# 53

Dear President, 

I hope you had a great Easter yesterday! We had a good week, despite the fact that many of our investigators seem to be struggling in progressing right now. We had many lessons which focused on them and why they need to be keeping commitments. Hopefully next week a lot more of them (we hope all of them) will be progressing. 

We went to Alavaerdi this week and still were unable to meet with the young woman there, but we were able to meet with her mother, who we picked up as an investigator and gave a baptismal date.

We met with the children in Alaverdi as well and reviewed the 10 commandments with them. 

We also met with the newly baptized members there. We retaught the Plan of Salvation and talked about temples as well. They all seemed really excited and even started making plans for going to the temple together. They also hold family prayers together and read together from the Book of Mormon. It made my heart so happy to hear that!

We've also been trying to meet with the taxi driver's wife lately, but she has been pretty busy. Most people were busy this week because of the Easter holiday. We did have one investigator come to Sacrament meeting though, which was very nice. We are planning on meeting with all of the people who were busy this week.

We also have been meeting with our member's daughter who is in town for a bit. We had a great lesson with them on the Plan of Salvation and today we are planning on teaching the Restoration with the father. He seems eager to learn about that and wanted to be a part of it. We are excited to see how it will turn out. 

We have also been meeting with a lot of new members and less actives lately. One Easter we had the opportunity to go to a member's house (whose son and daughter-in-law are not members, but the grandkids are) for a meeting. Her son was leaving for Russia that night to work for six months. The senior couple here shared the "Because of Him" video on Christ's atonement and then the 10 y.o. grand daughter read from 3 Ne 11 (where Christ appears to the Nephites after His resurrection). I think the father really felt the Spirit in his heart. He asked for our phone numbers and he even picked up my Book of Mormon and started flipping through it...so of course we gave him a copy. We also pulled up the nearest church to him in Russia. I saw him put the Book of Mormon in his bag for Russia before we left. That was such a sweet meeting. To be able to spend Easter with a family whose father's heart was opened to the gospel was such a tender experience that I will remember forever. 

Exchanges this week were a great learning experience for me. I've never felt so unified with a sister on an exchange before, so it was pretty easy to focus on our purpose and the people. I learned a lot from Sister W, like how to follow the Spirit and really focus on teaching the people and not the lessons. She is great at that. I have listed those as goals for myself for the upcoming week.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

I love you!

Sister Morreall

Dear Family,

I hope you all had a great Easter with the family!! Also, did you all see in General Conference the Armenian Preach My Gospel that made an appearance during one of the talks? 

Last Monday we had the opportunity as a district to go to an Armenian play of a Tumanyan fairytale. It was super cool! 

This week we had exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders in their area for the third time in my misson...I must be a problem sister or something haha. I loved being back there though because the Bishop there always jokes around with me and he's super funny. Also, I saw the Stake President who I absolutely LOVEEEEE. It was so good to see him again, I rarely get to see him since I'm up in the North.

I hope you are having a fun time with the family there!! 

Misa :)

Fun/cool facts:

Armenians buy wreaths of palm leaves (or weeping willow leaves cause they're cheaper) and hang them in their houses on Easter until the next year when they buy a new one. Then they bury the old one. It is supposed to bring them good luck for the next year.

They break hard boiled eggs by hitting them together...which ever one has the bigger crack loses...so the kids in the village play against each other to see who wins. 

They say this on Easter instead of hello: "Christ resurrected from death". The response back is "Blessed is Christ's resurrection".

They eat rice with sweet raisins cooked in it. The rice represents worldly people and the raisins represent Saints. Take the bitter and the sweet.