November 7, 2011

Hey everyone!

How are you all doing this fine week? I'd like to say congratulations to London and Mike! I was anticipating the big news all week! haha.I'm so happy that we have another little addition to our family. And I love the name and especially the pictures! She does look like a little
London. What an exciting week for our family! Well, everything is going really well here in Erebuni. It was a little sad leaving Charentsavan but I felt like it was time. I miss the members and the people there though. All the branches near and in the city gathered together yesterday for a broadcast where President Uchtdorf, Elder Oaks, Elder Clayton, and Sister Thompson addressed Eastern Europe. So I got to see everyone from the Charentsavan Branch, which was really nice. The broadcast was really good too. We watched it in Armenian, so I didn't catch all of it but I was surprised with all that I did understand. I really like Erebuni as an area. It's in the city but at the same time kind of village-y. We live in a small house apartment thing which is pretty nice. Probably half of Erebuni consists of small house apartments and the other half is actual city building apartments. For the most part, the people are really nice too and it is definitely a lot easier talking to people on the streets here in Erebuni than in Charentsavan. Probably cause I'm not walking by the same exact people every day haha. But things are going really great with Elder Seegmiller. He is such a great missionary and I'm really grateful that I get to serve with him. He is just finishing up his training, so it is kind of strange to find myself in a position of giving language advice. But this past week I realized how much I really do now and how far I actually have come these past few months. It was kind of stressful at first, cause if I don't understand than we are kind of in a tough spot and I still don't understand 100%. But I was really able to see the Lord's hand this week, with that particularly. I found myself understanding things that I honestly don't think I would have a week earlier. It has been a really good experience for me thus far though. Elder Seegmiller is such a hard worker too so he is getting better everyday, so I'm not too worried about it anymore. He is from Roy, Utah and actually reminds me a lot of Elder Steglich. So, I think things are going to go really well here in Erebuni these next few months! We weren't able to get a whole lot of meetings this week cause it was kind of a crazy week but we were able to meet with a few of their investigators. One is this guy named Aram, who doesn't speak Armenian and speaks broken English. He says English is his native language...right. haha. He is a good guy and we'll see where things go. It is really really weird teaching things in English though haha. I wasn't expecting it to be that strange but it was. Then we were able to meet with this small family yesterday which went really well. We still have a lot to teach them but they are doing so well and we are hoping for them to be baptized sometime in December. Their names are John and Suzi and they have two little kids. So, I'll be sure to fill you in on how that goes. The rest of the investigators that they have are super flaky and we weren't able to get with so we might be starting from scratch pretty soon haha. Elder Seegmiller and I are hoping to find some investigators this week and meet with a lot of members. I'll be sure to let you know how it all goes this next week! There is some other really exciting news from this week... Kristine got baptized! I got permission to still go cause I was supposed to baptize her and it all went really great. Elder Steglich was there too so it was really cool to have Elder Steglich, Elder Cook, and I there since all three of us taught her. It was also really great to see Silva again and to see Branch President. We took lots of pictures at the baptism and I'm going to send it along with this email. I hope you like them!
Also, I had an interesting experience this week with being a District Leader. I had to conduct a baptismal interview for another area in our District this week, which I was a little worried about haha. It was a really cool spiritual experience though. After a few minutes I stopped worrying about the language and started trying to actually ask inspired questions and make sure she had gone through the necessary conversion. The woman had a really cool spirit about her and I was really grateful that I had the opportunity to interview her. Well, that is about it for this week. It has definitely been a crazy and busy week but it all worked out really well. I'm just hoping that this next week will be a little more calm and busy haha. Thank you all for your emails and your love and care and support. I truly do
appreciate it and am eternally grateful for our family. That we can live together for eternity if we will do our part. I'm thankful that we are all doing our part at this time and that we have had the opportunity to be sealed together in the Temple. I can't think of a greater blessing that our Heavenly Father has given us than that! I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Fairclough