June 20, 2011

Hello everyone! Sounds like everyone had a great week which is always great to hear. Its been another great week here in Armenia. Nothing really went according to plan, but then again when is that the case in missionary work? haha. I'll start out by telling you all about the work as usual and then go from there.
Lida didn't get baptized this week. It was kind of disappointing at first because Elder Steglich and I both thought she was so ready. But it actually turned out to be a great learning experience for us and it was just what Lida needed. She has really grown alot in this past week and its been great to see her desire to be baptized grow. I think she needed to prove that she really wants it and she is making the steps so we still have high hopes for her. We are going to hold off on doing another interview for another week. Theres still some stuff we want to work on her with. Elder Steglich and I took it as an opportunity to see what we can do better and as a result we've been able to help a lot of our other investigators be more prepared as well. Ando is doing really well and its so cool to see him reading The Book of Mormon every day. His testimony has really grown from it and he is itching to be baptized! We are really proud of him and happy with the progress he is making. David, Ashot, and Geyvork are all doing well also. We've had a hard time meeting with them this week. Things just haven't been working out but we really hope things will turn around more this week. As of right now all 5 of these investigators have a baptismal date for the first week of July so we are way excited for that. We have a lot of work do to this next week but we both feel this is going to be our best week yet. Knarik left for Gyumri this week which was sad but I know things will work out. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to teach her these past couple weeks. She was always so nice and patient with me which made things so much easier for me haha. It was so amazing to see her testimony grow and even though she can't be baptized now, I know she will some day. And probably the most exciting news of the week is that Elder Steglich and I picked up 3 new investigators. One of the investigators names is Rubik. He lives in a village about 15-20 minutes outside of Charentsavan. He's a great guy and is the husband of a member. It will be tough with him  because we don't really have to time to get out to the village during the week but we are going to teach him  on Sundays after church. Hopefully things will work out there. And the other 2 are Lucine and Datevos. They are so amazing. They were a referral from a member. They are exactly what this branch needs. You can just tell what kind of faith they have and they are such a solid family. There a basically like no families in our branch. Its mostly mothers with their kids or grandmas. The priesthood we do have are more teenagers. So we were way pumped about picking them up. They told there friend that gave us the referral to us that they really liked the message we shared with them and that they want to start meeting with us everyday. You can really tell that this family has been prepared. They have a 10 or 11 year old kid who is interested as well so things are looking really good there. I'll definitely let you all know how this next week turns out. By the way, all missionaries got an email from the church saying not to disclose details about your investigators. I know this was a little more brief but I hope it still gives you some insight on the people we're teaching.
Well, now for the interesting part of my week. Before you read all of this, I want you to know that I am perfectly healthy and that all is well. haha. Probably not a good start but I don't you to freak out while you're reading this. So Elder Hall, Elder Smith, I had to go to Yerevan Thursday to get our residential stuff taken care of. We went to a hospital (Its a really nice one by the way haha) and had all these tests done, just to make sure we are healthy and all. And everything was going well, until they checked my heart rate. First off, they checked it by having me lay down on this table and they hooked these suction cup things to my chest that were connected to wires. It was so weird haha. But it read my heart beat and when the test was done they started asking me all these questions about if I had ever had problems with my heart and stuff. They told me a normal persons heart beats 60 times per minute and that mine was only beating 40 times per minute. I was like what in the world. This is not good haha. Cause I knew I had never had any problems like that. So we spent basically most our day there Thursday. Then that night President Carter called and I was like crap this is really not good. haha. But he just wanted to figure out what tests they did and what not and then he told Elder Steglich to check my heart rate that night and then call him back. So when we got back he checked it and I was nervous. haha. But lone behold my rate was 63, 61, 64 the 3 times we checked it. I was SO relieved haha. But they still made me go back Friday so they could test it themselves. They hooked all these wires to my chest and had me wear this tiny computer thing around my waist that checked my heart rate every 5 minutes. I took a picture of it and I'll send it next week when I have a little more time. It was the most uncomfortable thing ever. I had to wear that all day Friday and we had to go back AGAIN Saturday to get it taken off and checked. They got the results and were like "yeah you are normal" and that was it. All that hassle just because their machine read it wrong haha. So yeah we weren't able to do as much missionary work this week unfortunately. We are hoping this next week will be a much better. We actually had to go back to the mission office in Yerevan today to give them all the paperwork. I'm writing this from the mission office actually. Elder Steglich and I because we had big plans to go play basketball. We had been talking about playing basketball this P-day all week so we were pretty disappointed. But there's always next week. Just gives us another week to talk smack to each other I guess haha.
Everything else is going great in Charentsavan. The weather is amazing, besides the days that it rains. Charentsavan is one of the coldest cities in Armenia so I really lucked out being there in the summer. Yerevan is really hot too so I'm glad I'm where I'm at. I had to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting yesterday in our branch. (Hello. This is Elder Steglich for a moment. About the talk that Elder Fairclough gave in sacrament meeting, I just want to make sure you all know how incredible it was. Because I know Elder Fairclough is modest enough not to tell you himself. But really, it was incredible. His Armenian was so clear, and the message was exactly what this branch needed. To give you a taste of what the members of the branch thought about the talk, after sacrament meeting the Branch President told Elder Fairclough and I that it was the best talk he had ever heard from a missionary being trained. And he has seen a lot of missionaries. Your son is incredible.) Okay, this is me again. I love that guy haha. We're sharing a computer here at the mission office at the moment so he wanted to come in and say something haha. I've been meeting a lot of the other missionaries in this mission the past couple weeks and I'm about 99% sure I started out with the best missionary here. I really am lucky to have started out with Elder Steglich as my trainer and first companion. And as for the talk, I was really worried that no one would understand what I was saying. Hopefully they got something from it!
Thats about it for this week. Thank you for emailing me and letting me know how you all are doing! I love hearing from you all and hearing that you are all doing so well. I hope all is well and that you all have great weeks. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Fairclough