Glendale, California:  Week 41

Hello all, hope you had a good week!

This week we went out to visit Armen, a solid investigator who we rarely get to visit because his schedule is so busy. We wanted to make things more interesting and help him get to know some ward members, so we brought along Armen, the Armenian group leader. But when we got there, both of the Armens said they wouldn't be able to make it. So we decided to call a guy we've never met named Armen, whose number we had just received. We were thinking he's an inactive member, but it turns out he's just an investigating friend from a very long time ago. He answered the phone and when we told him who we are, he told us he hadn't been contacted by our church's missionaries or members for 6 years, which he was understandably upset about. But we got to talking with him and he lightened up, and we're hoping to stop by and meet with him shortly. He said that he had just finished praying when we called him, and that he knew that wasn't a coincidence. When he was meeting with the missionaries in the past he read the Book of Mormon and believes it, and was considering getting baptized. It's amazing to me to see the people that God prepares to hear the the gospel, it's just up to us as followers of Christ to find them and be willing to share what we know. Another takeaway from this story is that there are a lot of people named Armen. We rescheduled our lesson with the first 2 Armens, and it went great. :)

And finally, yesterday, we met with our Georgian friend who speaks Russian, and we brought one of the Russians from our ward, who brought an Armenian friend of hers, who doesn't speak English. So when the two Russian speakers would talk, the Armenian would translate into Armenian for us missionaries to understand, and when the rest of us would say something in English we'd translate to Armenian for her. It was fun, I love languages. 

Until next week,

Elder Clayton

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Glendale, California:  Week 40

It's so cool having a lot of elders cover this ward we're in. We don't live with the English elders but we see them often, and it's been fun introducing them to all the members who we've known since we got here. 

It's also a huge blessing that we have such a good number of Armenians to meet with. Pre-covid, it was so hard to find people who were interested in hearing our message, but somehow we now have enough that we're kept pretty busy. 

I love this verse I read recently in 1 Corinthians 12, when Paul is teaching about spiritual gifts and the importance of different members in Christ's church:

"For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ."

When I read this I thought of Armenians. They are very few in number in this church, and the Armenian group here in California can feel pretty disconnected from the English, Spanish, Tagalog, etc wards that are much bigger and more involved, but I know that Armenians play an important role and have a lot to offer, and I want nothing more than to bring more of them to the knowledge of the restored gospel! I love the Armenian people, and when our little group meets for online church, it makes me so happy to talk together and rejoice in Christ together. 

As always, have a great week!

Elder Clayton

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PS I love my zone! We played kickball and ultimate frisbee today and it was great, although I am pretty sunburned now

Glendale, California:  Week 39

I can't believe the transfer is over already! Time just keeps going faster and faster. Also, we got transfer calls and I'm really excited. Previously, it was the 3 of us Armenian elders covering the English ward and Armenian group, but now, the 4th Armenian elder is coming back, plus they're taking us out of English work entirely, by adding two purely English companionships to the ward. So technically, this ward went from 3 missionaries to 8. Crazy, and awesome. President Hall even shouted us out in the weekly mission email, "We are also taking advantage of the many language capabilities and are concentrating two Armenian and two Philippine Companionships in Glendale." 

One thing I look forward to in the next couple months is reaching out to more Armenian members who were attending church regularly about a decade ago, but then faded away over time. There are a lot of people in this category. Before recently, I didn't realize just how many Armenian members there actually are, I just haven't met them yet because church attendance is very small. We met with a previous Armenian branch leader, and he knew so many people that we have no clue about. 

As for church zoom meetings (actually we're using google meet now), it's going well, but it's hard because everyone is really old and doesn't know how to connect. So every Sunday morning we drive over to 3 or 4 people's houses to connect them into the church meeting. But it continues to grow basically every week, so that's great!

Love you all, have a great week

Elder Clayton

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Glendale, California:  Week 38

A couple days ago I had a new personal record for the longest lesson. 3 hours and 45 minutes! It was awesome, this investigating friend of ours just has so many questions and loves to hear and discuss about the gospel. She was worried she took up too much of our time but we assured her we'd probably just be back at the apartment trying to call people otherwise.

We also had zone conference this week, and instead of the usual ~5 hours, it was like 7 or 8. Pretty exhausting, but I enjoyed it a lot, especially hearing from the mission president and his family since they are still new and I don't know them super well. My zone is really old, about half of the missionaries going home at the end of this transfer are from my zone. They will be missed, this has been a great transfer and I love my zone! 

Elder Clayton

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Glendale, California:  Week 37

We did a lot of driving around and filming this week for a Facebook video that we're working on. In the past, each zone had their own Facebook page they were responsible for, but now it will likely be broken up by language (One English page for the whole mission, one Spanish, one Chinese, etc), so I will probably focus more on making Armenian content now. It's funny because there are only us 4 Armenian elders, so we are basically responsible to make all the content for our page. Which has been fun so far! 

The video we're making involves all 4 of us, so we drove down to the mission office in Arcadia to visit Elder Bell, my trainer. Then we hiked up a mountain to film Elder Christensen's part, and got permission to go to Hollywood to film Elder Hubner's part! (And visit an Armenian member out there who I've never met before.) It was really cool, but right as we were about to start filming, a big fire pops up a short ways off.  But just as fast as it came, it was gone. 

I also pieced together a short video about God's existence, centering around Alma 30:44, when Korihor is talking with him, and demanding to see a sign before he'll believe that there is a God. And Alma responds:

"The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."

And it's so true. The more I slow down and take time to consider all the miraculous creations that exist around us, even in everyday life, the more obvious it becomes that there is a God who loves us. I know we have a Heavenly Father who knows and loves each of us with a greater love than we can comprehend. And this beautiful world is a gift I could never stop being grateful for.

Here's the link to our page, any support would be much appreciated! 

https://www.facebook.com/churchofjesuschristglendalehye/

Have a great week,

Elder Clayton

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