This week has flown by and been awesome I don't even know where to begin with what has gone on. Last Monday as i''m pretty sure i mentioned last week was craZy busy because we played soccer with my zone for a few hours and had to finish everything else with the remaining time of our p-day. I had an amazing feat of spending less that $10 dollars on food for the week and i'm very proud of myself for it. don't worry mom i have enough money and food, i just already had a bunch of food at home already and didn't buy much. so yeah i was very proud of myself.
I was kinda upset on monday though. one reason was because we tried to contact a referral we had received two weeks ago for a lady who had terminal cancer but we never got a chance to visit her because she was too far out of the boundaries. but we tried to call her again but i dialed the wrong number and called her daughter instead. and she let us know that her mother had passed away already... so i was kinda upset because we didn't get a chance to give her the blessing she wanted.
Tuesday I had an interview with our mission president, President Beccera, and he is an awesome man and I havfe a great deal of respect and admiration for him. we just talked about how i was doing with the language and work and such and he told me that Dad called him to see if he could come visit me and take me out to lunch but that is unfortunately against mission rules. so sorry Dad! he was worried that you were upset but hopefully you understand. we got a handfull of referrals from the filipino sisters tuesday as well for an apartment complex full of armenians that we later visited throughout the week. then later that night we just had a quick visit with our awesome investigator Hambarsoon with Ashot. It was short and we didn't quite get to teach him anything even though he asked what we had for him that day but ashot said we weren't going to teach him that day... okay? but he understands his very difficult iranian dialect better than we do so we went with it.
wednesday we had lunch with a less active Abraham, who was baptized by Elder White when he was first establishing this armenian mission before it was a mission. he is so depressed and stressed from life and has fallen back into his old habits. it just sucks the life out of us when we teach him. i love him and just want to see him back at church and not stressed about the worries of life. then we had a lunch with a member and the member invited the filipino sisters to come with us but it turned out they couldn't stay because his wife wasn't there to have a third woman there. And the rest of the day we tried by potentials and referrals and ran into some really interesting people. Armenians are kind odd just straight up but that is what is so great about them. our bible study class that night was kind of a dud because only ashot and minas showed up. hopefully we don't have to stop the class becasue of attendance. but that is what i've realized this week. is that the armenian people are kinda doing only what they want to do, stubborn, and not easily convinced to do otherwise. like to come to a bible study or church.
thursday after DM we had a coordination meeting with the other two elders about some problems we have been having with the group and how we can address the problems and leadership and our way to approach teaching. it's really rough not having a solidly established branch. the leadership is struggling. the members are struggling with not that many showing up every week to church and not willing to meet during the week. its exciting to be apart of the work and pioneering but it is rough i'll tell you that. we talked with the bradley's this week about our ideas of how we can improve personally and how we can improve the leadershp and the group as a whole. they liked them and brought some good ideas to the table.
So friday was an interesting day! it was pouring rain and it was our day to bike. so we went around doing our work in the rain and it was awesome. seriously so much fun and satisfying to be doing it. love the rain but when you know you are going to teach an awesome lesson and you show up soaking wet is even better. thankfully we had weekly planning for the first half of the day so it wasn't completely a wet day, just the last half. but we sang and rode and just had a jolly time! and oh man. saturday was brutal. we offered to help with some service for the AP's moving this guy out of his house who is a nonmember. he lived on top of this hill and had 66 steep steps to his house... 66 STAIRS!!! not only that, but he was a hoarder. he had a few THOUSAND tapes, cd's, records, music entertainment media stuff that filled up half of the moving truck on its own. and the cds/tapes were in the small banker boxes because of how heavy they were and so we had to take a few dozen trips up and down the steep walkway...up and down... up and down... up and down... I gotta say my legs were giving out after about three hours of helping. and to think the AP's were there for another three!!! we had to carry armours, the refriderater, all of his cabinets/filing cabinents down all those stairs!! crazy!!! So I got an awesome workout but then put all those calories back on by eating at BJ's with our mission leader in the group for his birthday and we got a party size pizookie! it is like a large pizze but a cookie and probably a good 6-8 scouups of ice cream on top. I think the menu said 4000 ish calories? and we ate it all.. in five minutes or so. it was so good though.
saturday was also crazy becasue of some random family we met at costco who were from south america and were members and ate with us and then had a lesson with members Haratch and Armen and some delicious soup they made. then we ran into this guy, Russel who we ran into the day before. served 19 years in jail. alcohol drugs gangs. done it all but he had been out for 7 years and was living with his girlfriend and kids and is interested in religion. we gave him to the other elders because he isn't armenian. but he is awesome and really talkative! Then yesterday we had stake conference and both our investigators came to the main meeting and the new member meeting before! except mike and bridget kinda got put on the spot and bridget had an emotional breakdown.. but other than that it was awesome. later we just visited some people and visited our potential family, Souren, and his whole family is sick so he didn't think he'd be able to make it to our FHE tomorrow which should be awesome. if people come.... other than that this morning we went and took a tour of JPL and the facilities there. for those of you who don't know what that is, it is the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and is pretty much designs, tests, builds, and monitors all unmanned missions of the solar system... yeah and we got to go behind the scenes and see it all! pretty crazy stuff. the lady who gave us a tour is a member getting her PHD at CalTech. it was awesome and I should be sending pictures home soon! but that is all for now! I love you all and hope you ahve a great week. Miss you all but I'm where i need to be serving the great armenian people!
yes seeroom em zez. Arrijum!
Elder DeBry
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