Georgia, Azerbaijan, then Armenia

September 30, 2019

Georgia, Azerbaijan, then Armenia

ჩემო ძვირფასებო!

The big news for the week is that Elder Hunt and I and going to Armenia tomorrow to meet with President Picard and the other trainers/trainees. We'll leave after our district meeting, stay the night and have our meeting the next day. We're very excited for the six-hour drive to read and talk about some great doctrine. The Doctrine of Jesus Christ of course. We also went to დავით გარაჯე(it was spelled many ways there so it may not be correct). This is another old church built in the middle of nowhere. This time on the side of a mountain. It was very neat. It is right on the border of Azerbaijan and apparently, there is a bit of a conflict there right now. I don't know how true that is, but there you go. Pictures to come next week. 

Other than that, not much has happened. Our friend Rick who is an American that teaches English online in China. He travels all over because he can. He's not a member of the Church and he's very skeptical of all religion, but he's very complimentary of The Church. We have very good conversations with him and the other friends of The Church. 

We also did a district blitz on Saturday which was Near. Blitzes are where we try to get as many new contacts as possible in a certain area. Unfortunately, it was cut a bit short because SOMEONE did not lock one of the doors of the Church resulting in the alarm going off and the police showing up. Anyway. After that, we visited a member, მერაბი, with an amazing collection of books and records. Immediately after he met me, he wanted me to come over and listen to one of his Edwin Fisher records. It was great to hear him talk about his love for music. He also has quality condition copies of The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Peeper's Lonely Hearts Club. I was pretty impressed to see them along with his things.

Cool cool cool everybody. Nothing much more to say other than The Book of Mormon is a great book and worth a read. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I love it and that's why I'm here in this country. Anyways.

--უხუცესი ფიშერი 

Two meals we made that remind me of home.

  

Picture of corpuses -- giant soviet era apartments

A great trio. (The glass is not full of whiskey it was a gift from one of the people we are teaching)  

From our friend's collection.

I'm Actually a Missionary Now

September 23, 2019

"I'm Actually a Missionary Now

მეგობრები!

       This week went by super fast! Going to ყაზბეგი was incredible! The drive was incredible! My pictures cannot describe it well, especially the ones that I took. They really are terrible in comparison. But, we had a great time. It took about three hours to drive up. We stopped at two places on the way. Gudauri and the Russian border. Both were pretty cool, but nothing compared to ყაზბეგი. To get to the temple that is on top of the mountain, you have to either hike or take a taxi. It was rainy and cold, so of course, we ran, ignoring any trails and scaling the steep hills that stood in our way. It was really fun. It was also great to drive up with all the missionaries and a couple of our friends that are learning about the church.

Running up the hill

Elder Hunt taking a picture of the temple/church.

      
 The rest of the week was good. Elder Hunt and I recommitted to SYL (speak your language, aka only speaking Georgian). On Tuesday and Wednesday, we went the whole day. It was very taxing on the brain, but very cool. During our district meeting, Elder Hunt (as District leader) asked everyone to do better with their SYL. We report our percentage of SYL each week and there is room for improvement from everyone. I honestly think the main reason Elder Hunt wanted us to go 100% for at least a few days was to show the other companionships that if the missionary who is the worst at the language (me) can go without English, they can too. Granted, Elder Hunt is probably the second best missionary at the language, but a chain is only as strong as the weakest link (again, me).

       We went on another split this week. This time it was Elder Hunt and Christensen while I was again with Elder Layton. This was a great day because it felt like the first day I was doing missionary work. I knew before I came here it would be hard to find people eager and willing to listen to our Gospel message, but it's been very difficult. As a result I see everything we do as important missionary work although it's not always what you hear about from the Ensign magazine or from General Conference. Nevertheless, I love the work we do. Anyway, onto the split. We met with one of our friends that owns a café. Next door is a man who owns a dentist office. He comes in and we carry on a short conversation in Georgian and when he says, "they don't be taxes in Alaska, right?" I have no idea what he has said. So he begins speaking in perfect English. He asks about what we are doing here in Georgia and we tell about that our purpose is to help others to come unto Christ. We tell him a bit about our church, clearing up some misinformation he had. We may end up meeting him again. Probably will. He seemed to enjoy our mission and the fact that we know some Georgian.

       After, we went to clean the church building and we met with and taught several people. Now, it is uncommon for us to actually have a sit-down lesson where we say, "today we are going to talk about...", but this day, we did that three times. It was awesome. One of those meetings, was with a Turkish fellow. He understands some English, but we skyped two missionaries in Bulgaria that translated for us. It was a neat experience. 

During the week we ate some amazing Iranian food.

We also ate at a very good restaurant.  We had salad, Georgian barbequed chicken, and Georgian Dumplings.  Each nub is one dumpling.  We ate 40 between the three of us.

A great ad we saw for Poofs.  The 'f' sound is just a soft 'p' sound in Georgian so, poofebi sounds a bit different.

Tuesday night we watched the BYU devotional by President Nelson live on Facebook. We were very excited to see what the prophet had to say. He gave a very simple message about 5 truths that are important for all to know. It was a very good talk and worth a listen. You can find it at churchofjesuschrist.org or at byuspeeches.org. It's worth a listen. 

Here Comes the Boom

September 16, 2019
Here Comes the Boom
 მეგობრები!

       It's been yet another week and it's been the fastest one yet! We had some eventful days so, let's jump right into it.
       ლინონი is someone we have been meeting with for about as long as I've been here. He is such a great man. I think that about everyone we meet with, but he's just soooooooooooooooooooo wonderful. Each time we meet, it's starts out and it really appears we won't be super productive, but each time there is growth. Never is it very big, but for us it's noticeable. In fact, last night, he explained to his friend how to have a meaningful prayer. He really got into it. He really understands that prayer can be used to receive answers from God, which is really interesting, because we didn't know how much he knew that. He was going through rough times, but we were able to help him through. He is always asking for a spiritual message. His insights are interesting, but always welcome. Anyway, he's the greatest.
       Saturday Elder Hans T. Boom, of Quorum of the Seventy and the Eastern Europe Area Presidency, visited so we had a zone conference. It was good to see all the Georgian missionaries together one month after I arrived in this country. Elder and Sister Boom are from the Netherlands and had some amazing stories to tell us. They are also sooooooooo sweet. Also, he'll be speaking in General Conference this October during one of the Sunday sessions. One other quick story. When the assistants gave the zone report, they mentioned the fact that we don't have the Book of Mormon printed in Georgian. Elder Boom did not seem to be aware of this. Later when he spoke to us, he expressed how he felt about this. "You don't be the Book of Mormon in your language? Ya, I don't buy that. I'm going to get to the bottom of this because that's unacceptable." It's already translated. It's online. He has a point. I don't buy it either. Maybe if they didn't keep pushing back the dates for its printing, I'd be more willing to buy it. But regardless, we are still working to bring people closer to Christ with or without the Book of Mormon.

Georgia Zone Conference with President and  Sister Picard, Elder and Sister Boom. and Service Missionaries President and Sister Mangum.

The good old missionary quartet singing at the zone conference.

       Today, we are going to ყაზბეგი. (Spelled Kazbegi, but not really because its pronounced weird with the 'ყ' which is a crazy sound. Look it up if you aren't familiar.) Anyway, everyone is very excited. I've heard much about this place. A Swiss missionary once said it looked just like Switzerland. There's been a lot more hype about this place as well, so it better be good.
       Alright we have to go. See you next week.

--უხუცესი ფიშერი

Photos in our apartment

Tomorrow's Tuesday

September 9, 2019

Tomorrow’s Tuesday

მეგობრები!

How much has happened this week? I don't really know. Last Monday, we took some time to go around Tbilisi. We also went to სამება, the big main church here in Georgia. It's HUGE and very beautiful. If I'm not mistaken, the government helps fund this cathedral. Seems weird, but I won't judge. We went and got some ხაჭაპური and ხინკალი. Yes that is three eggs in that ხაჭაპური photo.

We went on a split this week. It was fun to see a different area and how other Missionaries do things. While on the exchange, a man from the Dominican Republic, who said he was ethnically Jewish but Christian, saw us and asked for a Book of Mormon. We didn't have one at the time, but we got his number and we're gonna get one to him. He also asked us who Melchizedek is for us. We told him we believe he was a great king and high priest and that Abraham paid tithes to him. He was like, "ya sounds good to me." We also met with a guy from Saudi that just got back from visiting home. He's a great friend of the Missionaries. He brought back some non-alcoholic malt beer and it was quite tasty. He says he always asks the new Missionaries why they decided to come on a mission. I told him my story of why and was super impressed. He said he's always amazed at the Missionaries putting our lives on hold to learn a terribly hard language for religion. He says he would join our church because he loves it and always feels the spirit when he comes to church, but he doesn't want to feel that he's committing a sin against Islam. He's very supportive though.

We are always looking for ways to serve, but it's very hard. The people here just want to serve us. We have to get creative sometimes. Sometimes it's translating or doing voice overs for things. We'll see what more we can do. Anyways.

Something very interesting here is that many people have spiritual experiences and they recognize them. They are usually pretty open about them as well. We have very interesting conversions with people about religion and when they've felt God in their lives. We try to leave a commitment with everyone we talk with, so a lot of the time it is having them look for God's hand in their lives more. So will you all do that this week? Neato.

See you soon!

 A giant xachapuri

A snail on my hand at the Hostel

Non-alcholic beer from Saudi Arabia

Sameba and roses

Giant rock at Sameba

Sister missionaries looking at stray dogs

Views of Tbilisi

იესო ქრისტეს სახარება ჭეშმარითია

September 2, 2019

იესო ქრისტეს სახარება ჭეშმარითია  (Jesus Christ Gospel is true)

Okay, let's jump right into it, shall we?

       Do I know the language? Of course not. It'll take me a year and a half before I can understand most things and speak fluently. For now, I have Elder Hunt. I don't know what I'll do in 10 weeks when I don't.  The people we meet with are actually very helpful. Since they know I've only been in country for 2 weeks, they are very kind and always tell me to write down words. Good thing I know the word for "write it down". 

       The week started out slow. Tuesday we had a combined District council meeting with the whole zone. We did language study, then we had a big training on the new Area Book app. We are transferring all our teaching records (from more than a decade ago) to digital, so there will be a lot of paperwork for the next few weeks. In other news, we met with a fair amount of people this week, but we didn't find very many new people to teach. Pretty unlucky.

       There was one day that wasn't optimal. Our water was shut off so we weren't able to do dishes from breakfast, take showers, or anything important to getting ready for the day. This was fine, but when we came home at night the water was still off! Finally at about 10:30 pm the water came back on. Great timing. 

       Church was good this week. Elder Hunt taught Sunday school again and there was pretty good discussion. Its never perfect because we have several native languages (Georgian, Russian, Farsi and English), but the discussion always goes pretty smoothly. Later that evening, we met with a friend at a nearby lake. We took a stroll around the perimeter and discussed religion, its purposes and how the spirit speaks to us. It was very nice. 

       This week we talked to several people about gifts of the spirit, and I studied gifts of the spirit a couple times in personal study as well. One thing that stuck out to me is that we cannot fully receive gifts of the spirit unless we have charity in our hearts. 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 and Moroni 7:43-44.  Another thing that I found was to have faith, hope or charity you must be both humble and meek. Meekness is a true attribute of deity. We cannot develop any other Christlike attributes without meekness. It is all dependent on our level of humility and meekness. Many things can humble us, but we must allow ourselves to be humbled by the experiences that befall us. 

       Anyway. I'm more than 10% done with my mission, so I only have almost 100% left. See you soon.  Send me questions, insights and more.  I love you all. 

We know some people that own drink shops.  We go in and help out the business and answer any Gospel questions they have.

Tbilisi has beautiful sunsets that don't show up as well on film.