Week 17  We. Are. Moving!!

That's right we are moving out of our apartment! I will explain it more later in the email.

A drawing of me from the "Metro Artist"!

So this week started out great we had a zone conference which was awesome. We talked about how we can get baptismal dates to stick and to help someone get over their addictions. This was my first real zone conference since the other one was more like a Christmas party. It was so great to be around all the other Georgian missionaries and to learn from them as well. After zone conference me and sister Van Brocklin went with the Donovan's to go apartment hunting. We found one place to go look at and we went and met the person. Amazing apartment and the landlord lady is suuuuper nice! The only problem is there is no elevator, but I probably need that since I have been eating so much bread. Thursday we sealed the deal and we have a new apartment! We saw our investigator with the baptismal date a few times this week. Our last lesson didn't go as well. It started out with her mom interrupting the lesson by walking in with only a towel.........it was the most awkwardest thing in the world and I had no idea what to say or where to look.  I guess I am glad she is comfortable with us...but that was a little to close for my liking. After that, the rest of the lesson was her talking about how she can never forgive someone for this thing that they did to her. It would make sense why because she lost three important people to this thing, but it takes up her life. She will not go outside often except for church when we go with her, and she plans on leaving this country specifically because of it the issue. Sister Van Brocklin and I have no idea where to go with her next. We also found out that she isn't as gospel knowledgeable as we thought she was...we need to reteach a lot of the lessons, because right now she just thinks any church is good. Hopefully this week we will be able to help her more. 

Game night this week was great. We had this one guy come that we met on the street. He talked to us because he knew English, but he was very awkward the entire time. He would not look us in the eye...Anyway he came although left soon after because he got a call from a family member...he had three phones all of which worked. One of the elders has a speculation he was a drug lord...but I will try to think the best of the guy.  Also, I was drawn by the metro artist! This lady basically sits at the metro and draws people for money. She drew me and it's not perfect, but I freaking love it! I've included a picture of it. We also got pocket badges for the sisters since they had leftovers from the elders. So now I can put one of my badges on my scriptures. I of course will attach a picture of that as well, I love my badges. And now we are here. We have a lot of packing and cleaning to do today. Missionaries have lived in this apartment for 5 years, most of those years being the elders who lived here. So...yeah...its a mess.  Thursday is moving day...I am super excited about that. 

"Mom, you would not be able to handle it!" -Rachel

Spiritual thought: I have seen the gift of tongues working in me throughout this week. I have been worried the past few weeks about my language, since I can speak the language, but I am not conversant yet. Which is difficult because we teach to needs. I have been praying really hard and trying to learn as much as I can, but some days are harder than others. This week I felt that I was able to say more in my prayers as well as speak the language more. It's coming slowly but surely, but I have been able to see how diligence and prayer play a huge part in obtaining the gifts and knowledge we need from our heavenly father. It is a process, but nothing is as fulfilling and life changing as something that makes you work for it. Heck, that is why we are here on earth, to learn! 

           

That is the week. We have a very interesting week ahead since we are moving, so next week I well have some fun moving stories to tell. Til next week!

-და ჯენსენი  

Beautiful Tbilisi

My new pocket badge for my scriptures. Love.

Week 16  The weeks are a blur!

This week was great and to be honest I can't remember too much about it😬 Tuesday we had district meeting as per usual. We had a return missionary teach the language study part and I learned a lot more Georgian and I wrote down a lot of notes so that in a few months when I am finally able to make fluent sentences, I can tackle what he taught. We had exchanges from Tuesday to Wednesday so I was with Sister Seely in the Gldani area. We had a meeting with a member who came up from Kutasi to give us a referral. At the end he showed us parts of his farm and his donkey that he is very proud of. Cool guy. We went knocking later and was invited in to this old lady's house who was an engineer. She had all these math posters all around her room walls saying things like; sine, cosine, and tangent (I believe..its been a while)...just a bunch of math stuff that brought back good old school math memories. Glad I don't have to worry about that type of math anymore. She also talked about her last name and showed us a written blessing that was given to her family by the orthodox church...apparently it's a famous/special last name....cool stuff though. Thursday we had the landlord lady come over to fix some (literally all) of our apartment. Her repair man tried...but the water heaters only work sometimes (one has yet to stop leaking period), the sink is worse than before, and we always have to turn back on the water heater in the morning. Let's just say that tomorrow we are going apartment hunting with the senior missionaries because this apartment sucks. Cool location though, just really broken. We saw our investigator with the baptismal date that night. We talked about faith and how to get faith is through reading the scriptures, praying, and going to church. We also invited her to the baptism that was on Saturday. She is doing great. We have yet to go over commandments (she loves coffee and tea)...but that will be the most telling to see if she is going through the motions or she is really invested. She has a few other problems with forgiveness because she has had some things in her past she can not forgive of, but we will cross that bridge soon. Saturday was the baptism and she got the days mixed up so she didn't come. She came Sunday though and even dressed up!!! She is so adorable. And now were are here. I cut my hair this morning and now I have side bangs. I felt so wrong cutting my own hair the entire time, but I have to say it looks pretty good. The things you do/learn on your mission, man. 

Spiritual thought is something I read from a talk from President Nelson. It is called "Where is the Wisdom". Super cool talk. He talked about how many young people would come up to him when he was a stake president and ask him about medical school. They asked things like how long did you go to school? He would state it took 13 years and usually the people who asked would be flabbergasted and more hesitant to do that much schooling to be a doctor. "How old will you be thirteen years from now if you don’t pursue your education? Just as old, whether or not you become what you want to be!” That was really cool to read. If we are lazy and don't take the time now we won't be what we want to be in the future. We will just be as old just with a lack of progression. I'm striving to become the person and missionary my heavenly father wants and needs me to be here and I have to remember that I can't be lazy during this time because; one,  I'm on the Lords time not mine and two, I could be wasting precious time that could be helping others as well as me progress.

That basically was the week...I didn't really take that many photos...so photos this week will be very few. Hopefully I will be able to report that we got a new apartment next week. 'Til next week!

-და ჯენსენი

Week 15  Communist Christmas

So this week started out with a bang. So we went to the შობა (Christmas) parade and let me tell you one of the most interesting experiences of my life. They had a bunch of people dressed up in white with a red cross and they had priests everywhere throwing holy water to bless the people. I got hit multiple time...it was interesting to say the least. They had a giant truck which had a pot for incense. Let me tell the smell was soooooo strong. They had a few other things like people dressed up as shepherds and some floats to look like the animals that would have been present at Christs birth. At one point we joined the crowds of people walking with the parade and then bailed to go to the giant church where the parade would end. There was a ceremony at the church's steps and one inside I think. Very interesting experience, I took videos of the entire thing.

We met with the investigator who has a baptismal date a few times this week. We found out in one of the meetings that she might be moving to Germany or France in February so she is unsure if she will be here for her baptism. She has expressed how she feels really unsafe in Georgia and with the many experiences she has told us it would make sense. She has had a very interesting life to say the least. She is still going strong though. She started reading the Book of Mormon. Its takes a while for her however because of how bad her eye sight is because of her surgery. She has a special magnify glass to help her read but it is straining on her eyes so she has to take breaks. Wednesday we met with the interesting family who has the husky and the son who is very...verry...weird. Literally the first 20 minutes of being in the apartment he had a giant blanket just wrapped around his body...like he had clothes on under but by the way he covered himself it seemed like he didn't...this kid, man. We finally set some expectations and she said she will read the pamphlet. She really wants us to help her son cause she is unsure what to do about him. We told her about the Elders and how they might help him out. I learned a lot about her son and the very...not so nice and not so righteous things he does. Saturday we started a new scripture study group at night. We held that...and it was very interesting too. The elders were sick so it was just the sisters running it. We had this one guy come who I think is an investigator. Let just say the discussion was interrupted by him with his many questions about the Atonement and specifically about God's name. It got very heated and the missionaries all got very frustrated because he wouldn't listen to their answers. I just got some good language practice and wrote down a bunch of words I didn't know...some of which weren't words after all, but I thought they were. I felt bad for the missionaries though. Sunday was awesome because the investigator with the baptismal date came and she said she loved church! We were so happy, it made our day! That night however our water heater broke. So our house has no way of heating. I took the most coldest shower this morning in my life. Like it was so cold that it would hurt to be under the water for too long. This apartment is going to be the death of me. First the kitchen sink doesn't work (we wash all our dishes in the bathroom sink), it leaks (we have to dump a bucket of water every night so it doesn't over flow), and now we don't have any hot or even warm water. We are going to call up the landlady and try to get it fixed. If not the missionaries are moving out of that apartment!

Spiritual thought: This week we set lifelong visions by using our patriarchal blessing as guide. It was super cool to set a goal to work towards to become more like the person my Heavenly Father wants me to be. I never really looked at my patriarchal blessing that way and usually just read it for comfort. It was really cool to look it in a different light. I highly suggest!

That's the week! until next time!

-და ჯენსენი

Week 14  New Years and Baptismal Date!

This week started out with the celebration of New Years and let me tell you new years will never be the same for me. Georgia is known for their new year's activities and many people travel up for it. Everyone sets off fireworks. Sister Van Brocklin and I went on the roof of our apartment building and got a 360 view of all the fireworks, it was insane! Wherever you turned there was just hundreds of fireworks going off. The people just do them of their balconies of their apartments. The guy below us was shooting them off of his balcony and I was literally like 10ft away from a firework. Like I was on the same level of a firework exploding! Funny thing though is like fireworks would start bouncing of of buildings and the Elders told me that a trash can lit on fire across from them. THE BEST! So glad I get two new years here! [parent note: this is coming from a girl that hid in your room on the 4th July to escape the fireworks she was so afraid of them] Next day almost everything was closed because everyone gets really drunk on New Years.....so we just did area book things that day because we had no luck finding people on the streets. Wednesday was pretty empty too. We went to one of our new investigators apartments, the one with the crazy son, that day however. Luckily it seems that she doesn't want to set us up with her son because he wasn't there. We had a giant feast at their apartment and I basically tried almost all the traditional Georgian foods. Super good food. Her husband was there and he is super cool. He is Turkish and learned Georgian and he gave me some advice about learning the language. He said try speaking even when you make mistakes. He specifically said that Georgians won't judge all my mistakes. Super sweet guy. Thursday was "finding" on the streets and Friday was more area book things. Saturday we went caroling for the last time. Fun story was when we were caroling this old guy came up and kept asking us if we were from America. We of course said yes and the guy then proceeded to take an American flag out of his bag and starting dancing and waving it around. One of the elders had a Georgian flag and started dancing with him as well. I literally could not stop laughing. Before we ended caroling the guy came up to us and said "America is hope, America is love, America is life!". Made my night! Sunday was the BEST! So we had a pretty rough start that day. I was a little sick and had to take some medicine, but not bad enough to stay in and none of our investigators came to church. But we had a meeting later that day with someone from the area book which made the whole day turn around. This lady lived in America for twenty years and went through some pretty hard stuff. She even said she survived 9/11 which was insane. Sister Van Brocklin and I both felt impressed to talk to her about the Plan of Salvation. It went really well and when the lady went to grab something in the other room, Sister Van Brocklin turned to me and said she felt like we need to commit her to baptism. At first I was taken back, but it felt right. Sister Van Brocklin then said she wanted me to ask her....so I did. Luckily it was in English and I was able to build it up, and then I asked and she said YES! She said she was already baptized, (in another church) but after explaining more about the priesthood she agreed to what we said and said yes to baptism. Like that is so rare in Georgia because they get so confused over the priesthood authority thing and feel that their baptism was legit and they don't need to do it again. We committed her to February 2nd so we are really excited. We meet with her tomorrow actually. She also is really excited about church and kept making sure that we are still going to church on Sunday. Amazing lady! Now we are here. Today is შობა( Georgian/communist Christmas). There is a parade we are going to later so we are all excited . It's been a pretty amazing week!

So spiritual thought: So I am pretty lucky to have a full year here. As in 2019 is a whole year dedicated to the Lord. In the mission if you are here January to January of next year its called Year to the Lord. So I made a year to the lord book in that everyday I write down how I have seen the Lord's hand in my life. I have loved it so far. Looking through my day and seeing just how I have been blessed and how the Lord is helping me day to day is really uplifting. The Lord is definitely in the details of our lives, we just have to look for it.

That's it, until next week! შობას გილოცავთ!!!!

–და ჯენსენი