man so much, what a guy.

Well the last cool thing was we had District Conference on Saturday and Sunday so that was great fun and just an all around good time. My area is actually in the North District so I got to see tons of people I know. It was just great realizing that people really do love you, and I got hugs, kisses, and just warm welcomes from people from Alaverdi, Vanadzor, Gyumri… it was just great. It really makes me feel special when I know people appreciate and love me here… I love my mission!

Well that is about it for the week sorry that this is kind of short, but I will make up for it next week… I sure love you all and hope you have great weeks! I will write again soon!

Love,
Elder Piercy

A Great Week!

2009-11-16T06:37:00.000-08:00

To all the Peeps!-

Well another good week has flown by… but what is new? This mission thing just flies by. I will try to write everything that happened in a short amount of time since we have the whole South Zone going bowling here pretty soon, basically to wish Sis. Peterson off who leaves in 2 days… so it will be sweet. I will let you all know how it goes next week.

I will begin, last Monday we had a way cool meeting! We met with these investigators Anahit, Alla, and Anna, who have been pretty iffy in our book. Basically they have been investigating the Jehovah Witness church, our church, and other churches and they don’t know what to do because they are confused that everybody says they should join their church… well we had a banging lesson with them all about the Holy Ghost and paying attention to our feelings and just praying to get an answer. Well, to keep this short at the end of the lesson we committed them all to pray and then told them we would call in 2 hours to see if they got an answer. We called and they were all so excited, they talked about how peaceful they felt and how good it was, and they recognized it as their answer! Yeeeahhh!

Tuesday, we went to Charentsavan for District Meeting, my old District, and Elder Ellison and I did their District Meeting. It actually went pretty good and we were impressed with how well everyone was doing with the language and how much they all had improved! Our lesson went pretty good too, the good news now is that we don’t have to worry about anymore District Meetings until next transfer cycle… which actually is soon I think. But it is a nice break, plus it was fun seeing Charentsavan again! We also had a cool meeting with a member on Tuesday, Pres. Hovakimyan and his family. He is the 1st counselor in the District Presidency and a way cool guy! It was a good lesson we did with them, and it was just fun getting to know more people from the branch.

On Wednesday we did some strange service for a member, basically we just carried a bunch of Garbage up into her attic. The craziest thing was this ladder we were climbing was so rickety and ghetto, I wouldn’t have even gone near it before my mission and now I just don’t even care! I guess that is just how a mission changes you. I have no fear! Lol. We also picked up 2 cool new investigators at a contacts house. The craziest thing about that meeting however was this painting they had on the wall. Right in the middle of their living room was this huge painting of a Naked Lady on the beach… it was the strangest thing ever… especially since it was 2 woman who lived in the house. It was super awkward trying not to look at that wall when one of them was sitting right under it… funny things you witness on a mission.

Well on Thursday we had a Zone Leader/District Leader correlation meeting. Basically Elder Ellison and I got together with our 4 District Leaders and talked about problems in the individual districts. Elder Ellison and I also talked about things that we have noticed and then gave a talk on “The Loneliness of Leadership” inspired by this talk that Pres. Hinckley gave one time. Basically we talked about how we have to stand up for what is right and keeping the rules no matter what other people think of us… overall it was pretty successful meeting I think. O, I also went on Exchanges with my son that day too! Elder Garner came to Davtashen with me and Elder Ellison went to Nork with Elder Krueger. It was a really good exchange and I was really able to see how my son has improved and give him advice so he can just continue to keep getting better and better!

Friday was just a pretty normal day, meetings and finding and what not.

Saturday however rocked! We went and took care of 2 more apartment checks, one in Ashtarak and one in Malatia. The cool thing about that was that Ashtarak was the last place in the mission I had never been too, so now I have been everywhere, including all the areas in Georgia! I thought that was pretty cool! I also finally finished the Book of Mormon in Armenian. I know it has taken me forever but I guess I just wasn’t the most diligent reader… but now it is done and I can move on to the Doctrine and Covenants in Armenian. The best part about the day though was that our investigator Meri passed her Baptismal Interview! It was so awesome too because she came out of the room, looked at us and did a double fist pump and said “I’m getting baptized!” It was the coolest thing ever to see her so excited about it! Plus this means that we are breaking the curse! There hasn’t been a convert Baptism in Davtashen for over 2 years... until next Saturday!!!! Curse is done, now we will have tons of success!

As for Sunday, it was another great day, but I felt like I was going to die by 9pm. We ate 3 dinners yesterday. The problem was first I made our dinner, Pizza… then the Dutsons invited us over for some homemade Beef Stew, amazing!... then at our Family Home Evening they fed us again. Now keep in mind we did all this in about 4 hours! It was awesome but a little bit filling. We also went to Center church on top of Davtashen church since we had investigators at both… we heard a way funny talk at Center though where the lady used a thing called “Everything I need in life I learned from Noah’s Ark”. Overall it was a good day and just a great week all in all. Elder Ellison and I are getting along well and just excited about everything that is going on in our area!

Well I guess that is it for my Weekly Update, but I hope you all have a rockin week! I love you all and just keep on partying!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Thoroughly Enjoying Armenia

2009-11-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

To all my Family and Friends Partying in America!-

I hope this letter finds you all very well, as for me I am thoroughly enjoying myself here in Armenia just doing great Missionary things! I don’t have too many exciting things to talk about this week, but I will fill you in as much as I can.

To start out let me tell you all a bit about Davtashen. It is actually a really interesting place because it is in Yerevan still, but there are places that have a real villagey, northy feel to them, so it is pretty cool. Davtashen is a little corner neighborhood kind of place with lots of apartment buildings split into 4 sections. Our church building is here. There is also a place called Davtashen Village which like I said is just like a village in the North it seems, but a bit nicer. My area also includes Ajapnyak which has a more big city feel, but still not as much as Nork so it is also nice. I am close to the city, I can get to Center with a really easy Marshutni ride, but I still have some peace and fun like in the north. I hope that is a bit for you to think about, maybe I will write more as I learn more.

Well as for the week it has been pretty good, last week for P-day a bunch of us went flannel shopping at some 2nd Hand Stores in Center. It was successful, the best part was everything is so cheap… you buy it by the kilo! I got 2 cool flannel shirts… one in Yellow for doing service and junk, then I got a Christmasy red and green one to pound when we have our new years movie party! That was P-day… o plus Indian food!

Anyways as for Tuesday Elder Ellison did the District Meeting for Ashtarak District, then we went on splits with the Malatia Elders. It was really successful and helpful I think. I went to Malatia with Elder Stutz and we had a really nice time together. The unfortunate thing was they had tons of fall throughs, so we ended up walking around talking to people for 3 hours in the rain, but what can you do those are the most fun days. Stutz is a really cool, super good and smart kid. He was actually the one who replaced me in Alaverdi (Elder Harris’ son). We did get a couple of good meetings in though, one with their investigator that was sooo good, until her daughter interrupted and messed everything up… what can you do, it was still good though. Plus we made some bomb milkshakes at home and had fun just talking and getting aquainted. The Photo is me and Elder Stutz

Wednesday morning we switched back from our splits with a breakfast at Gold’s Gym… omelette and toast! Then it was back to work in Davtashen. One fun thing was we actually took our lunch at the Poghosyan’s house(the District President) and just played with his super fun, cute kids and talked with his wife, plus ate good borsh and other junk! That night we actually caught a bunch of punks throwing rocks at our church which was dumb. I don’t get it, they always brag about being the first Christian nation but obviously they don’t follow Christ’s teachings if they are throwing rocks at our church… what can you do though, we just scared them away.

Thursday was a pretty normal day, but we did meet with this one dude who invited us in during our finding hour in the morning… he just wanted to fight though. He kept telling us he already new everything about Joseph Smith and then we asked him to tell about him and he just said crazy weird stuff. He was telling us how Joseph didn’t think the Bible was any good so he wrote a new book and junk like that.I wish people wouldn’t believe all the lies about us so easy… whatever though. The cool thing was while he was rambling I was looking at his bookshelf and I saw he had a copy of жэн эйр (Jane Eyre) in Russian. It was small though so I don’t think it was a full translation.

Friday we had a Zone Leader Council, it was super good and really productive. Plus we got to see the other Zone Leaders and President Dunn. We talked a lot about the mission tour coming up at the end of the month where President Pearson is coming and then we had Mr. Toaster’s Pizza (pretty good) and watched the "Phone Call", some really old, lame, BYU movie that was funny. We also had a baptism from our Branch but it was a child of record… still the first baptism from Davtashen in 2 years. I also got a Giant Bible to go with my Giant Triple which was exciting! Sis. Dutson ordered it for me and it finally came in!

Saturday I learned a very interesting thing. First, for lunch I made some amazing Spaghetti! Just tons of good stuff veggies and what not. I did it like my mom though, and made a sauce seperately… but I finally figured out why my mom had this little screen thing on top of the pot… I went into the other room to plan for a while and when I came back, the kitchen was covered in Spaghetti sauce! Unfortunately I was mad at myself so I forgot to take a picture before I cleaned up but it was everywhere… the walls, cabinets, it was nuts. Next time I will put something on top of the pot, lol. Other than that it is our job to do apartment safety checks in our Zone so I got to go to Shengavit and see Elder Simonsen and Crook! Their apartment was good too, even had a functioning Carbon Monoxide Detector!

Sunday was just another good day of church in Davtashen the weird thing was a lady I knew from Vanadzor was down visiting, as well as a lady I recognized from Charentsavan… strange. We only had 2 of 8 investigators come though, so we might have to do some thrashing this week.

Well I will tell you about this investigator we have named Meri, she is about 27 probably and so good! She actually was an investigator about 2 years ago, then right before she was going to get baptized, her husband wouldn’t let her. Well now she is divorced and just sooo good! She actually has her baptismal interview this Saturday which is exciting.

On another note, my old investigator Arpine from Vanadzor got baptized on Friday so that was good to hear!

As for everything else, that was pretty much the week, I hope you all have a great time and I will look forward to writing again next week!

Elder Piercy with a new hair cut, or perhaps a new winter hat???

Love,
Elder Piercy

Another Move, Another Companion

2009-11-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

To all of my favorite fans out there in America, this ones for you-

Well unfortunately I had a really great e-mail typed up for you all and then when I went to send it myldsmail went crazy again and I lost it all…stupid program so maybe I will try writing again but I really just don’t feel like doing it all over again, I will try for all of you though.

Anyways, I have a bit of a surprise... actually it is a really big surprise...here I am in Yerevan doing my internet! Yeah, surprise I got transferred again! I don't know why but... hey I guess I am cool with it. I am now serving with Elder Marcus Ellison in Davtashen(It is in Yerevan). So I am now one of the South Zone Leaders. My old companion Elder Harris went up and took my place with Elder Lystrup. The strange thing was I was only up there for about 7 weeks, and Elder Lystrup has been up there a lot longer. He was a bit annoyed that I was going down to the city again, but it wasn't my choice. I guess God wanted me down here for a reason. I was a little bit bummed to actually leave Vanadzor just because I didn't really get a chance to get to know anyone really well up there, but what can you do, I am excited to be down here and now we are planning on starting sport P-day activities when it starts to snow by the end of the month probably. It should be extreme! That is enough of that for now I guess.

As for the rest of the week I will start at the start. Well last Monday, I cut my P-day a little bit short and went to the Helelyan's house and they taught me how to make Dolma. That is the meat junkage wrapped in cabbage leaves and the boiled. It turned out really good and ended up being tons of fun too! They were really impressed and said I should be a chef too because apparently I rolled the Dolma really good and picked it up really fast. It took a while but we made it and it tasted super good, then we had a really fun and good Family home Evening with them and another family from the branch. Hopefully when I get home I will wow you all with my mad Dolma skills!

Tuesday came around and we actually ended up having to go to Vanadzor District Meeting again since President Dunn went up to Gyumri. So we actually ended up doing the District Meeting (President wants the Zone Leaders to do 1 district meeting in every district each transfer cycle so basically every week we will be doing one somewhere). It went really well though we talked a lot about what a successful missionary is...then at the end focused on how Planning and Prayer really makes you a truly successful missionary. Overall it went really great and I think we were really able to help people out. As for the rest of the day it was tons of finding since we have NO investigators...besides Arpine. Just as a side note though she is doing great and I am way excited for her. I also found out yesterday that she passed her baptismal interview on Saturday and will be baptized next week!

Wednesday was a normal day as usual...the catch was when the AP's called us at 5pm and let me know that I was getting transferred on Thursday. What a surprise because I was planning on being up there for a long time...the unfortunate thing was the short notice, so I had to pack pretty quick for the next day.

Thursday Elder Harris and Ellison came to Vanadzor and spent the day with us so we were doing work all day until Ruben came back from Georgia and took us down to Davtashen. We got back late that night though so not much work happened in my new area that day.

Friday we had some really good meetings and I got to wander around with Ellison for a while while he showed me the area. I also got to meet some of their investigators and they are just way good down here. It stinks that I don't get to see Arpine get baptized but there are some awesome people here in Davtashen and Acapnyak(other part of my area) who I am excited to teach.

Saturday we went down to Artashat in the morning and I did a Baptismal interview for one of the Artashat Elders investigators. They passed and it went really well. We also came back and went to a baptism that Shengavit was having so that was pretty fun and I got to see a bunch of my group...Elder Simonsen, Sister Woolf, and Sister Davis. I am excited to be down in the south because now my whole group is together... Sis. Fuhriman is in Charentsavan but still south Zone.

Sunday was really good, church was great because we basically don't have to do a thing. It is a really good functioning branch and we even had 4 investigators come which was really exciting. I guess that about sums up my week.

Well, one interesting thing was that I thought Elder Lystrup was going to be my "long companion" since Halcomb... KEESE, only 6.5 weeks! Well, maybe Elder Ellison can take that spot. Another interesting thing is that I am probably going to be in Davtashen a loooong time because there are no other Zone Leader areas, I already served in Vanadzor and now I am in the other. I guess I will get comfortable... I think I will probably be here till the end of my mission. No complaint from me!

Well as for the rest of my week I can't think of anything too notable. I am excited to serve the South Zone even though I am sad to see the North go, but everyday brings new opportunities!

I hope you all have a way good week and just enjoy life to it's fullest. I love you all and rock on!

Love,
Elder Piercy

2009-11-02T07:04:00.001-08:00

2009-11-02T07:03:00.001-08:00

2009-11-02T07:02:00.001-08:00

2009-11-02T07:01:00.001-08:00

2009-11-02T07:00:00.001-08:00

2009-11-02T06:58:00.001-08:00

2009-11-02T06:57:00.001-08:00

Zone Conference Report

2009-10-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

To Everyone in America!-

Well it has been another good, fun, exciting week of missionary work... unfortunately I have no crazy stories of battle wounds this week, but there is some other things to talk about so I guess I will get started.

I guess first I will talk about Zone Conference. Overall everything went really well, we were in Yerevan at the office again like usual. We changed the format of Zone Conference a bit so it is more fast paced and quick moving, so we had lots of talks on different subjects like using the Book of Mormon for ourselves, Planning, Personal Study, we even have one we gave to Elder King on Heb. 10:35 I think about not casting away your confidence. Overall it was great, we had everyone participating and everyone enjoying it all. Our lunch was fantastic also, we all went to Gold's Gym and the Restaurant there made french toast, eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, maple syrup...just tons of stuff most of us have not had for a while... AMAZING! After lunch we got onto our talk, the AP's talk, and President's talk. We talked about getting back to basics and just generally covered the simple things, the framework to missionary work that really just makes or breaks our day. We did it through a series of movies that were really entertaining but also true so I hope people got it. [Three of the movies are attached below this post, next week he will send the rest and then I will post a mission training video] Overall it seems like we were able to make a difference. The AP's gave a good talk on just becoming the best missionaries we can be... there is a talk called the 4th missionary that they referenced a lot. Finally President gave a great talk based on this book he read called "The Double Win" that he applied to the gospel. The main concept is you can be a loser and that is clear. You can also be a winner and that is also clear. Or you can be a double winner and help someone else win too so you feel even better. Overall it was great and he had all these scriptural examples and stuff. Our snack/break was also banana splits with chocolate sauce and tons of other good stuff! Overall it was just an all around really awesome Zone Conference. Plus my mini Arman came so I got to hang out with him at lunch and stuff.

Another thing I really enjoyed about Zone Conference was translating. I thought it was really fun... it is super hard, but it also just gives you an idea of things to work on and shows you what you can get better with. Plus no one gets mad because the Armenians understand it is hard. They said I did pretty good though and I liked it so hopefully I can do it again at another Zone Conference!

Other than Zone Conference I was on splits with Elder Gull my old companion Monday night after P-day and we actually picked up 2 new investigators! It was actually a miracle we found them because we were looking for this other house and we knocked on the door and the lady let us in... we assumed we had the right house, but she didn't even know the guy we wanted. Long story short we got to pray for her sick mother and talk to them a bit about the gospel and picked them up as 2 new investigators.

As for all our other investigators... we had a rough week with all of them. On Saturday it actually climaxed and we dropped 6 investigators in 2 hours... actually they dropped us. What can you do though. Two of them were the miracle ladies from last week, the problem was one of their husbands won't let us meet them and told us if we ever called or came back he would break our heads. It really frustrates me that all these good people in Armenia get stopped from accepting the gospel because their husbands or something won't let them. I am just glad people will have another chance after this life so they can accept it then. As for the other investigators they went nuts on us and just yelled at us because we wanted to talk about the Book of Mormon before giving it to them. They said they were smart enough without an explanation... then made us leave. Finally our other investigator Anush who couldn't get baptized also dropped us. We went to her house for a few days and they kept telling us she wasn't home, then when we went on Saturday her husband told us the same thing but we could clearly see her doing something from the doorway. I guess she just doesn't want to meet anymore and can't tell us to our face.

Overall we were kind of depressed, but it didn't last for long. The only rough part is just that we have to walk the streets a lot again to pick up some new investigators. The good news is Arpine is still awesome and doing great and we hope to get her a baptismal interview this week! So at least all our work is paying off a bit.

Another really cool thing that happened this week was this lady named Sis. Lee came to Armenia... I guess she taught family classes and stuff in Ukraine and the Area Presidency asked her to come do some in Armenia. Well she came up to Vanadzor and taught a really great class for about 2 hours for all our members and investigators on just having better, stronger, families. It was great, our members enjoyed it a lot and I did too, I actually learned some really cool things and have some good ideas of how I want to do things in my family later in life.

Also during one of our finding times we came across some cool stuff. One was this cool monument at the top of a hill in Vanadzor. It had some really cool Soviet like art stuff though... really interesting, plus it was huge. Armenia just has random monuments and statues and stuff everywhere... cool.
We also found this really cool park that we guessed was a way hip place a few years ago but now is just in disrepair unfortunately. It seems like when the Soviet Union pulled out that they let a lot of things just go. I am sure one day it will all turn around though and things will get back to being super cool here.

Well the last cool thing I can think of is just that this Daylight Savings stuff rocks! I don't know how I have been missing out on this all my life...actually I do it's cuz I live in Arizona but... anyways, last night we got to sleep in an extra hour and it wasn't even breaking rules. It is awesome...then again in about 6 months I will probably write an email about how terrible it is when I lose an hour of sleep...well either way... it is cool this time.

I can't really think of too much else to distract you all with this week so I guess I will end this, I hope you all have a good week and I will be writing again next time!

Love,
Elder Piercy

իմ շատ սիրելի ընկերներին եվ ընտանիկին - Friends and Family

2009-10-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

To my most beloved Friends and Family(իմ շատ սիրելի ընկերներին եվ ընտանիկին)-

Sorry about the Armenian I had to try that out on you... I am learning to type in Armenian on a normal keyboard which is actually harder than you would think, but I am getting pretty good at it from writing Arman... Keese! Maybe someday I will be able to type as fast as I can in English.

Well about this week, it was definitely one full of excitement for me...actually I learned what Armenians do when a person has an open head wound, but I will tell more about that later... to the letter!

Last Monday was a normal P-day of hanging out but afterwards, all four of the missionaries here went to the Helelyan's house for a family home evening which actually ended up being pretty fun! We even got to play stick pull... I totally beat Elder Lystrup, but then Elder Jonas rocked me... he is a big kid... what can you do. I sure love that family, it is going to kind of suck when their daughter Anahit leaves on her mission soon, but that is a really great thing for her, her papers are in so now we are just waiting!

Tuesday was then Elder Thylin's first District Meeting. It went very well, I was quite pleased with how the whole thing turned out. We ran out of time a bit towards the end, but still was very good. I think he will do a great job helping everyone in our district become better missionaries. After District Meeting we ran out though to catch a bus to this village to meet with our investigator Arpine. She is the one who wanted us to come teach her so she can be baptized...we have been having trouble meeting up with her but finally we were able to meet and give her a really good first. It went super well and she is going to be an awesome member some day. The only problem is she is getting a lot of flack from people at school and her friends for going to the Mormon church, but she thinks it is just God testing her... so she is going to stay strong. The craziest thing about the meeting was... well I'll tell you later in the letter.

Wednesday we got blessed with a way big cool miracle. We just decided to focus and build our investigator pool so we started out our day by going out to this place just past Vanadzor called 4th Taron, we were going to do a finding hour out there. We had a goal to get 10 conversations and 1 contact and felt good about it. Well we got out there and there was just no one outside. We decided to keep our faith up and do it though...what do you know but for about 40 minutes we just walked around and had no one to talk to... we stayed strong though...then we started talking to this one lady on the street, it was actually a really good convo and more people started coming over and talking to us... pretty soon I was talking to a bunch of people and Lystrup was talking to a bunch of people... we ended up getting 10 conversations exactly. Plus the first lady we talked to invited us over to her house. We didn't have a ton of time but we went in for about 15 minutes and ended up actually picking up 2 New Investigators! They are really cool too, Marine and Melina.

Thursday was another great day... the best part was that we got to meet with Arpine again and taught her all about the Plan of Salvation. She really enjoyed it and is excited by a lot of things in it. As long as she stays strong she will be baptized for sure. Overall the meeting was great and just by the questions she asks us, I know she is understanding... I sure love sharing the gospel with people who are so excited by it.

Friday was business as usual, we did go back to 4th Taron though and did another finding hour and met up with Marine and Melina. We gave them a complete first this time and they were really interested by a lot of things. They said we could keep coming back and sharing more with them too, the problem will be getting them to church...they want to come but Melina has a little girl and she thinks it would be hard to get her there by 11am... woah, try 8 am like America, lol. We will definitely keep working with them though and try to get them to church. The coolest part was on our way out we got another Contact. Some people who live in the same building want us to come over to their house and tell them about the Book of Mormon too! The work is just picking up so well and we are getting super excited. The Lord will definitely prepare a way for us if we just want to do it!

Saturday and Sunday were both pretty normal days, but we did get some good false doctrine at church! I just love being able to understand everything and hear all the crazy stuff people say... I almost wish I could go back to Alaverdi now and see what people said now that I can understand better. Well this week all our falseness was centered around Moses, not really false doctrine but they mixed stories up. First off, did you know that Moses freed the children of Israel from Jerusalem? Also, did you know that Moses was commanded to sacrifice his son, was going to go through with it, but then stopped by God... pretty interesting stuff, I didn't know that stuff happened. Anyways, kind of funny.

Well the last kind of interesting thing was last night I got to watch the end of Highschool Musical in Russian. We went to a New Members house and they wanted to finish watching it so we watched the last few minutes... I was actually really impressed though because they even translate all the songs and everything into Russian. The other cool thing was at another one of our New Member's house later in the day I saw a couple seconds of Power Rangers in Russian... strange, strange thing.

Well, Elder Lystrup and I worked really hard getting our Zone Conference talk ready this week, basically we are going back to really basic things like starting studies on time and stuff. We really just made videos of the worst missionary ever that we are going to show, then give tips of how to be better. It took a lot of work, but I think it turned out well, I will try to post the videos up on photobucket next week since I forgot them this week.

Well, I guess I will finally tell my great exciting story. On Tuesday when we were leaving Arpine's house I guess I didn't realize that I was taller than the door frame, so I wasn't paying attention when I walked out the door. Well I smacked my head way hard... it hurt, but it was also really funny and everyone was laughing. Well anyways I walked a few feet away from the house and reached up to rub my head when I realized I was bleeding. Well, everyone else stopped laughing and started freaking out once they saw I was bleeding... except me and Lystrup we thought it was cool. Well, Arpine was a quick thinker and I guess did the Armenian thing and just rubbed salt on my head wound... strange. Well, long story short I took my hanky out and just tried to clot it. Then we went home and didn't do anything else about it. The best part was that we had tried to call Sis Dunn and let her know what happened so she could advise us on what to do, but she didn't answer since she was in South Zone Conference. The really funny thing was later when she called us back and heard the story she said she regretted not answering since we just assumed to not do anything. She also notified us it was too late to get stitches at that point also...I don't think it was bad enough for stitches though. Anyways that was the excitement, about a 3 inch cut across the top of my head. I guess the top of my head just hit the door and when I walked through it dragged and cut me open. I guess I just get another cool head scar like my other one...now I could really never shave my head, lol. Plus the other cool thing is this is the second or third time I have used a hanky to stop the flow of blood coming from my body...those things are so useful...well anyways I included some pictures from all the excitement...it wasn't that much blood, that's why I figured no stitches were needed, check out the picture of Arpine with my blood all over her hand...so cool!

Well I don't really have too much else to write about so I hope you all have a great week and I will write again next Monday!

Love,
Elder Piercy

P.S. Check out this chair in our apartment...we noticed the arms were super dirty so I just used a Tide Pen to clean the border around the flower thing...gross now it looks way dirtier...cool.

Georgia On My MInd

2009-10-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

Hello to all of my Friends-

Well it has been a busy exciting week full of travel and other interesting experiences... so I guess I will just start writing and see where we end up.

First, we went to Georgia this week. We left on Monday and returned on Wednesday so overall it was a pretty effective trip.

We got to Georgia a bit late due to the border being super busy, but we all arrived safely. When we arrived we went straight to Avlabari church since there was an institute meeting class thing going on. Basically it was super exciting because Elder and Sis. Shulz who serve in the Center institute in Armenia were there and Pres. Poghosyan was there who is the North District President for our mission. The funniest part was that the Institute lesson was done half in English and half in Russian, then it was being translated to Georgian and Armenian. It was pretty hectic but really fun too! After that we didn't have a ton of time for other stuff, just a little bit of street finding then back to the apartment.

The first night Elder Lystrup and I both stayed in Saburtalo with the District Leaders Elder Lucas(from Britain) and Elder Grigoryan(from Armenia).

It was a good time and we were able to do a lot of good training with them. The next day after our studies and what not we went back to the Avlabari church where we had District Meeting. That went pretty well, basically the meeting was just Elder Lystrup and I summarizing all those notes from the trainer meeting trying to help all the missionaries get ready for their sons. Elder and Sis. Packard were also there with us (the Senior Couple serving in Georgia). They brought fresh bread, peanut butter, jam and apples, it was pretty sweet we got a snack after our meeting! After District meeting, Elder Lystrup stayed with the District Leaders and I went on splits with Elder Peatross and Elder Coltrin to Avlabari. It was actually pretty fun because almost everyone in Avlabari speaks Armenian... apparently it's where all the Armenians live in Georgia, so I felt useful kind of. We actually did have one meeting with one of their members who is Armenian and I taught a whole lesson in Armenian which was fun. Below are photos of Tablisi looking out from the apartment in Avlabari:

Overall the day went well we had some good meetings and did some good finding. I also got to see the touristy super nice part of Avlabari because that is where we did our finding hour... it was sweet! Then we capped off the night with a Big Mac and fries of course from McDonalds.

I really enjoyed getting to know Elder Peatross and Elder Coltrin, I don't think I ever really talked to them up to this point, but they were super cool guys. Wednesday morning we headed back to Vanadzor... overall I think it was a good, successful trip. Plus I got my Georgian name tag while I was there... oh, and I think I have finally mastered the Georgian alphabet. I have been to Georgia 3 times now and finally I think I can recognize all the letters and read things, unfortunately it's like Russian for me and even though I can read it I still don't understand the word... except cognates! My name tag, top is Georgian, bottom is Armenian:

Well the day after we returned from Georgia we did a really strange thing, at least it was strange for me. One of our investigators Lusik wanted to have us help prepare her house for the winter... in other words we stuck tape all around her windows and door frames. I can't imagine it will really make a difference during the winter, but I just do what I am asked. Who knows maybe it does help. I am just the kid from Arizona where there is no winter so.... what can I say.

On another note, Lusik was baptized on Sunday between conference session which was pretty fun... she is technically the other Elder's investigator though, so we were just watching after her until they got back. It was cool that she is a member now, she has actually been meeting with the missionaries on and off for the better part of a year. She is one of the people I visited from my Alaverdi days when I was on splits.

I also have good news for Elder Lystrup and I. All the new missionaries came on Saturday from the MTC... Yay! The best part is that Elder Lystrup and I are not alone in Vanadzor anymore, Elder Thylin is back and his companion is Elder Jonas who just came up from Gyumri. As for all of the new trainees... the only one I have met is Elder Lusk, Elder Gull's son... basically I said hi, hopefully today I will get to know him a bit more. The funny thing was when he first got here Elder Gull and I played a trick on him so when he got out of the transfer van I ran up and gave him a hug exclaiming "son, I am so glad to see you!" (Sidenote: Don't tell Elder Garner about this he might get jealous, lol). Well Elder Lusk gave me a hug and just looked really confused. Then I just started talking to him all about Alaverdi where he is getting trained and told him how we had meetings all planned and just tons of stuff. Overall I went on like this for about 10 minutes until I finally broke it to him that I was his Zone Leader, not his father. He seemed a lot less confused afterward because apparently they saw pictures of their dads in the mission office, and I don't look like Elder Gull I guess. Well that was my practical joke for the week. Maybe someday I will grow up.

Well, I got to watch General Conference this week... kind of. I still haven't seen all of it but a lot of it. The sucky thing was on Sunday the Branch President in Vanadzor asked me to chill in the nursery with all the kids so that they would not disturb the adults watching conference, well I assumed that I would eventually switch out with someone but... KEESE! Basically I was in there for both sessions of conference and the baptism. It was 6 hours of tiredness for sure. It was super fun, but I was really exhausted by the end. Trying to keep track of and entertain 10 kids under the age of 9 is tough! But, I assume I will watch the rest of Conference sometime this week. I did hear that Elder Holland had Hyrum Smith's Book of Mormon which was kind of random... but who knows. The parts I saw where pretty good, it just seems like General Conference gets better the older you get and it just starts applying to life better. Maybe that's because I pay attention now.

Elder Lystrup and I are a little bit stressed because we have Zone Conference in a week and a half and still have a ton left to prepare, but it should be good. We have tons of good ideas and really just hope everything works out so it can be another successful Zone Conference. The unfortunate thing is that since about half of our Zone just got here, translating for the Armenians has fallen a ton on Elder Lystrup, Sis. Fager, and I the 3 oldest in the zone. Somehow I have gone my whole mission without having to translate in Zone Conference until now and now I do a ton of it. I am not really nervous, but it will be different because until this now I have only translated Armenian to English for Senior couples and stuff, but now I get to do the harder one- English to Armenian... I guess if it kicks my butt I will have something to work on, so we will see how it goes.

Well I have another interesting dinner treat for anyone. Basically Elder Lystrup and I forgot to buy food Saturday night and Sunday came around and we really had nothing- so here is what we ate. First we boiled some old noodles we found under our counter with hot dogs. Then we drained the water and threw it on a plate. We smothered the noodles in butter and then put taco seasoning and ketchup on top. We ate it all with some old bread we had left over from Friday... basically it was sick, but hey try it out and see what missionary life is like. On another note, that fruit thing from last time is great with everything, we have been doing pears lately, but apples and bananas together are great too! Below is a photo of my favorite Georgian bread:

Other than all of this, I really can't think of too much else to write about. So, I hope you all have an interesting week and I will write again next Monday!

Love,
Elder Piercy

A few Days Late But Here is Michael's Letter for Monday Oct. 5

2009-10-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dear all!

Well here I am on a Thursday afternoon writing an email to you on my lunch break. I guess first I should explain why I am writing now instead of 4 days ago. We were in Vanadzor reading emails when the power in the whole city... pretty ridiculous huh?... went out. Then by the time it came back on we were going off to Georgia. What can you do. But I guess I will write about the Georgia trip and all of that next Monday for now I will give you the report I was writing on Monday when the power went out.

Well last Tuesday we had a good District Meeting in Gyumri. Elder King spoke to all of us about Secret Combination's. It was really interesting some of the connections he made to our life as Missionaries, and also really interesting as we looked at different ways to combat Secret Combination's. Unfortunately it was our last time all together in the big District since this coming Saturday transfers are happening and of course we didn't go to District Meeting this most recent Tuesday. We will be going back to having a Vanadzor and a Gyumri District up here.

On Tuesday we also watched this crazy movie at the Relief Society Branch activity about water. It was in Russian, but one of the members was translating to Armenian for us. Basically it was all about how water has memory and emotions and junk. Apparently if I say "Hitler" to water it is not as good as if I said "Mother Teresa". Call me skeptical but even if water could feel hate and junk like that how would it possibly associate the word "Hitler" with hate and "mother Teresa" with love. Also it said we should thank our water and it would be healthier for us. Basically it was a crazy movie and I didn't really think much of their "Scientific Tests" then again maybe I am critical... the Armenians loved it.

Tuesday was also really great because we picked up 4 really cool new investigators. We went back and visited this young couple from when Elder Lystrup was here last time and they were really happy to see us. Plus they had another couple there, I think the man's brother... they loved what we were saying, were glad to see us again, and basically we picked up those 4 new investigators. It was really appreciated because it was right after this super hard annoying meeting we had. All I can say is the Lord really does look out for us and knows when we are having a hard time... then subsequently blesses us. I think these investigators have a ton of potential... then again I think I always say that, lol.

Wednesday was another super awesome day because we were in English class just doing our thing, teaching... but at the end one of our students Arpine came up and asked us why we never go to her house and teach her about the gospel so she can get baptized...well we did and picked her up as a new investigator. She really likes the gospel and already has a really strong desire to get baptized. Once again, just another miracle that we were given. We have been struggling with new investigators and work, but it seems like the Lord is really helping us out now. I think it is probably directly related to us just plain working harder. We had been talking to tons of people and trying anything to get new investigators and although non of the convos and stuff worked out, we were able to get them other ways.

Well last Thursday we had to go down to Yerevan again. We had a trainer meeting... basically the APs, Zone Leaders, and President just taught all the people who will be training how to be good trainers. I had a talk on how to help your "kid" find the right reasons for being on a mission. I think it went over well. Unfortunately I wanted a little bit more discussion than I got, but either way it worked out pretty well. I had to take a ton of copious notes though because we went to Georgia this most recent Tuesday to do the same meeting for them. The worst part was Elder Lystrup forgot his Study Journal so it was all up to me to take all the notes, lol. I did get to see Arman for a few minutes though and he and I were both happy to see each other and talk again.

Friday and Saturday were both pretty normal days, nothing out of the ordinary happened, just missionary work as usual. On Saturday we did start planning Zone Conference though since it is on the 20th of this month, we now have all the talks and everything planned out so hopefully everyone will do well with there assignments and be able to cover the things we want.

Sunday was church as usual, but there was hilarious thing. I guess here in Armenia they just don't put that much importance on school in general. They only go for about 1/2 the day and sometimes kids don't even go anyways. Well the funny thing was in church as part of the announcements in Sacrament meeting they were talking about this youth activity going on this weekend and asked all parents to allow there kids not to go to school that day so they can go to Yerevan for the activity. I couldn't believe it, in church they asked people not to go to school, it is just funny how different cultures work.

Now, for a couple funny things. Elder Lystrup helped me solve a riddle this week that has been bothering me my entire mission. Everyone here always talks about this sad and spiritual and great movie called "Charlie". Well whenever someone would say that movie title I have always thought of this movie I watched with my dad about a giant invisible bunny [of course he is confusing Charlie with the movie "Harvey", starring Jimmy Stewart and the Pooka as himself]... and never understood why it is a sad, spiritual, super good movie. Well it turns out there is another Mormon movie called "Charlie" about some girl who gets cancer and dies or something... I don't know... all I know is that nobody knows what this bunny movie I have been thinking of is... the name "Charlie" means that other movie to them. Well, that is why I have been confused my entire mission for about a year, seriously, because I was just thinking of a different movie. In all, Elder Lystrup thought it was hilarious that I was mixing up the two movies... apparently I am weird because I have never seen the mormon "Charlie"... I think I probably like the bunny "Charlie" better anyways.

Next funny thing, there are 2 new laws in Armenia. First off if you sit in the front seat of a car, you now have to wear a seat belt. I don't want to worry any of you at home but I have not worn a seat belt for a bout a year because they just don't do it in this culture but now all the Armenians are having a hard time using their seat belts and obeying the law. Actually they will go through the trouble of holding their seat belt low so it looks like it is on and have a hard time driving rather than just wear it. Kind of weird, but also really funny. The next new law that just got started on Thursday is a new Jay walking law. We can no longer cross wherever we want, if you don't cross the street in a crosswalk now it is a 3,000 dram fine ($10 bucks). Now I know that isn't much but President Dunn told us all that we better not get that fine because even though it isn't much to us, he doesn't want the church being made an example of not obeying the law. It will definitely be hard to enforce because everyone jay walks in Armenia... so far I have not seen it enforced at all but, Elder Lystrup and I are using crosswalks, even if the members laugh at us.

Well I really can't think of too much else to write about, I will be writing again next Monday and for sure I will try and post some pics this week. Other than that I just hope you all have a great fun rest of the week until next Monday when I can write again. Love You all!

Love,
Elder Piercy

P.S. It is jay walking not j-walking... I looked it up in my English Dictionary to try to see what the "j" stood for so I could translate it...turns out it doesn't mean anything, however I still don't know the word jay walking in Armenian...hmm.

Sorry, No Letter This Week!

2009-10-05T08:51:00.001-07:00

I don't know why we didn't receive a letter this week. I assume we'll get an explanation next week!

Just received this letter:

Dear parents of the awesome Elder Piercy, (my grandson by adoption),

Elder Piercy has instructed me to let you know that he will not be able to write you this week, as there is no power in Vanadzor. He asked me to tell you that he is doing great and everything is going fine for him. He will write next week.

Elder Piercy is such a ray of sunshine and breath of fresh air! He is so good for this mission, I can’t tell you. Everyone loves him here, but Elder Dutson and I love him the most! He is an awesome missionary and an awesome person. Just to tell you the kind of spirit he brings, he is so happy and upbeat all the time. I have never seen him down or even just serious. Except when he teaches the gospel. Then he is very spiritual. He is so full of energy and optimism. This is a hard mission because they can’t preach door to door. We really need his optimism. You have done a marvelous job raising him. Good job, mom and dad.

Sincerely,
Sister Dutson
Armenia Yerevan Mission

September Snow

2009-09-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

What's Up Dogs...YEAH!!!-

Well another week come and gone and here I am in an Internet Cafe on the other side of the world freezing in the middle of a September Snow Storm... missionary life sure is different, but it sure does rock! I bet no one else is doing cool stuff like this... except other missionaries here!

Anyway, the week was pretty good, so I guess I will just start telling about it.

Last Tuesday's District Meeting was pretty good. Again we went down to Gyumri and Elder King gave a thrilling District Meeting on Gifts of the Spirit and how we can find our gifts and develop them and also how we can gain new gifts. It was good. I liked it and we even did an activity where we wrote down what we thought other people's spiritual gifts were; which was interesting to read when I got mine back, lol.

We went down to Yerevan again this week. I like going to Yerevan because I love the city, but it also sucks because it ruins the day and is expensive, but we had Zone Leader Council. Basically Zone Leader Council is when the Zone Leaders in the mission: Elder Lystrup, Elder Ellison, Elder Harris, and myself have a meeting with the Assistants and President Dunn. It was really productive and we talked about a lot of good things and made plans for the coming weeks. Plus, we got to go to Gold's Gym and have lunch with President Dunn and Jim, the owner. I tried getting them worked up for another golf match, President Dunn said maybe when Elder Gull and I finish our North Area probation we can go do it again, lol. I think he is just scared!

Unfortunately we are going down to Yerevan again this Thursday for a Trainer Meeting. All of the missionaries who are getting their sons/daughter in two weeks are coming to this meeting and we will be teaching them how to be good trainers. I have a talk on how to love the people and help your trainee find out why he is really here. Should be pretty interesting and I hope it works out well, I will let you know next time.

We had a Baptism on Friday for Anahit, a lady from Vanadzor. She was the other Elders' investigator but we have all been teaching her so it was fun to see her get baptized. The service went really well, plus there were tons of miracles. First it was not a water day... technically that means no water, but somehow we filled up the font... twice. And that is also the second miracle; the water heater wasn't working so after we filled the font it was super cold. We called Anahit and told her but she wanted to get baptized anyway. (*Sidenote... this was amazing because for those of you who don't know the Armenian culture, they think if you get cold that you will get sick, so they never want cold water, but I guess she really wanted to get baptized*) Turns out all the sudden we got the heater working again so we drained the font and filled it up with hot water. And the third miracle; her sister who is a member wasn't going to be able to come because she got called into work and she was very sad, but it turns out that a car smashed into the power generator and knocked out power in that part of the city so she got sent home from work and made it to the baptism. After all that I am pretty sure Anahit will be a good member, apparently the Lord really wanted her to be baptized.

I would like to share a recipe with all of you... because Elder Lystrup and I are the greatest Chefs ever and we invented a great breakfast. Cut up apples and boil them in water with sugar... make cider basically. Remove all the soft and delicious warm apples and put them aside. Cook rice in the apple cider. When the rice is done, mash up the apples into sauce and put it on the rice with cinnamon and sugar... best thing ever! Elder Lystrup is pretty creative so I guess maybe I will post more recipes later... just so you know though it really is super good, we eat it every day.

Next, On Sunday, church was pretty good, the best part was the 6 Primary age kids we have got up in Sacrament Meeting and sang i love to see the Temple (in Armenian). It was so good, I loved it. Maybe I am getting weird but I thought it was one of the coolest things ever just seeing all those little Armenian kids singing and it really brought the spirit to our meeting.

Well I guess the last thing that happened this week was that Elder Lystrup and I realized that Zone Conference is just 3.5 weeks away and we haven't planned anything yet... so we started. We now at least have talk topics so I will give you updates in the next few weeks.

Unfortunately our investigators are not so hot right now, Arevik went to Russia for a few weeks and who knows when she will be back. The good news was Anush came to church... but still doesn't want to get legally married. What can we do.

Well I guess that's it for this week, I hope you have a great week and just "stay classy" as Elder Wolfley used to say.

Love,
Elder Piercy

P.S. Sorry still no pics, but it is tough with these Northern computers, I will try to get some out for next week.

It's So Cold In Vanadzor

2009-09-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

To My Lucky, Lucky Fans!-

Hope everyone had a fantabulous week doing whatever it is you do best, as for me, life is pretty good here in Vanadzor. I guess I will cut the junk and get to the stuff you all actually want to read, so let’s begin!

First, something I forgot to mention a couple weeks ago from our Georgia trip… apparently I am a really heavy sleeper. I knew I was a good sleeper, but I guess a big earthquake shook Georgia early Tuesday morning while we were there [An earthquake measuring 6.2 in magnitude struck mountainous northwestern Georgia on Tuesday but caused no casualties or major damage], and I didn’t even notice it… the strange thing was I was on a really uncomfortable couch so you think I would have noticed it but… what can you do. I guess that is why Elder Lystrup’s snoring doesn’t bother me, lol.

Next thing… it is SO COLD IN VANADZOR!!! When I left the city I was wearing short sleeves and it was hot, but in Vanadzor we have been constantly wearing our suits and yesterday we threw on sweater vests, plus we are going to start running our heater already. Looks like it's going to be a cold winter! What can you do? It is kind of fun going down to the city and showing everyone how cold it already is. For Zone Leader Council this week in Yerevan we are planning to wear sweater vests just to prove a point, lol!

Speaking of Yerevan, we had to go down for a Leadership meeting this week on Thursday which was basically just Zone Leaders, AP’s, and President Dunn teaching the District Leaders. It was pretty good, the funny thing was the AP’s assigned me the topic "how to have good District meetings" which was weird since I only did a few, but I think I did a good job anyway. President Dunn gave a really great talk. He talked for an hour and twenty minutes, but it just flew by… that always seems to be the case with him, he is really such an amazing man. One other cool thing was we got to go to Karma with Elder Spitak and his mini… Arman. Karma is an Indian restaurant in Center that is pretty tasty. It was fun hanging out with Arman again. He was pretty offended I didn’t tell him I was leaving Nork… but once I told him I didn’t know I was leaving either he took it better. He did tell me how astonished he was when he went to the office on P-day and couldn’t find me though, lol.

Well, what else happened this week? We went to Elder King’s District Meeting in Gyumri which went very well, he talked about getting back to the Basics in Missionary Work. President Dunn told us that we should use that as our Zone Conference topic since for the next Zone Conference half of our Zone will be trainees. Elder King asked us to talk for 15 minutes on how to make a Companionship Inventory “not gay” I believe those where his words, so that went pretty good. I think Elder Lystrup and I teach well together, everything seems to flow nicely when we teach.

Next order of interest… Alaverdi had a baptism this week which was really exciting, And here is the funny and really really exciting thing, for any of you long time blog readers, you may remember I taught a young woman named Rima back in my Alaverdi days with Elder Halcomb. She was so good and had a dream the church was true and everything, but eventually we had to drop her because she just wasn’t progressing… well she was the Baptism! It was cool seeing her again and she was happy to see me too! Actually, all of the people from Alaverdi were happy to see me again, especially Ofik… she practically attacked me when she saw me!

Our investigator situation improved this week! We picked up 2 new investigators and the coolest part was one of them ended up coming to church and she really enjoyed it! Her name is Arevik and she is a neighbour (the spelling is for you mom, spell check marked it wrong) of one of our members Vardan so we always have a Member Present to help us teach. I have a lot of hope in her. I think she is super cool and could be an awesome member. The only problem is, she is in the other Elder’s area so in 3 weeks when they come back, they will probably take her from us… what can you do though. I just want her to find the gospel. Our other new investigator is a lady named Anush who Elder Lystrup and Elder Wolfley taught a long time ago when they were here together. She is really great except she won’t get married by the law, because then she would get less government money… maybe we can work through it with her. That seems to be a big problem with people in Armenia, but people have gotten through it before, so I guess it all just comes down to faith.

Church was church as usual, thankfully I didn’t have to give a talk again this week like last week. We did get to watch the Young Single Adult address last night by Elaine S. Dalton… in Armenian, but it was still good. She talked about virtue again, I think this is like her 3rd talk in a row about virtue, so I guess it's important. So stay virtuous!

Well in all honesty I can’t think of too much else to write this week, sorry my email was a bit lame, but I hope you all have an awesome week and just keep being yourselves!

Love,
Elder Piercy

It Has Been an Exciting Week!

2009-09-14T06:29:00.000-07:00

What’s Up to all the Peeps!-

Well it has definitely been an exciting couple of weeks since I sat down and wrote a good long e-mail, hopefully that is what this turns in to. I guess I will just start typing and see what happens.

Of course, you all know that I am in Vanadzor back up near Alaverdi. I am actually really excited to be here because I really love Vanadzor and the Branch here is just awesome. One of the coolest things about being up here is that tons of people remember me and now it is a lot easier to communicate! Another cool thing is I already know the area pretty well, especially the others area, which we are in charge of now. There is one set back, since we lost a missionary President Dunn temporarily closed down the other Vanadzor area until the new missionaries arrive in October, so it is just Elder Lystrup and I taking on all of Vanadzor. It's cool to have the whole place to ourselves though! Elder Lystrup is really a great guy and I am really excited to serve with him. When I first got to Armenia he was serving with Elder Wolfley in Vanadzor and I though they were way cool guys and then he went down to the big city. Then when I got to Nork, Elder Lystrup was my District Leader which was really fun. Now, I’m back hanging out with him and it is a lot of fun. Everything seems somewhat surreal it just doesn’t feel right because I got moved in the middle of a transfer cycle, but I guess I'm beginning to settle in to everything. One funny thing though is that Sis. Davis is back in Armenia, but I haven’t had the chance to say hi since I got transferred the day she arrived... actually the last time I saw her was at the MTC almost a year ago. I have always been up North when she was here... whatever, one day I will say hi, lol.

Next, I was thinking about this really weird thing, I have never had a really long companion since I left my dad Elder Halcomb. I thought my son was going to be the first long one, but... KEESE!!! Anyways I was with Elder Halcomb almost 5 months, Harris 6 weeks, Gull 6 weeks, Arman 5 weeks, and my son 6 weeks... maybe I can stay with Elder Lystrup a little longer this time, lol.

Well the week was pretty good, we have a few investigators that we adopted since the other Elders left Vanadzor, so we have been working with them. We are teaching Anahit who is an investigator that I taught back in the day when I was here on splits with Elder Wolfley, King, and Winchester... the cool thing is that she had her baptismal interview and passed so she will be baptized in 2 weeks! Another investigator Lusik, I also taught back on splits with Elder Wolfley and King, is a lady who had trouble going to church before but now she can attend, so we are helping her work toward baptism. The last investigator is another oldie, Hambartsum... I think just about every missionary ever has taught him but now he is preparing for baptism and has a goal to be ready in 2-3 weeks! Overall we have some good work, but the problem is we have practically no work in our original area, so we will work toward changing that soon.

Oh, I forgot to tell you last week, on my 2nd day as Zone Leader I had to go do a Baptismal interview for one of Elder King’s investigators in Gyumri... he is the District Leader, so that is why I had to do the interview. It went well, she was a super cool girl and was really prepared, she had a great memory too!

Well I guess I will give a recap on both Zone Conferences since I went to both. South Zone Conference was really cool, we talked about love and just tried to get us all to have more love for the work, the people, our companions, etc. I told you I gave a talk on loving the people and our companions and I think it went pretty good. It didn’t blow anyone away but I got a few compliments for it. The best part was I was able to stay on topic and work my personal experience into it. The Zone Leaders Elders Harris and Ellison gave a really great talk on love in general, the AP’s gave us a talk on how to receive revelation and the requirements for it, and of course President Dunn just seemed to tie everything up in a nice bow.

North Zone Conference now... it was so fun! We went to Georgia of course, that is why my note was short last week but it was a blast. We actually got a P-day from 1-6, in Georgia, so that was pretty fun. We were in a group, Elder Lystrup, Elders Beus and Kyle(AP’s), Elder Halling, Elder Grigoryan, and I. We didn’t really go souvenir shopping or anything because we will all be back in Georgia a few more times, one of the North ZL’s and one of the AP’s visit Georgia with President Dunn every month. So instead we just went and did fun stuff. We started out of course hitting McDonald’s... so good!!! Then we went up to this big fortress thing on a mountain by Old Tbilisi. It was cool. We could climb on all the walls so we climbed to the top of this thing and up there we could see a ton of the city! It was a cool fun hike. We all got dirty in our suit pants which was funny, but that’s what happens when you climb walls in missionary clothes.
After that we headed out to the "great and abominable" giant Georgian church. It is seriously humongous but such a waste of space because there wasn’t anything in there. We did see some weird stuff inside though, like this crazy confession thing and all these incense ceremonies and stuff. Also the whole time we were there this guy was up at the microphone just reading chants. The Georgian Elders said that it was such old Georgian no one even understands it anymore which is pretty funny. Overall it was just the perfect image of the great and abominable church that we read about from Nephi in the Book of Mormon.

Well the actual Zone Conference went really well too. We didn’t have a set theme like love, but all of the talks came out really well, the speakers said the things they wanted and I really just enjoyed it. Elder Lucas talked about being spiritually great, Elder Jonas talked about “the Higher law”, Elder Clark talked about learning our mission language, then we had a conversation activity workshop. After that, Sis. Fager talked about SYL-ing (Speak Your Language), and Elder Halling gave his last words since he dies next week. [perhaps this means he will be going home?] Elder Lystrup and I talked about Boldness and went through the scriptures and pulled out some story examples and then laid down conditions for boldness. Basically, first you have to have a testimony, second you need to be worthy and righteous, and finally you need to follow the will of the Lord. It actually turned out really well with a PowerPoint and everything, it was just a very busy 5 days trying to get it all ready before leaving for Georgia. The AP’s gave the same talk about Revelation, but it was good again, then finally President tied it all up by telling some cool stories. It turns out that at the Mission Presidents seminar he attended a couple weeks ago they did a temple session with Elder Perry, and he and Sis. Dunn were chosen as the witness couple so President Dunn sat next to Elder Perry the whole time. One really cool thing was since Elder Perry is old, President Dunn had to help him put his slippers on! So cool! Anyway, for lunch we had McDonald’s again which was great, everybody got a BigMac, 9 piece nuggets, Medium Fry, Milkshake, and for a snack a McFlurry. Overall the whole trip went off without any huge problems. We didn’t have any problems at the border and we arrived in Armenia safe and sound on Wednesday afternoon. I did buy one souvenir in Georgia... a cool Georgian hat. I will try to post a pic and some other Georgia pics from the trip.

Well, P-day will probably be pretty chillax, not a ton to do up in Vanadzor but it will be fun hanging out with Elder Gull again since he is in Alaverdi right now. We are also trying to organize a trip to Gyumri sometimes to play sports so that I can go mess up my knee again... but we will see how that goes, lol.

Well, I really don’t know what else to say, I hope I got you all up and sorry this is kind of long but, I will end it now. I hope you all have a fantastic week and I will give you the word next week! Love ya!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Letter From President Dunn

2009-09-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

WOW! Didn't See That Coming

2009-09-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

To All The Peeps in America-

First, I don’t have that much time because I am in Georgia today… there is a story behind that so I guess I will just tell it now.

I am no longer a District Leader, I am no longer in Nork, I am no longer training, and I am no longer with my son Elder Garner. I have been EMERGENCY TRANSFERRED!!! How cool is that, don’t worry though, I didn’t do anything wrong.

So basically last week after South Zone Conference I went on splits to Charentsavan. I was there with Elder Williams, having a great time, when President Dunn called me Wednesday morning and let me know that he had good news and bad news. Well I asked for the good news first and he told me that I had been called to be a Zone Leader, then the bad news was that I had to plan a Zone Conference in 6 days… in Georgia! So I guess the old Zone Leader in Vanadzor, Elder Craft, was sent home, I don’t know why… nobody knows why but that is how it is. Anyway, I had to immediately go back to Nork, pack, and 2 hours later I was on the road to Vanadzor. So, now I am a Zone Leader in Vanadzor serving with Elder Lystrup… my old District Leader. The funny thing is that less than 2 weeks after my father went home, I was in his bed and in his place as a Zone Leader.

So, that is the news, I am a little disappointed because since I was transferred so immediately I have no pictures and no cool things from Nork, but what can you do. I am also going to miss Yerevan, but I am back up in the North… plus I am in Georgia again! The cool thing is I am now the only missionary to have gone on both Georgia trips.

Well, wish me luck, and I promise I will write a good email full of more info for next week on P-day in Vanadzor!

I love you all and hope you have a good week.

Love,
Elder Piercy

P.S. I get to attend two Zone Conferences this transfer...woohoo, the bad part is I had to give different talks in each one.

P.S again, Pray for me I don't know if I will be a good Zone Leader I am pretty young.

Worst Night of my Life on Saturday

2009-08-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

What’s Up to all the Peeps!-

Anyway another week gone bye and another one coming! Missions rock, always a new story and interesting new things to experience. I guess I won’t waste any time and just jump into the week!

First, rumor on the street is that Sis. Davis is coming back to Armenia tomorrow which is just nuts since she has been home for about 6 months or more now… I guess I will let you all know for sure next week. If she does come back she will be serving with Sis. Woolf [both in the MTC with Michael.] which would be way fun! Hopefully the rumors hold true! [Sister Davis went home with a herniated disc in February]

Anyway, I guess I should keep this letter short my son (Elder Garner) is feeling sick today, I think he got it from me… so we will probably be heading home soon, but I will write while I can.

We picked up a really cool new investigator this week named Tigran. He is this dude from Nepal who speaks okay Armenian but much better English. We were also able to pick up a Hindi Book of Mormon from the office for him so that was cool. He is just a way cool guy, he has had contact with the missionaries before and they just stopped meeting with him at some point, I guess he just got lost in translation somewhere. The only problem I see with him is that he wants to go to America really bad… so hopefully he doesn’t just think the church is a way to America… we’ll see how it goes!

District Meeting went well last week, it was all about loving life and what not. It was really just a good chance for everyone to reflect on their missions and other things. I just asked a lot of questions and had the district write down their answers in their study journals. It was thought provoking.

I had the worst night of my life on Saturday and Sunday was way rough too! Turns out that I may have gotten food poisoning or something from this pizza place we went to on Saturday for lunch. By Saturday evening I was feeling kind of sick, but kept working. Then when we got back to the apartment I had pretty severe diarrhea, but still got to bed. The rest of the night was terrible! I woke up every half hour just puking and going diarrhea… it was rough! All I can say is I am glad our sink is right next to our toilet because sometimes I needed both at the same time. I probably puked 15 times… between puking I was just drinking water so I would have something to puke the next time rather than just dry heaves and bile. On Sunday morning I was still puking with diarrhea… needless to say we did not go to church. Actually I didn’t really get out of bed until about 2:30pm. My son was so good though he had been up and studying the whole time since 8am… what a stud! The bad thing was last night my son started feeling ill, he had diarrhea and threw up once… he is feeling pretty nauseous here now though so we will see what happens, maybe it wasn’t food poisoning after all.

Well, I am sorry but no other super exciting news happened this week, we have Zone Conference tomorrow which we are all looking forward to. I have a talk on Loving the People and Loving our Companions. I am pretty excited for the topic, just because I love everyone so much, but I only have 15 minutes to talk so the trick will be getting right to the point from the start. I will let you all know how it goes next week.

I hope you have a great week and keep enjoying all the fun at home!

Love,
Elder Piercy

Farewell to Elder Halcomb, Elder Wolfley, Elder White, and Elder Hope

2009-08-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

To all the good People in America-

Well it was actually quite a week of excitement for me here in the AYM. First off again, a fond farewell to Elder Halcomb, Elder Wolfley, Elder White, and Elder Hope… we will miss them for sure but they are probably having a really fun time.

To start out, this week I went on splits with Elder Clark in Charentsavan before he left us. The transfers last week ended up taking him away from us, up to Gyumri, and Elder Williams got a mini from Nork… Tigran. The split went well, it was fun hanging out with him and we got a lot of good work done. Plus we got some very tasty pork chops and made some good apple cider. To finish up the splits we all met down by the office and grabbed some food at Gold’s Gym since it will be Elder Clark’s last time for a while.

Thursday, we headed over to the office to say good-bye to the group leaving. It was kind of weird, almost a surreal experience because it was the last time we would see them for a while, but it was fun. I was glad to see my dad again before he left and my son officially got to meet his Grandpa, twice! I wish he could have gotten to know him better, he is such a good Elder, Ah but that is life.

Thursday was also my year mark! It wasn’t really any different except I burned a shirt… yes outside, mom, and then my son and I had juice and ice cream for dessert to celebrate. It was actually a pretty funny day and a fairly accurate sum of my mission so far. We had a few meetings fall through, got persecuted, it rained super hard so we got soaked to the bone and we just smiled and partied through it all!

Friday we had a few more interesting experiences. We met this dude on the street who was asking us to give him all our stuff as a gift, it was super weird but also really funny. We finally gave him a Book of Mormon, what could it hurt, but then he wanted my pen. Well I wouldn’t give it to him because I need a pen for the things I do everyday, but he grabbed it out of my pocket and tried to run away, I made him give it back and then we just went our separate ways. Like I said, weird but funny. Later when I was at Nelli’s house, a member, she found out my knee was sore and she gave me this crazy remedy to fix it. She told me to mush up an onion and rub the junk all over my knee and then wrap a plastic bag around it, supposedly that would make all the pain go away. Well, I didn’t try it so I guess I can’t say it isn’t true, but Armenians sure have some interesting ideas for remedies and stuff. Next, while we were at the Dorms in the 2nd masiv I got bit by a kid on the arm… and he bit me hard. I have this big bruise from it. I was really mad about it too, but then we went to Emma’s house and she cheered me up. She kissed me and my arm a bunch of times to make it feel better and said she was doing it since my Grandma wasn’t there to do it. It made me feel like a little kid, but I was laughing so hard all my anger went away so I guess her remedy worked. Finally while we were at Emma’s house this guy just busts in and tells us he has a question for us. He then goes off on this long spiel about how since Adam and Eve were created, they would not have belly buttons so how did they have kids? Well first, I asked how he knew they didn’t have belly buttons and he said it says it in the bible… weird?! If it is written I don't know where, but I just moved on and then tried to explain to him that the belly button is an important feature for the child and doesn’t really have anything to do with the mother so it wouldn't matter anyway. Of course he was stubborn and wouldn’t listen to me, so I gave up and moved on to other things. It was definitely an interesting Friday.

Saturday was fairly interesting as well. We are the back up teachers for the Nork Seminary program, so we had to go to a Seminary teacher's in-service meeting and learn all the junk. The cool thing was we got both the teacher and student guides for the Book of Mormon course in English and Armenian so I have been studying them which has been pretty interesting so far. Later we wandered a lot trying to visit contacts and talk to people but nothing really seemed to work out, we finally did have a good meeting with Ashot, you know the crazy guy. We were actually planning to thrash him, but then we had a great 2nd lesson so we are going to keep teaching him for now.

Finally, Sunday. I had to talk again… like always, but this time I got to choose my topic so I talked on the same subject that Elder Stevenson spoke on at General Conference, how our homes can be like temples. Apparently I did a pretty good job because a lot of members thanked and complimented me. Even one really super smart, good member, Sylva said she learned a lot from my talk and that I filled her with the spirit. So overall I felt pretty good about it. Also if you have not read that talk… Holy Homes, Holy Temples… I think it's called, I would suggest doing it, it is a great sermon! Also we walked the streets for 3 hours yesterday and had a very interesting time. We actually met this one guy who bought us Lemonade and made us sit with him for 30 minutes and we just talked. Turns out supposedly he was a sniper down south in Armenia by Azerbaijan where all the fighting is now, but a bomb blew up and now he has this shrapnel junk in his back. It was a good story, but I don’t know if I believe it all. He was all mad at the government for taking away his government check even though his back still hurts. Of course he was drunk which was kind of depressing, but what can you do.

Well, I really don’t have too much else to comment on, our investigators are all in the same boat as last week and of course we are working on finding more, but it isn’t going so well right now. I guess I should get going soon. We are going to grab some Shaurmas, then go to the Amusement Park rides by the Mother of Armenia Statue. Maybe I will take some pics and let you know how that goes next week.

Well, I love you all and hope you have a great week and enjoy the new school year!

Love,

Elder Piercy

One-Year in the Armenia Yerevan Mission

2009-08-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

Click here to view a slide show of Michael's first year

On August 20, 2009 Elder Michael Piercy will complete his first year in the AYM

To all the Wonderful supporting people!-

Well first lets get it out of the way… on Thursday I have been a missionary for 1 year! I can’t believe how fast it has gone… it's almost scary, but good news… I GET TO BURN A SHIRT!!! I will be sure to send home some nice photos of the arsenity (not a word?) next week.

This week was another uneventful one, I guess my weeks in the city are just more calm then in Alaverdi. I am sorry I don’t have a billion colorful stories every week anymore. We did play basketball again today… it was sweet and I took this really good fall on a breakaway and sprawled out on the floor… then like 3 seconds later my knee was all big and puffy again, guess I get to drain it tonight… maybe I will send some pics of that too next week.

One really cool thing that happened this week was that we picked up 3 new investigators. We got 2 from this family we found in our Area Book that we went and visited… they fed us so much fruit! Sidenote: I love fruit so much in Armenia, it is basically all I eat… Apricots, Peaches, Watermelon…etc. The weird thing is I didn’t really like watermelon much at home but now I eat it for breakfast everyday… so good! Anyway, they are a cool family and actually agreed to come to church next Sunday… should be good! Our other new investigator is a friend of one of our members, Shahandukht. She is a cool lady, but hard to meet with, so we will have to see where that one goes.

The investigators that we already have are still giving us some trouble, Shushan just won’t accept getting baptized again… she thinks it's a sin. Today we are going to try to teach it to her 1 more time but if it doesn’t work out we will probably just have to thrash her. Ashot gave us a glimmer of hope this week though, we had a really spiritual lesson with him, I don’t even remember what it was on exactly because we didn’t teach the lesson we planned, but it was powerful. One of the funny things was that he was showing us something in the Bible and was teaching us, but basically copying the way we teach, he had us read a verse explain it, then he clarified more, it was just funny seeing someone copy us. We are going to meet with him tonight and hopefully we are at a turning point with him. Karine and Arman are still questionable, they love meeting with us and say they believe that our church is true, the trick is getting them to do something about it. They have told us they would come to church 2 weeks in a row now, but nothing still.

Mnatsakan is still doing very well but we had some problems in church on Sunday. It isn’t really his fault, just people are prideful I think. First, Hakob freaked out on him because he was telling him he shouldn’t smoke and do stuff like that, now it has blown into something bigger than it needs to be but…. that is life. Also Genya our other new convert doesn’t really like Mnatsakan because she says she studied the gospel for 15 years and prepared herself to find this church and Mnatsakan didn’t and doesn’t know anything… then she told me that perhaps I did something wrong for baptizing him… I guess we are just going to work through it and try to bring our new converts together in the unity of the gospel.

On a lighter note, Friday we went to another baptism, this time it was the 2 people I interviewed last week for the AP's. It was cool and the AP’s were super happy about it, they have been working with this family for a while. One of the other cool things was Elder Dow one of the Senior missionaries here did one of the baptisms and did the prayer in Armenian. I was super impressed that he learned it but no one could figure out how because the AP’s didn’t teach it to him… anyway that was so cool.

District Meeting went pretty well this week, I just had people prepare different talks on Christ, then I tied all of them together. It actually worked out really well, Sis. Fuhriman talked on the life and example of Christ, Elder Garner (my son) talked on Christ's attributes, and Elder Clark talked about the Atonement. It was really good and very powerful. The Zone Leaders were there and gave a short talk on the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5 and compared it to our little AYM tree which was super cool!

Saturday Night Soccer continues to be a success. This week we had a lot of good convos and are really just gaining a lot of respect for the missionaries in Charentsavan.

Well I already told you about crazy church and stuff, but I also had to teach Gospel Principals again. I just love being a missionary and having to do things with no preparation… it just adds an element of excitement to everything… for real! It went well I guess except that one of the times when Mnatsakan and Genya were fighting was during class. What to do… what to do.

We saw this member Flora yesterday, she always calls me Paul the Apostle, anyway she was lecturing us on how when we get home we should not get married too quickly like other people. It was actually really funny, she told me to wait 2-3 years, but it was okay to date, just not get married… and definitely I should never take a girl to meet my parents. It was all just really funny to me and Elder Garner.

Oh last thing, I guess I should just give a fond farewell and a warning to you in America because my father, Elder Halcomb, and the rest of his group: Elder Wolfley, Elder White, and Elder Hope, leave for home on my one-year mark, Thursday. It's going to be so weird not having them here but I know they are excited to be going home.

Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I hope you all know I love you. Keep being awesome.

Love,
Elder Piercy