Faith Like a Violet

Parts of the letter to me:

So Violet's doing pretty good :) She's way excited about doing missionary work and she's including her daughter and nurse with everything the church does. Plus she loves us too. Every time I come to shake her hand on Sunday, instead of shaking my hand, she slips some kind of candy bar in it :p She's so funny.

She was actually going to go to the hospital, but she said before her baptism that she had faith that through the baptism, she could get healed. We thought it was kind of pushing it, but later that week her nurse said she could just do her treatments at home. And now she says she's getting better really quickly. Plus it looks like her heart problems are about gone. :) So I guess faith has no Boundaries.

Around Christmas time, we sent Jared a bunch of yarn and these looms called Knifty Knitters.  They let you knit hats without any actual knitting.  I had them at home and showed Jared how to use them before his mission.  We thought he might like to use it to make hats for himself, companions, and the people of Armenia.  ..Speaking of yarn though, there are places everywhere here for yarn, and it seems like Sister Carter knows them all :p There's actually one right off the Metro station we use to go home :)  I already gave away the 1st one to Sister Kholer because she gave me a tie and I had to make it up to her. It was a funny story actually, she was just walking through this one store and was looking at the ties and the store owner came up to her (kind of flirtatiously) and asked if she had anyone in mind for the tie, and she said she was just looking. The guy then told her to just take the one she was looking at, so she did :p She didn't need a tie, so she just gave it to me :) 

We made a picture book for Jared through the company Shutterfly that included a lot of family pictures as well as pictures of himself in band and scouts. ...The picture book is well used :) I carry it in my backpack everywhere. Everyone always looks at it and they love it :) The most asked question is what is the funny uniform I'm wearing (both for scouts and band :p )

Letter to Carl:

 Hello!

This week was good. :) Challenging as usual, but good.

As far as youth in Armenia, it's a bit lacking, at least in the branches I've served in. It seems like there are mostly elderly women that attend, which is a bit discouraging. In Malatia there were none. In Charentsavan, there were actually a few, I'd say about seven or eight, but then here in Center there's only about one or two active.

With conference, we watch it a week later than it takes place so that we can watch it with the rest of the Armenians. We actually have our own disk that we watch in English, usually somewhere else in the building, while the Armenians watch a dubbed version in Armenian.

Violet is doing just great :) She's found her place in the branch and she has quite a few friends she hangs around with. When we teach her now, we actually teach her from the New Member Lessons which is lesson 5 in Preach My Gospel. So hopefully we'll be doing those soon. Plus we also teach the first 4 all over again, now that she has the spirit to guide her in her learning.

On Sunday I had to translate for all three hours because Elder Fairclough was sick and had lost his voice, and Elder Peterson did it last week. (And Elder Rackham is still in his training). I was actually kind of nervous at first, but I didn't do as bad as I thought I was going to do. I never feel like I make progress in the language, but it's nice to have those little moments that let you look back and see where you've come from.

Some Iranians also came to church and we had a meeting with them afterwards. This was kind of difficult because I'm not used to dealing with people who don't accept Christ as our Savior. They brought up the point where Christ never says He is the Son of God directly in the Bible and I thought that was a bit odd. So in personal study today I did a project on that and found quite a few scriptures, in the Bible and in modern scripture where Christ reveals his true identity as the Son of God and our Savior. Plus scriptures where God himself says Jesus Christ is His Son. So they said if I could find a scripture where Christ directly says that, they'd join our church :) So I'm going to be bringing my notes next Sunday.

They did say though that the really respected our church though because out of all the denominations, our church comes closest to Islam, which is actually somewhat true. We believe in a high standard of modesty, we both believe in not smoking or drinking, and we both believe in the Abrahamic covenant. It just makes me realize that all of us in the world really aren't as different as we think :)

Then you get people who try to tell us Christ actually didn't die in Israel but actually moved to Greece and then Japan and died of a ripe old age there after having three sons. He's seen the grave himself....
sighhhh....

Quote of the week:
Me: "We bring news about Christ"
Guy: "Way good. What is it"
Me: "Well it's called the Book of Mormon"
Guy: "Wait, aren't Mormons dangerous"
Elder Peterson: "Do I look dangerous"
Guy: "Wait, you're Mormons??"
Us: "....."
Guy: "I thought Mormons danced around naked and did tribal dances"
Us: "....."

Our sink overflowed this week. So we took it apart to see what was wrong, and it turns out everything was wrong. Years and years of grime, food, rice, and peas were clogged up in the drains, so we spent one of our meal hours cleaning all that up, but thankfully we came out victorious, not a penny poorer, and feeling just that much manlier for fixing something ourselves :p

Love you all! :)

Elder Hammer

Shopping in Armenia--Pictures

Here are some pictures Jared sent us this morning.  He sent them kind of late so I could not upload them earlier.  There aren't any pictures of him but they do show where he shops and how cold it is still!

This is where we go shopping. It is THE biggest store in Armenia. We are so lucky :))

Garegin Nzhdeh square, right by where we live

Garegin Nzhdeh :)

Marshutine

Electric bus

(Referring to the last 2 pictures)  Menus at a restaurant. They don't have most of the food that they post, but it's up there anyways. They have all the stuff on the first picture except the last thing (pizza?) and only the first thing on the second. In order, Kebab (pork), Kebab (beef), Shaurma, pizza (don't have), [2nd picture] Lahmajo, and the other three they don't have :p

Everythings coming up...Violets!

Hello!

So first the big news for this week. We had a Ukranian come over for two nights this week from Monday to Wednesday. Our Ukranian was actually from Denmark. His name was Elder Klestrup from Copenhagen. It was an interesting experience.

On the flip side, VIOLET WAS BAPTIZED!! So this is the story: Her nurse called on Tuesday and said that she had been admitted to the hospital because of an unexpected heart problem (she had actually been rushed in an ambulance). She was released on Wednesday to take medicine at home. She told us she still had to go in to the hospital for that 10 day treatment though. So on Thursday we went on exchanges with the Zone leaders and District leader. So I went down to Erebuni. On Friday night I get a call from Elder Peterson saying "I hope you're free at 1:30 tomorrow, because you have to BAPTIZE VIOLET!" Apparently she said her 10 days were going to start this upcoming week so she had time to get baptized and confirmed in church.
So I get to the baptism and we perform the ordinance which was way neat for me :) First time ever in my life. I get out of the water and step into the bathroom and realize, because I was on exchanges, I hadn't planned for any spare...clothes :p So I was in the bathroom putting my legs underneath the automatic hand dryer for quite a bit of time. Then on Sunday, Violet said she wanted me to confirm her as well, so I did :) It was quite a neat experience for me. It's was just kind of weird changing her name on our phone from " I Violet " to " M Violet " (I is for investigator. M for member :) ) It seems like it's been such a long journey, I can't believe it all happened that quickly.

Anyways, Violet's nurse came to her baptism and actually came to church to see her get confirmed as well. She turned to me just after the sacrament and said "I also want to get baptized" :) So that was way cool. Violet's daughter though said she also wants to get baptized :D So it was just a crazy time for us.

So despite a rough beginning of the week, it turned out alright :)

Anyways, I love you!!!

Elder Hammer

Us and Elder Klestrup

A shaurma :) yummmmmm

Our apartment front porch

Pizza Pizza!

Letter to Dad

 Hello!!!

So first off big news for this week. Today we are receiving an Elder from the Ukraine mission :) After a year they have to renew their visas and while they do that they have to stay in a new country, so we're hosting one of them for three days :) That should be fun.

So as far as pizza goes. It is actually 300 times better here. I'm not quite sure exactly what they do, but they have this one place called Tashir and it makes amazing pizza. The crust is pretty thick and they mix mayonnaise into the tomato sauce. The cheese here is about as awful as the milk (pretty awful) but for some reason when they put it on pizzas it actually tastes pretty good. They have quite a few weird toppings but they do also have some really good ones. They have this one three meat pizza that I really enjoy, and they have a couple other interesting ones.  Plus they also sell crusts at even the smallest grocery stores here, so we often make our own too :)

So as far as the email rule goes, it was just instruction President Carter got from the Area Presidency. President Carter included it in Zone Conference. He made an analogy about a table with shaky legs. He said if these legs are shaky and you have something fragile you want to put somewhere, are you going to put it on this table? No, so what do we do to fix it? We don't have to absolutely destroy the table, we just have to tighten the legs a little bit. So with the mission, Heavenly Father is giving us people to teach, but he won't put it on shaky foundations, so he wants us to tighten up the rules a bit so we have a solid foundation for them.
....I'm still getting used to it, but it will be fine I guess. Snail mail still takes quite a bit to get to and from here, so that won't be to fun.  For instance, I still haven't gotten the packages, but they should be coming soon :)

As far as health though, I'm doing fine :) Just about over my sickness.

So Elder Peterson is from Clinton Utah. (His brother was actually interviewed for his eagle badge by Uncle Neil :) ) He hasn't gone to college yet but he's thinking about going to Weber State. Some day he's thinking about maybe being a professional baker (of cakes and treats and stuff). But yeah, I don't know a whole lot about his family but he has four brothers and two sisters. Both of his sisters are married and one of his brothers in law actually works for Marvel Comics as an illustrator. He actually worked for a few years in Santa Monica :) But yeah, as far as sports goes, I think he played soccer while he was in school :) So yeah, that's my companion.

I'll try to do better on pictures. It's a little difficult because I don't have too much time to take pictures and we're not supposed to while we're proselyting, but I'll see what I can do :) I actually had a few for this week but the computer doesn't accept pictures. We might find one in a bit that does, so stay posted :)  (He did send pictures!)

Funny you should mention rock throwing youth :p We were actually walking by a few when they started throwing rocks at us, so we took off and tried getting away. One of the youth ran after us and caught up with us and starting talking, pretending to be interesting. Then he took Elder Peterson's tag and walked off, saying "thanks for the gift" I was a little bit more frustrated than I should have been, so I said "hey, don't take that. You're stealing" He then said "No I'm not, you gave it as a gift" and I said "No we didn't, that is a lie. And now you've broken two of the commandments" (oops.) He walked off and we decided to just let it go, but one of his friends got mad at him and brought the tag back for us. I kinda felt bad afterwards, so I decided to take more control of myself after that :p

And for service we actually went and chopped wood for our member Samvel again. It was funny, Elder Peterson was having a bit of difficulty with one of the logs so Samvel tried coaching him. He said "Strike the axe on the wood. Don't place the axe on the wood, strike it! Pretend it's a Lamanite!" :p We love Samvel and his clever remarks.

Anyways, that was my week :) Love you all!

Elder Hammer

Ps. As far as packages go, the mission just wants us to send them though normal mail because if we don't we have to do some customs thing. Just for any future references :)

Two quick notes from my letter:

...Soooooo Violet. It was a rough week. She'll called us and told us she'd be going into the hospital today. She passed her interview and was going to be baptized tomorrow, but....yeah. So we'll see how that turns out. She'll be in for 10 days, so we're not quite sure when she'll be coming out. :/

...So is it warming up? Well we thought it was. Then we walked out the door this morning and saw a blizzard. So we walked back in, put more layers on, then went out to do internet. :p

Jared included these pictures.  He said some were from a branch activity. I personally like the first picture...and the lumberjack picture..and the orange tie picture.  Okay, I like most pictures with Jared in them!!!

Email Change

Hi!  I've added a small page to Jared's blog.  On the right side of the home page, you'll see "Jared's Companions".  It is a link to a page that lists all the companions that Jared has had since he started and includes pictures.  Here's Jared!

Hello!

Before I start in, I have a little announcement. President announced at Zone Conference this week that the policy is changing now so that I can only email family and him, so others have to write by snail mail or Dear Elder :/

Anyways, so it looks like things are starting to melt over here. We were sitting doing studies when we hear this huge crash. We look out the window and all the ice from the ceiling, about 50 pound of it, fell off and crashed to the floor. :p We were also able to chip the iceberg off of out front steps :)

My cold has pretty much gone away, but something really weird happened though. On Wednesday or so, we were about to go outside when I feel a drip in my nose, so I sniffed and thought that was the end, but it kept on coming back, so I wiped and found a whole bunch of blood on my hand. Naturally I freaked out, because I had never had a nose bleed before :p I run to the bathroom and about half a cup of blood comes out before it finally stops. It was really weird for me but I guess it's normal in the outside world. Guess it was just the dry winter air and the fact that I had a cold.

As we were walking to Violet's this week, I heard a strangely familiar sound. As we rounded the corner, lo and behold there was an Armenian marching band right in front of the play house. :D I was pretty excited to be around my type, but we were running late, so we couldn't stop. They weren't quite the best quality :p but it was nice to hear something I haven't heard in almost a year now :)

Speaking of Violet though, we couldn't get much done that meeting because she kept on making fun of my accent to our member present every time I spoke... :p great....

And on the ride back, I was reminded that the metro is still an Armenian metro. Right after we got on, the lights went off in the metro, and the driver naturally can't see the cab behind him, so we were stuck in darkness the whole ride. It was a little awkward, seeing as a herd of teenage girls were giggling right next to us.

On Sunday, the lot fell on me to translate for the Seniors during Sacrament meeting. A lot of it was easy stuff like "I know this church is true" and "I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet" but then some would go in telling their life story about something or other and using all these technical words. So that was less than fun. :p

Anyways, Violet is doing great and should be getting her interview tomorrow :) Next Tuesday we're hoping for a baptism :)))

So, I love you all :))) See you next week!

Elder Hammer

Bullies

It looks like it was another challenging week in the mission field.  He mentions that he got sick this week. He could really use our prayers.  But he's still there and doing the work! This week it will be one year since Jared received his mission call and we began to know and love a little country on the other side of the world.  Time flies! Here's the news from Armenia.

Hello!

Thanks for the advice you send every week. I really appreciate the insight and the creative ways of connecting things to missionary work :)

So this week I got sick. It wasn't fun at all, but I'm getting through it. Yesterday I had to take the evening off to rest, but the good thing is that it looks like it's working. :)

Anyways, lots of crazy stuff happened this week. Some of the stories will just have to wait until I get home :p But know that your prayers are heard and answered out here :) It's really interesting seeing the hand of the Lord when it comes to certain things.

We met one old man this week named Lova Papik, which means Lova gramps. We met with him the day after we found him on the street and he was way nice. He wanted to feed us so we went into his kitchen and tried to help him out. He gave us a can to open and we both tried opening it but couldn't to save our lives (and I've been doing my push ups every day). So Papik gives a little "aghh, give it to me" and he places it on the table, then goes on to smash the lid with his elbow several times (he's 82 by the way). He then picks up the jar and lightly removes the lid :p

 Anyways, he told a story about how in 3rd grade there was a bully who would always take his books at school and told him that if he said anything he would cut him with a knife, that he brandished every time. So eventually he got kicked out of school because he just wasn't learning and couldn't tell anyone why. He still remembers that kid and said that he curses him still.

So sad story, but even more sad, at the end of our meeting we were about to walk out the door when his grandson comes in and asks what we were doing here. We said we were here because of our faith. And then he told us to never come back. We said that we were invited by him and he said that it didn't matter. Papik then asked what he was doing and the grandson said he'd tell him later. Because we didn't really want a conflict, we just left. I couldn't help but compare his Grandson to his bully. Both kept him forcefully from learning things that would change his life.

Well, you win some and you lose some.

We also met an Iraqi-Armenian this week. His accent was crazy and it was almost impossible to understand what he was saying. He wasn't quite interested in the gospel, but he was Christian and said we were doing good stuff here (that's something that doesn't usually happen here).

Fun fact: We live right next to the (one and only) air force base here in Yerevan, so quite often I get distracted by MiGs flying around doing routine practices every day :)

Anyways, that's my week. Sorry it's a bit short :)

Love you all :)

 

Elder Hammer

A picture of us and Violet and Sister Reading :) (Elder Reading is taking the picture)

We're cleaning out the left over jello from New-years....It's better that I'm not showing the picture of the close up...

Found this in the basement of the Mission Office :p

Stepping in His Footsteps

Parts from Jared's letter to me:

Hello!!! :)

So I think I'm pretty lucky when it comes to crashes and everything here. Two sets of sisters have gotten in marshutine crashes since I've been here. One was a head on and almost resulted in a roll-over but thankfully the spirit of the Lord resides with missionaries and everyone was fine in both situations. :p

...So out here I try to do 15 minutes of Book Mormon as well. I would do more but I only get an hour for personal study. Plus in the evenings I like reading the children's Book of Mormon in Armenian :p It's fun because I understand all the words :p Plus we also read about 15 minutes in the actual one during language study as a companionship. 

...So about Violet, she's kind of dropped us again. Not completely, but she doesn't want people coming to her house because she's ashamed of how small it is and we can't just come by ourselves because she's a woman. Soooo....merrrr....but we're still working with her and hopefully it will work out.

Anyways, don't let the clouds of life get you down :) Always remember to play in the puddles when it rains.

Letter to Dad:

Hello!

Thanks for the pictures by the way :) (Carl sent pictures of his time as a missionary in Denmark) It's proof that in fact, these stories actually did happen, and that my dad actually was that age once upon a time :p  Before long, you'll be watching Jeopardy at night and be in bed by 8:30 :) Jusssttt kidding :P

So I hope Maddie gets better :) (Maddie has the cough/cold stuff going on) You know, I actually haven't gotten as sick out here as I thought I would. That being said, I did actually go to the hospital this week because I've been feeling fluid in my ears most mornings and it hasn't been to fun. I went though and they said they couldn't find anything wrong. So 20,000 dram later I add something else to the list of stuff that needs to be checked by American doctors :p

Thanks for your stories from your mission though. It's always a nice reminder to see that the number of baptisms don't mean anything, especially considering how great of a person you turned out to be. I guess I wasn't frustrated that my potential baptism was taken away from me, I was frustrated that Yeran was taken from us. We really liked that kid and it was exciting to see how he accepted the gospel so well and how he saw the blessings starting to work in his life. It was also quite frustrating because our last few investigators have either moved to Russia, gotten offended by the 'male present' rule, ended up living in another area (about three or four so far. They live on the other half of Center), threaten to get our Visas taken away, etc. It just kind of brightens the week when you have work to do. But anyways, we're doing fine. We find ways to make the day worthwhile and fun. It just takes a little more work.

This week I met another man on the street who happened to be a taxi driver in LA. He knew Santa Monica and all the streets etc. So that was fun. And it always is a way to break the ice on the street. Literally.

Speaking of breaking the ice though. Things are kind of warming up here, and as we were walking to church we heard a loud crack and looked just in time to see about 100 pounds of snow and ice fall from a tall roof straight onto a brand new BMW :p I'm sure that will be a surprise when the owner finds out. I'm just glad we weren't underneath that.

So the church has been around for about 20 years or so here, but we still have to teach some pretty basic doctrines. For instance, in Gospel Principles, our teacher started talking about how Jesus' name isn't Jehovah (a common dispute in this country) and then we had to correct that. Then they said we were wrong and didn't know what we were talking about. Sighhhhhh.....So we had to pull out the scriptures and testify and quote modern day prophets before they stopped calling us liars. :p Fun Sunday.

It turns out that a lot of stuff from America reaches here. For example, someone asked me about Davis from BYU. I decided not to get into that subject. A lot of people on the street though have been saying "Hey isn't Obama that Mormon thing?" and we have to clarify that it's actually the candidate for president.

We actually had a fun experience this week walking along the side of a freeway because there was no other way to get to one of our investigator's houses. Crossing off-ramps and dodging speeding traffic was a great way to get the heart pumping. Along the side though was a massive amount of snow that only had one set of footprints in it, so we quite often got knee deep in snow. I thought to myself though "What kind of spiritual message can I pull from this?" and this is what came to mind. The whole time we were walking, we always tried stepping in the one set of footsteps because it meant we didn't get a ton of snow inside of our socks and it tended to be a lot easier to walk. Some other ways looked easier at times but it always ended up taking more energy and resulted in wet, frozen toes. I guess in comparison, there's one Man who took the pain of walking through all the snow in our lives, and all we have to do is follow in His footsteps. It's the easiest way and the most comfortable way and in the end will save us a lot of energy and grief. :)

Anyways, that was my week :)

Love you!

Elder Hammer

So You Say You're From France?

Satik Tatik, me, our investigator Davit, Elder Peterson

Hello!

So Valentines Day doesn't really have the same foothold here, though the candy stores are trying hard to change that. The church here however likes to take the American holidays and make activities out of them, such as Halloween and those kind of things. So there is going to be a youth activity for Valentines day. We'll see how that goes though :p

As for tortillas there are none here, but they have something close called lavash. It's like a giant flour tortilla about two feet wide and four feet long and they make all sorts of things out of it. They do have one Mexican restaurant here which is actually not too bad. It is way expensive though, so we only go there for birthdays and stuff. :)

Anyways this week had it's up and downs, but things have seemed to get into a routine, so the work is pressing forward. With this mission though, who knows if things will change in the next week, day, (hour even?)

But one piece of news, we had to give up our one investigator who we taught the first three lessons to, to the Assistants because he was just barely out of our area and we didn't even know because we were meeting him at the church. So we were way sad about that. Violet has her baptismal date though! For the 13th of March. It happens to be her birthday as well :) She said she wanted me to do the ordinance too :) So hopefully I'll be getting my first baptism soon :) assuming I don't get transferred.

We went on exchanges this week and I got to serve with the new missionary Elder Rackham. He's a way good missionary, and really motivated. We had an awesome 2 or 3 days together. It was kind of interesting though being the older companion for the first time, if only for a few days.

While we were on exchanges we were walking around the square by the Opera and all of a sudden the streets went empty which was really weird. Then we heard sirens and then the Presidential Armada came rolling down the street with all sorts of official looking cars, so that was way neat.

I was getting ready to go out the door when all of a sudden a heard Elder Peterson scream pretty much like a little girl. So I run in thinking he got shot or something and I see him run into the bathroom. I asked what was wrong and he said he had put his hand in his backpack and felt something squish and lifeless, like a dead rat. Something that was not supposed to be there. So I put on some gloves while he's boiling his hands and open the backpack a tiny bit. I look inside and see a banana, rotten and brown. After laughing for a bit, I went and told Elder Peterson what his culprit was.

We were visiting this one potential investigator who had come to church and we found this one ollllllddddd lady at his house. We said hello to her and she was probably the liveliest one there. Her hearing was awful though :p We were saying, where we were from and she was like "Whattt? They're from France?" We said, "No, from America." She said, "You live in America, but you're from France??" We said "No, just American." She said, "Well, then where did France come from??" Then we explained none of us had said anything about France :p Then someone asked where we were staying and we said Shengavit. Then she said "Why are you staying in the hospital? What's wrong?" Then we explained again where we were staying :p She was super nice and funny. We asked to take a picture and when we said to stand in front of the camera, she stood with her nose practically on the lens :p It was way too funny. Her name was Satik, so we all called her Satik Tatik, which means Satik grandma. :)

Anyways, that's my week. Not too much going on :)

Love you all! :)

Elder Hammer

2 feet of snow fell this week.

Elder Frosty:p We made this while doing service for a member.

Money here

Slip Sliding Away

Hello!

So, yes. It is more than cold here. It snowed again which dropped the temperature below comfortable. Since I don't read metric temperature very well, I just figure if a plus is next to the C, it means 'comfortable', if there's a negative, it means 'not comfortable'. Plus it didn't help that our water heater broke this week, so it's just as cold inside as outside. I almost cried last night. It's a good thing I have a giant marshmallow blanket. (It's big and white, and really warm.....to a point). And so, that also meant no warm showers...merr...

Speaking of the cold and "no broken backs". Funny story, (well it was funny for Elder Peterson). The second day after snow comes is the worse because it kind of melts during the day, but then freezes again at night, creating ice...everywhere, because no ones scrapes snow off of anything here.  So we had to walk up a hill and turns out the whole hill was ice, so we both got about halfway up when I realized that instead of going up I was going the other direction. So I resigned myself and slid all the way back down. Elder Peterson followed and we found a patch on the side of the hill next to a building that had some snow left which provided traction. When we got to the top,we saw an Armenian just take off from the top of the hill and slide all the way down. We were kind of jealous.  

On our way back, we had to go back down the hill, so Elder Peterson took the snowy side while I, being impatient, tried to follow the example of the Armenian. So as you can expect, my pride brought me pretty low. I didn't even make it to the slope before I smacked down and Elder Peterson watched as I slid right by him on my rear, sprawled on the ice. There happened to be a car back up at the top of the hill waiting for someone, and it honked, the driver inside laughing....The best part is that when I got up, I made it about four more steps before I wiped out again.

Later on that day we were walking around Shengavit when I tried stepping up on a curb and wiped out again, making number 3. That time I just kind of laid there for a minute, sprawled out again, not really feeling like facing the two teenage girls who watched the whole thing and were, also, laughing.

Yesterday we were trying to get to Violet's house, and yes, I wiped out again, except this time on stairs. That was a little less fun. So my back hasn't really been too happy with me lately and my entire left side of my body is sore :p

So earlier on this week we had an experience that really showed we must be doing the right thing here. We were together with Elder Hatch and Elder Peterson (the tall) and we were going to our church so they could meet their landlord who lived in Center. As we were walking across the street, this one boy in front of us, about 17 years old, turned around and spat at us. He missed for the most part, but managed to get Elder Peterson (the small) on the jacket a little. We kind of assumed maybe it was just an accident...maybe and kept on walking. As we got closer to our church though, the boy kept on looking back. Finally he just stopped and said "Stand right here! Don't walk this way any more" we explained we had to get to our church, and then he went off saying something about a crazy house and saying he'd do cuss words to our religion. Finally he just kind of stopped and we said, that we could walk in front of him if he'd like. Then he said something about killing and whatnot then right before he left he spat a huge wad of spit in Elder Peterson's (the tall) face at point blank, some of which bounced off into my face. So that was fun :p He's been known for punching Elders though, so we considered ourselves lucky. 

So a cold, less than encouraging week, but the good news is that Violet is our silver lining. She's way excited for baptism and shows up for everything the church has to offer, Sacrament meeting, Institute, all sorts of stuff. And she calls us her grandchildren (and treats us like it too). This Sunday she was in church and signaled for me to come over, so I came and she looked like she was about to say something and then just shoved a whole bag full of candy into my jacket pocket and said "share with your friend" :p She is honestly our favorite person right now. :)

Anyways, that was my week :) I love you! :))

Elder Hammer

Me and Khachik, a new member

Us and Zaven, a really good member

Khachik wearing my backpack :p His idea.

Letter to Santa Monica 2nd Ward

What a pleasant surprise it was when I stumbled on a letter that Jared had written to the entire Santa Monica 2nd Ward, our friends and fellow church members here in Santa Monica.  I was reading the ward newsletter and at the very end of it, there was a letter from Jared!  I thought I would share it with everyone else.   It's neat to see the growth Jared has made while on his mission.  I'm a lucky mom!

Hello!

Well things are going great out here. We just got a new group out here and it's been really interesting to see these missionaries and it has given me an opportunity to look back and reflect on the progress I've made on my mission.

For the most part it was kind of hard to see that I had been making any progress at all. Armenians are quite blunt about things which is both a blessing and a curse. But they have taken the liberty of telling me (quite frequently) that I don't speak the language well. Understandable seeing as I've been in country about 5 months now, but slightly discouraging none the less. So for the last little while, I've been focusing on where I need to go. I've been looking up the cliff side and realizing there's still a long ways to go. I think there was a conference talk about this but I can't remember. 

The new group coming in kind of gave me an opportunity to stop and reflect, and look down the cliff side and see how far up I've come. I thought about my first few weeks in this country and how I barely even spoke in lessons and didn't understand anything going on in Sacrament meeting. I look at things now and I'm working almost 50/50 with my companion during lessons and I'm even starting to translate in Sacrament meetings. 

Besides the language though, I've made some serious spiritual progress. I think the thing I've gained a testimony about the most is the Book of Mormon. I had a pretty interesting experience at the beginning of my mission. I decided that I wanted to read the Bible during my personal studies because I wanted to say I've read the whole thing if I'm out there saying we believe that both the Bible and the Book of Mormon work together and are the word of God as one. I neglected my Book of Mormon reading though and I noticed things were just hard. Things weren't working out the way I wanted and I felt like I was working on my own. I took one Sunday though to start the Book of Mormon and my day just brightened up. I felt happy and at ease, as if there was something behind me, supporting me throughout my work the whole day. My companion and I didn't have any contention between each other (not that we had much of that anyways) and everything was better in general. 

Since then I haven't missed a day of reading and things have gotten much better with my work. It's not a big change, maybe just 15-20 minutes a day of serious study, but it makes all the difference. I've been through the Book of Mormon twice now and I'm working on my third, and I can honestly say I find

something new every time. 

Anyways, I can't express enough all the appreciation I have for this ward that has supported me so much. I wish I had thanked each and every one of you before I had left. But I truly am grateful. It's hard to know where I would be without all of you. Thank you, and may the Lord bless your lives.

Elder Hammer

How to Clean Your Clothes in Armenia and Other Fun Pictures

Hello all!  So after I posted Jared's letter, my hubby started asking where the pictures were.  What pictures?  I obviously had missed something.  When I checked again, there were 8 pictures that I had not seen.  So here they are along with some comments Jared made.  Enjoy! 

 

The pictures  are of me and Elder Peterson at the memorial today, one of a screw stuck in Elder Peterson's shoe. We couldn't pull it out, so we screwed it out. And one of a popular laundry detergent brand here....I don't think the makers know English...I might have included one of our planning board, but I can't remember :p

At the Memorial

Elder Peterson and Jared at the Memorial

 

At the Memorial



Elder Peterson and Jared



Elder Peterson's Shoe



Jared fixing the shoe



Really?  This is supposed to CLEAN the clothes????



The Planning Board











Properly Placed Strokes

Hello!

This week was more successful I'm happy to say. Elder Peterson set a mission-long record for him self with 8 new investigators this week. I had a good week in Malatia, but if it weren't for that week, I would have set a record with new investigators too. Unfortunately, the trick is keeping the investigators you find. By the end of the week, all of them had dropped out except for our good investigator Violet and a 16 year old we picked up this week. We had actually seen him at church for the last few months, so everyone thought he was a member, but then we said something to the effect of "When were you baptized?" and he was like, "What?" So we picked him up and he agreed to a baptism date at the end of February. So if all works out, we should be having two baptisms at the end of this month :D My first two of my mission.

Anyways, a transfer happened this week but I'm not moving :) for once. Elder Seegmiller moved out of our district to Nork :( but now Elder Fairclough is training the new missionary, Elder Rackham! So that's a really cool experience for him. And it's kind of fun to have a new kid in our group and see how I once was. :p But yeah, that's way cool.

So we found out that the great new investigators that dropped us, that I was talking about last week, the ones who went to Russia, turns out they never went to Russia. We ran into her brother again and he said that they were still here. We called them and found out the truth. Apparently, their landlord says if they talk to us again, he'll kick them out, so that was a bummer to find out about.

So I learned a pretty cool life moral this week by chopping wood for one of our members. He's about 70 years old and has rheumatism and blood problems and all sorts of crazy other problems. I was out there chopping the wood, bringing down the axe way hard and feeling all manly about my self. I would cut through the wood in about two strikes, sometimes even after one it would go right through. Then our member said "Wait, hold on, hold on. Tsavd tanem (not really a direct translation to that, but it kind of meant, "goodness") You're hitting too hard." He then took the axe, and a fresh stump (you have to realize these stumps are huge) then brought the axe down and destroyed this stump straight down the center. Then went on to pulverize the entire thing. His strokes weren't even that powerful. At points he made it look like he was just cutting through butter, sometimes with only one hand. He then looked at us, then looked at the pile, then back at us, and said, "With the properly placed strokes, you use maybe half the energy." So it made me think what kind of stuff I was doing in life that could be considered improperly placed strokes. Stuff that gets the job done, but if done a different way would make things easier and more efficient. It was kind of funny though to see a man, who is a few times my age, show us both up.

This week we were standing on the street, talking to a 60 year old lady who was fond of pushing me in the chest every time she wanted to make a point, when I heard some sirens which sounded kind of weird to me. I looked and there were 2 military police cars escorting about 7 trucks full of troops going into the city. Needless to say I got distracted. I was brought back into reality by a shove from an impatient woman who wasn't happy that I wasn't listening to her... :p

On Sunday, our branch took the third hour talking about sacrament meeting and what they didn't like about what went on (it was kind of irreverent). They then went on to say how the translating by the missionaries was awful (we had to translate for a talk the senior missionaries were giving) and it was putting them to sleep. (Part of the irreverence was caused by an old lady in the front yelling "What are you saying?? I can't understand you!") Then they took the whole time talking about how much we were terrible at the language and should try focusing on the language of the spirit instead. I was translating that 3rd hour for a couple guys who were there from a business based in Utah, so I kind of watered it down for them saying "Well, they're kind of making fun of us right now..." :p Oh well, you do what you can, right?

I met a guy yesterday actually, who used to live in Santa Monica for 6 years! I was really excited. He was impressed because of my language because I had only been learning for a few months. He said he had been in America for 6 years and had only learned two words in English. :p I thought he should meet some of our members. I kind of got distracted talking about Santa Monica for a few minutes. We got his number though :) Hopefully going to pick him up as an investigator.

Fun fact, we may live in little America, but there are a couple things that remind you that Little America is still inside of just as Little Armenia. For example, if I want hot water for my shower, I have to turn on the sink to get the water pressure up high enough. :p But we're lucky though, because not all missionary apartments have hot water, so we're still blessed :)

So that's my week :) Love you!!

Elder Hammer

Tomorrow

Hi everyone!

We received an email from Jared this morning that said this week he is switching his P-Day to Tuesday.  So if he hasn't written to you, wait a day.

Take care!

The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away

Hello!!!

So this week was definitely one to write home about...so to speak :)

If I were to title this, I would call it, The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away

Now to explain:

Elder Peterson and I were pretty down after not having any investigators for a really long time. Our one that we had, Violet, promptly dropped us once Elder Peterson got here because, 'she had no time'.

After struggling for a while, we resigned ourselves to walking on the streets until we got investigators, either from walking, or from the members we were meeting with. One night, we were walking along and I decided to take the attitude of not worrying about the numbers. I changed my mindset and honestly just wanted to bring these people to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The results were pretty amazing. We left all our pamphlets with people (6) and gave both of our Book of Mormons away. It was getting late and I was anxious to get inside after a long day's hard work, when one kid, Vahe, about 19, stopped us on the street. He started asking the typical questions, and then went on to ask us if we had girls over at our place (he asked more than that but we'll keep this PG). Eventually we wiggled our way out of that one and left the last piece of church material we had with us with him, one Articles of Faith card with our names and number on it.

That night we got a call about 10:45. We let it go because it was late. The next morning, though, we called back and it was a man named Gor. He said he got our number from the streets, but neither of us remembered a Gor. But he said he wanted to meet, so we got his address and set up an appointment. When we went over to his house, both he and his wife listened intently. Then, Gor suddenly got up and said he wanted his relatives to hear what we had to say. So he left and brought back two men. One was his wife's sister's husband, and the other was Vahe! Apparently Vahe had given the card to his sister (Gor's wife) and she had given it to him. We extended baptismal invitations to all of them and they were way excited and said they'd be ready by the date we set. They even said next meeting they would bring over 3 or 4 other members of their family who wanted to listen. That night, Gor's brother called us and said he wanted to meet with us (separate from the 3 or 4 others who were going to come)

So we set appointments for all of them on one day, in the evening and morning. We called the day of to confirm the appointments and Gor said he had been wanting to call us. He then said he was moving to Russia for work...that day.

So we lost all of them. We tried calling back later to see if we could meet one more time, but he busied us every time. We then called his brother to see if he could meet. The conversation goes as such:

us: Hello
him: Hey
Us: This is the Elders, we wanted to know if you could still meet
Him: Who is this?
us: The Elders
Him: You dialed the wrong number
us: Oh, we called this number yesterday and it was Artur (his name)
Him: Ummm, wrong number
us: You aren't Artur?
Him: No
us: Who is this?
Him: (silence).....uhh.......Aiden.....

So that was not quite fun. Something must have scared them all away. But we can't do much about it now.  We then also found out that day that someone we were hoping to meet with ended up going Apostolic church and didn't want to speak to us again.

Oh well :)

On Sunday, though, Violet called us back after her having come to church. She said she wanted to meet with us again. She believed everything we said, and she wanted to do whatever she needed to do to be baptized. :) So maybe we just needed a test first. :)

Anyways, the rest of this week was neat. I found out during personal study that our ancestors are written about in Our Heritage :) I was just reading and I saw a story I thought was familiar about the John Hammer family. I matched it with the one in the family history written by great grandpa about the one blind horse, and it matched up! :) Fun fact.

There's a portion of the metro which goes outside. So I was sitting back watching the snow fall outside when I realized, the snow was falling inside the Metro as well. I looked up and there was snow flying in from little cracks all over :p These metros need to be replaced.

Our working with less-actives seems to be paying off. We got quite a few to come to church, including one, we figured out, who was having Word of Wisdom issues. :) So I don't feel too useless anymore. I think the results though are all coming from a desire to just help, instead of a desire to please the mission president with numbers. I guess it shows where the blessings come from :)

Anyways, I love you all!!!

Elder Hammer 

Numbers Aren't Everything

Hello!

I remember playing Chinese checkers with you back at Aunt Ruth's house :) I lost every time, even though I'm pretty sure you let me cheat a couple times. I think once or twice I may have won actual checkers though :)

 I really am trying to do heartfelt work though. Lately, we've been doing more re-activation than anything else. It doesn't show anything for our numbers really, but it helps the branch out a lot. Plus, we're hoping that some of our re-activated members start helping us find new investigators and coming with us to member present meetings. It's also a companionship goal of ours to meet everyone in the branch and try to form friendships with them.

The reason we have so many less-actives though, is because there was a period of time (known as the candy-giving time) where missionaries would promise financial aid if they joined the church. Some missionaries would baptize over 50 members, and then only one would continue to be active. So we're here trying to clean up that mess. We would meet with some and realize some didn't even own a copy of the Book of Mormon. One of them didn't even know what it was.

I guess it's just hard in a culture where everyone shuns us because we're not from the Apostolic church. They cling to it way too much, understandably. It's been the only thing keeping this country and race together over the years, but it really is a stumbling block for everyone. No one wants to look at us, let alone listen to us :/

But anyways, this week was alright. In terms of numbers it was our worst week yet, but hopefully that will change with the season.

This week I got a package from Grandma and Grandpa Merrick :D I finished it off by the next day :p That made my Tuesday :)

One of our members in Arabkir just got his mission call....to Armenia :p So we'll be having a native Armenian speaker within our circle of missionaries. We're all excited, yet a little apprehensive to have someone who will know Armenian better than English serving with us.

So we were getting on the subway this week when I heard the doors close and a little squeak come from Elder Peterson. I didn't realize what it was at first so I just kind of looked forward. Then Elder Peterson tapped me and said, "my bag is stuck." I looked, and sure enough, part of his bag was sticking out the doors of the Metro. So he had to patiently wait until the next stop (which happened to be the longest stretch of track on the whole system) to let himself loose. :p

Something I've realized out here is that sometimes, you just have to be a nice person. We got in a taxi and I made several comments asking what his name was, how was his work going, how was his family. When we arrived, I made a motion for my wallet and he just said "it's not necessary" and smiled. I asked if he was sure and he said he was. I could tell I had made the end of his night for him. A lot of people here don't really make casual talk and sometimes it's just nice to see how people are doing :)

Anyways, love you all :)

Elder Hammer