Yerevan January 7, 2012

The first picture is the view from the living room/kitchen window in our apartment.  The area is named Glendale Hills and we are on the 6th floor.  It is a new area of the central city so there is still construction and the road we walk in on is partly dirt.  The next picture is some of the housing.  The apartments are of 3 types.  Some are the old apartments from the Soviet era,  old apartments that have been remodeled, and new construction.  The landscape was a day trip we took with the humanitarian couple to some villages where they had completed projects such as water pipes into the village.  Big mountains surround the area and a local cemetary is in the front of the picture.  Carl took my picture at a city park with my new hat and scarf from a local market and some flowers he bought me.  We don't know yet what the statue is about, but it is not far from our apartment.

New Years Day

This is a big day in Armenia.  They celebrate Christmas on Jan. 6th and they start celebrating on Dec. 25th.  Today the church meeting was one hour.  We had 40 members last Sunday and today we had 20.  In the afternoon we invited our district (2 sisters and 4 elders) over for dinner.  We used our new crock pot that I brought with me and we were able to find most of the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies so we had the missionaries make them.  We then watched the Christmas broadcast from early December which they had not seen.  On Wed. a new senior CES couple arrive and we are going to show them around on Thurs.  We won't be the new ones anymore.  The picture is our district picture from last Sun.  The couple is Pres. and Sister Carter.  He is holding the majic jack we brought for them and Sister Carter is holding the pot holder I made for her on the flight over.

Christmas

The first week we  attended 3 Christmas parties.  On Sat., Dec., 24th there was a mission party for all of the missionaries in Armenia.  There were about 40 young missionaries and 5 senior couples.  A highlight was the talent show where almost all of the missionaries presented something.  One of our favorites was 2 elders with M&M fancy catches.  One elder caught them in his mouth.  Their catches had names such as John Stockton.  Sun. was the district party with the 7 young missionaries.  The sisters prepared most of the food and the elders brought the incorrect food items they had been assigned.  They had a good time just spending time with each other.  Mon., Dec. 26 was the branch party.  50 people attended church and 120 attended the party.  The Relief Socity party of the program was a role play on good and poor visiting teaching.  Father Christmas and The Snow Queen like to dance to jivvy fast music with the children.

Leaving the airport in Salt Lake

Travel to Armenia

We left our house on Mon., Dec. 19th at 10:30am and met the mission president in the Yerevan, Armenia airport at 6:00am Wed., Dec. 21st which was about 30 travel hours plus an 11 hours time change ahead.  We flew to Chicago and then Munich, Germany and on to Vennice, Austria and then to Yerevan.  In Munich they suggested putting us on an earlier flight as a snow storm was coming.  They were late calling our flight.  As we waited the snow started and the runway was covered so I saw 6 John Deere tractor snowplows lined up side by side clearing the one runway.  We took a bus to the plane and then waited for an hour on the plane for our turn on the one runway.  The most exciting part was when 2 large trucks with cherry pickers de-iced our lane with hoses that had the force of a fire hydradrant.  Then on safely to Armenia.

MTC

We entered the MTC (Mission Training Center) on Mon., Dec. 12, 2011 and left on Fri. It is all so well organized. Young missionaries met us at the car and carried in our things. The apartments have been moderinized in the past 2 months so everything was new. Our lessons were on preaching the gospel from Preach My Gospel. We had practice sessions with local volunteers. Our teachers were all impressive young missionaries. There were about 20 couples and one single sister in our group. Some were going to the U.S. I remember New York City, Cleveland, and Snowflake, Arizona. Some of the couples were going to New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Peru, Mexico, 2 to Africa, England, Armenia. The assignments were as varied as the places. Some were member support missionaries. Three favorite experiences were eating with different young missionaries each meal, finding Elder Murray who was new from Jim's home ward and the 6 young missionaries going to Armenia and Georgia, and having Carl's high school friend and college roommate in our district. Our 2 suitcases now weight 50 pounds and our flight is Mon., Dec. 19.