2025 Faith Leap - Chapter 6: Batumi Blessings

In Church on Sunday, our inspired teacher led a discussion surrounding the question of why it was important for the Savior to come to earth into humble circumstances, rather than the fanfare of a King. She then asked us to ponder, "Is there anything in your life where you are expecting fanfare when humble simplicity is enough?" Richard and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes - knowing exactly what the other was thinking. With that question, we were directly minister to: Reporting on this blog/to people back home, constantly being asked by people here why we came, feeling accountability to our children for uprooting them, and wanting to ensure that we do not fail to do whatever we are here to do, means that Richard and I feel a lot of pressure to find purpose and be anxiously engaged - which has led to anxiousness. (What if this ends up being a let down? What if, when we go home, we are still unclear about why we came? What are we supposed to be filling our everyday with? - is the simple day-to-day enough? Or, do we somehow need to be figuring out how to spend more time with more people? If so, how? who? when? Is what we are doing enough?...) This sweet sister's question dissolved our anxiety. At the end of this trip, we may not have any grand purpose to report. And that will be okay. Because God doesn't need fanfare when a simple manger is enough. What matters is our commitment to go where God directs and do what he inspires us to do - big or small.

"...but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass...And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about His great and eternal purposes; and by very small means, the Lord doth confound the wise, and bringeth about the salvation of many souls." - Alma 37:6-7

Highlights

Miss had her glasses stolen by our neighbor
We are surrounded by Mandarin trees ready for the picking and have been blessed by many people's generosity in sharing them
The many cool cars are a highlight for Bob, and we can add cows to the list of animals we encounter in the yard
The large Dreamland property next to us is probably only a Dreamland to Kroc
We love our Batumi Branch so much! And, for good and bad, almost everyone speaks English!
Our Church building is next to a charming Ice Cream Parlor, on a charming street.
More Christmas lights!

Prayer Requests

Please pray for Bob. The void of friends, people his age in general, physical books, and his favorite outdoor activities (likely mingled with some teenage hormones) have made this mighty change harder on him than it has been on the rest of us. You could even pray for our creativity to be magnified on mobility-limiting rainy days 💗

Details

I thought that, after the last chapter, life would slow down a bit and there wouldn't be much to report for a while. Silly me! Buckle up - this is going to be a long post 😆

Meeting the Neighbors

We have now met our Russian-speaking-only next door neighbors on both sides of us: Raisa is a kind woman who lives on our left. As is the norm in Georgia, the family on our right has 4 generations living in the home. We met the great-grandmother, an adult granddaughter (blanking on both of their names), and her daughter, niece and nephew. The niece, Mariam (age 7) desperately wanted to play with Miss, but couldn't figure out how to. She tugged on her sleeve until Miss bravely began walking with her down the lane. As I watched, Mariam took the glasses right off of Miss's face and put them on herself. Miss gestured to her multiple times to ask her to return the glasses, and Mariam refused. Finally, Miss looked at me with a plea for help, so I began walking toward them when, suddenly, Mariam took off into her house. I interrupted Richard's conversation with the adults to ask for help, and the glasses were returned with profuse apologies. It was quite an ordeal for Miss. Perhaps Mariam was wanting Miss to play in her house and didn't know how to communicate that? Or, she just thought the glasses were fascinating and wanted them for herself? 🤷🏻‍♀️Now that I think about it, I don't think we have seen a single child with glasses here. So, they are likely more of a novelty than we realize. Either way, I am grateful to have them returned - as Miss needs them to see, they are expensive, and I do not want to have to figure out how to replace them here.

Exploring Chakvi

We have been blessed with beautiful, sunny weather for a full week. We spent a good part of it exploring our little town. There are Mandarin trees everywhere, laden with ripe fruit. While we were out for a walk one day, a sweet old lady had just finished filling a small bucket from her tree and, when she saw us, she insisted we take them all. We asked if we could do any service for her, and if we could take a picture with her, but she said no to both requests (not wanting to be on camera). Our beloved housekeeper, Mari, also brought us a giant bag of home-grown mandarins and lemons as a Christmas gift.

Another prominent feature in Georgia are public parks with exercise equipment. Even our little village of Chakvi has at least 3 parks (that we've found so far). Miss enjoys wowing people (or stressing them) with her splits on the exercise equipment. The largest park has astroturf knock-off Disney characters scattered throughout.

We are eating a lot of chicken because it is impossible to find beef here - which is ironic because there are an abundance of cows. And the kids name each of them as well (this is Fat Linda - who lives behind us).

We have discovered a short-cut to the market that is largely on a path through the forest. I love it! Every spring I commit to taking advantage of the beauties of the mountains of Utah and, by the end of the summer, it is never as much as I had hoped. I love that an escape into nature is just 2 minutes away here. The only downside to this shortcut is that it requires walking on the actual train track to cross the river - so I don't want the kids there without an adult. (Speaking of the train: this track is used by multiple trains - including travelers from Tbilisi. We are learning by sound and feel which train is passing. The big cargo train gratefully doesn't pass through as often as the others. But you know it by the way it shakes the whole house!)

The kids are filling our photo storage with dogs and cars. I will spare you most of them. But I will post this adorable puppy that they affectionately named Smoke, because it looks like a lighter version of their cousins' dog, Ash. And just a couple of their favorite cars. Georgians live in literally crumbling houses, yet on every walk through every city we have seen multiple super cars: Ferrari, Mustang, Cobra, and Bugatti. Maybe better housing feels impossible so they don't bother and spend all of their money on a car instead? 🤷🏻‍♀️Bob would love to geek out over all of them with someone who will appreciate them as much as he does. Any takers?

Our home is right next to a gigantic resort called Dreamland. Part of it has functioning nicer hotels - nice enough that we saw a wedding being hosted at one of them. Then, other parts of the property look like the photo below. Does this look like your Dreamland? Kroc would reply with a resounding YES! Oh the endless possibilities of things he could build!

Batumi Branch

We love our Batumi Branch so much! We'd been warned that it is very small - only about 15 attending; and it likely would be all in Georgian and Russian - very few English speakers. We were pleasantly surprised our first week at church with a full "chapel" of 30 people! (Granted, we are 5 of them). And have mixed feelings about learning that English is actually the primary language spoken. Within our branch right now, we have people attending from Russia, Brazil, El Salvador, Norway, Turkey, Japan, China, Kazakhstan, America, and Georgia. Everyone in the Branch either speaks English or Russian (or both), so services are held in English, with Russian translation. This is nice for us, but we recognize that it does make it more difficult for Georgians to attend, despite it being their country. Richard is one of the few here who speaks all three languages (at least, as far as we know), so perhaps one thing he can do is to help bridge the gap and shift to more Georgian speaking at church. He is feeling the need to really hone in his language skills.

We meet in a charming second floor apartment of a charming building on a charming street - an area of Batumi that has been fixed up nicely to attract tourists. (The picture at the top of this post is of us in front of our church building). The Youth and Primary were combined into one class (which Bob was not thrilled about) - with our 3 kids bringing the total up to 5. But we know of some other children and youth in the Branch, so maybe we will eventually have enough to split the Youth and Primary🤞🏻. They decorated the Christmas tree with snowflakes and a "Names of Christ" paper chain.

In addition to the amazing Sunday School lesson mentioned at the beginning of this post, the speakers also did a fantastic job. One invited us to consider the symbolism of the gifts of the wise men and then examine our lives for gifts we can give the Savior for each of those symbols. I was excited to accept her invitation and had a beautiful experience doing so. I extend the invitation to you. I love how a focus in the branch seems to be asking questions that invite focused reflection. Our cups were o'er flowing.

Our Branch President and his family are phenomenal people. They moved to Armenia a couple of years ago in order to escape the Russian conflict. The Mission President then asked if they would be willing to move to Batumi to start a Branch. While Alexsey and Lyubov have been serving as the Mother and Father of the Branch (even hosting Sunday dinner every week!), their daughter and son served full-time missions in the Armenia/Georgia mission. All 4 of them are warm, inviting, funny and insightful. Such impressive people.

Batumi Shopping

The rubbers that I brought for Bob ended up being too small (I thought he'd tried them on before we left, but there was a miscommunication). So we decided to go into Batumi for shopping and Christmas lights. We came home without any rubbers. (I think our mistake was going to the Mall - which is very much like a mall in America: everything is top-end/pricey. I just want a pair of cheap goulashes that keep out the water - nothing fancy! Everyone that I have asked has said you can find them all over, but they've not been able to point me to a specific place, and I haven't seen them anywhere.) However, our shopping excursion was not all for naught as we found ground beef at the mall grocery store, and Kroc found a pocket knife to replace the one he has mourned losing in Tbilisi.

We have learned that carrying knives is against the law here. So the boys are only allowed to use their knives at the house.

We also learned that the ready-to-eat food process at the mall is ridiculous. At home, if you buy something at the grocery store that they allow you to eat right there, you pay for it right there. The process is simple. Here, they have dining tables for sitting to enjoy the ready-to-eat foods you just ordered. But, before you can sit to eat, you have to go through check out at the front of the store, then come back through the entrance and have a sticker put on each item you purchased (to prove it has already been paid for) before returning to the tables. I guess this process isn't as cumbersome for most, as the culture here is to run to market for a couple of items. But they don't know what to do with our "large" family purchasing enough for several days. (I can't count how many times a day people ask me if all 3 children are mine, they gasp when I say yes, and then they stagger when I tell them I actually have 5 children. People might faint if they ever met my friends with 7+ children 😆). We overwhelm every grocery lady with the number of items we purchase. The security guard at the mall responsible for putting stickers on all of our items got through about 5 and then gave up and waived us through. We had our receipt as proof of purchase so I didn't see a point to the stickers anyway.

One more note about grocery shopping: it takes exponentially longer to shop when you have to take the time to translate everything, and you have to check the ingredients of every item (and every product comes from different countries with different language sets to translate from). Shopping with food allergies is never a cake walk, but it is extra difficult in a foreign language. I have mistakenly be "glutened" twice now. But, miraculously and gratefully, I have not seen that it affected me. I have heard stories of people with Gluten allergies having no problem in Europe. So far, it seems to be true for me too - though I am not willing to risk too much.

Batumi Lights

After shopping, we found parking near our church building (regular miracle), and a passerby kindly signalled to us that we could pull in a little closer to the curb (this is one of several times where Georgians have been so awesome to help us park). Our church building is right next to an adorable Ice Cream Parlor. We owed the kids ice cream as a reward for going 48 hours without saying "6-7" (it is not until someone in the house is resisting saying it that you realize how many times a day the opportunity actually arises. For example: did the report of record number warmth at home need to be 67 degrees? 🤣). After ice cream, we 🎵 walked and walked and walked and walked 🎵 to experience the Christmas lights on the Promenade and at European Square. Our walk included getting steamed corn. Apparently it is a thing for street vendors to sell steamed corn-fresh off the cob (that tastes like fresh out of a can...). Bob also found his favorite Georgian letter (B) at the base of the An-bani Tower (Georgian Alphabet Tower) and started dancing to Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" before realizing we were filming him. For some reason he thought it was "cringe" when his parents tried dancing under the tower too. All in all, it was a lovely evening!