Week 6  Balancing the Natural Man

ძვირპასო ოჯახი და მეგობარაბი,

Yet another week, and this one seemed to go by even faster than the last one. Oh gosh, I am leaving soon...  I am ready and then not at all at the same time. So glad I have a few weeks left before I go out, because a girl kinda needs them. I will go through my week as per usual. The beginning of the week was a little rough for me. Nothing really fun on Wednesday, except the temple was great though. We tried to go as a district but the elders were late so we missed each other. Thursday was a roller coaster. I woke early, well I wake up early every day now to study now. I wake up at 6 every morning to study, besides Sundays I let myself sleep in. Sleeping in as in waking up at 6:30. Never thought in a million years I would think that waking at 6:30am would be considered sleeping in. I might start waking up even earlier cause I need more study time. I gave an unexpected lesson that morning. I was not prepared whatsoever. That was the worst lesson I have ever given. I winged the lesson, and I learned that I can't wing lessons. The biggest problem was I didn't know what to say in English let alone in Georgian. I almost cried in that lesson, it was not fun at all. I was so glad when that was over.  I had TRC that night, which was my last TRC person to person. It actually went well....kinda. I taught four people that night, one on two, twice. One of my lessons, I had my teacher’s wife in it. That lessons was funny though because they didn't know one of the words I was saying. I was teaching about EXACT obedience. I was saying ზუსტი, but they thought I said სუსტი. Now what I was saying was “exact”. What they thought I was saying was “weak”. So that lesson I taught about the importance of “weak” obedience and how it is a gift from God. Hilarious really. Friday was so much better. I taught a much better lesson and committed the role play person to baptism. I saw 2 dogs at exercise time😊. In class I learned more Georgian grammar. Fun fact about Georgian conjugation is that if you know the infinitive of the verb it doesn't mean you know how to conjugate it. So...basically you have to memorize the infinitive and the conjugated version. Yeah...go Georgian.

Saturday was soccer Saturday and the last soccer Saturday for my companions, they leave Monday for Russia. They don't let people leaving the MTC exercise the last few days to make sure they don't hurt themselves. Saturday’s lesson was........meh. I taught my “new” investigator (as in my teacher pretending to me a new investigator) the whole first lesson. He threw a lot of curveball questions at me, some of which I didn't even know how to answer in English...so that was nice. Brother Muir is always pushing me, which is good in some ways. That day I also met my new teacher, I already forgot his name though. He will only will teach me like once a week, so probably won't see him too much. Sunday was great because I slept in to 6:30 (which is normal time we are supposed to wake up). It snowed!!!!!!!  Just a little bit and melted by the afternoon, but it was awesome. Sister Stockman (my companion) had braided my hair the night before, so my hair was all curly and puffy that day. I taught relief society with one of the Armenian sisters that day. After being able to teach with her, I am even more excited for a companion out it the field than before. Like, having a companions make life so easy! I was with my district the whole day. My district is so awesome I wish I was able to be with them a lot more. Monday I didn't have to teach, was nice. I learned Georgian directions. We did an activity in which I had to guide my teacher to the cafeteria using Georgian. If I said the word wrong he would continue with the direction that I had previously said. It was basically a video game in which you don't know the use controls. It was pretty funny though. Tuesday was stressful. I had my first skype TRC. Usually you would skype with someone from the country, but I got a return missionary. I hadn’t finished the lesson by bedtime so I set my alarm to 5am so that I could get up earlier and finish it and study/practice before service work. That didn't happen because the alarm didn't go off...so I had to scramble to put something together. The whole morning all I wanted was a companion, not even in a sense to carry the load but just for moral support. All I wanted was someone next to me. So before TRC I said a very long prayer and tried to envision the Savior next to me. Was the lesson perfect? Heck no. But, I wasn't as afraid and the all my nervousness was gone. And a tender mercy was that my companions had their TRC at the same time. So, they were in the room with me the whole time, maybe not next to me, helping or listening, but there were there. Devotional we had another Apostle come, Elder Stevenson. He gave a great devotional and even spoke some Japanese. I understood some of it which was cool. I was assigned to give a talk for this up and coming Sunday. What is funny though is that talks in sacrament have to be in our mission language......so like no one is going to have any idea what I say because no one speaks my language...no one! And here we are today. The week was good, with some ups and downs. I have a lot more to improve on, but hey წინსვლა(progress)! 

Spiritual thought I thought I would give an analogy that I was taught this week. I will do my best to describe it so you can follow along. I was shown this a visual object lesson. Basically, you take a scale and label one pan natural man and the other pan spiritual man. On the natural man side you put a rock. On the spiritual man side you put a cup of water. Obviously, the water in the cup is going to weigh a lot less than the rock. This is when the Savior comes in.  He is going to push down on the spiritual side to help you balance it out the natural man side. Now here is the cool part. There will be times where the Savior sees that if he just lets up a little on the pressure, you will have to grow. So that is what he does from time to time. He lets off just a little bit of pressure so that you can start to learn for yourself. Lately, I feel the Savior is letting up just little bit of pressure so that I can take on the weight and learn for myself. I have seen that this week especially. I felt that this week was just a little bit harder in certain areas that were easier before. I guess I have something I need to learn. This definitely applies with life. The Savior can trust us at times to do things on our own and to learn things on our own. He knows when he needs to help and when he needs to bless us. It is all on the Lord's time really. 

           

Well that was the week. I get new companions this week because my companions leave Monday for Russia. Hopefully I join my district's sister’s trio. Well, until next week.

-და ჯენსენი