Week 50  Just Keep Strumming...

Well talk about a week my friends, a lot has happened. This was such a fun week so let's dive into it. Monday had a small melt down but I found through the experience sometimes God uses those (meltdowns per se) to get another outcome. I will explain. We were supposed have a meeting with a family from the area book that lived quite a distance away. I called the father and he wouldn't give me his address. He just said to call him when we were on the bus. FYI, I suck at directions in English let along in Georgian. We are at the bus stop waiting for the certain bus to come as I try to talk to this guy on the phone. I was pretty frustrated. What is the difference between telling me the instructions now verses when I am on the bus, I was thinking. He wouldn't tell me anything, just get on the bus and then I will tell you where to go. Well the bus wasn't going to come for a while (over 30 minute wait) and the travel time would be even longer since I had a small understanding of where his apartment is in the city, so we had to cancel and told him another time. I literally was close to crying on the phone. Just frustrated that I wasn't understanding and that I couldn't exactly turn to anyone for help for clarification. Well because the meeting didn't happen, we went back to the church where Sister Mafi was able to talk to her dad. Turns out this was the first time in a very long she has been able to talk to her dad. She has talked to me about it a little bit, but to sum it up and not give out too many details there has been some family problems recently. I got to hear Sister Mafi do missionary work on her dad through another room. If we hadn't canceled the meeting earlier, then I don't think she would have been able to talk to her dad. So all that stress and my close to melt down, was worth it I guess. Looks like God took away the gift of tongues for a second so that we would have to cancel so that could happen. Well lets continue on with the week. We got a referral from a member which was cool. We went really late one night through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods (mom calm down it was fine) to meet this mother and daughter. They only spoke Russian so we taught in English while our member translated. Talk about not the language I learned in the MTC, whoa. We went through the lesson and although with some small interruptions, I could feel the spirit in that room. We will meet with them again this week and since we will have exchanges with the Russian sister, my old companion Sister Arutyunova, the lesson will go a little more smoother. PARK FINDING! We went park finding this week with our ukuleles and it is so fun! Talk about a ice breaker. We had a lady that posted our pic on Facebook too. Had some people come beat box with us. Got to know some local street performers. And my favorite was saying hi to some tourists in different languages. Funny story: there was a group of Chinese tourists walking by and my companion said "gamsamida"(Korean word) to them as a hello...this word actually means thank you in Korea. So not only did she use the wrong language but wrong word. Flip I about died. I was laughing so hard. They also got a kick out of it to.🤣 

So we had Elder Boom come to Georgia so that was the highlight of the weekend. He is in the Seventy and is part of the EuropeEast Mission presidency. He is from the Netherlands. We had zone conference with him, special devotional, and later he spoke at our church. I will go into something that was said in zone conference later in the spiritual thought. He actually came to our apartment for an inspection and we got to perform for him a little with our ukulele. So that was fun. Oh, guess what! We got permission to go to Kazbegi today! It is a city 2 hours away from Tbilisi. So today, Pday, we are headed over there. We have a rule that we have to stay in the city besides a few exceptions. Kazebegi was a big no no before, but we got special permission from our new Presidentto go! Flip! I'm so excited! მაგარია! ძალიან მიხარია რა. I will have pictures next week. 

Spiritual thought: Something that was talked a lot in our zone conference is how we can still feel joy amidst the hard times. That we are still blessed immensely in those hard times. We are just blinded sometimes and we can't seem to focus on anything else besides what's going bad. We focus on what isn't working out or ask why this happening and why Heavenly Father is letting this happen. We sometimes lose the vision to see how much God has already blessed us and how he is still blessing us. Sister Picard (mission president's wife) told us a story about when she has cancer.  One day she was in the bathroom throwing up from the medication. Her husband was in a another country for business, and she was just tired of being sick. She basically was pleading with Heavenly Father and asking him why. And she got a distinct impression amidst her complaining for her to count her blessings. She did so despite not being to happy about the answer to her question. The thoughts of gratitude came slow right then. "Well, when I do throw up I feel better." "My husband is in another country, but I do have a husband." "Treatment is available...and the list continued until she found her prayer changed thanking Heavenly Father for all the blessings she had received. I personally think gratitude and joy are linked together. If we aren't thankful and we aren't happy about the things we already have, joy is kinda harder to reach. We can forever chase after happiness but joy can be found right from the start, you just got to stop and appreciate even the littlest of things. So count you blessing this week😉

Well that was the week, til next time!

-და ჯენსენი