Monday was kind of a bitter sweet day. We had to say good bye to those in our district who were actually being transferred. Namely Elder Fochs (pronounced Fox) who has been here since I got here. He's awesome and will be dearly missed living above me. The new ZL above us is Elder Bangerter from Bountiful Utah. Pretty cool guy. Not a whole time to really get to know him yet but he's not too weird. We had to end P-day early and go to a dinner with a less active where we played a traditional game that Armenians play around Easter where after you color the eggs and decorate them, you play a game where you hit someone else's egg with yours and whosever egg doesn't break, wins. Pretty fun. Stopped by Mike and Bridget. Tried to find out what his expectations were at this point since he missed his date. He's not quite sure. And we got a media referral from the ZL's from a girl that is 11 and referred herself on Mormon.org to meet with us... yeah pretty excited about that.
Tuesday we did the exchange for a day with a brand new elder. Our brochacho was Elder Coontz from Memphis Tennessee. pretty cool guy. I felt bad though because we had a full day of Armenian speaking lessons so he wasn't able to contribute that much. But we did give some lady we found last week a tour of the church and it went really well. Passed her off to the spanish sisters this week as well.
Wednesday after we dropped Elder Coontz off in the morning in Arcadia, we stopped by our Armenian mechanic friend, Joey and found out he is getting married August 10 of this year. Went up to GCC to hopefully meet with a guy that never showed up. I love GCC because there are so many Armenians to talk to. Not that Glendale isn't already majority population but Glendale is just a bunch of younger generation. But instead of making fun of us like they would in Armenian they praise us for knowing the language. We taught a guy Nersees Iran who is super nice but had some interesting views on why we have so many different religions. He said it is because we have different languages... I guess that would make sense if all languages went to their own specific church but that is not the case. But the most exciting thing this week. Met up with the 11 yr old who wanted to meet with us. Her name is Talia and seriously looks like she might be 8 or 9. But she is wicked smart and went to some church and wanted to know more and ended up meeting with us! Not sure how the parents feel about it because they haven't really been there. ONly the grandparents who don't understand English. But she was super excited to meet with us and find out more. Said she would read and ask to know if what we were teaching was true and be baptized. What 11 yr old does that?! I wasn't that mature at that age. went on visits that night as well with Bro Bradley to Chris Aristokisian and Elizabet and Sona. Found out that an old referral that Elizabet gave us but nothing ever came out of it, was a guy and his family that we had just met last week and we saw him over there that night! small world even in California.
Thursday Elder Dicus taught District meeting. Then had a lesson with Abraham. Still not sure what he needs. But we told him about General conference this weekend. Melinda canceled on account of midterms so we visited our other Hambarsoon 2 whose wife is very pregnant and should be due in the next few months or so. visited Hambarsoom 1 and invited him to General conference as well.
Friday was long and hot and hard work. It was a bike day as usual but we had planned lessons early in the week all over the city so we figured we biked about 13 miles ish at least. Not to factor in the hills and pace at which we had to ride. Lets just say we were very sweaty that day in our lessons. Started off biking to GCC and the girl didnt' even show up. So we planned at the Central building and after planning rode to the mission boundaries to meet with Talia again. She said she had been reading but didn't completely understand so we reviewed and committed her to a date of May 12. So now we just have to run it by the parents. But right after that we had to go to the central part of town to meet with Albert and his family (the ones that know Elizabet and are malnourished). The first thing the wife said when we came was "I have questions about this book." It was awesome. Especially because she actually doesn't speak Armenian. Only Farsi. So throughout the whole lesson she kept whacking her husband to translate and speaking up in Farsi to us in response. too bad I don't speak Farsi! Before that lesson though we ran into some Armenian teens who yelled out to us not knowing we knew what they were saying and we found out from them that there is some stuff going on in Armenia having to deal with the voting and such and it being corrupt or something or other. But then before we went home we decided to treat ourselves to some authentic mexican at el suaz again. But I didn't get tongue this time. just al pastor.
Saturday was General Conference! We watched the morning and afternoon sessions at the central building and the priesthood in la crasenta. It was an awesome first day. we had dinner with Bella and Antonia after priesthood. Found out that in the village they lived in Iran, when it was cold, they would make their own cow pie sort of things to heat up the place they were living in. Their little boy asked what about the smell and the dad said that when it was cold enough you didn't notice the smell. Kinda gross but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Sunday wasn't quite as exciting. We missed the first quarter of the session waiting for people to show up to the session and at that point it was a bit harder to fully get what the speaker what trying to say in armenian. I understood the topics but it just wasn't the same having a monotone translater when you see the speaker getting into his/her talk. So that is how it went for Sunday. we taught another lesson to Nersees and made some progress. meaning found out we need to go back to the beginning. But then we stopped by Edmond and he is so frustrating to teach. he won't let us teach. he is asking questions about how he can help his family be happy but he won't let us answer because he just keeps talking and talking. So yeah!
Well that is about my week. I love you all and can't wait to hear from you soon. Have a great week!
Elder DeBry
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