Yep… absolutely absurd. My companion said I shouldn’t tell these stories until I get home. But I just asked the elder sitting next to me and he said I should tell. So I’m going to tell them because I can’t keep a secret. But we will get to it later…we will start at the beginning.
Monday: We had lunch with Sister Peterson and her family at a Chinese restaurant. It was so yummy. I couldn’t believe there was Chinese food here. It was great to visit with her family, they were very nice. We had a lot of fun.
Tuesday: Siranush was still staying with us. She stayed till Thursday. We had district meeting in Charentsavan and then our district leader gave Marat his baptismal interview. He passed! Since we had Siranush staying with us we had her make us a bunch of Borsche so that we would have food to eat. I learned how to make it so that I can make it from now on. It’s so yummy!
Wednesday: Nothing special happened.
Thursday: Thanksgiving Day!!!! We had a few meetings in the morning and went to Yerevan at about 2pm. We went to look for a big flower market in Yerevan but we couldn’t find it. Sister Dunn wanted me to make all of the floral designs for the tables for zone conference. It has been so hectic trying to find it all. After we couldn’t find it we went to a big supermarket (ya it almost felt like America) and we bought some food for thanksgiving there. We then went to the Elders in Yerevan and made our big feast. I made fried chicken and we also had mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, homemade biscuits, homemade root beer, homemade raspberry jam (made by me), apple crisp, ice cream…I think I named them all. It was so fun. We had Christmas music blasting and it was a great meal. That night we went home and after being home for about an hour or so…someone knocked on our door at about 9:45pm. We didn’t answer it. They kept knocking. We still didn’t answer it. I was on my nightly phone call with our district leader and I asked him what we should do. He told us to talk through the door and ask what they wanted. We were a little scared by now because it was a teenage boy with his hood on. So I finally asked who it was and what he wanted. He put his face close up to the door and whispered "I want a bible". I said no and told him to go away. He kept knocking and saying “I want a bible”. He then went on to tell us that we needed to open the door for a second. I said no and he just kept asking us for a bible in a very creepy voice. While all of this was happening I was looking out the little peep hole in the door. And all of the sudden I see him pull out something shinny and silver. Before even taking a second look or a second thought I yelled to my companion and said “he has a gun!!!!” So we bolted to our bedroom and laid ourselves flat on the floor. The kid kept knocking. I was ready to hear a gunshot any second. I kept yelling at my companion to stay lying on the floor. I hung up on our district leader and called the elders who are in Charentsavan with us. I told them to run over fast. Then I called our Branch President and told him to send the police, that some boys were at our door. He said he would send them and that he was on his way as well. Then I called our neighbor who is an inactive man and I told him to get out there and see who was at our door. I made 3 phone calls within one minute. I was shaking and breathing so hard. Then I made us move to our closet because I didn’t want us to be by any windows in case he really did have a gun. We sat in the closet for about 3 minutes and then I called the Elders again and told them to wait behind our building because the kid might have a gun. Then our branch president called and said we could open the door and that the cops were there. We went and opened the door and as scary as this story is…it was a pretty funny sight. There were about 7 HUGE mafia/police men. They had the boy and another boy who was hiding. The boys went on telling them that they just wanted a bible and they were acting all innocent. One had come to church before and my companion recognized him. He is a major problem causer. So then the Elders walked up and we told the police what had happened and they took the boys away. The elders had run from their apartment to our apartment in 3 minutes. And their apartment is pretty far from us. The elders came in and they were way scared…we were way scared. Then a few minutes later our branch president showed up. He had to have someone wheel him all the way from his apartment to our apartment. He called the police station (he is good friends with all of the cops) and made sure they still had the boys. Then he went to the police station and chewed them out and he even made them cry. We called President Dunn and he just told us to be careful and call our branch president. So after everything had calmed down we eventually fell asleep and everything was fine. We aren’t sure if he had a gun or not. I don’t know what he had in his hand, but I wasn’t about to take a second look and find out. I just ran as fast as I could, dragging my companion, to our room.
Friday: We spent hours looking for stuff for the centerpieces. It took forever. We had to find vases, candles, flowers, wire, etc…it was very hectic and we weren’t in the mood for hectic because of our night the night before. But we eventually got everything found and ordered. Nothing happened to us that night. Everything was quiet and we figured everything would be fine after we showed them how fast we could have the police there.
Saturday: Today was Marat’s baptism. We all went to Yerevan that morning. We had the baptism and then came back to Charentsavan. The baptism was great. Very beautiful and he was very happy. So that night we were sitting at home and we hear a soft knock on our window. So I was like okay that’s it we are putting a sheet up over the window so they can’t see when we are home because the curtain we have now is see through. So I went to get a sheet to put up and then someone pounded way hard on our window. So again we bolted it to our closet and called the elders. There were out still and close to our apartment so they ran over. We had them hang out with us to see if anything would happen again. Then while we are sitting there we hear a big smack. I thought something had just fallen down but we couldn’t find anything that had fallen. So a few minutes later the elders looked outside the door and there was a big huge rock that had been thrown at our door. That pushed us over the edge. We called the Assistants to the President and asked them what we should do. They told us to sleep at the elders’ apartment that night and the elders would sleep at ours. So we packed all of our stuff into the car and went and slept at the elders. As the taxi was pulling out of our alley way a car started following us and I told the driver that the car was following us and he saw. So we kept driving and it kept following. A little bit down the road there was a cop car on the side of the road. And the car that was following us got pulled over. So we have no idea if they were really following us or not but right when we pulled out they did to and they were following us way closely for a while. Luckily the cops pulled them over. So we slept at the elders’ apartment and they stayed at ours. We switched back in the morning and then went to church.
Sunday: Marat received the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was very good. Our branch president called the boys that came to our door that night and he wanted to chew them out again and he wanted to ask them if they hit our windows the night before. They denied it and kept trying to tell us that they just wanted a bible. I told them they were lying and our branch president said if anything else happens he will assume it was them and he will smash their heads in (well his friends will because he is in a wheel chair). Branch President just left to go to the temple in Switzerland but we have his police friends number and he will be at our house in 1 minute if needed. We are also looking for new apartments to move to a new place. We will hopefully have all of that solved soon.
Anyway….This is probably scary news for you and I probably shouldn’t tell you these stories but I just really wanted to. We are fine and we will be fine. The elders have been with us a lot and we keep them at our apartment until about 10 at night to just wait for something to happen. We are being very careful and watching our backs. Don’t worry. Let’s just say I’m living in a horror movie sometimes. We are in Yerevan today and tomorrow because we have a mission conference tomorrow. We are spending all of tonight designing the centerpieces. I’ll let you all know how they turn out.
Things are just dandy here. I’m alive. That’s good. Well sorry to send such a weird email. I love you all so much. Keep me in your prayers. Have a great week! Love you!
-Sister Bishop
FYI
Monday, November 30, 2009
Okay so you know how I said that one week was the craziest week of my life…well this week topped it…
Monday, November 23, 2009
“Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming soon…hurry hurry!”
It's just around the corner! My companion is even letting me listen to Christmas music now because it snowed the other day! It was just a little bit of snow but we had a deal going on that I could listen to Christmas music either the day of the first snow or the day after Thanksgiving. Anyway, everything was good this week. Nothing too special. Here I go…
Monday: As a zone we all went bowling together. I didn’t bowl because I am silly like that and I don’t like bowling. I don’t find a point in paying to throw a ball down the gutter every time. But it was fun watching everyone else.
Tuesday: We had district meeting in Yerevan. Our district leader made a chocolate cake for us because I told him to. He always asks me what we want him to do for district meeting and I always say make a chocolate cake. And so he did this time. After the meeting we went to a restaurant as a district. It is a Harry Potter themed restaurant. Kind of silly but it was fun.
Wednesday: I don’t remember. Just more missionary work.
Thursday: Ya I forgot to write down my week as it went so I really can't remember. Nothing special. Again, just more missionary work.
Friday: We went to a baptism in Yerevan. It was the Elders baptism. Everything went well. We will be having a baptism this coming Saturday. Marat will have his interview Tuesday and he will be baptized on Saturday. We are way excited.
Saturday: We planned our day and then went out to get our meetings in and all of them fell through. That was a little frustrating. We did meet with the lady who was just baptized and talked to her about enduring to the end.
Sunday: Okay…this is where the week gets a little exciting. It was way quiet the whole week and then it picked up a bit. We went to Yerevan again for a district conference (stake conference). We got everyone there and all went fairly smooth. Everyone was well behaved and stayed in their chairs pretty good. A bunch of non members came with us because they just wanted a free 3 hour trip to Yerevan. The conference was very good. I got to see everyone from Gyumri. I sat with Tamara from Gyumri. She misses me a ton. She is now the new relief society president. She is so happy. I also saw Siranush and we had planned earlier in the week that she would come back to Charentsavan with us and stay for a few days with us. I asked our mission president and he approved of it all. So Siranush is with us doing missionary work. It's way good to have her around again. We have lots of fun. We went to a meeting Sunday night with Marat. We were teaching him about all the commandments and everything he needs to know before baptism. After our lesson all of the boys that we are teaching and working with come in with big wood clubs. They has just beaten someone up and then they came to the church acting all cool. We tried to kick them out but it wasn’t going very well. I won't tell all of the story but it was lucky we had Siranush there to help us out because we told them we can't teach them anymore and that they can't come into the church like that. She did all the talking for us. Anyway…a long story short and edited…we got it all under control and we will probably be talking with President Dunn here pretty soon about it. No need to worry. All will be well. I probably shouldn’t even tell this story to you but I got nothing else exciting to tell. So I'll just leave you with a little bit of the story. :) Anyway….we are going to lunch now with Sister Peterson's family. They are in town picking her up from her mission. I'll let you all know how it goes next week. I should have more exciting stuff to say next week. All is well here…we are happy and working hard. Life is a roller coaster. But you gotta keep on riding! Have a great week! I love you all!
-Sister Bishop
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!
Monday: As a zone we all went bowling together. I didn’t bowl because I am silly like that and I don’t like bowling. I don’t find a point in paying to throw a ball down the gutter every time. But it was fun watching everyone else.
Tuesday: We had district meeting in Yerevan. Our district leader made a chocolate cake for us because I told him to. He always asks me what we want him to do for district meeting and I always say make a chocolate cake. And so he did this time. After the meeting we went to a restaurant as a district. It is a Harry Potter themed restaurant. Kind of silly but it was fun.
Wednesday: I don’t remember. Just more missionary work.
Thursday: Ya I forgot to write down my week as it went so I really can't remember. Nothing special. Again, just more missionary work.
Friday: We went to a baptism in Yerevan. It was the Elders baptism. Everything went well. We will be having a baptism this coming Saturday. Marat will have his interview Tuesday and he will be baptized on Saturday. We are way excited.
Saturday: We planned our day and then went out to get our meetings in and all of them fell through. That was a little frustrating. We did meet with the lady who was just baptized and talked to her about enduring to the end.
Sunday: Okay…this is where the week gets a little exciting. It was way quiet the whole week and then it picked up a bit. We went to Yerevan again for a district conference (stake conference). We got everyone there and all went fairly smooth. Everyone was well behaved and stayed in their chairs pretty good. A bunch of non members came with us because they just wanted a free 3 hour trip to Yerevan. The conference was very good. I got to see everyone from Gyumri. I sat with Tamara from Gyumri. She misses me a ton. She is now the new relief society president. She is so happy. I also saw Siranush and we had planned earlier in the week that she would come back to Charentsavan with us and stay for a few days with us. I asked our mission president and he approved of it all. So Siranush is with us doing missionary work. It's way good to have her around again. We have lots of fun. We went to a meeting Sunday night with Marat. We were teaching him about all the commandments and everything he needs to know before baptism. After our lesson all of the boys that we are teaching and working with come in with big wood clubs. They has just beaten someone up and then they came to the church acting all cool. We tried to kick them out but it wasn’t going very well. I won't tell all of the story but it was lucky we had Siranush there to help us out because we told them we can't teach them anymore and that they can't come into the church like that. She did all the talking for us. Anyway…a long story short and edited…we got it all under control and we will probably be talking with President Dunn here pretty soon about it. No need to worry. All will be well. I probably shouldn’t even tell this story to you but I got nothing else exciting to tell. So I'll just leave you with a little bit of the story. :) Anyway….we are going to lunch now with Sister Peterson's family. They are in town picking her up from her mission. I'll let you all know how it goes next week. I should have more exciting stuff to say next week. All is well here…we are happy and working hard. Life is a roller coaster. But you gotta keep on riding! Have a great week! I love you all!
-Sister Bishop
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!
Monday, November 16, 2009
I REALLY AM A NICE PERSON…I PROMISE!
Okay so I read the little “disclaimer” that was put on my last blog and I want to make a comment… I really am a nice person. I’m just not a push over anymore…especially when people are ruining my missionary work. I'M BOLD! Anyway..my week…(Sorry Lara, we love you!)
Monday: We had lunch with a bunch of missionaries from our zone. It was pretty fun. We went to this place called Square One. It had American food. Yum. Then Sister Furhiman and I went shopping and I bought lots of cute earrings, a necklace, and some sunglasses.
Tuesday: We had district meeting in the morning. We did this thing called “language pressure” where you have to teach a lesson to the other missionaries in Armenian right off the spot. And then they critique your Armenian. I absolutely HATE them. I get so nervous and then I can’t even speak right. The zone leaders were there and they absolutely pounded our language skills. I felt terrible afterwards. (Hi Elder Piercy, I know you are reading this, thanks for the pounding). The Lord always seems to find some way to keep me humble. Oh well. That night we went to the village Alaparse. We even wore our P-Day clothes because we were going to visit that very very poor family out there that has a bunch of little girls that get us way dirty. One of the little girls was sick and she was lying in bed and she was being such an actress. She kept acting like she was dying and she made me hold her for like an hour. I felt so bad for her because she was so sick and just laying in her dirty cold cement house. I have a few videos of her and I will send them home here in a few weeks with Sister Fager. My companion also got a package with a bunch of little kids gloves in them so we took them to those little girls for the winter. They loved them so much.
Wednesday: The Elders had a baptism that day so we went to Yerevan for the baptism. We went early to have our interviews with our mission president (where I found out that I won’t be having a mini missionary companion…I don’t know what it will be) and then the rest of the branch and the people being baptized came. It went really well! We had 3 investigators come and they just loved it. The people who got baptized are a cute little husband and wife. That is so rare that a husband and a wife get baptized. Good Armenian men are hard to come by. Everything went smoothly…which is always a relief for us missionaries. On the way home we rode in the vans with the members of the branch back to Charentsavan. The van I was in got pulled over by the police so we were a little behind the other van that the elders were in. So about 10 minutes into our trip we see the people from the other van waving us down. We pulled over and got out to see what was going on. They had stopped on the side of the rode to get food from a shack and then we walked up and saw their van. The front left wheel was completely off of the van. We asked the Elders what had happened and they said that out of nowhere our branch president was like “let’s stop right here and get food”, he had a feeling to stop at that exact minute. So they stopped and right as they stopped the front, left wheel completely fell off. It is an absolute miracle!! If they would have gone 10 more feet on the highway they all would have been dead. If the wheel would have fallen off at that speed it would have rolled the whole van. They are so blessed! So the whole branch piled into the other van and we missionaries took a taxi home. We didn’t want to sit in that van with everyone. Ooh the joys of having enough money to just take a taxi. So that night we had a meeting with our investigators. All the boys who have been causing problems for us are now our investigators. We gave them a very good lesson about the word of wisdom. 2 of them had already started quitting. My favorite investigator is Marat. He used to smoke 60 cigarettes a day but he cut down to 5,3,1,0!!! His countenance has just changed this past week. He is so excited that he was able to stop. I just hope and pray he will stick with it. He has also told us that he has prayed and he knows it is true. He comes to every activity and even helps out the branch president. He is doing so good! It is so amazing to watch it all. We are so very excited. If all goes well he will be baptized November 28th. YAY!
Thursday: We had another pounding Word of Wisdom meeting with those boys. Our branch president was there and he absolutely pounded them. The spirit was so strong. One of the guys had a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and I made him give me the box and I took it to our branch president and he made all of the boys come watch as we ripped them up. It was great!
Friday: We had a very interesting meeting this morning. We met with a man and all he talked about was committing adultery. I was trying to give him a lesson on the restoration, and he kept bringing up the commandment about adultery. He tried to tell us that he thinks it's okay. He went on to ask us “what do you eat for your meals” and I said “umm chicken” and he was like well if you ate chicken everyday that would get way old. So that was his way of justifying adultery. That a person can’t eat the same thing everyday…in other words….be with the same person every day. I just laughed at him and said it is one of the biggest sins. It was way funny. He also told us he would come to church if there were always pretty girls like us there. EWW! So this night we went to a butcher shop to get some ground beef for a lady in our branch that was going to be making us dinner the next day. At this butcher shop there was a fresh dead cow there. It was so gross. I was dry heaving the whole time. I asked the man how long the cow had been dead and he said 38 minutes. The flesh was still steaming! I got some way funny pictures and videos with it though. But let’s just say…that was the freshest meat I’ve ever eaten.
Saturday: We had traditional Armenian food at a member’s house with the elders. We ate dolma. It is way good. It is meat wrapped in cabbage leaves. It was way tasty. Then we taught seminary because the teacher bailed out on us again. After seminary we had a way funny talk with a teenage boy in the branch. He has a big crush on a girl in the branch but she doesn’t like him and so he treats her like crap. We started talking to him about it and he just started opening up to us. It was so cute. We had to give him dating advice and tell him that he has to treat her better and be different than normal Armenian men (they are all way big jerks and treat women terribly). It is so funny to watch this whole Jr. High dating games again. After that there was a Young Single Adult activity at the church. So they made us stay and party with them. We had 3 investigators there so we decided it was justified to stay. We ate, danced, and had a ton of fun. My comp was dancing like a crazy person. She definitely didn’t get any skills in that area. It was good to show them our fun sides, because the probably think we are all boring, strict, mean missionaries…..hahaha they have no idea how we really are…well actually they do now.
Sunday: There were over 80 people at church. It was awesome!! I tell ya….if you just endure the hard times…God will always bless you. The hard times never last! Church went a lot better. There were still some problems with people being irreverent but it was so much better. Ever since we picked up the teenage boys as our investigators they are behaving so much better. The gospel is slowly changing their lives. And in Marats’ case…it is quickly changing his…and he is so happy about it. It’s so neat to watch that weight of addiction be lifted off on his shoulder. He is so surprised he has done it. He even said the smell of smoke is gross to him now. SO GOOD!
Well that’s all for this week. Everything is going great. Transfers are this week but me and my companion are staying where we are at for a couple of weeks until Sister Fager goes home. ..Then we don’t know what it will be. Anyway…I love you all! I miss you all!
-Sister Bishop
P.S. I was thinking the other day how badly I miss going to the temple. I seriously ache to be at the temple again and I always have dreams about going. So since I can’t go for another 8 months…will you all go for me!!! You don’t know how lucky you are to have one right down the street! LOVE YOU!
Monday: We had lunch with a bunch of missionaries from our zone. It was pretty fun. We went to this place called Square One. It had American food. Yum. Then Sister Furhiman and I went shopping and I bought lots of cute earrings, a necklace, and some sunglasses.
Tuesday: We had district meeting in the morning. We did this thing called “language pressure” where you have to teach a lesson to the other missionaries in Armenian right off the spot. And then they critique your Armenian. I absolutely HATE them. I get so nervous and then I can’t even speak right. The zone leaders were there and they absolutely pounded our language skills. I felt terrible afterwards. (Hi Elder Piercy, I know you are reading this, thanks for the pounding). The Lord always seems to find some way to keep me humble. Oh well. That night we went to the village Alaparse. We even wore our P-Day clothes because we were going to visit that very very poor family out there that has a bunch of little girls that get us way dirty. One of the little girls was sick and she was lying in bed and she was being such an actress. She kept acting like she was dying and she made me hold her for like an hour. I felt so bad for her because she was so sick and just laying in her dirty cold cement house. I have a few videos of her and I will send them home here in a few weeks with Sister Fager. My companion also got a package with a bunch of little kids gloves in them so we took them to those little girls for the winter. They loved them so much.
Wednesday: The Elders had a baptism that day so we went to Yerevan for the baptism. We went early to have our interviews with our mission president (where I found out that I won’t be having a mini missionary companion…I don’t know what it will be) and then the rest of the branch and the people being baptized came. It went really well! We had 3 investigators come and they just loved it. The people who got baptized are a cute little husband and wife. That is so rare that a husband and a wife get baptized. Good Armenian men are hard to come by. Everything went smoothly…which is always a relief for us missionaries. On the way home we rode in the vans with the members of the branch back to Charentsavan. The van I was in got pulled over by the police so we were a little behind the other van that the elders were in. So about 10 minutes into our trip we see the people from the other van waving us down. We pulled over and got out to see what was going on. They had stopped on the side of the rode to get food from a shack and then we walked up and saw their van. The front left wheel was completely off of the van. We asked the Elders what had happened and they said that out of nowhere our branch president was like “let’s stop right here and get food”, he had a feeling to stop at that exact minute. So they stopped and right as they stopped the front, left wheel completely fell off. It is an absolute miracle!! If they would have gone 10 more feet on the highway they all would have been dead. If the wheel would have fallen off at that speed it would have rolled the whole van. They are so blessed! So the whole branch piled into the other van and we missionaries took a taxi home. We didn’t want to sit in that van with everyone. Ooh the joys of having enough money to just take a taxi. So that night we had a meeting with our investigators. All the boys who have been causing problems for us are now our investigators. We gave them a very good lesson about the word of wisdom. 2 of them had already started quitting. My favorite investigator is Marat. He used to smoke 60 cigarettes a day but he cut down to 5,3,1,0!!! His countenance has just changed this past week. He is so excited that he was able to stop. I just hope and pray he will stick with it. He has also told us that he has prayed and he knows it is true. He comes to every activity and even helps out the branch president. He is doing so good! It is so amazing to watch it all. We are so very excited. If all goes well he will be baptized November 28th. YAY!
Thursday: We had another pounding Word of Wisdom meeting with those boys. Our branch president was there and he absolutely pounded them. The spirit was so strong. One of the guys had a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and I made him give me the box and I took it to our branch president and he made all of the boys come watch as we ripped them up. It was great!
Friday: We had a very interesting meeting this morning. We met with a man and all he talked about was committing adultery. I was trying to give him a lesson on the restoration, and he kept bringing up the commandment about adultery. He tried to tell us that he thinks it's okay. He went on to ask us “what do you eat for your meals” and I said “umm chicken” and he was like well if you ate chicken everyday that would get way old. So that was his way of justifying adultery. That a person can’t eat the same thing everyday…in other words….be with the same person every day. I just laughed at him and said it is one of the biggest sins. It was way funny. He also told us he would come to church if there were always pretty girls like us there. EWW! So this night we went to a butcher shop to get some ground beef for a lady in our branch that was going to be making us dinner the next day. At this butcher shop there was a fresh dead cow there. It was so gross. I was dry heaving the whole time. I asked the man how long the cow had been dead and he said 38 minutes. The flesh was still steaming! I got some way funny pictures and videos with it though. But let’s just say…that was the freshest meat I’ve ever eaten.
Saturday: We had traditional Armenian food at a member’s house with the elders. We ate dolma. It is way good. It is meat wrapped in cabbage leaves. It was way tasty. Then we taught seminary because the teacher bailed out on us again. After seminary we had a way funny talk with a teenage boy in the branch. He has a big crush on a girl in the branch but she doesn’t like him and so he treats her like crap. We started talking to him about it and he just started opening up to us. It was so cute. We had to give him dating advice and tell him that he has to treat her better and be different than normal Armenian men (they are all way big jerks and treat women terribly). It is so funny to watch this whole Jr. High dating games again. After that there was a Young Single Adult activity at the church. So they made us stay and party with them. We had 3 investigators there so we decided it was justified to stay. We ate, danced, and had a ton of fun. My comp was dancing like a crazy person. She definitely didn’t get any skills in that area. It was good to show them our fun sides, because the probably think we are all boring, strict, mean missionaries…..hahaha they have no idea how we really are…well actually they do now.
Sunday: There were over 80 people at church. It was awesome!! I tell ya….if you just endure the hard times…God will always bless you. The hard times never last! Church went a lot better. There were still some problems with people being irreverent but it was so much better. Ever since we picked up the teenage boys as our investigators they are behaving so much better. The gospel is slowly changing their lives. And in Marats’ case…it is quickly changing his…and he is so happy about it. It’s so neat to watch that weight of addiction be lifted off on his shoulder. He is so surprised he has done it. He even said the smell of smoke is gross to him now. SO GOOD!
Well that’s all for this week. Everything is going great. Transfers are this week but me and my companion are staying where we are at for a couple of weeks until Sister Fager goes home. ..Then we don’t know what it will be. Anyway…I love you all! I miss you all!
-Sister Bishop
P.S. I was thinking the other day how badly I miss going to the temple. I seriously ache to be at the temple again and I always have dreams about going. So since I can’t go for another 8 months…will you all go for me!!! You don’t know how lucky you are to have one right down the street! LOVE YOU!
Monday, November 9, 2009
I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AROUND HERE AGAIN!!!!
Yes, I said that to a man last night. I don’t even know where it came from. He was making me so mad that all of the sudden it came spilling out…in Armenian! I seriously laughed at myself after I said it because I couldn’t believe I came up with the words in Armenian to say it to him. I say so many things in Armenian that I would never be able to say in English. I’ll tell you the story as to why I said it to him later in the email.
Monday: P-day: We did Internet, went to lunch with all of the sisters. The sisters from Gyumri came down so we had lunch with them and then we went shopping. Nothing too exciting.
Tuesday: We went back to Yerevan for District Meeting. After District Meeting we went to lunch at Gold’s Gym and met Sister Peterson and Sister Christensen there. We were doing companionship exchanges with them until Thursday. Sister Peterson was coming up to Charentsavan with me for a few days. She is from Arizona and she goes home from her mission in like 8 days. It was fun and we had a good time. She gave me a lot of nice compliments about how well I am speaking. She even told me she thinks I am better than her at the language. It felt good to hear that I am doing okay. A lot of our meetings fell through so that was kind of stressful because I don’t know my area that great so we were out of ideas of places we could go.
Thursday: Sister Furhiman came back. It was nice to have her back. She is a great companion and we have TONS of fun. We are laughing all the time, well that is when we aren’t yelling at silly Armenian men.
Friday: That night our maid was supposed to come and clean but she didn’t show up. We were already upset because she hasn't been doing a very good job. So we called her and asked her to come the next day.
Saturday: That morning I wrote a list of all the things the maid needed to clean. It took me like a half hour to write it all because I had to figure out how to spell everything right in Armenian. So I set the list out and expected her to do everything on the list. It was simple things like make sure you take out the garbage and clean the floors. Pretty much common sense things. Well she came and still didn’t do the things I said on the list. The garbage was still there, the floors were soaking wet, a bucket of our clothes were sitting in water because she couldn’t find a place to put them to dry and it just wasn’t what we'd expected. Other sister missionaries have told her that she was out of chances and if it wasn’t done right, she would be fired. But no one had the guts to fire her. We called and asked her if the bucket of clothes was clean and to tell her that she missed a few things and she wasn’t really sorry. So Sister Fuhriman being the nice one handed the phone over to me and I did all the talking. This girl is like 20 years old and she wasn't being very nice to me. I was like if it doesn’t get better we'll have to let you go. And so she was like "Well it can’t get any better, I’m doing everything possible". She just kept saying way rude things so I finally told her to not return. So we had a nice long 40 minute conversation over the phone. Sister Fuhriman always makes me do the dirty work. This girl was trying to tell me that I was sinning. I was trying to explain to her that it had no connection with the church and that we were paying her with our money from America and we can do whatever we want with our money and that this has nothing to do with the church but she was like “this has everything to do with the church”. So I had to clarify that. It was just very tiring. So we now don’t have a maid and we probably won’t hire a new one unless we find someone who will do an amazing job. We pay way good money for this and so it should be good.
Sunday: This day was absolutely crazy again. Those same non member boys came to the church and caused so many problems. The funniest thing happened. Sister Fuhriman and I were getting so mad and yelling at them so loud to get out of the church. As we were doing this Sister Fuhriman pretty much picked up one of them up and threw him out the door. I was so frustrated, but I couldn’t help but laugh at that. They just kept coming back in as we were pushing them out the door. I seriously am so tired from all of this drama. I can’t even sleep well anymore. I might get a stomach ulcer. Ha…joking joking…. We seriously are so hopeless. We don’t know what to do about it all. It is a circus at church. I did give a talk during church yesterday about following the prophet. It went pretty well. They all told me that I am speaking very well. I wasn’t even scared to give it. I got up there and just spoke. It was way nice. It’s so fun to just be able to speak in another language and have the people understand you. So last night we were teaching an investigator at the church, the meeting was going great, we were giving him a baptismal date and he even accepted it. But during the whole meeting one of the boys that keeps bothering us was knocking on the windows the whole time and trying to get into the church. It is our investigators friend. He knocked for like 10 minutes. So finally we went to the door and through the window him and I had a little chat. And out of nowhere I said “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AROUND HERE AGAIN”. My Armenian really does get better when I’m yelling at people. He seriously is one of the hardest persons to get along with. He acts like a 12 year old and makes our work as missionaries so hard. (DISCLAIMER: This isn't the sweet Sister Bishop that left us 9 months ago. Apparently Armenia is making her mean. LOL! Hopefully she can soften these "boys" hearts and find someway to get through to them.)
Anyway, that’s all that happened here. I’m tired. But I will survive. I am pretty sure I am getting another mini missionary companion next week. I’m not too excited about it. I will be excited if it is Siranush again. We shall see. But transfers go by way fast so I can handle it. Have a great week. I love you all!
-Sister Bishop
Monday: P-day: We did Internet, went to lunch with all of the sisters. The sisters from Gyumri came down so we had lunch with them and then we went shopping. Nothing too exciting.
Tuesday: We went back to Yerevan for District Meeting. After District Meeting we went to lunch at Gold’s Gym and met Sister Peterson and Sister Christensen there. We were doing companionship exchanges with them until Thursday. Sister Peterson was coming up to Charentsavan with me for a few days. She is from Arizona and she goes home from her mission in like 8 days. It was fun and we had a good time. She gave me a lot of nice compliments about how well I am speaking. She even told me she thinks I am better than her at the language. It felt good to hear that I am doing okay. A lot of our meetings fell through so that was kind of stressful because I don’t know my area that great so we were out of ideas of places we could go.
Thursday: Sister Furhiman came back. It was nice to have her back. She is a great companion and we have TONS of fun. We are laughing all the time, well that is when we aren’t yelling at silly Armenian men.
Friday: That night our maid was supposed to come and clean but she didn’t show up. We were already upset because she hasn't been doing a very good job. So we called her and asked her to come the next day.
Saturday: That morning I wrote a list of all the things the maid needed to clean. It took me like a half hour to write it all because I had to figure out how to spell everything right in Armenian. So I set the list out and expected her to do everything on the list. It was simple things like make sure you take out the garbage and clean the floors. Pretty much common sense things. Well she came and still didn’t do the things I said on the list. The garbage was still there, the floors were soaking wet, a bucket of our clothes were sitting in water because she couldn’t find a place to put them to dry and it just wasn’t what we'd expected. Other sister missionaries have told her that she was out of chances and if it wasn’t done right, she would be fired. But no one had the guts to fire her. We called and asked her if the bucket of clothes was clean and to tell her that she missed a few things and she wasn’t really sorry. So Sister Fuhriman being the nice one handed the phone over to me and I did all the talking. This girl is like 20 years old and she wasn't being very nice to me. I was like if it doesn’t get better we'll have to let you go. And so she was like "Well it can’t get any better, I’m doing everything possible". She just kept saying way rude things so I finally told her to not return. So we had a nice long 40 minute conversation over the phone. Sister Fuhriman always makes me do the dirty work. This girl was trying to tell me that I was sinning. I was trying to explain to her that it had no connection with the church and that we were paying her with our money from America and we can do whatever we want with our money and that this has nothing to do with the church but she was like “this has everything to do with the church”. So I had to clarify that. It was just very tiring. So we now don’t have a maid and we probably won’t hire a new one unless we find someone who will do an amazing job. We pay way good money for this and so it should be good.
Sunday: This day was absolutely crazy again. Those same non member boys came to the church and caused so many problems. The funniest thing happened. Sister Fuhriman and I were getting so mad and yelling at them so loud to get out of the church. As we were doing this Sister Fuhriman pretty much picked up one of them up and threw him out the door. I was so frustrated, but I couldn’t help but laugh at that. They just kept coming back in as we were pushing them out the door. I seriously am so tired from all of this drama. I can’t even sleep well anymore. I might get a stomach ulcer. Ha…joking joking…. We seriously are so hopeless. We don’t know what to do about it all. It is a circus at church. I did give a talk during church yesterday about following the prophet. It went pretty well. They all told me that I am speaking very well. I wasn’t even scared to give it. I got up there and just spoke. It was way nice. It’s so fun to just be able to speak in another language and have the people understand you. So last night we were teaching an investigator at the church, the meeting was going great, we were giving him a baptismal date and he even accepted it. But during the whole meeting one of the boys that keeps bothering us was knocking on the windows the whole time and trying to get into the church. It is our investigators friend. He knocked for like 10 minutes. So finally we went to the door and through the window him and I had a little chat. And out of nowhere I said “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AROUND HERE AGAIN”. My Armenian really does get better when I’m yelling at people. He seriously is one of the hardest persons to get along with. He acts like a 12 year old and makes our work as missionaries so hard. (DISCLAIMER: This isn't the sweet Sister Bishop that left us 9 months ago. Apparently Armenia is making her mean. LOL! Hopefully she can soften these "boys" hearts and find someway to get through to them.)
Anyway, that’s all that happened here. I’m tired. But I will survive. I am pretty sure I am getting another mini missionary companion next week. I’m not too excited about it. I will be excited if it is Siranush again. We shall see. But transfers go by way fast so I can handle it. Have a great week. I love you all!
-Sister Bishop
Monday, November 2, 2009
WILDEST WEEK OF MY LIFE!
Okay so seriously, this was the craziest week of my life. Absolutely absurd. This is going to be a very long email because I am going to try to explain all that happened. There is so much to tell. I hope I can give you a glimpse at how crazy it was.
Monday: We had lunch with the sisters in Yerevan. We just sat and talked at this restaurant for 3 hours. It was fun to get with the girls and have girl talk.
Tuesday: District meeting was in Yerevan so we drove all the way back to Yerevan Tuesday morning. There was this handicapped man that hangs out at the church named Hacob. He was acting up and locked us in the room during our meeting. Luckily we were able to trick him into unlocking the door and we took the keys from him. After district meeting Sister Furhiman and I went to a restaurant in Yerevan called Cactus. It is a Mexican food place and I have been dying to go there. It was soooo good! I almost cried. I love Mexican food and have been missing it so much. It was so expensive though. For the two of us we paid $40! It was so worth it though. After that we were waiting for the Elders to get done with doing service so we just chilled in Yerevan and did some shopping. I found a coat that I just loved and I bought it. It is exactly what I wanted. I am way happy about that. It's long and has a fur hood. Way cute. Tuesday was like another P-day. It was way nice.
Wednesday: We went out to the village Alaparse. We visited with a member out there and did service in her garden. We then did our English class out there with her. After visiting with her we went to an in-active member’s house. This lady lives in some of the roughest conditions that I have seen in Armenia. She has 4 daughters but 3 of them have been taken away and sent to a boarding school in Yerevan. The girls were home visiting for the week while we were there. It was fun to be able to meet them. They are so cute. They all have shaved heads because they get head lice all the time. They are so starved for love and attention. They just held on to me and made me hold them and they just kept giving me snotty kisses. (Yes…I am now very sick because of it). I don’t want to withhold my love from these kids though just because they are sick. So I just take the risk. This is where the week started to go downhill. That night we went to an investigators house. Her mom is a member. We were way excited to teach her but once we get there they had her little son put his karate outfit on and show us all of his karate moves. They thought he was the best thing in the world. It was cute and all but they thought he was so great that we needed to take video and go and show our mission president how amazing he is. They wouldn’t listen but kept talking to us about how great it will be for the church if they have a karate champion in it. Their motives are not good. So many people just want money from the church and this was definitely one of those families. They wouldn’t stop asking us to do this for them. They even got out another DVD and made us watch it. It was a video of some designs out of fruit that the investigator had done. They also wanted us to take the DVD to our president and see if he wanted her to work for the church. I was getting so frustrated. They just wouldn’t stop. So finally I asked if we could pray together! We prayed and my comp gave a 2 min. lesson and we left. It was hard to be in that position.
Thursday: I have this new skirt that a member knitted for me. It is an underskirt so that I can stay warm in the winter. I was wearing it this day and during lunch I took off my over skirt that I had on. So I was just wearing this very funny looking knitted underskirt. So we were getting ready to leave our house after lunch and I put my shoes on and walked out the door. As we are walking toward the church I see that my companion's long socks had fallen down and so I busted up laughing because she looked so funny. She was laughing like crazy because she looked so ridiculous and as she was bending down to pull her socks up she sees me and starts hysterically laughing even more. And I was still laughing because of her socks. Finally she was able to get it out…."Well look at what skirt you are wearing!” Hahaha! I was wearing my underskirt out in public. It was sooo funny! I bolted back to our apartment and put my over skirt on. It was so funny. Me and her laugh so hard all the time. We are both wild and she is always doing things that makes me roll of the floor laughing. I love it.
Friday: This is where it gets really bad. All of our meetings in the morning fell through. We went to go and look for old investigators that other missionaries had taught to try and get them to be investigators again. So we climbed 9 flights of stairs and find out that no one even lives in that apartment. OI! So after a lot of walking around we find an investigator home. She was very tired and grumpy. She has been a very difficult investigator. She has so much potential but is always too busy to read or pray. Or so she says. Her daughter and granddaughter are members and they live with her. You think that would be a benefit. But it's not. The daughter doesn’t do anything around the house so it leaves here to do it all alone. Which made her snap at us. She completely lost it. She went off on us for about 30 minutes about how hard life is. Once I finally got a chance to talk…I tired to calm her down. I told her that we could sit here and talk all day about how terrible and hard her life is or we can figure out some way to fix it. And I told her the only way to fix her life is by finding the truth. The spirit was speaking so strongly through me. It was so fun to be able to have a discussion with someone in another language and just speak that fluently. I told her something that my dad always says “if you do what you’ve always done…you will get what you’ve always got”. I told her if she wants something different from life she needs to make some changes. That lesson was so powerful I just wanted to cry afterward. She really softened and said she would read and wanted us to come back the next day. She is still going to be very difficult and it's going to take a lot of time with her. But hopefully we can get a start at helping her change. After lunch we went to the church to teach English. Like 5 little kids showed up for English and were being sooo rowdy! We couldn’t even get a good class going because it was so wild there. I wanted so bad to just send everyone home and cancel English. (That wouldn’t be the first time that has happened in Charentsavan). So the church had been turned into a mad house. Kids were running and screaming and no parents were there. After English on Friday our branch had a ward Family Home Evening. The behavior in English set the mood for the Family Night. No one would sit down or hold still. Our branch president called us 30 minutes before FHE and told us he was sick and that he couldn’t come. So the whole thing was up to us missionaries. No one listens to us so it was still just crazy. We watched “The Other Side of Heaven” in Russian and no one listened. One lady even complained that she didn’t like this movie. My companion was getting so frustrated she finally was like okay lets go. So we stopped the movie and put an end to the evening. We were exhausted after that.
Saturday :( Halloween) It just keeps getting worse…hold on. Saturday morning I wake up and I am feeling fine. Then all of the sudden out of nowhere I get sooo sick. I won’t describe it but let’s just say literally every 3 minutes I was running to the bathroom. My companion was just laughing at me. She thought it was so funny. She even told the Elders all about it. So here I am…sicker than a dog and our branch president calls us and tells us we need to hurry and come over to the church. So we run over in our pajamas to see what’s going on. We get there and there is the worst smell. We walked back to the branch presidents’ office and there was a ton of sewer water all over the church. The bathroom over flowed and the pipes from the ceiling were leaking sewage. One of the members was on his hands and knees in sewage wiping it up. Our branch president didn’t know what to do. So he made a few calls and got someone to come clean it up. The guy that had just been soaking in sewage just acts like it’s no big deal and keeps walking around the church and sitting in chairs with his wet smelly clothes on. I wanted to die. I just wanted him to leave because he was sooo dirty. I felt like I was being drowned in germs. We knew that the person who was going to come and clean it up wouldn’t do a good enough job so we planned to come back and completely Clorox bleach the whole building. So after this we went back to our house and I was still sick so we were staying in for a while. We had a little Halloween party with the Elders. We made a homemade stew and zucchini spice cake. They made homemade doughnuts and homemade root beer. It was so good because there is no root beer here in this country. We had a nice little party with them and planned to meet with them that night to clean the church. It was a disaster and the next day was Sunday. So after the Elders had left we get a call from some members asking why the seminary teacher wasn’t there at the house. OOOH MAN!! We forgot to tell the Elders that the seminary teacher was sick and that they were supposed to teach it. We were too busy with the messy church and me being sick that we forgot to tell them. So we call them and have them come teach. We went to unlock the church door so that they didn’t have to stand out in the cold and freeze while waiting for the elders to come. So we let them in and one of the moms, who happens to be one of the best members, just starts yelling at us. She just went off on how bad the church is here in Charentsavan. How everyone is so irresponsible and when they don’t want to do their callings they go and call the missionaries to do everything for them. She was just so mad that she had to do so much. She even tried to blame the terrible behavior of her 5 year old son on the church. (Which reminds me: my trainer Sister Barratt once said to me…"Once you can start understanding the language and what they are saying to you…you are going to wish you couldn’t understand”…well now I’m understanding and after this crazy week…I wish I couldn’t understand. I’ve been asked for money and complained to sooo much this week. I am very grateful that I can understand Armenian but I sure wish it wasn’t like this.) So after she yelled at us, I tried to calm her down. Once again the spirit was speaking through me and I was able to speak so much better. I told her that we could sit around and talk about how bad everything is or we can set a goal to fix it. She kept trying to leave mad and I wouldn’t let her leave until she was calm and set a goal. I told her a lot of positive things and got her calmed down. I also told her that we would set up a meeting with the branch president to talk all of this through. It is sooo draining to have to console these people. So after all of this we went and changed into our cleaning clothes and came back to the church and poured bottles of bleach everywhere! We got the church completely bleached and cleaned and ready for church the next day. It still smells like a swimming pool in there. But at least I know it’s clean.
Sunday: Yep another crazy day. We wake up and I have a way bad sinus infection. I don’t know what it is but everything is getting me sick. The sisters in this mission get sick so bad. There is always someone sick. It is way hard on the sisters here because they just get smothered by the people and the germs get spread so easily. I was fine up until this past month but now that I’m hitting my half way mark I am getting way sick. I think my body is just getting tired. So we get ready for church and leave our house an hour before church to go to our investigators houses to try and get them to come to church. We tried 3 houses and they all turned us down. It was super frustrating but at least we tried. We are doing our part, the people just aren’t doing theirs. So we get to church and it was just wild there. Everyone was walking in and out of sacrament. Kids were screaming and running around the hall. There were these non member teenage boys just causing so many problems. After sacrament the branch president made everyone stay sitting and he gave them a big lecture on how this behavior is not allowed. It didn’t help. During Sunday school we were teaching some younger guys who came to church. They were so out of control. There were asking all of these silly questions. One was getting mad at us because he said this place is not a place of religion…it is a fun house. Two of them seemed pretty sincere and I wanted to have a good lesson with them but people kept coming in and out of our classroom and interrupting. It was crazy. I had to turn away so many people and we even had to lock the door so they would stop interrupting the class. Then we go and sit in relief society and one of the ladies sons is just bawling and causing so much trouble and she wasn’t doing anything about it. So me and Sister Furhiman take him out and put him back in primary. I then had to give the primary teacher a lesson on how to treat children. She would just yell at him and hit him which made his behavior worse. SO we finally got the 3 primary children settled down and took over primary. I finally got the little boy to stop crying and had to tell them that if everyone keeps calling him a bad boy then he is going to think he is a bad boy and he will behave badly. It was crazy. We were literally running from place to place just keeping the church from getting burned down. That night we had another crazy meeting with some young guys and one of the guys that was at church earlier that day came and was bothering us again. I had to get stern with him. So once I finished with him, I felt much better. But seriously…I’ve never done so much lecturing in my life. My Armenian is getting so much better since I’ve been in Charentsavan because I’ve been doing a ton of talking and consoling. Way fun.
Anyway…this email made me tired. It is so long and I just had to relive this crazy week again. It was much crazier than I can even describe. But I do love it so much. It’s so fun to help these people and help them improve and to teach them what they need to do in life. I do love my mission! Anyway…I love you all! Hope all is well!
-Sister Bishop
Monday: We had lunch with the sisters in Yerevan. We just sat and talked at this restaurant for 3 hours. It was fun to get with the girls and have girl talk.
Tuesday: District meeting was in Yerevan so we drove all the way back to Yerevan Tuesday morning. There was this handicapped man that hangs out at the church named Hacob. He was acting up and locked us in the room during our meeting. Luckily we were able to trick him into unlocking the door and we took the keys from him. After district meeting Sister Furhiman and I went to a restaurant in Yerevan called Cactus. It is a Mexican food place and I have been dying to go there. It was soooo good! I almost cried. I love Mexican food and have been missing it so much. It was so expensive though. For the two of us we paid $40! It was so worth it though. After that we were waiting for the Elders to get done with doing service so we just chilled in Yerevan and did some shopping. I found a coat that I just loved and I bought it. It is exactly what I wanted. I am way happy about that. It's long and has a fur hood. Way cute. Tuesday was like another P-day. It was way nice.
Wednesday: We went out to the village Alaparse. We visited with a member out there and did service in her garden. We then did our English class out there with her. After visiting with her we went to an in-active member’s house. This lady lives in some of the roughest conditions that I have seen in Armenia. She has 4 daughters but 3 of them have been taken away and sent to a boarding school in Yerevan. The girls were home visiting for the week while we were there. It was fun to be able to meet them. They are so cute. They all have shaved heads because they get head lice all the time. They are so starved for love and attention. They just held on to me and made me hold them and they just kept giving me snotty kisses. (Yes…I am now very sick because of it). I don’t want to withhold my love from these kids though just because they are sick. So I just take the risk. This is where the week started to go downhill. That night we went to an investigators house. Her mom is a member. We were way excited to teach her but once we get there they had her little son put his karate outfit on and show us all of his karate moves. They thought he was the best thing in the world. It was cute and all but they thought he was so great that we needed to take video and go and show our mission president how amazing he is. They wouldn’t listen but kept talking to us about how great it will be for the church if they have a karate champion in it. Their motives are not good. So many people just want money from the church and this was definitely one of those families. They wouldn’t stop asking us to do this for them. They even got out another DVD and made us watch it. It was a video of some designs out of fruit that the investigator had done. They also wanted us to take the DVD to our president and see if he wanted her to work for the church. I was getting so frustrated. They just wouldn’t stop. So finally I asked if we could pray together! We prayed and my comp gave a 2 min. lesson and we left. It was hard to be in that position.
Thursday: I have this new skirt that a member knitted for me. It is an underskirt so that I can stay warm in the winter. I was wearing it this day and during lunch I took off my over skirt that I had on. So I was just wearing this very funny looking knitted underskirt. So we were getting ready to leave our house after lunch and I put my shoes on and walked out the door. As we are walking toward the church I see that my companion's long socks had fallen down and so I busted up laughing because she looked so funny. She was laughing like crazy because she looked so ridiculous and as she was bending down to pull her socks up she sees me and starts hysterically laughing even more. And I was still laughing because of her socks. Finally she was able to get it out…."Well look at what skirt you are wearing!” Hahaha! I was wearing my underskirt out in public. It was sooo funny! I bolted back to our apartment and put my over skirt on. It was so funny. Me and her laugh so hard all the time. We are both wild and she is always doing things that makes me roll of the floor laughing. I love it.
Friday: This is where it gets really bad. All of our meetings in the morning fell through. We went to go and look for old investigators that other missionaries had taught to try and get them to be investigators again. So we climbed 9 flights of stairs and find out that no one even lives in that apartment. OI! So after a lot of walking around we find an investigator home. She was very tired and grumpy. She has been a very difficult investigator. She has so much potential but is always too busy to read or pray. Or so she says. Her daughter and granddaughter are members and they live with her. You think that would be a benefit. But it's not. The daughter doesn’t do anything around the house so it leaves here to do it all alone. Which made her snap at us. She completely lost it. She went off on us for about 30 minutes about how hard life is. Once I finally got a chance to talk…I tired to calm her down. I told her that we could sit here and talk all day about how terrible and hard her life is or we can figure out some way to fix it. And I told her the only way to fix her life is by finding the truth. The spirit was speaking so strongly through me. It was so fun to be able to have a discussion with someone in another language and just speak that fluently. I told her something that my dad always says “if you do what you’ve always done…you will get what you’ve always got”. I told her if she wants something different from life she needs to make some changes. That lesson was so powerful I just wanted to cry afterward. She really softened and said she would read and wanted us to come back the next day. She is still going to be very difficult and it's going to take a lot of time with her. But hopefully we can get a start at helping her change. After lunch we went to the church to teach English. Like 5 little kids showed up for English and were being sooo rowdy! We couldn’t even get a good class going because it was so wild there. I wanted so bad to just send everyone home and cancel English. (That wouldn’t be the first time that has happened in Charentsavan). So the church had been turned into a mad house. Kids were running and screaming and no parents were there. After English on Friday our branch had a ward Family Home Evening. The behavior in English set the mood for the Family Night. No one would sit down or hold still. Our branch president called us 30 minutes before FHE and told us he was sick and that he couldn’t come. So the whole thing was up to us missionaries. No one listens to us so it was still just crazy. We watched “The Other Side of Heaven” in Russian and no one listened. One lady even complained that she didn’t like this movie. My companion was getting so frustrated she finally was like okay lets go. So we stopped the movie and put an end to the evening. We were exhausted after that.
Saturday :( Halloween) It just keeps getting worse…hold on. Saturday morning I wake up and I am feeling fine. Then all of the sudden out of nowhere I get sooo sick. I won’t describe it but let’s just say literally every 3 minutes I was running to the bathroom. My companion was just laughing at me. She thought it was so funny. She even told the Elders all about it. So here I am…sicker than a dog and our branch president calls us and tells us we need to hurry and come over to the church. So we run over in our pajamas to see what’s going on. We get there and there is the worst smell. We walked back to the branch presidents’ office and there was a ton of sewer water all over the church. The bathroom over flowed and the pipes from the ceiling were leaking sewage. One of the members was on his hands and knees in sewage wiping it up. Our branch president didn’t know what to do. So he made a few calls and got someone to come clean it up. The guy that had just been soaking in sewage just acts like it’s no big deal and keeps walking around the church and sitting in chairs with his wet smelly clothes on. I wanted to die. I just wanted him to leave because he was sooo dirty. I felt like I was being drowned in germs. We knew that the person who was going to come and clean it up wouldn’t do a good enough job so we planned to come back and completely Clorox bleach the whole building. So after this we went back to our house and I was still sick so we were staying in for a while. We had a little Halloween party with the Elders. We made a homemade stew and zucchini spice cake. They made homemade doughnuts and homemade root beer. It was so good because there is no root beer here in this country. We had a nice little party with them and planned to meet with them that night to clean the church. It was a disaster and the next day was Sunday. So after the Elders had left we get a call from some members asking why the seminary teacher wasn’t there at the house. OOOH MAN!! We forgot to tell the Elders that the seminary teacher was sick and that they were supposed to teach it. We were too busy with the messy church and me being sick that we forgot to tell them. So we call them and have them come teach. We went to unlock the church door so that they didn’t have to stand out in the cold and freeze while waiting for the elders to come. So we let them in and one of the moms, who happens to be one of the best members, just starts yelling at us. She just went off on how bad the church is here in Charentsavan. How everyone is so irresponsible and when they don’t want to do their callings they go and call the missionaries to do everything for them. She was just so mad that she had to do so much. She even tried to blame the terrible behavior of her 5 year old son on the church. (Which reminds me: my trainer Sister Barratt once said to me…"Once you can start understanding the language and what they are saying to you…you are going to wish you couldn’t understand”…well now I’m understanding and after this crazy week…I wish I couldn’t understand. I’ve been asked for money and complained to sooo much this week. I am very grateful that I can understand Armenian but I sure wish it wasn’t like this.) So after she yelled at us, I tried to calm her down. Once again the spirit was speaking through me and I was able to speak so much better. I told her that we could sit around and talk about how bad everything is or we can set a goal to fix it. She kept trying to leave mad and I wouldn’t let her leave until she was calm and set a goal. I told her a lot of positive things and got her calmed down. I also told her that we would set up a meeting with the branch president to talk all of this through. It is sooo draining to have to console these people. So after all of this we went and changed into our cleaning clothes and came back to the church and poured bottles of bleach everywhere! We got the church completely bleached and cleaned and ready for church the next day. It still smells like a swimming pool in there. But at least I know it’s clean.
Sunday: Yep another crazy day. We wake up and I have a way bad sinus infection. I don’t know what it is but everything is getting me sick. The sisters in this mission get sick so bad. There is always someone sick. It is way hard on the sisters here because they just get smothered by the people and the germs get spread so easily. I was fine up until this past month but now that I’m hitting my half way mark I am getting way sick. I think my body is just getting tired. So we get ready for church and leave our house an hour before church to go to our investigators houses to try and get them to come to church. We tried 3 houses and they all turned us down. It was super frustrating but at least we tried. We are doing our part, the people just aren’t doing theirs. So we get to church and it was just wild there. Everyone was walking in and out of sacrament. Kids were screaming and running around the hall. There were these non member teenage boys just causing so many problems. After sacrament the branch president made everyone stay sitting and he gave them a big lecture on how this behavior is not allowed. It didn’t help. During Sunday school we were teaching some younger guys who came to church. They were so out of control. There were asking all of these silly questions. One was getting mad at us because he said this place is not a place of religion…it is a fun house. Two of them seemed pretty sincere and I wanted to have a good lesson with them but people kept coming in and out of our classroom and interrupting. It was crazy. I had to turn away so many people and we even had to lock the door so they would stop interrupting the class. Then we go and sit in relief society and one of the ladies sons is just bawling and causing so much trouble and she wasn’t doing anything about it. So me and Sister Furhiman take him out and put him back in primary. I then had to give the primary teacher a lesson on how to treat children. She would just yell at him and hit him which made his behavior worse. SO we finally got the 3 primary children settled down and took over primary. I finally got the little boy to stop crying and had to tell them that if everyone keeps calling him a bad boy then he is going to think he is a bad boy and he will behave badly. It was crazy. We were literally running from place to place just keeping the church from getting burned down. That night we had another crazy meeting with some young guys and one of the guys that was at church earlier that day came and was bothering us again. I had to get stern with him. So once I finished with him, I felt much better. But seriously…I’ve never done so much lecturing in my life. My Armenian is getting so much better since I’ve been in Charentsavan because I’ve been doing a ton of talking and consoling. Way fun.
Anyway…this email made me tired. It is so long and I just had to relive this crazy week again. It was much crazier than I can even describe. But I do love it so much. It’s so fun to help these people and help them improve and to teach them what they need to do in life. I do love my mission! Anyway…I love you all! Hope all is well!
-Sister Bishop
Monday, October 26, 2009
One kiss a day...
So I finally couldn't take the kisses anymore from this one lady so I had to tell her she could only kiss me once a day, because otherwise, she was kissing every 3 minutes. And lets just say it's not pretty. Haha.
Everything went great this week. The week went by pretty fast. Every Saturday we have a 3 hour planning session and I feel like we just planned. Saturdays come so fast. I hate planning sessions so I dread it every time. I had all of the stuff written down in my planner about what I wanted to write all of you but I left my planner at a store and the store has been closed since Saturday. So I don't really remember what I wanted to say. I will try to remember, but I have the hardest time remembering what happened every week. I'll just throw out the main points.
Monday we went to a little amusement park here with two of the sister missionaries and we rode a Ferris wheel. It was pretty fun. After that we found this cute pond and just sat there and talked. Our P-days get cut 2 hours short every week because we have about 2 hours of driving time from Charentsavan.
Wednesday I got my hair cut. We went out into a salon that is in a little village. A members daughter works there so she cut our hair. I was way scared to get my first haircut in Armenia. But it turned out good. I also dyed my hair this week. Black. Way black. Not so sure I like it but oh well. Too late now. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE tells me I look Armenian. Every convo we get on the street... It starts out with them telling me I look Armenian. Haha. So then I tell them I'm American and they say...well you don't look American. Umm what does an American look like?
We had a few stressful days this week. There were days where a lot of our meetings fell through and we didn't know where to go. We have a lot of investigators but they aren't that great. Our goal for this week is to find some good investigators that will progress. It gets so frustrating having to beg people to pray or read. My favorite investigator is Rozanna. She is 18 and so cute. She just loves us and thinks anything we do or say is so funny. She is progressing well but moving to a village soon. She has great questions and we have great pounding lessons with her. But she is leaving! NOO!!!
This Sunday not many people came to church. There was this big festival out in the village Alaparse. It was called "covenant" day I guess. It is where the church out there does all of their big sacrificing and stuff. They were sacrificing sheep and having a big party. So tons of the members went out there for the big party. Way funny. Everyone kept asking us why we weren't going. And I had to explain at least 10 times that we don't do animal sacrifices and that Christ was the last sacrifice. They just don't get it. Tradition!!!! We were way tempted to go out there and visit with some members out there while it was going on...just so we could see it. But we figured it probably wouldn't be good to have the Mormon missionaries out there in all of that. People might have gotten mad at us.
Hmm so what else can I tell you. Let's see....our apartment is way tiny and super humid. I don't know why it's so humid in there but nothing dries. But the good thing about it is that there is a brand new remodeled bathroom. It's tiny but it has a tub. And any of you who know me...know i love a good bath. So I've been way happy with that! Our hot water isn't very good though. It's hard to get it to turn on. But once we get it turned on it's great!
Anyway, Charentsavan is doing great. It is a very relaxed little town. The people are very nice but so set in their ways and traditions. We battle daily to convince them of the wrongful traditions of their fathers. That's all for this week. All is going well! I love you so much! Be good! Choose the right! The church is so true!!
- Sister Bishop
Everything went great this week. The week went by pretty fast. Every Saturday we have a 3 hour planning session and I feel like we just planned. Saturdays come so fast. I hate planning sessions so I dread it every time. I had all of the stuff written down in my planner about what I wanted to write all of you but I left my planner at a store and the store has been closed since Saturday. So I don't really remember what I wanted to say. I will try to remember, but I have the hardest time remembering what happened every week. I'll just throw out the main points.
Monday we went to a little amusement park here with two of the sister missionaries and we rode a Ferris wheel. It was pretty fun. After that we found this cute pond and just sat there and talked. Our P-days get cut 2 hours short every week because we have about 2 hours of driving time from Charentsavan.
Wednesday I got my hair cut. We went out into a salon that is in a little village. A members daughter works there so she cut our hair. I was way scared to get my first haircut in Armenia. But it turned out good. I also dyed my hair this week. Black. Way black. Not so sure I like it but oh well. Too late now. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE tells me I look Armenian. Every convo we get on the street... It starts out with them telling me I look Armenian. Haha. So then I tell them I'm American and they say...well you don't look American. Umm what does an American look like?
We had a few stressful days this week. There were days where a lot of our meetings fell through and we didn't know where to go. We have a lot of investigators but they aren't that great. Our goal for this week is to find some good investigators that will progress. It gets so frustrating having to beg people to pray or read. My favorite investigator is Rozanna. She is 18 and so cute. She just loves us and thinks anything we do or say is so funny. She is progressing well but moving to a village soon. She has great questions and we have great pounding lessons with her. But she is leaving! NOO!!!
This Sunday not many people came to church. There was this big festival out in the village Alaparse. It was called "covenant" day I guess. It is where the church out there does all of their big sacrificing and stuff. They were sacrificing sheep and having a big party. So tons of the members went out there for the big party. Way funny. Everyone kept asking us why we weren't going. And I had to explain at least 10 times that we don't do animal sacrifices and that Christ was the last sacrifice. They just don't get it. Tradition!!!! We were way tempted to go out there and visit with some members out there while it was going on...just so we could see it. But we figured it probably wouldn't be good to have the Mormon missionaries out there in all of that. People might have gotten mad at us.
Hmm so what else can I tell you. Let's see....our apartment is way tiny and super humid. I don't know why it's so humid in there but nothing dries. But the good thing about it is that there is a brand new remodeled bathroom. It's tiny but it has a tub. And any of you who know me...know i love a good bath. So I've been way happy with that! Our hot water isn't very good though. It's hard to get it to turn on. But once we get it turned on it's great!
Anyway, Charentsavan is doing great. It is a very relaxed little town. The people are very nice but so set in their ways and traditions. We battle daily to convince them of the wrongful traditions of their fathers. That's all for this week. All is going well! I love you so much! Be good! Choose the right! The church is so true!!
- Sister Bishop
Monday, October 19, 2009
I LOVE MY MISSION!!!!!!!
Oh my goodness I am so happy lately. I absolutely love Charentsavan and the people there. They are amazing. The branch president is so good and such a good man. He is a 30 year old single guy who is in a wheelchair. I guess he got in some sort of car accident because he was drunk. This was before he was baptized of course. Anyway he is so good and such a fun guy. It is nice to see a good man in Armenia. They are very rare. The people in this branch just love us. I was cuddled the whole time at church. The branch presidents mom is absolutely wonderful. I talked about her last week. Her name is Liana. She is obsessed with the missionaries and she is so wild. She held me all through church. I have been sick again so I was coughing during Relief Society and she just grabbed me and held me in her bosom for like a half hour. I was laughing so hard the whole time. It was way funny. I can't even begin to describe this lady. She is just hilarious. There are so many good members that just give us lots of loves.
Tuesday we went to Yerevan for zone conference. It was way good. It is nice to go and just listen to people teach us instead of always being the one teaching. We all went to Gold's Gym for lunch. They made all of us breakfast. French toast, hash browns, bacon, fruit. It was so good. I love American food!
We go out to a village and teach English twice a week. There are some members out there so we go and teach them in this village because they can't afford to come into the town for English class. On Wednesday before English we did service for a member out in the village Alaparse. We helped her pick apples and the elders cut wood for winter. I made Sister Furhiman wear one of my new flannel shirts. We looked great.
On Saturday nights we do "soccer finding". Us 4 missionaries go to a soccer field and play soccer with all of the Armenian kids. We are hoping to find new investigators this way and make friends with the kids so they will like the missionaries better. I didn't play because I was sick and I'm not exactly the sporty type...and they were all way good at playing. So I did all of the preaching while the other missionaries played. I got about 20 conversations that night with the teenagers that were there. I talked to them about the church and our English classes that we have. I even had an inactive member lesson while everyone was playing. There was an inactive member there so I took advantage of that and pounded him for not coming to church. He said he will come next week. We will see.
Friday nights our branch has Family Home Evening at the church. It went really well and the lots of people came. The branch president is such a pounder and very organized so he got it all ready and gave a great lesson.
We have some great investigators here. Narine is a way cute 20 year old girl. She is kind of embarrassed to come to church though. Her family is way great. We are trying to get them interested in the church as well. Ofik and Rosanna are grandma and granddaughter. They are doing way good and reading. They are having trouble in believing the resurrection so we are working with that. We have picked up 5 new investigators this week and there are other investigators that we have that have only been able to meet once. Things are going great here though. I really like it here and I feel like this is going to be my best area.
Anyway....that's all for this week. I love you all. I miss you all. Keep getting those Christmas packages ready.....;). Have a great week!
-Sister Bishop
Tuesday we went to Yerevan for zone conference. It was way good. It is nice to go and just listen to people teach us instead of always being the one teaching. We all went to Gold's Gym for lunch. They made all of us breakfast. French toast, hash browns, bacon, fruit. It was so good. I love American food!
We go out to a village and teach English twice a week. There are some members out there so we go and teach them in this village because they can't afford to come into the town for English class. On Wednesday before English we did service for a member out in the village Alaparse. We helped her pick apples and the elders cut wood for winter. I made Sister Furhiman wear one of my new flannel shirts. We looked great.
On Saturday nights we do "soccer finding". Us 4 missionaries go to a soccer field and play soccer with all of the Armenian kids. We are hoping to find new investigators this way and make friends with the kids so they will like the missionaries better. I didn't play because I was sick and I'm not exactly the sporty type...and they were all way good at playing. So I did all of the preaching while the other missionaries played. I got about 20 conversations that night with the teenagers that were there. I talked to them about the church and our English classes that we have. I even had an inactive member lesson while everyone was playing. There was an inactive member there so I took advantage of that and pounded him for not coming to church. He said he will come next week. We will see.
Friday nights our branch has Family Home Evening at the church. It went really well and the lots of people came. The branch president is such a pounder and very organized so he got it all ready and gave a great lesson.
We have some great investigators here. Narine is a way cute 20 year old girl. She is kind of embarrassed to come to church though. Her family is way great. We are trying to get them interested in the church as well. Ofik and Rosanna are grandma and granddaughter. They are doing way good and reading. They are having trouble in believing the resurrection so we are working with that. We have picked up 5 new investigators this week and there are other investigators that we have that have only been able to meet once. Things are going great here though. I really like it here and I feel like this is going to be my best area.
Anyway....that's all for this week. I love you all. I miss you all. Keep getting those Christmas packages ready.....;). Have a great week!
-Sister Bishop
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