A Visit To Armenia

This picture of the cows on the road were taken in a Kurdish village. There is a cow herder that goes out each morning and picks up all the cows to take them to graze for the day. As he returns at night he brings all the cows back and as they go by their road they just peel off.

Pictures depicting the countryside of Armenia. I found it a relly poor county, with a lot of rubble around everywhere.





This is a picture of The Marriot where we stayed.
This is a building just across the square-think this was a government building.
This is the Pagan Temple that we climbed to the top of - the stairs were quite steep but did not compare to the magnitude of those in Mexico. Was destroyed and rebuilt in 1960's.
This is the Church-Monstary built in the side of the mountain. Lots of the rooms are carved out of the mountain side.
This is a picture of a pen of sheep/lambs located next to the meat shop.This is the local meat shop. The meat is hanging on the hooks for you to choose what would you like for the day.





Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry, I am slow in getting my thoughts together and posting to the blog. On the 17th April we flew to Armenia so we could test some Elders who had been exposed to TB and do an "inspection" of hospital facilities for safety in treating the missionaries. We got in about 3:00 AM and they had a very nice Marriot where we stayed for two nights, as nice as any we have probably ever stayed. As the Mission Pres. was not going to be able to pick us up til Monday morning we decided to do a day trip to some areas around Armenia. We had a tour guide who took us to a "Pagan Temple" and a Christian Monastery/Church. We learned quite a bit about the Armenia history. Armenia is a land locked country, has no natural resources, an unemployment rate of 70% and the first county to embrace Christianity. It is borded by Turkey, Iran, Russia and Georgia. The first two, they have been fighting with for years, they won't let any of them even travel through their borders. In fact the Mount Ararat, which Armenia claims as theirs is actually now located within Turkey. This is the Mount where Noah's Ark is buried (?). There is a population of 7 million Armenians in the World of which only 3 million actually live here. A lot of them go out to make a living for their family which stays at home. There is also very little timber in the area so they use cow chips as their source of fuel. Aremenia has a Christian Church which is called the "Apostolic Church" which dates back to 300AD. With 70% unemployment rate a lot of men can be seen on the roadside talking - solving the Worlds problems - or playing games. There has been a lot of structural damage from the earthquakes that have hit this area and they seem to make no effort to clean up the rubble.

We visted the Pagan Temple called Garni. This was built to a sun God. The steps were very steep which reminded us of the ruins in Mexico, but not any where near the size of those ruins in Mexico. This was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1600's and rebuilt in 1960, out of some of the original stones. At one time there was a Christian monastery for nuns built next to it. There are also some Roman baths that were used by some King and Queens on the property, from 300AD. There are probably other buried structures but there is no monies for escavations. Need to go out. SO Need to Bathe (the hot water was off for the day and when it came back on it was orange. They have also turned the heat off in our apartment for the summer. Have had to go back putting a heavy blanket on at night. Will finish the posting later with pictures. MOM