November 15, 2011

Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well and are enjoying life. It was great to read all of your emails and to see that you all are doing so well!

So, it has been a great week here on this side of the world. The work is going well and I'm really enjoying Erebuni. The work is kind of slow but Elder Seegmiller and I both feel like it is going to pick up in the next couple of weeks as we are doing our part and being diligent. But I'll start out by answering the questions you all asked. Hopefully I get them all haha. The branch is really good here. Two Americans actually walked into our Sunday School class in the middle of church. I was like, what in the world are you doing in Armenia? haha. I was pretty surprised. But they were here on business for some computer software company. They actually took us out to dinner last night, which was pretty cool. Free meals are always nice haha  There were a good amount of people that came, I'd say 35-45 people were there. Charentsavan generally has a lot more members there on Sunday, but there are a lot more Priesthood holders in this branch here in the city. And a lot more people stayed for all three hours which was way good too. Most the time in Char, like 70% of the people would bounce right after Sacrament. It was starting to get better there though. But majority of the people stayed and it was really good to finally meet a lot of the members. I think I'm really going to enjoy getting to know
some of the members in this branch. We met with this amazing lady in our branch this last week named Hasvira, who helped translate the Book of Mormon into Armenian. It was so cool to see how much translating the Book of Mormon had strengthened her and her testimony and faith. It was just a huge testimony builder of the power of the Book of Mormon and how important it is. But yeah, I'm really excited to work with and get to know the members here. I enjoy the area though. We did a lot of street contacting this last week, which is something I did not do much of in Charentsavan, and it went well. We found a few potential investigators but most of them ended up falling through. But I feel like I learned a lot this last week. I had found that I had gotten into the habit of not pushing to talk to people who kind of brush us off when we say hi. But Elder Seegmiller is so great. He talks to EVERYONE and it really opened my eyes to the importance of giving everyone a chance to either say yes or no to this message. I'm not called to share the gospel with the people that are convenient to
talk to, but rather I am called to share it with everyone. We had some really funny rejection stories, as well as some really cool spiritual experiences. First with a funny story. So, we were walking along down this sidewalk and there was a grandma and I'm assuming her daughter walking along. And I just walked around them and kept going but then all of a sudden I realized Elder Seegmiller wasn't beside me anymore, so I turned around and he had stopped to talk to the grandma and daughter. But I just stayed a few steps ahead and let Elder Seegmiller handle the testifying and inviting. So, I'm walking along just listening and Elder Seegmiller starts out by saying, "Hey, how are you?" and the grandma responds, "We're good...without you." Haha I just bursted out laughing. But I think it kind of caught Elder Seegmiller off gaurd cause he was still walking with them, I'm sure trying to process what just went down cause the lady looked super nice. Then, I heard him open his mouth to say something else and the grandma cut him off and said, "Go, walk ahead." Elder Seegmiller then caught up to me and was just shaking his head. I told him, "Good job, but you just got owned by that grandma..." haha we both got a good laugh out of it. Maybe you just had to be there. But it was way funny to say the least. I love Elder Seegmiller. He's inspired me to be better in a lot of different ways. Especially, with talking to everyone and giving everyone a chance. That is where the spiritual experience comes in. We were street contacting one night and not really having any success. It was pretty cold and not a lot of people
were out so we were trying to walk down a lighted street. But as we were walking I had a feeling to go down this side street that wasn't well lit and a few people down it. We then decided to stop and say a
prayer and we just asked that we would be led to someone. After the prayer, we didn't make it 10 seconds down the street before Elder Seegmiller stopped and talked to this guy who was coming out of a store. I hadn't noticed that he had stopped until I had walked past the man. So, I turned around and we started talking to this man. About half way through the conversation and invited us over the next day! We were way pumped. So, we kept walking and we didn't even make it another 10 seconds up the street before we got called over by these two guys sitting down under a little pavilion thing. The first thing they asked was if they could read the book we were holding, The Book of Mormon. Elder Seegmiller and I just walked away shaking our heads at how quickly that little prayer had been answered. It was such a testimony builder to the power of prayer and striving to be led by the Spirit. Unfortunately, our meetings with them haven't worked out yet, but it still was an amazing learning experience for me. It wasn't until we had stopped and humbled ourselves and asked for help, that we
received the guidance. President Shwitzer, the area President/General Authority is here in Armenia. He actually said the closing prayer of conference a month ago. But we were able to take one of our investigators and it was really cool. We have zone conference tomorrow and he is going to teach a majority of it. I'm really excited for it. I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes this next week.
I'm attaching a lot of pictures from Khor Virap to a seperate email. I hope you get them all! It was so much fun. It really reminded me of something our family would go to, cause we always go to old churches. It was so cool though. We got to go down into the pit that Grigor Lusavorich was down in for 13 years and we got a lot of cool pictures. It was snowing and super foggy so unfortunately we were unable to get a good picture of Mount Ararat. I was really bummed, but maybe another
time. We went as a district though and it was a lot of fun. I hope you like the pictures! Thank you all so much for all your help and support. I hope you all know how thankful I am to be here in Armenia and serving the Lord and these people. It truly is a privelege and I am so grateful for the tender mercies of our Heavenly Father. I've been trying to stop and take more time to look for them in my life and it really is a humbling experience. We are so blessed and loved. I'm thankful for this truth that we have and for the examples that you all are to me. This church is true! I hope you each have a great week and know that I love you all!

Love,
Elder Fairclough