Headbutting

Hello!

Sometimes it hurts to be lifted up so high, only to be dropped....hard. Well, this week we were sitting in a bench when a guy came over and asked about us, etc. We asked how he was doing and he said not good. He told us he was trying everything to get his mind off of death. We asked him why, and above other things, he had a father who had had three heart-attacks and was now dealing with cancer along with a leg injury caused by malpractice. He asked us if we could come over sometime and pray for his father and read from the scriptures. We agreed and came over later that night. During our meeting we prayed for him and his family, which put the father in tears. He told us that we prayed for exactly what he needed and wanted. It was late so we could only read a short verse about the Saviors love before we left.

 The next day we came over and we asked the son how he was doing and he said 'towards good'. Everything seemed to be starting off well. We were going to pray and then tell him how he could pray whenever he wanted, and he didn't need us to pray for him, because God would always listen. We were also going to teach that we could pray from our hearts, but before we could get to the lesson, an acquaintance of the family came in. He saw us, then began to tell the father he was very unwise to let us over. I said hello to let him know we knew Armenian and that we understood what he was saying, and then he turned to us and in a very lengthy manner told us to stop being idiots, cut out our destructive work, and go home. He then turned back to the father saying...not good stuff. The son realizing the situation could get worse, helped us leave and said to come back another time. 

They were close to being my first investigators, a whole family of them, in 3-4 months. But, that's fine. I guess the Lord has other plans for them. We'll still try to get a hold of them; I guess we'll see how it goes. 

On our way home though that night there was a light rain, and later we saw some Chinese lanterns floating above the Armenian Church in our area. Just a little tender mercy  which cheered me up from a very bad day. (We'll skip what the other people on the street that day told us to do)

There was a Relief Society activity for our branch on Saturday, at which Sister Carter gave a fifteen minute message about the most important things in our life. Early on in the week she had asked me to translate for her. She used an example which was focused around the idea of fitting your time into a box, which was funny, because just that morning, I had studied how to put the word 'box' into several different cases (cases are basically tenses for nouns). 

Well, time for a funny story. Every week seems to have one. So we were just walking along when this 60 year old man ushered to us. We asked him how he was doing, but he didn't answer, he just gestured for us to follow him. We followed him until we got to this one garage which he opened and invited us in. As soon as we got in, we bolted the door shut and started jabbering in Russian. We said we understood Armenian and then he began to jabber away in Armenian. It was pretty obvious the guy wasn't all there. He told us stuff like Stalin is still alive, America doesn't really exist, etc. Then he came up to me and said "English people don't usually like it when I pachel them (the Armenian form of greeting with a kiss on the cheek), but is it okay?" and grabbed my head with two hand. At this point I was getting a little nervous as he moved in closer. Then without warning he headbutted me right in the head with strength that defied his age. I grabbed my head and it was all I could do to keep from laughing in front of him. He then, with a complete serious face, proceeded to ask the same question to Elder Woolley (we were on splits) to which he responded "uh...welll" and then he got head butted too. At that point I couldn't hold it in any more and busted up. We both said we had to go, and headed, no wait, that's not the right word, and aimed towards the door. The man smiled and said we could drop back by at any time.

Well. That's it for this week. :) I love you all!

Elder Hammer

Elder Christensen fighting a battle with the language :p

Me and Elder Christensen :)