American Corner

This week we were able to find the American corner and it was really cool. It is this place that the American Embassy set up for the Armenians to learn English. The Zone leaders told us about it and told us to go check it out. It was just cool to meet people that had some ambition in their lives.  We were able to have conversations with Armenians in English. There are not that many Armenians that know English as well as them. There are a lot, but for some reason we just do not come in contact with that many in Charenstaven. 

Then we meet a super good contact who was super excited to meet with us. So we were ready to meet with him and then he would not answer his phone, so we decided to just let it go and call him the next day. We called him and then he said, that he "did not have time"  I just felt like someone told him not to meet with us because he was super excited to meet with us and then all of a sudden he said that he did not have time to meet with us. 

Then at the end of the week we meet with this man named Ashot and he said that is ready to come back to church. He has been an investigator in the past and he said that he wanted to start meeting with us again. We did not get to talk to him for very long, but set up a return appointment with him for Tuesday. He is a good man and knows how to feel the spirit. He told us that he feels light and good when he is around us. We told him that it is not us, but the spirit and he can feel that always. We did not get to set a baptismal date because he had to go, but we hope to on Tuesday. 

So we are just moving along here and doing missionary work. I don't really know what to say anymore, but just keep living worthy of the spirit and everything will be okay. The spirit will guide tou do do what is right. I love you all and have an amazing week. 

Elder Sproul 

Press on with Faith

This week was a really good week. We had a lot of chances to pick up investigators, but all of the visits just did not work out. One thing that happened was someone called us and wanted to meet with us and we were super excited about it. I asked him if he was in Charenstavan and he told me yes. So we were super excited about it. The next day came and we were 15 minutes early to where he said to meet. We were going to meet him at a park. So we called him and wanted to see if he was still going to come, and then we found out that he was in Yerevan. He said that we gave him our number a few days before, but we did not remember that at all. So we just gave the number to the Erebuni Elders and they took it from there. 

Then we had this man who wanted to meet with us and practice English with us. He called us last week trying to meet with us. We were really surprised that he would call us. We made it a focus of trying to meet with him and get him into the church to feel of the spirit that is in the building. So every time that we called him he was saying that we would be able to meet at night so every night we would be ready to meet with him he would just tell us that he was busy or went to another job, or had guests over. 

I don't tell you this because I am complaining or anything, but because I am happy that we have opportunities to find people Out of the 3 opportunities we were able to find one person this week. So what did we learn from this? Sometimes we try our best and it still does not work out. We just have to remember that it is all in the Lord's time. We are blessed in so many ways and just for trying. In my opinion the Lord does not care as much about the results, but just that we are trying. For instance, we had a member tell us that he does not want to read because he will not remember what he had read. This was my response to him. The Lord does not care if we remember what we read. He cares that we are reading and following the prophet and reading the book everyday. We will feel the spirit and be blessed just for showing our faith in the prophet. So I know I talk about The Book of Mormon a lot, but really it is my testimony and will never be shaken. All you have to do is open the book and the spirit will open itself upon you.  

I love you so much and have an amazing week. Sorry there has not been any pictures lately, but I just have not been taking any lately.

Elder Sproul

It is in the doing that brings results

I have heard this a few times during my mission, but I just wanted to talk about this a little bit. You hear people say a lot of the time that he is really good at this or he is really good at that. When you think about it all the people are good at something are people that just do it. If you want to be good at math it is because you do the homework and the work necessary to get the results. If you want to be good at scripture study read your scriptures. If you want to be good at praying then start praying. If you want to be a good member missionary then talk to your friends about the gospel. It is all in the doing that gets results. Do not think that someone is just better than you at something. They are better than you at something because they did the doing in the past to get the result that they are at today. Sometimes it takes a lot of doing to get the results we want, but we will always get the results that we want if we do the doing that takes to get us there. It is dependent on if we our willingness to make the sacrifice to get to the results.

Other than that we meet a less active named Radik this week and he said that it was time for him to make a change in his life and come back to church and he said that he would come to visits with us 2 times a week. It really is super cool that sometimes having time away from the church helps you realize what you have been missing. He was a super cool guy and knew the scriptures fairly well. He said that he could not come to sacrament every week because of work, but that he would be able to come when work did not call him in. It was a blessing because we do not have a lot of males to go on visits with us and now we can visit some more people with Radik. 

That was basically the highlight of my week and I am super excited to work with him. I know that The Book of Mormon will bless you life and if you say I am not good at studying the scriptures, just give it a try for 10 min a day and if you can not find 10 min in the day obviously you do not want to blessings that comes from the doing. Prophets have said it plain and simple if we are doing our reading we will get blessed. So I will leave you with that. I know this might come across a little harsh, but it is true we really will get blessed just for reading and showing God that we want the results. I love you so much and have a good week. 

Elder Sproul 

Audit

So this week was nothing really different, except we were able to do an activity with the branch and we had an audit in the branch. I don't know if I told you, but a lot of the missionaries here are clerks. In every branch there is one missionary clerk.  In the activity we went to a place called Gardni and Geghard which is just some churches that are in Armenia. They are really cool, but just the same as any other church in Armenia. It was a good activity and we were able to grow closer as a branch. 

Then in terms of the audit. Everything went well. The auditor was really nice. His name is Elder Cook and he came down from Russia. Everything went well. I just feel like doing all these things and knowing the church this well that there is no way that people in this mission will not be bishops and stake presidents one day. I literally have found out so much stuff about the church it is insane.

This week I have been reading the new testament and I was able to finish Matthew. I would like to encourage everyone to read from the like of Christ. It has brought me closer to Christ. and really helped me understand more fully what he went through. I know you have all read it before, but reading it will bring you close to Christ no matter how many times that you have read it before.  

I love you all and have an amazing week. Doing the simple things will bring you more blessings than you can imagine and just think about all the blessings that you do not realize. 

Elder Sproul 

We met an "apostle"

This week I had the opportunity to meet an apostle. We went to the meeting not knowing that we were going to be meeting an apostle and then we got there we found out that it was a guy named Manvel and he was starting his own church. We found him by calling him in the area book. He kept on saying that one of our members that was in a wheel chair did not have the right to preach the gospel because he was handicapped. He brought up the Matthew 9 story and was like he was healed and then started preaching. It was really dumb, I thought because this guy was someone that was paralyzed and could not do anything, while the man in our branch is completely normal and can doing anything he wants, but just has no use of his legs. After all he is an "Apostle" and we need to listen to him, right? It was just super funny. The whole time we were just trying to testify of the truthfulness of the gospel, but he just wouldn't listen and would just try and teach us. So we don't think that we will meet with the apostle again, but it was a funny experience. 

My companion is the first counselor in the branch presidency. This week, he gave a calling to a member in our branch to close the door during sacrament and make sure that no one enters. It was super funny because people were trying to get in and he was just holding it shut. Sacrament went really well though and it was probably one of the better sacrament meetings that I have had in a long time. During the sacrament there was no noise and you could actually think about what the Savoir has done for you and then we learned from all the talks that were given. This branch has a lot of room to grow and I am excited to be able to work here for the next 22 weeks. 

I know that this church is true and it will never go away. I heard this week from someone that our church is crumbling in Armenia, but we have the promise from the Lord that it will never go away. It does not matter if there are 5 people in a meeting. As long as there are people in Armenia we will continue going forward and I know that. I love you so much and have an amazing week. 

Elder Sproul