It Can't be True if There's No Microphone!

 I love waking up to mail in the inbox on Mondays!  He writes Mondays around 1:30 P.M. Armenian time.  So by the time we wake up over here on Mondays (12 hours behind), we already have a letter from our boy!  Here are his latest letters home.

Letter to Dad and the family/friends:

Hello!

I remembered my journal today so I should have some pretty good stories, and sometimes photos to go along with the movies.

So first off, Alah and Sussana passed their interviews! So they will be baptized this Saturday. We're all so excited. 

But anyways, something for dad. I showed someone my pictures of my family and they asked if dad was Chinese. :p I thought that was funny because everyone always says that, even all the way across the world.(Carl has been asked on many occasions if he is Asian, so it's funny that even in Armenia they are asking the same questions! Actually he has Swiss/English/Scottish/Irish/French/Italian/Jersey Isles ancestry. Carl likes to say he's a mutt! Carl's words, not mine!)

Scary story: We were walking by this one man when he called us over. He looked like he had a smug grin on. So we came over and saw he was talking to a policeman. Soooo we tread very lightly seeing as proselyting is illegal here. So the guy thought he was getting us in trouble by calling us over. The policeman asked us what we were doing here, and we were like "we're just on our way to an appointment". At this point another policeman came over too. But then the original policeman said "No, not right now but in general" Then we told him a bit about what we do and teach. They just seemed like nice curious policemen. Needless to say, though, we didn't invite an invitation for us to come over. When we left, the original guy who called us over looked a little disappointed. :p

Our one old friend with the daughter who had us carry the crib is taking a little turn for the south. We thought he was so excited for everything, but now he's [upset] because our church doesn't have a microphone. We came over one day and he just told us that everyone is just praying and talking to themselves and that the Book of Mormon was a lie. We said "Have you read it?" and he said "No" So we said "How do you know it's a lie?" and he said "Oh. I guess I'll read it" Problem solved. Hopefully he gets over the microphone shenanigans.

So when we were driving back from Sussana and Alah's house, there was a massive thunder and lightning storm, which is still going on kinda. The taxi driver had his window down which wasn't too bad because we were going so fast it didn't make a difference with the rain....don't ask how fast. But at one point we passed by a lake in the road and another car came by and splashed everything inside our taxi. Everyone was soaked, and I got a face full of water. Fun...It was a hot day anyways I guess.

School started here in Armenia too. The Elementary/Middle school thing is right across from our apartment. They had some huge production and show in front of the school before everyone came in. It was kind of interesting seeing everything they did. Though after about 2 hours of it, we just wanted them to get inside and start learmin'. We were trying to plan for our week while they were making all that noise.

Something that I really like is that the Russian Air Force does training over Yerevan every morning. There are typically four MiGs in the air and one time they flew right over our apartment building. So awesome :) (Can't tell he was accepted to the Air Force Academy once upon a time, can you???)

Funny story:

So one morning I went to grab a bowl in the cupboard and the door to it just came right off. I swear I didn't do anything. It's just the cheap Russian wood glue they used to put it on. I showed Elder Lush and he was a little shocked, and said we'd fix it sometime with some sort of glue. So while he was in the shower, I was going to play a joke on him and say "Hey, the landlord called and said he's coming over in 5 minutes." But then the phone rang. It WAS the landlord saying he was coming over in 5 minutes. So we kind of rushed to force the door in place and kind of used some crazy setup inside of the cupboard to keep it up. The landlord came over to do a maintenance inspection and checked every one of the cupboard doors...except the one we broke. We were so thankful that he passed right over it. He just fixed a couple of drawers and the window that was already broken and left. 

Anyways, I love you all and I'll see you next week!

Pictures:

*cough* well...that was my bad. (See picture of Jared and the cupboard)

They have these huge ducks here that just roam the street

Elder Hammer

Letter to Mom (He's answering a bunch of questions I asked him earlier.)

Hey there!

Great pictures :) Except it looks like I died with Maddie holding up my picture :p

[Editor's Note: We sent Jared a couple of pictures this week.  Here was one of them.  We have a tradition of first day of school pictures with the two of them.  So since Jared wasn't here, we used his picture instead.  It's  kind of what we used to do at Christmas time when we would take our traditional "Kids lined up on the stairs" picture. When my brothers were on their missions and they couldn't be there, we would just take their picture from the wall and set it by us. I guess this picture does look a little morose!]

I hope school is going well. School started here in Armenia too. I thought of you when I saw it.

My building has about ten floors, but I'm on the third, thank goodness. That would be a lot of stairs, and I have bad experiences with elevators here.

The ice cream here may be good, but nothing beats good old custom made homemade ice cream. :)

It's not the same Susanna, that Susanna was a youth baptism, but Susanna and Alah are getting baptized on Saturday! :D

But yeah, I hope things are going well back home. I'm safe and healthy here, so don't worry about me :) We always talk about family with our investigators and it's nice knowing I have a family that I can be with forever that supports me in my life. I'm especially thankful that I have a Mom as cool as you. Elder Lush and I talked about my family, and I talked about how we should have been brother-sister instead of Mom and son. But I think everything ended up working out ;)

Well, I miss you a ton Mom and stay safe back home. :D I love you!

Elder Bear

(Have I mentioned lately what a lucky mama I am? Love my bear!)