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