Christian Renewal in Armenia

On May 5, 1991, Armenian government officials met with some Americans offering to build a concrete factory in partnership with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Susanna Sarkissian helped interpret for him. When senior missionary couples with expertise in construction arrived in Yerevan to work on the factory, Susanna arranged for her sister Narine, the vice-principal of a local school, to teach them Armenian.

After a week of teaching, Narine had a dream. She was walking in a garden, looking at a building in front of her. She saw it was “a very tall building … with round windows on the top of the walls.” The building had “spires,” and “above the windows were sunstones, which are very typical for ancient Armenian architecture.” But there was no entrance. In the dream, she walked around and around, searching for a way in.

The next Monday in class, the missionaries asked Narine how much they should pay her for teaching them. Narine refused the money. “Just consider this as my humanitarian project,” she said. “But if you want to do something for me, why don’t you baptize me?”

Narine and her daughter Christina agreed to take the missionary lessons to prepare for baptism. When she entered the missionaries’ home for the first time, she saw a picture of the Salt Lake Temple and recognized it as the building in her dream. Narine and Christina, who were baptized in April 1992, were among the first Armenian converts to join the Church in the post-Soviet era.

Thereafter, “I was amazed to see the great changes that took place in Narine and then later on in myself,” Susanna said. “She was becoming kinder. She was becoming wiser. She was becoming more beautiful. She was changing every day, and I was amazed.” Susanna also sought out the missionaries and was baptized. After her baptism, she became the Relief Society president of the young branch.

Just over a decade later, in 2001, during a year of national celebrations to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the official establishment of Christianity in Armenia, Latter-day Saints around the country shared the newly published Eastern Armenian Book of Mormon with their communities. In March, they hosted open houses in Yerevan and Gyumri.

“Every word and sentence of the book passed through my mind, my spirit, and my heart, leaving an indelible testimony in my soul,” said Hasvira Minasaryan, who had worked on the translation. “I began to recognize the ways of God, the significance of the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the love, mercy, and grace of my Savior.”

Just as the Sarkissian sisters had discovered, Margarit Matanyan found that the restored truths of the gospel brought change into her life. “The Book of Mormon fills my heart with warmth and love toward others,” she said as she reflected on the scriptures’ testimony of Jesus Christ, now in the language of one of the world’s oldest Christian countries.