Burning Rubber

This last week has been fairly slow on the teaching point if view, but that doesn't mean I don't have a story for you.

We had a dinner with a family in our ward, and the Brother is a huge fan of spicy stuff. And, as some of you guys know, I am really bad at spicy stuff. He brought out a bottle of hot sauce called "Possible Side Effects." He then gave us each a toothpick and we got just a tiny bit of it on the said toothpick. We then had to put it in our mouths and endure. And endure we did! At least I think I did pretty good. I may have said some stuff like "This was a bad idea!" or "My tongue is melting!" But all in all I think I took it quite well. I think next week he's gonna bring out the even hotter sauce for us to try, because their kids seemed to enjoy it a lot more than we did.

Also! I left out some details from transfers that are kind of important (to me at least): We can no longer attend zone sports since our area switched zones, and the place where it would be held is too far away for us to drive. They also took away our Rav 4, which was a really nice car, and they gave us a smaller/not as good car from a different area. So, that has been fun to drive with in the snow. Did I mention we're kind of in an outlying area, technically, so we need to drive a lot?

I can't believe it's almost Mothers' Day! I'm pretty excited, though I don't know exactly how that will work. I think we just use Skype on our devices. We did have a member family invite us over for Mother's day so that we can use their Wi-Fi (because we don't have Wi-Fi at our apartment, though we are going to try to get some in our next place). Also, sorry I don't have any more pictures of us together yet. It's getting harder to use Google Drive to send pictures, just because we can't go to zone sports anymore.

Also, those pictures of us in the hats were at the retirement home that we do service at every Wednesday. One of the new staff members was a Church member and took our pictures. I didn't think anything of it until she asked what Mom's phone number was, and by then it was too late.

And now for the weather report from Elder Hill: "Well, it's been an interesting April for Canada this year, as you can see from this chart *points to chart with a pointer thingy*. We've had some warm spring days in the beginning of the month, but *moves pointer to the other side of "chart"* they have been ultimately dwarfed by the amount of snowy, wet, winter days."
The weather is a bit strange... It's still snowing, almost every day, but it should be gone before Mothers' Day, at least.

Although, it hasn't really been that bad, at least, not as bad as it had been.

Also, we're moving apartments on May 1^st. So, next week you'll probably hear all about our adventures with stairs... lots and lots of stairs...

We actually don't have any new contacts. A. is super busy all the time, J. pretty much told us to wait a month or two, and everyone else has dropped us. So, it's been a ton of us going out and knocking on people's doors for the last few weeks, which hasn't brought in many potentials. We have, however, been going through a list of "formers" recently and we're hoping to get someone to teach from some of those, but it's been super slow.

We have been able to clean our apartment more, though.

On the subject of food: We get fed by members almost every day, and it's usually really good, too. I am also very pleased to say that my picky eating is not really a problem anymore. The first day I got here and we had a member meal, they fed us spaghetti with a very chunky sauce with a lot of things in it that you know I wouldn't usually eat. And I looked at it, and knew that I had to deal with it sometime, so I ate it like a fairly normal human being. and ever since then, I haven't had a problem trying new things or eating things that I know that I don't like.

There is one thing here that I would rather not try. It's called "Balut". Balut is a fertilized duck egg that has been partially developed and also fermented... apparently it's a thing for the missionaries to try it at least once before they leave, and it's actually kinda popular. Although I'd rather not eat a fermented baby duck any time soon.

I don't really know a lot about Elder S., but he's pretty fun. He's a little reserved, but has a very subtle humor that goes unnoticed by most people we talk to. It's been fun to have someone to laugh with. He's been here for about 6-ish months (don't quote me on that). He also spent some time with a lot of Chinese-speaking Elders and has some fun stories from those experiences. Oh, yeah, he also likes fly fishing and baseball. I don't know much else, but he is fun to be silly with.

Love ya! Talk to ya next week!

Missionary Commission

I am called of God.

My authority is above that of kings of the earth.

By revelation I have been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is my master and He has chosen me to represent Him–to stand in His place, to say and do what He Himself would say and do if He personally were ministering to the very people to whom He has sent me.

My voice is His voice, and my acts are His acts.

My doctrine is His doctrine.

My Commission is to do what He wants done, to say what He wants said, to be a living modern witness in word and in deed of the divinity of His great and marvelous latter-day work.

How great is my calling! 

-Elder Bruce R. McConkie

Hey y'all! It's been pretty slow up here. We're just trying to find people to teach for now, though Elder S.is a pretty fun guy. He has the most subtle humor I've ever seen and doesn't show a ton of emotion, but we've been getting along great. He is also from Utah. From Centerville I believe.

The above quote is one of the things they have us memorize while we're out here. It has really spoken to me while I've been here. I kind of wanted all of you to read it and to know that I am not the only missionary out here. We, as a mission, at least, have been really focusing on member missionary work. I just want all of you to know that, though not all of you are currently called to be a missionary, that doesn't mean that you can't help bring our lost brothers and sisters back to our eternal family to come.

Spring Cleaning

Happy Easter!!! If you haven't seen the new Church Easter video, you really need to.
This week was super interesting. Transfers are here. I'm staying in Leduc, but Elder J. is leaving to go train another guy in a tri-panionship. My new companion's name is Elder S., I have no idea who he is yet, but it's going to be fun! So, that's going to happen tomorrow, and we get to clean out our apartment to move out at the end of the month! So, yeah, I'll keep you updated on that.

It's great to hear that Utah is also still under the cold iron fist of winter for a bit, though ours stays longer and snows more, I think.

About driving, we do have some maps in our tablets. The fun part was trying to figure out where Elder L. was directing me. I also do have my driver's license (a temporary one waiting for the real one) and the funny part about that was that, when we went to go get them, they had us do a vision test. And of course, that was the one day that I didn't wear glasses or contacts. But I took it anyway, and I passed!!! Somehow, barely, so I may not actually need glasses to drive legally in Alberta, Canada! (But I will, because I'm super blind.)

We haven't played Extreme Croquet yet, nor have I been subject to a S.T.E.A.K. yet. Though that'll probably happen as soon as we're all able.

I also love showing people the Easter Video. My district at the MTC got to see it early when we had a guy who was over the development of it come and give a talk on a Tuesday devotional, so it's super awesome to be able to show it to the members.

One of the coolest things I’ve learned in General Conference is that "we're called to the work, not to the place." It's great that I get to be in Canada and do the work, but I know that if I were anywhere else, I'd still be learning and growing spiritually and helping bring God's children back to Him.
Something that I learned just this last week is "Whom the Lord calls, He qualifies." So even though it's rough here right now, I know that if I don't lean on my own understanding, and if I let God help us, we will be doing everything we need to have the work progress.

We had a guy come to Church and the Priesthood session of General Conference. He also has read the Book of Mormon all the way through, has read every pamphlet that the church owns, and has marked them up till you can't see the words anymore (which is pretty amazing.) And we didn't even ask him to. In fact, we were just barely able to have a lesson with him on Sunday! Aaaannnddd we kinda dropped him. We knew going in that it was going to be a difficult lesson from talking to him before about how he doesn't listen to his feelings at all, so he didn't like how the Holy Ghost testifies, I guess. But we found out in the first few moments of the lesson that he has also been reading a big ol' book of anti-Mormonism... To put it shortly, he was a Bible basher. The whole time, he was telling us what was wrong with the Church and he expected us to pull out historical evidence of pretty much everything that we believed (not knowing that we didn't study for years on how to ARGUE our religion into people's lives.) The only thing that we could do was testify and hope that someday he'll soften his heart to the Gospel. He was really nice, though, and he gave us cookies (because, Canada.)

I know that my life has been changed, and for the better. We, as greenies, have this thing that we do called a “greenie read”. the greenie read is basically us reading through a fresh copy of the Book of Mormon and highlighting every time it talks about Heavenly Father, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost. It's been a HUGE benefit for me to see the ways the Godhead influences the lives of those in the Book of Mormon and in our lives in the latter days. If you haven't done a "greenie read" type of thing, I'd strongly recommend it.

And I guess that's about it. I love y'all, and I'll talk to ya next week!

Canada Loves Us

This last week has been pretty awesome.  We went on another exchange with the Mandarin Elders yesterday, so Elder L. and I got to pretend we knew what we were doing for a bit. (<-- sarcasm) Also, Elder L. can understand/can speak about 15% English so we pretty much just said whatever inspired us and switched conversations rapidly. We actually had quite a bit of success, too. We went tracting and gave away four Books of Mormon in one whole day! And most of the recipients seemed pretty interested, too. We also got a non-member to commit to come to Church in the first lesson we taught on the sidewalk while tracting, so hopefully we'll see something come of that. We also were let in by a very nice and very sad lady. The lesson went great and she said we could come back on Thursday. Elder L. and I also got UBER lost, and I don't use the word "uber" lightly. We thought we knew where we were going, but we were wrong... obviously. We found a golf course, a campsite, the personification of "the boonies", Edmonton, and a really cool looking house. We had a blast.

For those of you who have questions about our use of Facebook and technology and such:
We don't know when the missionaries are getting Facebook, so right now we're working with the members to have them send friendly messages to people they know. When we do get Facebook, it will be us mainly using it for something like a group chat with investigators and members to do lessons or answer questions. We're also going to be using Skype for lessons in the future.

One of the greatest uses of technology here is an app we use called "Area book". Area book is pretty much a digital version of the area book and daily planner. We can record lessons we have with people and have our plan of how we're gonna teach them all on the device. We also have an area book map that has our investigators' addresses from the Area Book app.

One thing that was said about the apps was that they are buggy (of course) and that there were people who were lost in the system that we couldn't find again. Most people weren't really happy with the app until Elder N. told us about how Heavenly Father gave us this technology to help us make the work progress faster, and whoever fell through the cracks would be found again when they are ready to hear the message.  It's pretty cool to see all the ways the Lord is hastening the work.

On another note, though, General Conference!!! Woo! Elder J. and I met up with Elder N. and Elder K. for General Conference at a member family's house. The family there had a lot of fun talking about the famous "STEAK CHALLENGE" and I think everyone in the house ganged up on me, so now I have to do the challenge... I am going to die.

For those of you who do not know about the famous "STEAK CHALLENGE", let me explain. You start off with a small ice-cream sandwich. After that, they throw you straight into the S.T.E.A.K.(I'm sure we could find a fun acronym for that.) The steak is usually from an animal that humans don't eat a lot, like a yak or a moose or something, and it's Huge!  They don't even own plates big enough for the steak. After that, you have another small ice-cream sandwich, and after that they give you a large slice of pie in a swimming pool of whipped cream and you have to eat all of the whipped cream, too. And finally, to finish, they give you a large, thick, hockeypuck-ish, ice-cream sandwich. I am going to die...

Okay, back to Conference! My favorite talk was actually in the priesthood session with Elder Eyring. He talked about Enoch, who was called by God to teach repentance to the people (a.k.a. Missionary.) He was troubled by that call because he thought he wasn't good enough. He talked about how the people hated him and he was slow of speech. He then asked God, "Wherefore am I thy servant?" (That actually might be a direct quote. Not sure though.) God told him to go and do the things which the Lord had commanded. He told him about how his words would be justified and he would bring many people back to Heavenly Father. I looked further in the scriptures and, sure enough, he becomes a totally awesome dude. The talk kind of spoke to me, I guess, because I have kind of been feeling inadequate--not a ton, but enough. We had Sharon drop us and Aaron kind of dropped us, too (he didn't come to conference and such.) We also haven't heard back from Jazelle in forever. But I know a lot of things now that have strengthened me a lot. I can testify to all of you that no matter what trial you have to go through, God will be with you. You just have to let Him.

I love y'all and I'll talk to ya next week.

P.S. We are going to play Extreme Croquet, whatever that is. All we know is that it's played in a big field/forest-y area and that every shot is a chip shot. (They are gonna kill me, haha.)

Zone Conference

We went to the temple this morning and didn't get to do our normal stuff until about noon today. We also had zone conference!!! It was awesome, too. We learned a lot about teaching simply and by the Spirit. "Cuz if they don't learn by the Spirit, then it ain't from God." D&C 50:17-20. Totally a direct quote.^*

Elder J. and I also got to teach Sharon again! I don't remember if I told ya about her yet, but that's pretty much what happened. We also get to watch General Conference with the F.s and we're bringing Aaron with us.
Oh, yeah! We're gonna get Facebook soon! So that'll be weird. I'll update y'all on that one.

Also, I'm also seeing the value of saving money here. Another Elder wasn't thrifty at all, recently, and had to eat Ramen for a week for every meal. I still have about 15 Canadian dollars after buying food for this next week, so I'm gonna work on that too, I guess. Though I have a hard time spending some coins, just because they're awesome. We have one and two dollar coins here. One dollar is a Looney, and two is a Twooney.

I love ya! Talk to ya next week!

^*Editor's Note: Not a direct quote. "Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? And if it be by some other way it is not of God. And again, he that receiveth the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? If it be some other way it is not of God."