Week 9 (2/11-2/18)

So today is officially two months since I left the MTC. Crazy how time has flown and yet it feels like i've been here for at least six months in the field. Just with how well I feel like I have a handle on our group, getting to understand the culture and just the area in general. But alas its only been two months! Time is weird and I'll leave it at that. But this week was quite busy. 

     last monday was cleaning day (where we deep clean our apartment) and that means that today is Transfer day! Where usually people get transferred to different areas around the mission but we basically just go to the Armenians and don't really have a specific area. So we really only get a change of apartments every few transfers and we usually know who our next companion will be. Which is kinda nice. We actually have the next 5-6 months already figured out if things aren't too crazy. but the down side to this is that sometimes we don't get a fresh start with investigators/members. Which i've heard can sometimes lead to complacency and times when the work is slow because you feel like you have talked to just about everyone. 

     Anyways! Tuesday we had our 6 week training meeting in Arcadia. Basically it was just a follow up of how training has been going and a Q&A with our mission president about concerns and such. Don't really have any questions, comments, or concerns. Just need my newspaper in the corner and I'll be good! This week has been awesome for street contacting though. Elder Dicus and I have really made it a goal to not just park in front of peoples apartments but to walk inbetween just so we can meet more people. Even though by the end of this whole week my feel are tired of walking, it has been awesome. but at the same time lets just say people aren't always the nicest. For example, tuesday we had a guy tell us straight up " GO AWAY" when we just tried to ask him how his pizza was that he was eating on a garbage can. but then we met some guy that just invited us in off the street and let us teach him and his wife the first lesson. however the husband was a little more interested in watching the news that was on... and i saw why! Lets just say that Armenian news isn't quite child appropriate and leave it at that. 

     Wednesday Elder Dicus and I made our way into the heart of glendale into the Americana to go to barnes and noble to look for an ESL book. We need one so we can start teaching english classes in replacement of our bible study class that is kind of a dud. And wednesday was the first time i've had someone threaten to call the police on us! which was rather random because she had said nothing of the sorts the last time we had talked to her on the street in front of her house. she even seemed pleasant and enjoyed our conversation. guess not! people are just rude for absolutely no reason. before we even say something to them they just grimace and shake their heads and say no to us. But we had a great lesson with Hambarsoon this week. We brought our recent convert Christine and we got him to say an actual prayer! It took some push from Christine and some embarrassment but he prayed. felt very accomplished. 

     Thursday we got invited by Mike and Bridget to Mike's house for a family dinner again. Fortunately it was right after our Dinner with another member so we were extra full.... bleh. but one of Mike's sisters had this lil puppy that just adored me. it was a pomeranian/chihuahua mix and his name was Jay. I guess Elder Twelves never got to go to His Mom's house and that means they must really like us! but mike hasn't come to church in two weeks and missed this past sunday as well because they are going out of town. 

     Friday was planning/bike day and we had an epiphany about our armenian group and investigators. we feel like our group is just going in circles and not progressing becasue they aren't acting on what they know. which is frustrating because we teach and teach but they don't do anything about it. dumb. 

     Saturday was quite the adventure. Since we share a ward building with a congregation of Filipinos, we had some of the missionaries that work with that ward bring us some Balute before we started our open house of the church. So Balute is basically a fertilized duck egg... and we each ate one.... I'll send pictures. It looks disgusting but it wasn't that bad! But I can't even explain it. lets just say mine had some crunch from the duck being somewhat developed... after that we sat in the sun for a good two hours just trying to contact people and show them around our church. not so much luck but we did get one! not armenian but hey it works! later we tried by some park to play some old people in cards but this lady stormed up to us and very rudely said that the park was full of only armenians and that Mormons had no right to be there..... ummmm yeah.... pretty sure it didn't have her name on it but we continued talking to the old ladies who liked talking with us and agreed that the lady was off her rocker! 

     Sunday we had our stake president speak in church and had combined sunday school meetings. we found out after the meetings that someone had gone into the baptismal font room and turned on the valves so the water was going all over. this has been going on for some weeks now. but then we got a call from the other armenian elders later that day to come to a dinner appointment with them because the husband had left unexpectedly and they needed someone else so we had a delicious three course meal last night that was way too filling. Also met with an investigator and learned some Russian! languages are pretty cool I guess :) But that is all for this week! I'll write more next week! Love you all and hope you have a great week. 

Elder DeBry

Week 8 (2/4-2/11)

Barev barev from wonderful Glendale California!

where it has been mostly cold this week and we have actually woken up to ice on our cars most morning! And to think that people think this 50 degree weather is cold! what babies! I desperately miss snow but know it will be a while before I actually get to see it again. aside from pictures that is.

so anyways! this week has been a good one! so i'll get started on the highlights and whatnot. Last monday was a typical busy busy busy p-day. we had an awesome lesson with Hambarsoon that night and as you have probably guessed, he still isn't baptized but I straight up laid down our purpose with him and set him straight that he needs to put in the work. so hopefully he will have that conversion that we have been waiting to see in him.

Tuesday we met up with Mike and bridget which was strangely odd because we usually meet with them on Sundays because of Mike's busy work schedule. But in light of his uncle passing away the week before, and the funeral being on tuesday morning, we got to swing by and see how they were doing. It was acutally really good becuase he was asking a bunch of questions about where his uncle was and we gave a brief overview of the plan of salvation and told him more answers could be found in the scriptures. more incentive for him to read because he hasn't been too good at it. we met up with Minas and were stressing about finding another male to go with us to our dinner appointment that night with a member of the glendale first ward and one of her neighbors. Turned out that we had Elder Twelves come with us and Elder Crumrine went on an exchange with Brother Bradley for the time being. Long story short, the dinner was awesome. We had our recent convert, Christine from lebenon, come with us and she was a big help. the neighbor was Shakeh and she had a really hard life with losing her daughter in a car accident and her other son to colon cancer a few years ago. she was looking for a way to get out of the depression she was in and she really saw it in our lesson. it was awesome. we set up a return appointment to come back this next week to talk more about our lesson.

Wednesday was a really long one. most of our afternoon kind of was thrown off because our studies went long and decided to walk around our neighborhood which ended up taking about an hour and a half just talking to people! seriously forget I'm in california. so many Armenians to just run into. and when we start talking to one, one other person notices we are speaking armenian and want to talk to us to. we enentually made our way over to a potential and found out it was only his grandmother who spoke armenian but she invited us over to help the grandson find a job! but he was interested and we taught him the first lesson and he accepted a soft baptismal commitment to be baptized when he knows it is true. It was awesome. Then we had to race to meet with Hambarsoon at his house and let him know that we couldn't drive him to dinner like he thought we could. but he was understanding so he gave us money to go buy food and bring it back. so we did but it took so long to make that we had to rush through eating to make it to our bible study class. so we were only a few minutes late to find Minas and Anoush already there but Anoush felt sick so she went home so it just ended up being Minas. And he wanted us to just teach him English. so we did and it was fun. we taught him how to say "I am THE Man". and after all that we had to run over to Henry's house to give him and his wife Lacey a blessing. crazy day.

next day, Thursday, we had zone training and found out that our mission president made it a new rule that we can ONLY LISTEN TO HYMNS. Which is a bummer. but just for anyone who was going to send me CD's (Kiel), only hymns... but the rest of the day was just trying to contact potentials, rescheduling, dinner with the bradley's and going to a lesson with teh other Armenian Elders.

Friday morning we got invited to go to breakfast at Henry's mom's house who speaks a little english but mostly arabic and we got to learn some cool words like 'delicious' and 'i farted'. fun stuff! I guess there are very specific words to describe farts in arabic. really funny. but i found out that Henry is basically a rockstar. legitamitely he is. he put out cd's, went on tour, plays shows. everything! his name is Henry Ammar. go check him out and that is my ward mission leader! That night I went on an exchange with Elder Twelves for the day. He is from Seattle, went to UW before the mish. pretty cool guy. a little socially awkward but it's just elder twelves! but we visited with some members Haikus and Mariam, and Haik whose dad is Martin who we met a few weeks back but he I guess went to Armenian for a month with his wife so we taught Haik and he said we could come back and teach him every week.

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to play basketball at the court by our pad. twelves didn't have shoes and it was freezing but a good time. we lost :/ it was kind of a crazy day. I had to go and try twice to pass of Anthony the english guy with the armenian grandma to some other elders. but he ended up not being home all day so that was a dud. we then had to switch back twice and elder twelves and I taught this potential (who is now an investigator :) ) Edmond who is a very smart guy and knows his religion but is interested in the BOM. so we taught him and answered questions but had to hurry to teach Hratch and Armen our members another quick lesson on Missionary work so they will let us teach their family but they still won't let us for some reason... dumb. but after the lesson we stopped by our fav. armenian market to eat before we switched back to be with elder Dicus. it was a good split. but the rest of the night we didn't have much success becasue no one likes to meet at 8 :/

Sunday before church we had some waffles with the ZL's upstairs and then had a pretty non-stressful church meetings! it was odd actually! Hambarsoon showed up in a shirt and tie which was awesome but Mike and Bridget didn't show. 12's gave a talk in sacrament and then the rest of the day we met up with Minas becasue he was sick too, met some cops parked at our church building and talked to them for a bit about fun stuff they had seen this past week, including some guy that we know who is schizophrenic. met up with Samvel and Hambarsoon 2 with his family for a bit before we had to go home. Overall, a really good week! I love you all and thanks for all your love from home. I'll update more next week! Happy Valentines Day!

Elder Tanner DeBry

Week 7 (1/27-2/4)

So I have to apologize in advanced for the short weekly email. We are no longer allowed to use our regular facilities because the guy from the stake is out to get the missionaries we swear. so I am at the public library and only have 48 min remaining to email! AHHHH! So this will be more brief than usual! 

So I told about last weeks tour of JPL last p-day. Also last monday we had a really good family home evening with our group. we kind of did a speed dating thing for people to get to know each other better. but because our leadership didn't speak armenian we made it so you drew things about yourself and then showed it to the person so to break down the language barrier. my idea. thought it was pretty good :)

tuesday us and the zl's went to an all you can eat sushi place that was really good and pretty cheap for lunch. then we went and taught a guy whose wife we met on the street and invited us in. His name was Harry and it was super frustrating to teach him because he was so hung up on the trinity. dumb. later that day we ran into a drunk jehovah's witness on the way to another potential family and it was really funny because he thought it was mind blowing that we spoke armenian. not sure if it was the alcohol or the fact that it really is quite amazing. but we have actuallly run into him a few times this week so maybe we will actually get to teach him. we picked up a new potential named Samvel that night who we gave a persian BOM to and he was thrilled to read it. He is an old potential but he had never had the bom in persian so we will see where this goes. he has two daughters and one son who are all married so maybe we can teach them. 

tuesday night/wednesday i went on an exchange with Elder Crumrine, our District Leader, in his armenian/singles ward area. it was kind of like a sleep over that night with lots of pillow talk and then a regular day the next. we made a cake for a mentally challenged guy in the singles ward who had a birthday the day before. then we went and gave a blessing to this lady who is inactive in the family ward but is trying to come back and has a CRAZY life. lets just say she is probably a little down syndrome and was repetative of how she was hit by a car, almost died, abusive parents, got her kids taken away from her for whatever reason she didn't say, and then she was now living with her boyfriend who she swore he was possessed so the other elders might have to go do an excercism or something of the sorts. crazy. all in the life of a missionary! then we had a few cancellations and met with another guy from the family ward who was having a lot of marital problems and we basically were his counselors for the time we were there. then we had our Armenian class that night at the central building. it was pretty fun to teach the basics or armenian. it made me wonder how much i struggled in the mtc! but elder crumrine said i was a good teacher so that made me happy :) but we had the cake we made and it was awesome. then i switched back with elder dicus that night as usual. District meeting the next day with some after meeting taco bell to satisfy the appetite. Had a lesson with our less active Abraham who we gave a blessing to and he still just seems really depressed and down and yeah. sad to see. but we don't know what to do. later we just had a lesson with a recent convert Christine and were talking about setting the goal of getting her to the temple next year! 

Friday we had a service opportunity to move another person but this time there weren't stairs! thankfully. so it was much eazier. then the rest of the day was spent planning at the church as usual. we picked up two more new investigators that night as well! Hambarsoon #2 and his wife with their little son Ashot who is 5. Hambarsoon seemed really interested but his wife was kind of skeptical but i know she will warm up to it. Saturday we had some more Jehovah's Witnesses knock on OUR door at our apartment. Kinda funny. Very confusing teachings they have. then we stopped by some potentials, got three new ones. then we stopped by our potential, Martin whose wife had made it to America! she is very intelligent and actually published a book that she signed and gave to us. its on politics in armenian... probably a little over my head reading level wise. but she was asking some pretty tough questions that we hope to address later this week. Next that night we went to an ARMENIAN WEDDING! It was seriously so awesome. We got invited by Mike and his wife Bridget. It was Mike's cousin getting married and they got married in this beautiful armenian church in burbank that we got special permission to go to. It was awesome and tons of food. It was kinda of wierd sitting at the table with mike's family because his other cousins dad just died and they were really somber about everything but we talked with some of them and it was fun. bummer we had to leave after a little over an hour. but definitely worth it.

Sunday was stressful/frustrating. I had to give the lesson in the priesthood meeting at the last minute and lets just say that one of our members is really not patient with my speaking for whatever reason. everyone else seems to understand me just fine but he has little patience with me I guess. so I was frustrated with him and yeah. later we had a BBQ over at mike and bridgets while they had some friends over to watch the game which I didn't really get to watch but probably wasn't supposed to. hear the 49's lost. bummer! it was so good. home made armenian food. and it is easy to make so i want to make it when i get home for sure. then we stopped by samvel again and met one of his daughters who found it funny that her husband didint' know armenian but we did. but he was also white. and yeah that is about my week and I don't have time to write much more so I love you and hopefully will have more time next week! Happy birthday MOM by the way :) Love you. got your package. I love it. and Dad I got your letters/pictures. Love them too.

 

Elder DeBry

Week 6 (1/21-1/27)

BAREV ZEZ EEM HRASHALEA UNTAUNEEK! 

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

Week 5 (1/14-1/21)

Why hellooooo everyone not in Cali! this week here has been awesome. Things were a little different in light of the recent transfer but it didn't really affect the Armenian work for us. We are special that way :) 

Last monday one of the zone leaders who lived upstairs, Elder Lambson, left for el hambra and he will be missed. But replacing him as elder fochs companion is Elder Tovey and he is AWESOME and hilarious. He is probably 5'8" of wrestlers muscle from Oregon. he has been fun to work with this week that is for sure! last p-day i got a pretty sharp looking haircut if i do say so myself. nothing else happened too exciting but i did go on a split with elder crumrine(another armenian elder) while elder dicus went with elder twelves to do a tour with a guy who had talked to elder twelves before. Elder crumrine were out and about and ran into a recent contact named Martin and he invited us in and fed us dinner even though we had just barely eaten with a less active family with the other elders. it was a good visit but i didn't understand the last bit about him wanting me to say the closing prayer and ask for his invention to be promoted and so because i didn't mention anything about it, he made elder crumrine say another. kinda funny because i had no idea what i said that was wrong when everyone was just staring at me when i looked up. 

Tuesday morning for my workout I got my all time high of 215 push ups! pretty proud of myself. We worked on some flyers for our bible study class for most of the day until we had our lesson with a recent convert Christine who we think has gone back to smoking again so we need to follow up on that this week. The lesson we had after that was with some members, Haratch and Armen. We did a good object lesson on faith with lighting a tea bag on fire and having one person hold it in their hands but you need to have faith that it isn't going to burn you because it floats up in the air when there is only about an inch left. they seemed to enjoy it and we invited them to invite the rest of their family who lives in la crasenta to come to our church or an activity. that night we did our first tour and we had an extra person show up that didn't understand that much armenian but spoke more arabic so his friend had to translate into arabic for him or I just explained in english. the original guy was really interested and we plan on visiting him this next week again with his family but the friend wasn't so much interested but thought he just knew everything...like more people think they do. 

Thursday after our district meeting (we just have one new sister in our district and then elder tovey), we went to our favorite armenian place to eat but this time they didn't give us free food unfortunately :/ but we went over after to have a lesson with Varter and her non member husband Vardan. She told us her conversion story and why she started not going to church as much. aside from her diabetes making it so she can't walk any more which we just found out yesterday, she had some members in an english ward she needed to just go to the armenian group and some younger kids were making fun of her kids when they were younger. some people are so rude and they don't realize that their actions cause them to go inactive. just makes me angry. later that night we had dinner with the bradleys and then had to race to our lesson with Hambarsoon where we brought our assistant ward missionary leader, Ashot, to come. the lesson went awesome. we talked about the first half of the plan of salvation and he understood it and we still have a solid date with him for Feburary 3rd to get baptized :) we figured the next day that we needed to meet with him three times a week this next week to teach him everything but we know we can do it. he is progressing really well and is really fun to teach. Friday elder dicus and i had to go to this new missionary training in Arcadia at the mission home all day from 10-4... yeah it was long but it was good. had some lessons from our mission president who is really a great teacher and very knowledgeable (probably why he is a mission president) and the assistants to the president. if you want to know the doctrine of why it is a rule we need to make our bed, look up Acts 9: 32-34. Never would have thought. So not only did we have to drop off some other Elders before we headed back to glendale, but we had a dinner appointment right away and the night just got crazier. we met our member Minas at the church and barely made it on time to walk over to Anoush's house for dinner. we also talked about her conversion and got a good referral of her neice who is a yoga instructer but who visits her all the time. so if we weren't crunched for time as it was, Anoush's lesson went 20 min over, we forgot the projector (for our movie night that night at the church) so we had to run back to the pad, grab it and go back to the church. we were about half hour later than we should have been and our ward mission assistant wasn't very happy about that but there wasn't anything we could do. so we set up and waited for the people to show up...and kept waiting...and kept waiting... we only had four people show up and three were members and one was a guy who was going to the other elders armenian class to learn armenian... none of our investigator families showed up so we were pretty bummed and so was Ashot. And since we couldn't watch the movie (which was monsters inc in armenian) we went and visited another potential, Joey, and he bought us pizza. we weren't at his house for more than 10 min when Ashot called us and told us that he had left the church with all of the projector stuff just there alone with minas... so we had to have joey drive us back so make sure the church wasn't burning down when we got there we just found that the only non armenian was there cleaning up the movie stuff for us. crazy night. 

Saturday we had planning becasue we didn't get to do it friday. we are really going to focus on Mike and Hambarsoon this week to get them to keep all our committments. it'll be good. but after planning we met with Elizabet and Sona with minas and it didn't go to well...we ended up getting off topic about how in the Bom the Lamanites eat the Nephites... yeah so we ended early and went to visit Antonia who should be giving his son Emmanuel this next Sunday the Aaronic priesthood. so we gave him a lesson on that and how important it is for him to be an example. next we had an awesome visit with this potential, Souren, and his family. they have three kids. 17, 10, and 7. We were hanging out with the 10 and 7 year old. I was reading armenian story books with the 7 year old little girl and Elder Dicus was talking video games with the older boy. It was great! they gave us some amazing armenian bbq and we got to schedule another time to come back to see them. i'm so excited to see them again. their family would be awesome members. Sunday was a really good day. Hambarsoon actually came to church and stayed for all three meetings and has been getting some really good fellowshipping. Mike and bridget didn't come but we got to visit them later and teach them a good lesson on their reading and then they invited us to Mike's family bbq and it was great! they kept saying 'I see white boys but hear armenian' and thought it was great that we spoke the language. we ended up doing a push up contest to get mike and bridget to come to stake conference next week but we lost.. but they said they would come anyways. and yeah that was my week and it was great. Thats all the time I have but i love you all and hope you all are doing well :) look forward to hearing from you next week! 

yes seeroom em kez! lav mnatsek! 

Elder DeBry  

Week 4 (1/14/13)

Well the holidays are finally over so things are finally calming down party wise with all these crazy partiers of Armenians. Gotta love them. This week has really flown by fast because our bathroom was being redone so we had to use the other elders above us to get ready then wouldn't be able to come back for lunch or dinner. So lets just say we ate WAY too much fast food this past week. Glad to finally make my own food this next week! Which i''m finding out i'm not too bad of a cook afterall :) 

So last monday was crazy. mostly because i found out that MY BEST FRIEND IS GETTING MARRIED?!?!?!? WHAT?!?!?! Wow. Definitely need someone to keep me updated with that or else i'm going to die. Seriously. So nothing too exciting besides that news of home and regular errands. Oh but I did have a bomb dinner that is called khash. Its a very thick/dense armenian soup that is awesomely delicious and definitely the most exotic thing i've eaten so far. it is lamb tongue, stomach, cow's calf, and its cooked with the bone in the broth so it turns to a gelatinous mush and you pile on lavash (armenian bread) in it and its really good :) supposedly it is supposed to be eaten with alcohol but since that isn't quite available.... we made do. But yeah so Tuesday we met with one of our part member families and they gave us this really mysterious tea that they kept insisting we drink it because they said it was from a flower so we ended up drinking it but yeah we were skeptical! We had dinner with a less active and it ended up being just me and Elder Dicus because they were going to see their son/brother who was the one that was arrested and is a schizophrenic so they just bought the food and left! 

Wednesday was kind of an adventure because we went to visit a referral I received from some other lady that is in the philipino ward here and lived in LA. so we drove over to LA wednesday night to see her but we chose the wrong time to go and got stuck in traffic and found out that she is really out of our boundary... so we just had to turn back. and we didn't even get to see the hollywood sign! so bummed!! also wednesday night we started our bible study class for our armenian members and non members. it was the first class so we weren't expecting a ton of people to show up but we thought there would be more than three! We had two members and one non member which was really cool. i was really nervous about the class because i can barely get by in a lesson so how was I supposed to teach a bible class?! but it turned out well for the three that were there. it was funny though, one of our members was having problems with his non member wife and he was going off about that so we had to keep redirecting it back to the actual class stuff. Thursday we had our first zone training! well, my first zone training. it was basically just like a bigger district meeting with our zone leaders teaching. it was funny to see our zone leaders teaching because they live above us and we see the not so serious side of them in the mornings and at night.... you can just imagine the good times :) but anyways we had a really good lesson on the vision to baptize people and so we hope to see that more in our lessons. we contacted less actives in the afternoon and we were going to this one lady's apartment who we didn't even know if she lived there but on our way there some guy down the street just randomly was staring at us and started yelling 'SATAN!! SATAN!!!' It was more funny to us because it was so random and yeah :) cool story! some people are just so funny! 

but anyways we had our weekly dinner apointment with the Bradley's and talked about the new movie les miserable. I guess it is really good? it looked awesome in the previews! wonder what other movies i'm missing. someone better be keeping a list of all the must see's when i get back. And that night we had a lesson with our progressing investigator Hambarsoon and we brought our member Haratch with us. So lets just say we gave a bomb lesson and he is getting baptized the first week of February! So I was stoked about that! It could have been an even better lesson if our member would actually let me speak instead of being super impatient and kind of rude that i'm not that great at armenian and speak slowly... dumb. but hey he is getting baptized! It has been really cool to see him progress like he has and to see the time from the first time we met him to now. so yeah! Oh also forgot to mention that thursday they officially started working on our bathrooms and we came home to a completely torn up bathroom! 

Friday morning we planned at the church for lack of privacy in the pad and had a pretty busy day with three lessons. Christine with brother bradley, Elizabet and Sona with Minas, and Abraham. They all went really well. I had been studying patience because of my frustrating with Haratch the night before and it turned out that both Christine, Elizabet and Minas all needed to hear about how to be more patient. Funny because Minas was supposed to be contributing but he was more like we were teaching him too... with him still going on about his wife. Ashot bailed on our plans again so we had a lesson with the other elders wiith this less active family who were all really smart and going to med school and had these two ancient dogs that could barely walk. it was so sad! but we taught them and pinpointed when they had stopped really progressing in the church and found that it was when they stopped reading  the scriptures so we addressed that and got them to read. I was just so caught up about the dogs being so cute but old and depressed! 

So Saturday morning was really funny because we were getting ready at the church (brushing teeth and such) and they were cleaning the church so we had to go into the primary bathroom and some sister who was cleaning the church came in when we weren't looking and was like 'What are you doing???' It scared us and I was in a panic for a reason so i just blurted out "THEY ARE REMODELING OUR BATHROOM!' And it was just funny. Also saturday was the day we learned who was being transferred and such! it was no surprise that none of the armenian group got transferred. found out that one of our zone leaders, Elder Lambson, is getting transferred :/ Sunday was sunday. church was church. don't have a ton to say about it this week in comparison to last. We taught a part member family, Mike and Bridget, and lets just say it wen't a little longer than it should have as usual..... but hey they fed us filet mignon! And finally we had some other lessons with another member family but on our way home we stopped by this potentials house and they were not very nice saying that we had no right to teach... wasn't very nice. 

So that is my week! this email is really long so enjoy!! love you all :) have a great week! 

Week 3 (1/7/13)

Well it's officially the new year!! So happy new year everyone! Things here have been great and I'm starting to get the hang of things finally. Well, not completely but i'm just getting used to it I guess. 

So last tuesday we got permission to go the Rose Parade on Colorado and it was awesome! However, I was pooped from not being able to sleep much from all the partying going on outside. I guess here people shoot guns into the air to celebrate... not sure why but whatever. Not too happy about it because it kept me up! So the rose parade was fun but after that the day continued on as usual. We had a lesson with Elizabet and since she has been sick she asked for a blessing and asked me to say it so I gave my first blessing in Armenian! It was pretty cool. Definitely not sure what I was saying completely correct but its the thought that counts right? So you could say the language is coming along but still slowly. My understanding is getting better too from reading everyday but its still frustratingly slow. I'm just waiting for the day that it all just clicks but i haven't hit that oint yet. But hopefully I will someday! later we met up with the philipino sisters who had a referral for us with a couple that we had stopped by the night before but were having a party so we were invited back the next day. They fed us a bunch and some of it was not quite to my liking. This food they have thdolma is like a cold egg roll but its a grape leave wrapping and rice and flavors inside. Not quite the best but everyone else says its da bomb so I will try it again. We have been meeting with our investigator Hambarsoon and he is actually reading the BOM and is understanding it! Slowly but we are excited that he is keeping the commitments we are leaving him. Wednesday we had a lesson with a recent convert, Minas, who is solid and loves reading the BOM even though he is a slow reader. He is really hard to understand because he is from Iraq. So far i've heard/had to understand three dialects. Eastern armenian which is spoken by those from armenian and it is very easy to understand, Western armenian spoken in lebenon and syria and places as such with different congugations and odd stuff compared to eastern, and then there is the difficult parskahide (iraq) armenian which is just difficult because they mumble and use more arabic and farcy words. its rough. so for those in armenia be thankful! 

We stopped by another family who we helped move into their apartment last week and talk to the Father. he isn't super interested but we hope to establish a good relationship that leads him to teaching him more. And also, we have been stopping by this building where three potentials all live and we have met with two of them and given them the first lesson. the third speaks more russian and he is NEVER HOME! but we are thinking of dropping them because they haven't been willing to meet and they must not be ready. thursday was our regular district meeting but thats is about it for that day. we ran into two interesting people. the first was a family of jehovah's witnesses and they were fun to talk to. they were armenian but spoke pretty good english but they were asking some pretty odd questions and i was finding out that they have some very peculiar beliefs themselves such as they believe only 144,000 people are going to heaven...? yeah not sure either. but the second was this guy who was totally into our conversation with him on the street and he was asking all the perffect questions that we were trying to answer with our lessons but he just wouldn't listen! so frustrating becaues all of his confusion and questions about why there were so many churches and different teachings could have been cleared up but no he had to just say we were too young to know anything. grr. so we were cheered up with our dinner with the bradley's that night so it was all good. we also met with Ashot our ward mission leader from Iraq and talked to him about his recent trip to Utah to visit the RM who i replaced and it was funny to hear that on his way back he got pulled over going 95 in a 55 but got out of the ticket and went to the temple with the cop that pulled him over in st. george. 

So Friday morning we had a big surprise during planning. the other three elders show up at our pad and tell us that Elder Smbatyan was going home to Armenia leaving that afternoon. He had been really struggling and negative here since i've been here and he has been wanting to go home but finally the president gave him a ticket. So i was really bummed about that because I liked him alot and I gave him a big talk the last time he threw one of his little tantrums but to no prevail i guess. Hope he does better at home. Later that night we ran into some great guys who were from yerevan, Martin and Joseph, and we ended up talking to them on the street for a good hour just about the church and their lives. martin was very cool and we got his information to talk to him later. We also met with hambarsoon and taught him about prayer because he is still saying the lords prayer and even after our great lesson... he still is. so we'll try again next time.

Saturday was basically full of food. we met with Ashot and he took us out to lunch after our weekly missionary meeting and had some great lebonese food. then after that we had a lunch appointment with some members Antonia and bella and their son Emmanuel who are from Iraq as well and they fed us some persian food which was not very good and i had to gulp down with water each bit... bleh! AND THEN since it was Armenian Christmas eve, we had dinner later that night with helga and her daughter for a christmas eve dinner and that was very good armenian food. Now Sunday was crazy. During sunday school I got pulled out of the meeting while Elder Dicus was translating and got three referrals basically, then had to worry about coordinating with someone to go pick up a member who had not been in the right spot when the ride was there and then in sacrament our potential, Martin, showed up our of no where and he ended up talking to this member Arman who used to be a Armenian Apostolic priest and he was giving him way too much info about our church and yeah. craziness that went over my head. Also found out that I sound like a russian-armenian because of my accent? Not only that but EVERYONE thinks i'm russian! After Church we met with a part-member family and set some new years goals with them to get them to come and the husband baptized. but i have a good feeling about him even though he has gone through 10 sets of missionaries... later we actually met with the potential, Martin, and had a very frustrating lesson with him. although he is fun to talk to, he doesn't see the importance of there being just one correct church. we covered so much information and ended up being there twice as long as we should have been. BUT ANYWAYS! that is about my week :) 

So overall, This week has been great and flown by. The language is coming but still slow and we have two progressing investigators and a ton of potentials. Elder Dicus and I are really getting along and he is awesome. Bummed Elder Smbatyan went home. So for those in armenia, make sure he stays strong! his name is Sahak Smbatyan from Yerevan. age 26. lives with his mom. Okay thats it for now! love you all and have a great new year! 

Elder Tanner DeBry