Week 19  Farewell to The Donovan's

This week was very weird and didn't go as planned at all, but it still was pretty awesome. We had exchanges this week with the sister training leaders. I was with sister Myers. The exchange however ended early due to sister Myers getting sick. We had English group that night and we were assigned to advanced. It was on architecture/art/history, so I took control on this one and basically gave them one of my college lechers. Remembered quite a lot surprisingly, but definitely forgot a good chunk of it. I will just have to relearn some of it when I get go back to college. Thursday we saw x(investigator with a baptismal date). This was the most weirdest meeting in the world. It was the most spiritual despite her rants about how she hates this one thing and will never forgive it. At one point she starts ranting about it, her bird starts squawking, and in the background is dramatic music from the TV that her mom was watching. I felt like I was in a movie waiting for the climax to happen. It was an out of body experience let me tell you that. She is doing great though. We retaught some lessons and she is starting to get it I believe. We still have no idea when she leaves for France, but it could be soon. We pray for her a lot. She of course came to church and again she dressed up which was adorable! Friday was interesting...because it was very unexpected. We have been needing to get a new faucet since it doesn't fit our filter which we are required to have. The landlord said she would send a guy to help us. He came and after a few seconds of being there said for us to go buy one. So we left with him, got in a marshukta, and drove off to a unknown location. He took us to GIGANTIC bazaar full of literally anything related to hardware/apartment stuff. It was probably twice the size or even more than the station square bazaar. It was a maze of shops selling sinks, heaters, wires, and a bunch of other stuff.  We walked for twenty minutes passing many sink places, but he wanted to take us to his sink guy. He found it bought a new faucet and left. When we got back he started to assemble it while we did language study. When he was partway done he stopped and waited for the landlord to come to check. We had a gospel discussion with him, which he basically ranted about different religions. He talked really fast, so good language study for me. He has similar beliefs to us and we told him to read the BOM. After some more fixes he and the landlord finally left and we ended up having to leave for game night. Game night was so fun! Played spoons and it got insane. Saturday we welcomed the new senior missionaries, the Mangums. Super sweet. They were mission presidents in the Philippines. Elder Mangum severed in Montreal, Canada, so I practiced some of my french on him. Sister Mangum new me because she is related/or knows one of my companions in the MTC, Sister Burrap! So that was super cool. Sad to say goodbye to the Donovan's, but they served a great mission and it was time for them to leave. Sunday was crazy. We don't have a primary teacher/president anymore since they moved to back to America, so it's just missionaries running it. I taught primary with sister Seely since sister Van Brocklin needed to translate for relief society and sister Myers needed to help on of their members teach for the first time. We had a small split. After that we had some meetings, headed home, and caught up on 12 weeks (missionary training thing). Now we are here. We are hiking with all the missionaries today which will be fun. Fun stuff planned this week for valentines as well!

Spiritual thought (of sorts): The sister training leaders told us some stuff that they learned when they went to MLC in Armenia. They talked about how there are different types of people who are motivated by different things and actual categories for them. Blue is love, yellow is fun, white is learning, and red is accomplishment. There is a test you can take, but sadly we don't have access to that, so I have been pondering about what motivates me. I would either say I am blue or white, maybe red depending about what (such as art). The cool thing though is when you know what motivates you can adjust your goals to meet that. This goes of course with investigators and members. When we know what motivates them we can give them commitments that reflect that. I am going to keep thinking about what specific category I am, so that I can begin to make better goals that reflect that this week.

That was the week, nothing too crazy. Happy valentines day! Til next week!

-და ჯენსენი