Week 68  Bible Bashing with a Priest

[Parent note: This is a picture of Rachel she sent to us this week after her first haircut in Georgia . She was so afraid of getting her hair wacked because an old companion had that done on accident. She also had to wait until she knew enough hair cutting vocabulary to describe how she wanted it cut. This is such a classic Rachel pose and expression]

It was another interesting week.  One, we celebrated orthodox new years. We had the sisters over Monday (Mercer and Reynolds). We did proselyting before and so we had the night to party. Made pizza and did make overs. Yup, super girly stuff that I never thought I would do but here we are. Over here they have Georgian Christmas trees which they burn on the orthodox new year. So we did that. I didn't burn the big one I bought...cause I don't want to burn down our apartment building...looks like the Isani Sister's apartment is stuck with the tree for a bit😅. More knocking and finding this week. When we were walking home we got stopped by 2 guys. By the way, this is on a busy street, so mother calm down. Anyway they both were holding  beer...so I was like this might end interesting. They were nice and were just interested in why we were both holding the same book, yeah we were happy to tell them why. We talked about our church and well it turns out one of them was a priest...and he was all ready to prove us wrong. Yeah, I had to bite my tongue a lot. The other guy was chill and was helping us out actually...but the priest guy was just not having it. We eventually just told them we we had meeting because it wasn't productive. He was chill and kissed our hands at the end.  The blood was boiling a little afterwards but hey it's not a mission unless you get a little bible bashed at times, right? We met with one of my favorite members and she came all prepared. Last week we asked if she had read a certain book about the Priesthood we gave her. She was like "oh we don't need to know about the priesthood, that's the boys thing". Yeah we set up a follow up meeting real fast. We told her to read a few chapters before next meeting and she comes back and has taken full on notes and basically made our lesson without even knowing it. She is amazing! Oh we are teaming up over here with Carista which is a catholic charity group. Tonight we went on a tour of the place. We will finally be having regular service time through out the week! It was amazing and they also have an art therapy part and I seriously hope they let me volunteer there soon. Thursday we said goodbye to visionary man. He is gone for a few months to a certain country of which I cannot name. I thought it was my last goodbye to him but he gets back just a few weeks before I leave, so yeah! He gave me some advice before I left and man did he hit the hammer right on the nail. Everything he said was something I was seriously scared about or have been worrying about recently. He was like I don't know why I am saying this but it's coming to my mind. I of course was like that's the spirit, please continue. Friday we met with another member down in Rustavi and she fed us soggy xinkali...I had 6 cause she wouldn't let us leave unless we had that many. I did not feel good afterwards. Saturday we had a sushi party with a contact of ours with the other missionaries. He is super cool and it was a blast! Sunday was well a mess. I got out of it though so because I had to help in primary. I felt bad for the other missionaries though. I finally gave my talk this time, recall I was sick last Sunday. All the members really loved it, which was great. We went up to the primary room and guess what?! Primary has improved and we are actually having lessons. Yeah for progress! We mad an iron rod out of scarfs and jumping ropes. Kids loved it. While we were having a blast in primary, Sunday School was falling apart. We have been struggling with our Sunday school teacher for a while now. He speaks English but we English speakers don't understand most of what he is teaching and he usually teaches the doctrine wrong...well I left all the younger missionaries to translate and I guess it didn't end well. I basically had to straight out tell him he was wrong. Georgians over here are blunt. Us Americans and foreigners it can come off rude. But, for them it's normal. Well they just kinda drilled the missionaries about how they don't know the language...which I felt real bad about cause it wasn't even their fault. We have been struggling with the teacher because he doesn't make sense. It's hard enough to understand in one language let alone having to translate into another language, one you are learning. So looks like I'm probably translating next Sunday school. I'm officially old...missionaries are turning to me for things which is weird. I mean they started doing that this transfer, 3 months ago, asking me to plan things and do certain member stuff, but this made me realize even more that I seriously am the oldest sister missionary. I'm still a child! I don't get this😅!

Spiritual thought: I thought I give you little from my talk I gave in sacrament meeting yesterday. I actually basically gave my farewell talk I gave in america. I talked about the continual strengthening of your testimony. I gave my analogy of when I lost weight. I did small things everyday and I kept on doing them. It is a lifestyle because temporary changes do not have long lasting effects. Your testimony is the same. We have to do little things everyday to keep our testimony growing and strong, everyday! I talked about the three things that we need to do. Pray everyday, read the scriptures and go to church. All are simple yet very important and they help us deepen our faith which we need. I highly recommend listening to or reading Elder Johnson in the last October session. He talks about this and it is a great talk. 

Well that was the week, til next time!

-და ჯენსენი