Week 77  Home

Well its kinda funny that I ended up writing this email on a Monday, which used to be my Pdays. As most of you already know I am officially home. It came very unexpectedly. On pday I got the call from my president that they were sending me and my coming home group home. Talk about a life-changing phone call. Well basically the rest of the day I tried to get a bunch of souvenirs and I packed. My flight was thought to leave the next day, but that was a mistake and we didn't know that til we showed up to the airport...so that was fun at 5 am in the morning. That day we chilled because our whole mission was officially on quarantine. Amazing thing was that it snowed that day. Tbilisi never snows! Small miracle. Again a late night for me. Isani sisters joined us. We heard that more missionaries from our mission (the Georgia side) were leaving. The senior missionaries, and two elders who have a chronic asthma were leaving for their safety. So, in one day basically we lost 3 missionaries and they were down to 12. Well, luckily I got a flight buddy, Elder Layton, for my flight. 

Leaving Georgia was a lot harder then I expected. I mean it was probably even harder since I wasn't able to see people before I left. I didn't believe I was leaving until I took off on the airplane from Tbilisi to Istanbul, Turkey. Its weird because I realized then just how short a mission is. Being on the plane reminded me when I left and it almost felt like yesterday when I left home, yet I know that there were many months in between that. It's funny because I feel the same I did then, but still remembering the old me seems so foreign. Hard to explain really. After crying basically the whole flight from Tbilisi we landed in Istanbul. We both had a layover of about 5 hours. Talk about boring, I couldn't sleep either. Once I boarded my next flight it was straight to San Francisco which was a 13-hour flight. Man that was the worst flight ever. Squished and exhausted but I couldn't fall asleep. I didn't eat anything too just because when I eat plane food on my first flight, I do not feel good afterwards. Well, after a super long flight I finally landed. I got to see my mom and sister in a person for the first time in a long time. One, Amy is taller which is not OK. She was smaller when I left. Second, America is huge! But, buildings are so short! I am so used to tall buildings and apartments. One thing that I won't miss is smoking, no one smokes here which is amazing!  I also, won't miss that smell. I got to see my dad later on in the week when he finally got back from his business trip.

Well, its been almost a week and it has taken a little time adjusting. I still wake up at like 5AM and I get bored pretty easily, but its getting better with each day. Sad news is that they sent 5 more missionaries home from Georgia. which means there is only 6 left. The only reason why the sisters are still there is because they couldn't get a flight to Tonga for Sister Mafi and she needs a companion. The Georgia mission is basically gone and that's so sad. Good news is that the Doctrine and Covenants, in Georgian, came out online! So there still are miracles happening!

Well I am beyond grateful for my time in Georgia as a missionary. I miss it a lot already. I grew a lot there and it truly became my second home. I am going to miss the members, the people I met and especially the missionaries, they became such a family to me. I am grateful for the all experiences I had, good and bad. I learned so much about life and the gospel and my testimony grew so much in that short span of time. My missionary time I will forever cherish.

I am currently on quarantine for 14 days, so I can not go see people at the moment but afterwards I can and would love to see anyone that would like to meet.

Well Georgia til' next time.❤🇬🇪

- და ჯენსენი

Week 76  Basically Quarantined

Well, this week did not go as planned whatsoever. Currently not in the most happiest of moods. Our mission president early in the week informed us that everything was OK, nothing to worry about the in regards to the coronavirus and then the very next day we were informed to take no public transportation, only taxis. Then the following day church was suspended and our bank accounts we were full so we could fill our apartment with 14 days worth of food. We are still not on quarantine...but we basically are. English night, game night, church, district meeting is all gone. Most finding has been suspended and the only thing left is to walk outside and go to parks. People won't accept meetings because of the coronavirus. Georgia has been flipping out. People are leaving to the villages and so our area is becoming a ghost town with each passing day. We go outside but there are barely anyone around. I'm bored out of my mind and not happy. Everything I loved about missionary work is basically gone...and I don't want to end my mission like this. Plan for today is to buy all my souvenirs because next week they might not be open. I want them at this point to put us on quarantine so that we don't force ourselves to try to make nothing into something everyday with barely any tools/options other than to walk for 7 hours....but I also will go insane if we go on quarantine. Sorry for the rant but it's been basically all that has happened this weekend.

The beginning of the week WAS good.

- met a super cool lady from France that is motorcycling around  the world

- met with Em and visionary man with a member present. Awesome meeting

- tried to find some long lost members and we got lost along with them

After that...is when the mess happened and Georgia started to flip out. All the stores are being ransacked. It's insane. We had to figure out church and put groups together with the elders. The church is already unstable over here, and now doing it this way is causing a lot of problems. But, over all it wasn't too bad. Church was an 1 hour late because members got lost. 2nd hour also didn't happen...we just had tea time really instead...yeah it was very Georgian, and it's really not tea. I gave a talk, so that was fun. Overall, not bad. We might have broken a rule though..asking president today if we can meet there. Instructions not clear to us. We do know that members are asked not come unless it they are in walk-able distance. Well, for us anything is walk-able. 30 mins why not heck we are chill with an hour. I mean during this time there is nothing else to do so why not. Anyway that was the week.

Spiritual thought: I have to say having sacrament in someone's home was weird. During the prayer we had the house owners rooster go off too. Despite the situation, I still felt the spirit. The ordinance is quite special and although it wasn't super fancy like it usually is, I still felt the all the same spirit.

Well that was the week, til next time!

-ა ჯენსენი

Week 75  Relief Society Activity

Sorry this week email is a little short, I don't have too much time. This week was fun, but it went by in a flash though. I literally can't remember too much of the week. We had some meetings, we've been trying to pass our investigators off to the Indian missionaries, and we celebrated Georgia's Mother's Day and Women's Day. I bought some flowers and gave them out to people. Also called a lot of people too. Normal missionary stuff through out the week. Weekend was a blast. Saturday we had the relief society activity where we celebrated the 178th anniversary of relief society. We are celebrating it kind of late. We made quilts all together and talk about a turn out! Nail lady came with her girls and they loved it!  Made my day! Wish I could share picture's here of it, but of course I can't. Afterwards we did the community cleaning project we have doing around the town. Our neighbor joined and the bar lady joined us as well, along with some other friends. It was great! Sunday was interesting. We went down to Rustavi to join their church service. President said we could do so. Church was so small. There were 10 people all together, 6 people and 4 missionaries. I got to give a talk which I was excited for. Although, I realized I wouldn't have a translator to translate into English so when they said you need to give a 15 minute talk in Georgian I actually had to talk for 15 minutes in Georgian. Usually, translation takes half of the time. Pushed my language abilities a bit, but it was fun. Afterwards we went and visited some people and gave out the flowers for mothers day. Later found out that our relief society fell apart while we are gone. We miss one Sunday and it's back to false doctrine. We also found some other things in regards to keeping the commandments that we will be needing to go over...this is gonna be an interesting week. Anyway nothing to crazy planned for this so we will see what happens!

Spiritual thought: I gave my talk on The Plan of Salvation. I realized just how much is in the plan of salvation...like it is a very detailed plan! I was trying to fit the entire plan into my talk and I barely did. I couldn't elaborate too much on certain parts too. There is just much. Talk about a perfect plan. I am so glad and thankful for the knowledge I have of the plan of salvation. It truly is a blessing. 

That was the week,  til next time!

- და ჯენსენი

Found some funny graffiti thought I would throw it in😂

Week 74  Small World

So this week was great! P-day was great we made khinakli and didn't go too bad actually! So a guy messaged sister Mercer and asked if she was a missionary. He said he is reading the Book of Mormon and he is really confused and wants us to teach him. He currently lives and India. I remembered that there was a kid from my stake back home  that is currently serving in India so I shot him a message, shout out to Elder Jue! So currently we are in contact with him to get this guy (I'll call him Shar) passed off to missionaries a little bit closer to where he is. We first had a meeting with Shar to get more info over phone call and man let me tell you we were very surprised by his knowledge he already had. He bought the BOM off of Amazon and started to read it!! Got stumped in 2nd Nephi. He talked about his catholic friends telling him not to read it but he said that he hadn't read anything bad in it yet and said that he would continue. So that was the fun miracle of the week. We had a lot of meetings this week. We met up with Em. She was a past investigator of mine. She isn't doing so well so we are going through the self reliance program and see if that helps her. We went back down to Rustavi on Friday. We met with nail lady again and she was so cute. She made us cheese khinakli and gifted us Georgian bottle toppers which I will probably hang up in my car when I get back. Her husband (who is a member) messaged us later and thanked us for making his wife's day which was so cute! Later we had a meeting with the grandma that we helped last week. Her son goes to Rustavis English group actually. The meeting was really weird. Everytime I tried to do the normal missionary tactics it didn't work. Tried bringing up her saint pictures on the wall and talk about Christ, but she just nodded and changed the subject. There are so many religious things in her house and we tried to make convo using them, but the conversation would constantly be switch. Even in normal conversation we couldn't hold anything. Well we thought it was a disaster of a meeting, but still decided to gift a Book of Mormon at the end. So the really cool thing about this is that a few days later the elders start to hang out with her son and the son said he wanted to read the book. Well, the next day he texts the elders to say he does not understand the Russian version very well.  This confused the elders because they hadn't given him a Russian one. Guess what?  That was ours we gave the mom! So another small miracle! Saturday we did a cleaning project which went great. Sunday we finally did the children and youth activity to explain the program. We didn't have everyone show up due to sickness, but it still went great! The kids are very excited so the work has paid all off. Another fun week ahead...this will be fun. Relief society activity and exchanges with Isani!

So don't have too much time left and I'm getting kinda lazy so this will be a fast spiritual thought: Something I learned more this week is going and doing even if you don't want to or understand why. God sometimes will give you tasks that you don't understand but trust me, there is always a miracle waiting at the end of the tunnel which always makes the task worth it.

Well that was the week, til next time!

- და ჯენსენი