Week 43  Generous Old Men in the Park

So yet another week done and over. Woke up on Sunday and was pretty confused as to where the week went. Yeah time flies when you're having fun. We went to მცხეთა(mtsxeta) on Monday early in the morning for Pday. We originally were going to hike to a church...yeah turns out we would have to hike for 15 hrs to get to the church if we wanted to go by foot. We decided to wonder through the town and check out the famous church there instead. This church is the one that has the apostle Andrew's foot. Well we go in that specific room and in that same room they were doing a ceremony...this ceremony was interesting. There was a group of girls singing and a priest singing. They were conversing/praying through song. The girls would sing and the priest would say something in response through song. There was smoke in the air and incense...I felt like I was in a movie. We left after everyone started to kiss a golden cross. We had some cool/weird things happen this week so I thought instead of going through the days I would just tell you the fun stuff. Monday we had a guy come up to us in the park and as we were talking he saw our badge and asked us about it and we had a conversation. We got his number and he left. We thought he was done, but he proceeded to return with gifts. He bought us this type of bread that I feel if I even explain what it is you will get diabetes. It is fried bread with lard and sugar as the filling. That's right folks, lard and sugar. I had one bite and I felt like I ate a bag of grease. It's weird cause its gooey and clear and just doesn't seem right. We met with him later that week with the elders for a pass off meeting. Continuing on with the week we got some pretty cool contacts. One was a historian who knew about the church and about baptisms for the dead as well as family search. We gave him a BOM in English and in Russian (no printed copies of in Georgian have arrived). He named himself bloody historian in our contacts. Funny dude. We had a guy who went to high school in Colorado and has a friend on a mission in the Philippines. It blew our minds! Not only does he know who we are and has friends part of the church, but understands the whole mission thing! Another fun story...so we are sitting in the park contacting some people when an old man walks by. I thought why not say hello and he got so happy came up to us and asked for our names. Turns out he is a just any modern day doctor, no he is a herbalist (for a lack of a better word). He goes to the forest and makes medicine out of grass and stuff. I have no idea how I understood this man but I told him to show us some...well he comes back with two bottles and now we have free grass medicine for nails...I'm not sure if I'll try it. We had exchange this week and I was with sister Arutyunova and it was fun to be with her again. It's crazy how time flies it feels like it was just yesterday I was serving with her. Well, that's week today will be fun we are going to go have a barbecue with some missionaries/members/investigators/friends so I'm excited. I'm ready to be socially exhausted👍

Spiritual thought: I'm  going to keep this short, but I wanted to talk about the ceremony we witnessed in the church. Sister Mercer and I were talking about how unsettled we felt about the ceremony. Watching it just felt...for a lack of a better word weird. When I watched it seemed like something was missing and I think it was probably was spirit. I realized yet again how I know this church is true. Every time I walk into the any of our churches no matter how different it's set up is or how it looks I can always count on the spirit being there. And feeling the spirit, lets me know it is true.

Well that was the week, til next time!

-და ჯენსენი