These boots are made for walking

Dear Family AND Friends,

  Not sure why i capitalized and. oh well. everyone keeps making fun of my english. 

ITS COLD. hot diggitty its cold and snowy. it was cold the whole week, scarf, sweater, gloves, two socks, etc. etc. then saturday night we got dumped on, and it continued most of the morning and afternoon sunday. it was a long walk to our blind members house and then to church, tons of snow and wind. its not snowing anymore and not too terribly cold but the snows a pain. no one really treats the snow, theres a truck driving around with two guys throwing dirt on it occasionally. so you have the snow thats been walked on, packed down and slippery, or you have the untouched stuff thats thick and takes effort to walk through. i've slipped a number of times, two memorable so far. i slipped hard in front of a Jehovah's Witness couple. they tried not to laugh, then asked me a question about how the end of the world was going to go. then this morning i was getting on a marshutni with a bag in one hand and phone in other and straight up ate it. the women freaked out. my backside hurt. its funny how when you dont have too many people to talk to and less chances to exercise humility and lose your pride, God gives it to you anyway and you look like a fool. my comp is fairly taller than me and a lot less coordinated, but he's stayed on his feet so far and gets a good laugh. anyway ive been happy to get my boots into action, theyre pretty awesome. 

   we taught a family this week! its been a goal of ours this transfer to find a family. theyre chaotic and harder to teach but sooo worth it. i told you about the man last week, he let us in off the street. this week we went back and everyone was home. my comp, who's already super quiet and doesnt teach much, decided to play with the kid the entire time to earn the trust of the mom. it worked, but he took our member's attention with him so i taught the whole thing myself, which im never a fan of. but they liked it, they loved Joseph Smith and agreed to read the BoM. there was a special moment at the very end. my comp and the kid are nuts, the member and mom are distracted, im trying to explain the need to be rebaptized. the dads getting distracted by everything, but all of the sudden his mom just goes LISTEN! and they stare at me for a good 30 seconds, then accepted to be baptized. it was awesome. other than them there isnt too much going on but we're working hard on controlling what we can and being grateful. 

   other news from this week... i was in vanazdor tues. then wed i had an interview with Pres Carlson. it was good. lots of needed statements and assignments/advice. he's legit. 

  yeah i think thats about it yall. i love being here, i know good things can happen in Gyumri with hard work. im glad you had good thanksgivings and Christmas is coming up. its a good time. stay classy, the Church is true because its lead by Jesus Christ

Love Elder Moore

The The building you cant see much of on the right is our church

This is more accurate of what little villages here look like. 

this bread is fluffy and delicious and costs 50 cents. its only good for about 3 days but it usually gets eaten in like two

elder christensen all bundled up

leather jackets and sunglasses, looking oh so good

mernum em

Dear Famsham and Friendrends, 

   First, off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY POPS. Dads awesome, I love him. I walked by an old man playing an accordion today (doesnt happen much) and threw 100 dram (25cents, but worth more here) in his case- he was so happy he started singing. i thought about paying him more to let me video tape him singing a birthday song but we try not to look like tourists. anyway i hope its a good one dad. 

  so yeah today we didnt get to email at normal time and i think the sister in the office sent home an email that we wouldnt- the president of Russia is here (?) not sure what he wants with Gyumri. There is a big Russian army base here. anyway all the main roads were closed off and the shops on them were closed. it was chaos cause the police were all out and keeping the roads closed but apparently no one told the marshutni drivers cause they had no clue what was open and what wasnt and where they should drive. we almost had to walk home, that wouldve taken like 1.5 hours. and all the police people kept saluting us and speaking in Russian hahaha. Hayernov! (In Armenian, say in it Armenian!) sometimes people guess we're Russian, and everyone here can get by, i guess we just got more of it today cause the big cheese came. anyway we were gunna email wednesday cause tomorrow ill be in vanadzor with the zone leaders, and we try to use nighttime hours to proselyte, but elder christensen has been SICK. so when our meetings died and he didnt feel good, but dediced he could sit down, we figured wed do email now and that would be better than sitting at home. mernum em means "im dying" hes the sick one, but im dying. we've been inside all day since friday with the execption of church and today. i've watched the districts, all bible videos, all mormon messages, the testaments, the bom videos and the work of salvation. TWICE. im charging through the BoM in armenian and english. trying not to nap cause then i cant sleep at night. he doesnt really seem to be improving cause its not like nausea or weakness or anything just a very bad stomach pain. sis carlsons working with the area doctor to get him all better. i keep asking the other elders to come and watch him so i can get outside but if they have a meeting then they wont switch out with me, and they have a lot of meetings. ugh

  anyway so thanksgiving was AWESOME. it was a blast, and by that i mean i relaxed the whole day and didnt do anything. we drove over to vanadzor around noon and hung out in the Haglunds apartment, we were squished but cozy. our zones pretty small and im not super good friends with any of them but theyre all awesome missionaries. i spent most of the time talking to the two sisters from new york about how awesome the east coast is. we had a pretty good dinner, turkey and mashed potatos, candy yams, that sorta stuff. watched a movie, talked about what we're thankful for. it was a needed break. 

   anyway not too much else to report from the week. we found two new investigators this week. one man invited us in right off the street, he was the first id met in a while that literally knew nothing about us, had never even heard the word Mormon. That tends to be a blessing, and it was. when his friend walked in he said hey these guys are talking about Christ. I LOVE when we hear that. sure Mormon is important but he is not the cornerstone of this church and the Savior of the world. they both kissed the pass along cards with a pic of Christ we gave them haha. anyway we're hoping to pick up their families this week. our other investigator isnt doing well but the father of a family whos all baptized came back to church and he's super close to baptism. i can feel we as a district are really close to great things here in Gyumri, just a few last steps to charge and a few screws to tighten. but we'll get there. 

  oh by the way this internet place has an Xbox with Kinect and its cheap to play by the hour. you guys dont mind if i play FIFA next week instead of writing? k thanks. 

i love all you peoples. we'll chat soon

Love Elder Moore

tanskgiving

Family and other family known as friends, 

  First off, we will get to do thanksgiving this week. armenians cant do their THs so i gave up saying thanks and started saying tanks. dont make fun, you cant do your KHs and GHs and hard Chs Ts Ps and Ks. i learned to roll my Rs. Street cred. anyway today we're cutting pday short cause thursday we're headed to vanadzor, we'll be celebrating as zones, so itll be us 12 northerners and the senior couple the Haglunds, who are amazingg, will be making our turkey. then we'll watch movies and relax. im stoked. but i already know halfway through the day ill be bored and just want to go do missionary work. 

  this week was a fun one. kinda, i dont know why i lable it fun but it certainly wasnt bad. we visited a lot of members, theyre great. we found a new investigator thats a young man, doesnt smoke or drink, came to church 3 times already, and accepted a book of mormon and a pretty quick baptismal date in armenia (the 7th) all was superb, until the second meeting- he didnt remember a thing. then we read from the BoM with him and watched the JS movie and he didnt remember a thing from that either. he kinda fell asleep while i was talking directly to him. my armenian accent is dull, but its not THAT dull. anyway that was discouragin and a setback but he's still a good kid who can get baptized and itll be a good opportunity to actually adjust our teaching to meet needs. 

   this week we went to Artik, a city about 35 minutes away with the Haglunds to go visit a member whos the only member there and rides a bus for an hour to go to church. we were excited, but it turned out not super well. the womans mother, who we're pretty sure has alzheimers or something of the sort, came out of her room and wouldnt stop screaming at us to either give her money or leave. she kept hitting her daughter (the old ladys 85, the member like 35) then she got pretty close to hitting me with her cane, so branch pres, who drove us, kept telling her to kiss me. thankfully she did neither. it was kinda funny, then just sad. esp since the member told her the rest of her family was like that too, and that explains why the member is a litttlee bit crazy, so we were just sad for her. after that we visited another small city nearby and got an inactive to come to church this week though so that was good. 

 theres not too much else to report. its pretty dang cold outside. im gunna buy a hat today, im also having a members mom make me a sweater. clothes are super super cheap here in gyumri, so ill probably spend a little more than i should. our apartment is actually too hot though, elder christensen says hes cold while im falling asleep during study cause its too stuffy. so we'll have to fight about that. hes awesome though its good to be back around him. itll be a good opportunity for me to slow down and not dominate every conversation. ive only served with good speakers and after my training i still dominated conversations. elder christensen is pretty timid but i'm working hard on getting him into everything, esp cause he knows the place so much better than i do. 

  lately ive been enjoying a frustrating study of faith. ether says there is NO witness until a trial of your faith. so i've been studying stories where it seems like the opposite happens, where it seems like a straight up witness followed by believing, and trying to shift my prespective of faith. some people refuse to believe until some neon sign, but i feel like i dont expect any witness because my faith isnt strong as the neon sign equivalent. ive been working on simpler faith and looking for the simple miracles to follow. 

  anyway ima split. i love you all, im jealous you get to go to grandma jeans this week for so many reasons. but im so grateful for all of you. the picture im attaching is of our gratitude board- we had a white board just chilling in the hall so we decided that we were being too ungrateful and put up pictures of our families and friends, our other awesome missionaries we love and most importantly the baptisms and close armenian friends we've been blessed with. i love the board. and now we're gunna go fill it. 

 nuff peace n hair grease,

Elder Moore

Brrrrrr

Dearest Untanik yev Unkerner, 

   Well my quick email yesterday kinda gave it away but i doubt anyone is actually able to keep a mental picture of where i am. anyway i've moved north! Im going from down near the iran (or is it iraq? i dont remember) border up to Gggggggyumri (theres only one G, but it sounds awesome when you build it up) its pronounced gyoomree. i was bummed to leave artashat. its a great ward with good members, but we really didnt get too much done so i wanted to stay and have another go. plus i lovedd that district. but now im north. its super different. Charentsavan was tiny, and Artashat was super simply laid out, so i had no trouble getting used to where everything was. but gyumris the biggest city after yerevan, and we live like a 45 min walk from the church. theres vans, but im always standing on them so i cant see out the windows. any the city isnt grid like or anything. so im still pretty lost. its DANG COLD. and only getting worse, snow hasnt come yet but itll come by the feet. no more white shirt days. its sweater and coat every time. im serving with elder christensen, who i was around in hrazdan during my training. we served together a bit cause our companions were the zone leaders. he was super quiet and wouldnt say anything back then. he's grown a lot since, but he's still not one to take over. so i have to make sure i dont dominate everything like i tend to. hes been here 6 months already, and he looves the place and knows it super well so i just follow him around and we do alright. 

 the main bummer thing about gyumri is its isolated. we're an hour away from the other 6 missionaries in our zone (we have 6 here in our district) and we dont have a senior couple close by like almost everyone else. no one comes to visit- zone meetings are in vanadzor, and thats the city on the way to georgia so anytime pres goes north thats where he goes. so its kinda like being back in Char. its funny, i wasnt happy to be isolated when i was in Char, but then i got out of my corner and realized i wanted to go back. but then i got used to it and loved it and now i dont want to go back to isolation. 

 so basically with that in mind and my new district, not feeling great about how i left artashat, and not wanting to move again and start over, i wasnt super excited to move. but i realized i was focused on all the wrong things, namely myself. so i decided to cut that out and go back to work. thats why i was happy in Char in the first place anyway, cause i was left to my work. so i just need to get back to working as hard as i can and ill be all smiles again. i hope i can. im confident i can. 

 we have a great branch here thats super close and really wants to become a ward. branch pres is awesome, he basically got back from serving a mission and then took everything over. i think hes 26, but he does a great job. he said the members are awesome, they just arent that into doing missionary work. and thats been a big focus of all our meetings as missionaries lately, so elder christensen and i are gunna get to it with the members. the church is super beautiful. and we have two investigators that are great potential. 

 so yeah, basically this week was a fair amount of introspection and realizing that everything else can wait and take its place, that the only thing i really want to do and will actually make me happy is missionary work. id just gotten away from that because the work wasnt going well at all. but i wasnt putting my all in anyway. so things are gunna change, and baptisms are going to follow. i can feel it in my bones. 

  i love you all soo soo much. my interactions with the armenians and with my other missionaries too just make me so grateful for the family i have. we'll be talking soon enough! basically ill be spending an hour instructing you all how to say armenian words without sounding like a fool. i dont want to come back and hear "so how was ararat" (with hard As, not long ones, its hard to explain, but it makes me laugh every time. ) everyone sounds like theyre doing good. good to see all the pictures, i specifically wanted the ones from alexs spirit week though. so send me those! 

kisses

Elder Moore

Hey Dudes

Dear Family in Friends, 

  Todays a quick one cause we were in vanadzor for zone conference with pres malm from teh area presidency, so we're doing pday tomorrow. anyway thats all,ill write more tomorrow. love you all

Elder Moore

hey errebody

Dear Family and Friends, 

   Not a lotta to report this week. Tuesday we had a good zone meeting. we got out, sat a marshutni van to the metro, rode the metro to the marshutni stop to sit one and ride the hour back to artashat, and then i realized i didnt have my phone. i asked elder chojnacki, who sometimes carries it instead, but i already knew he didnt have it. so there we were with no phone, knowing we couldnt go back to the Shat without it but not quite sure how to locate and get ours. a nice lady let us use her phone to "zangetsnel" meaning "to cause to call"- they call you, then hang up immeduiately not to spend their money, and have you call them back. they do it to missionaries a lot. anyway we zangetsneled the sisters cause theres was the only number we knew and they called president and found out i had left it in his car when he gave us a ride to the meeting that day. so then we had to take a taxi back up to the other side of yerevan to the mission home, then all the way back to artashat. so we got back at night and our taxi driver shafted us for a ton of money. so that was tuesday. wednesday and thursday we did some more service for our members, friday we ended up walking in the rain the whole day and saturday we ended up walking in the mud the whole day. sunday was stake conference but we didnt gather as armenia, instead our ward went to the closest branch in yerevan and we watched the meeting on skype there. skype. people. skype is good but it is not thatttt good. it was like listening to a dying radio through a tunnel. in armenian. and then we watched a video made for eastern europe where elder nelson and some 70s spoke- it was translated by old return missionaries whos accents were TERRIBLE. im not saying i couldve done better, even though im confident by my misssion's end i will be able to. but thats why i dont translate conference. anyway it made me refocus hard on speaking smoothly and trying to get the accent. 

  anyway thats about it. the transfer is thursday, hopefully we'll hear whats up by tomorrow. artashats been tough, it wouldnt be true if i said i was dying to stay here, but i know its a possibility and if i do it will be a good opportunity to recommit and work hard. we'll see what happens. there could be some significant shake ups. i have decided that if i do stay here im gunna throw myself into less active work. i watched The Work of Salvation in english the first time this week and a bishop mentioned that he felt the Lord wasnt going to give them new baptisms until they took care of the ones theyd already been blessed with. thats a huge problem here in armenia- lots of inactives, and lots of church records that dont even have their updated info. 

  thats all i got for this week, only one picture too but its a good one. i wish i had more to write. im still waiting on pics from the fammmmm- alexs halloween ones for sure, and i need to keep seeing my doggies. alex didnt write, the rest of it was good though. sounds like lanies havin fun. ill be jealous of everyone come christmastime, especially cause i wont be allowed to listen to rosie o donnell christmas special (im still working on getting that approved) but it sounds like an awesome time. 

 anyway i love and miss all of you and hope you have a great week. i love being a missionary, i cant imagine life without my mission. i hope you look for and see the blessings that Im confident the Lord is giving us as I serve. shat em sirum zez! tsavd tanem

lolve elder more (yes that was a lol on purpose)

me using a "tatik (grandma) broom" its all they ever use, and it forces you to bend over, so tatiks just end up stuck that way. anyway i had a good time. i think im going to come back to armenia and create a broom company

hey errbody im tired

Dear Family and Friends, 

  Not a lot to report this week but it's been an okay one. Not too much worked out but it was alright. The older guy that fell asleep during the Joseph Smith movie did accept a baptismal date, that was a great moment. Idk about others, but as a missionary i keep going all over the place with baptism. sometimes i feel like its this life changing event that people have to understand completely and other times its just the door, and people just need to get through the door so they can understand the rest. well obviously its both, but ive struggled to find how to explain that balance to people. but with this man it really was that simple- the church of God is back on the earth, but you need to join it to gain a remission of sins and eternal life, not just because everyone should find a church. he got it- he actually asked me how he could be cleansed from his sins, and how to know which church God wanted him to join. it was great. unfortunately he dropped us this week, hes moving to Yerevan and still working so he just doesnt have time. but hes a great man and once he moves we'll try to get him set up with the yerevan center missionaries. 

  other than that we didnt find too many people to teach, but we did a lot of service for our members. to be honest i was super annoyed when we first showed up- we were the first elders here in 3 years, but instead of being excited about strengthening the priesthood, everyone was like "yay, now we can send the elders to give blessings instead of us going, or yay now the elders can come do my physical labor the sisters couldnt" but i realized that while thats obviously the wrong attitude, service is the way into the members lives. its a great ward here, but we havent gotten a single referral in the 3 months here. but we served, and tried to chat up their neighbors, kept mentioning the ward activity, etc etc. it didnt work out, but i know it was more effective than just eating their food and then asking for a referral, and also more effective than just saying we'll go get our own investigators, forget the members. so that was good. i've done more service in the past 3 weeks here than i ever got done in my 5 months in Char, so its been a good feeling. 

  i got sick this week, maybe from being tired with all the service and being out in the cold. but i actually took it easy the next day instead of going out in the rain all day like the last time i got sick. so im fine now, not flu ridden for a week, although my voice is struggling to come back. its making me sound super weird when i speak armenian. no one understands me, its like im back in march. 

  i was stressed out this week but i found some awesome council in pres eyrings message from this priesthood session- he gave the story of how the good samaritan could be "the overstressed EQP" but i've decided just to call it "the missionary" since every missionary is working super hard and it never goes as well as it should. this missionary was breaking up little kid fights after our activity/ before the sisters' baptism, and then trying to stop their moms from yelling at each other. but pres eyring gave three promises that i realized i needed a reminder- we CAN feel the love the Savior does for the people we serve, there WILL be others to help, and the Savior will recompense ALL that we spend in his service. those gave me comfort. the third one i think we focus on too much, but i decided to do something more than dream of my mansion above and get back to working hard so itll actually be there one day. 

thats all i got from this week. theres only 10 days left in the transfer and thats crazyyyy. esp cause we're both new here so anything could go. the week didnt go much better, but theres some potentials here and there, and im committed to leaving this area better than i found it, so i can either recommit to another 3 months here, or leave it feeling at peace. 

 i love you all, hope halloween was awesome and fattening (did i mention im skinnier?) crazy how the time flies, the winter holidays are coming faster than i care to admit. 

sirum em zez. Astvatc zez het

elder moore

sorry but i never get sick of ararat photos. theres some great ones from this week that im not allowed to send!!!! blegh. i love armenia, but not the fact that its in eastern europe. sort of 

action shot! i think if i had held the axe at the bottom my hands wouldve gotten less torn up. but then i probably wouldnt have been able to cut it. and then the 60 year old crazy grandma lady we were serving wouldve made fun of me like she did elder chojnacki (i wish i could send pics of her chopping. shes great though)