Hey Everyone!
A lot has happened the last couple of weeks! I left the humble village of Ashtarak and am now living in the heart of the capitol in Yerevan. My new area is called Kentron. It's so fun to be in the city and be surrounded by so many different cultures. We interact with people from all over the world everyday. My new companion is Elder Crook from Tuscon, Arizona. Elder Crook is a stud and also wicked good at the guitar so I'm going to buy my own today so we can play! I'm really excited. Before I left Ashtarak last week, I went on a split with my zone leader. We were trying to street contact and ended up walking down into a big valley outside of town. We didn't see anyone for a long time and once we got pretty far into this valley, we found something a little weird. There was a big cage of grizzly bears just sitting there with no one around. I was just as surprised and confused as you probably are. I wish I had more answers for you but that's pretty much the end of that story. Classic Armenia. I'll throw in a picture so you guys can see what I'm talking about. In other news, a few of us missionaries have been working on a really cool project recently. There is an awesome blind member living here so we have been voice recording chapters out of the Book of Mormon for him and all the older members who can't afford reading glasses. Hopefully soon we will have the whole Armenian Book of Mormon available to those who are unable to read!
Some Highlights:
•Moving to Kentron
•Split with Elder Tweed in Ashtarak
•Exploring old Soviet Airplanes
•Translating sacrament meeting
SPIRITUAL THOUGHT
My last sunday in Ashtarak I was feeling a little bit discouraged. As my first transfer was coming to an end, I looked back at the last 3 months and felt that I hadn't accomplished my goal of building the branch. I felt that we had genuinely worked so hard and endured so much, yet we had seen little to no growth in attendance every week. Minutes before sacrament meeting was scheduled to start, I felt discouragement as I looked around and saw the usual 4 ladies sitting in the congregation alone. These feelings soon left me when out of nowhere, 3 inactive families and an investigator poured into the chapel all at once. The timing could not have been better. We have not had such a high attendance rate since I arrived here in Armenia, including the Christmas service. I was overwhelmed in that moment, as I sat in the middle of the congregation that day, feeling like our efforts had truly been accounted for in God's eyes. Sometimes we work hard and we don't see the fruits of our labors right away. It may take a lot of patience but at the end of the day, "If you do the right things, the right things will happen to you."
Elder Brennan Larsen
Vratsakan # 5
0051 Yerevan
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