Sunday, June 25, 2017

What do you call an alligator in a vest?

June 20, 2017

This was a pretty fun week. Not a huge number of things happened, but we did have zone conference! It pretty much obliterated companionship study, and then put it back together in a big ol' ball of [Insert Noun Here]. It was pretty fun, though. Afterwards, we had pictures and we got the whole Canadian MTC district back together! And also Elder L. was taking the pictures.

On the subject of investigators... well... we weren't actually able to meet with anyone. We almost got D. to church, but we can't actually seem to get into contact with him anymore. And then A. and J. are still pretty flaky, so they keep rescheduling appointments. But, we do have a ward BBQ coming up this Saturday and we invited a billion people to come to it. So, we are excited for this Saturday. 😊 Also, we went on exchanges with the Greenfield elders last Wednesday. Me and Elder T. had some fun in Leduc tearing up some flooring in a house that a member was renting out. It's been a solid week of tracting and service.

Happy birthday to my sister!

I've been thinking a lot about how to study more effectively as well, and I learned this: Earlier in my mission, I heard a story about a guy who was off work for a few days and had nothing to do. He had already read everything he owned, so he went to a friend's house and asked if they had any good books he could borrow. His friend was an awesome person and gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He took it home and tried to read it, but he really couldn't get into it. It was a drag to read. So he went back to his friend and tried to give the book back saying that it was too boring. His friend replied saying: Well, did you pray about it? As it turned out, he didn't. So he went home and "popped open a beer" and got on his knees. He asked God to let him know of it was true, then he sat back up and started reading again. He said that as he read the book from that point, he couldn't put it down! He was suddenly engulfed in the story. He cared about Nephi and his tests of faith, he felt bad for King Benjamin having to tell the people about their sins in front of the pure in heart. He could see the battles of Captain Moroni and the courage that they showed, and he saw Mormon's son writing in the record for the last time as his people were being slaughtered.

He read the whole book in three days, only taking breaks for the bathroom and meals. Once he finished, he got on his knees again and thanked God for letting him know that it was true. He got baptized three weeks later.

I heard that story and wanted to have the same experience with reading it. So, I asked God to help me read it as that man did. It didn't come all at once like it did for him, but I am at that point now. The only reason I was able to meet that goal was because I had help from our Father in Heaven.

Simply Divine

June 13, 2017

Hey y'all! What a week. Wow. A lot of stuff happened since I sat in this chair last. Firstly, Elder Ballard from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and spoke to every single missionary in the mission! All of them! It was pretty awesome to hear what an apostle of the Lord had to say to us, and also to receive the advice and blessings he bestowed.

We also met with J. and D. again! J. is doing well, though we're still trying to get his wife involved, too, so she doesn't feel excluded. The lesson with D. was probably the second coolest thing we did all week; he is soooo prepared it's crazy. He pretty much taught us the restoration. In detail. And he's really enjoying the Book of Mormon so far.

We also had four other elders stay at our place for the apostle visit, and one of was Elder C. from the MTC. That was fun haha.
It's really awesome to see the amount of improvement there is in our lives while we're here.


Heating Up

June 6, 2017

The weather here is just about killer status. It's so hot here! I never would have thought that I would ever say that, but it is.

Also, we just had transfers, like 2 or 3 weeks ago... sorry, I forgot to tell y'all, but not much changed. I guess our district got a bit bigger, but that's about it. Though, in my last interview with President Pattison, he told me he was probably going to move me somewhere else next transfer. I have heard that, for everyone that has been in Leduc, it has been their favorite area.

We do have Elder L. and some other Mandarin elders in our zone, but we never get to go to zone sports, except for today!  We are still helping out at the retirement home, though it feels like we pretty much just play games with them for a while.

This has been a week of miracles. We had the traveling elders at our place on the weekend and we just did a huge amount of finding in 2 days. We found a bunch of solid people and also learned a ton about how to do finding effectively. Also, on Sunday night, we got a referral from another area, so we stopped by and he wanted to go on a walk. So, we had a walking lesson for about an hour, and throughout the whole lesson he would stop and talk about how grateful he is that he moved here, grateful that he had met his friend who referred him, and how thankful he was that he was able to talk to us. In short: he's the most prepared person we've ever seen! He was super stoked about getting the chance to read the Book of Mormon! We're excited to teach him some more.
Also, while I was writing that, we just got another referral! 😂 So happy.

We also had a lesson with A.! He is still kind of struggling to read, but I think we're slowly making progress. We also haven't had the chance to meet with J. again yet, but we're going back on Thursday.

I have actually been doing pretty good in my teaching skills, I think. I mean, I'm nowhere near perfect, but I'm miles better than what I was. Things are getting busy really fast. Really, really fast, but I love it, and I love y'all.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Elder Lurch and the Mormon Church

May 30, 2017

Hey y'all! We had a pretty awesome week! To explain the subject line above: We went to a member's house for dinner and he showed us a version of "Green Eggs and Ham", but it was in Missionary Mode. It was fun.

On the investigator side of things, not much has changed. We actually didn't have any lessons this last week. But, we are meeting with A. today and J. tomorrow, so wish us luck. 😊

The coolest thing that happened this last week, though, was on Sunday. We were at sacrament meeting and some pretty keen stuff happened. First of all, we had a less active, part member family come for the whole thing! They were really interactive, too. And we also met a friend that one of our members brought to Church with them. They were less active and wanted to come back, so we're going to meet with them. AND we also had some more less active members that we had stopped by the night before show up for church. AND I got to give a talk that day that I think really helped at least one person. Yeah, it was a pretty awesome day.

Also, we have a pretty good potential investigator that we finally got a hold of yesterday. She's busy for now with cleaning up a shed, but she said we might be able to help, and also she seems really interested in what we have to teach her about.

And that's about it. We did finally find some fun activities to do on P-day. We are going to make some T-shirts today with K. (because it didn't happen last week), and we also found a Frisbee golf course really close to our apartment.

Thanks for all of your support! Love y'all!

Snowballin'

May 23, 2017

There have been a lot of things happening recently. Like, a lot...

First of all, we have a new investigator! Woo! He is awesome. We've taught him twice-ish now and we've set up a time to have a lesson every Thursday with him. He's been progressing quite well and I can't wait to see how far he'll come with us.

We also met a guy who's not really interested in taking the missionary lessons, but he is super interested in the missionary program. When we first found him, he talked to us for about an hour, asking us questions, and he even had us over for dinner once! He also has a screen printing for T-shirts company that we've stopped by before. He showed us around and even offered to help us make some shirts on our P-day (today), so we'll see how that goes.

Also, shout out to my Mom who just had a birthday! 😗💨🎂

We have another guy who we've been "teaching" and he doesn't speak hardly any English. So, we've been Skyping with the Spanish Sisters in the city to teach him. He seems to be doing well, but then I have no idea. It's all in Spanish. 😀

We have consistently been teaching A. which is a miracle! We've recently talked about the Plan of Salvation and he's committed to read the Book of Mormon every day (at least when we remind him).

I really liked what Lia said about being brave. Something that I've experienced recently is that talking to random people is hard, especially on the phone (I just have trouble talking on the phone for some reason).


But, there are two things that can really help. One of them is just to "DO IT" and the more that you do it, the easier it is to do it again. The other thing, (which is even more important) is that we can ask Heavenly Father to help. It reminds me of an experience that I had once on a camp out. We were going down a river in boats and such. I was in a 2-person kayak and behind me was one of the leaders. Whenever we came to some rapids, we (me being a weakling) had to paddle as hard as we could to get through the rapids. If we stopped mid-way, we would have tipped over and would have had an amazing time dragging ourselves to shore. Looking back, If I didn't have help from someone stronger than me, I would have gone face first in the water several times. "Isn't that a metaphor for life?" It really is. Sometimes, we are too weak to paddle ourselves through the rapids. But there is someone behind us who can paddle us through anything, and all we have to do is ask.

1 Nephi 3:7 -- God will never give us a commandment that we can't achieve, even if we need help to achieve it.

Brief After Mother's Day Call

May 16, 2017

Hey y'all! I hope your week was great, I know mine was.

To start off: We have a new investigator! Woo! He is really awesome. We've had one lesson with him so far, and he's shown a lot of potential. When we first knocked on his door, we taught him about the Book of Mormon and explained that it was a record of the people who came from Jerusalem before it was destroyed and were led by God to the Americas. After we had talked about it a bit, he said something around the lines of "Yeah, that sounds like something I might believe." Woo!

Other than that, even though it's been kind of rainy, we've been doing a lot of cleaning.

On the subject of food, I do have to "cook" for every lunch but it's usually just like a grilled cheese sandwich or something just as easy. We get fed almost every night by a member so we never really have to worry about that. Elder S. "cooks" too, but we both only really make single person portions... though I am planning on using some of those dessert recipes in my cookbook soon. 😋 Also, I would love to try my mom's lasagna again. Sorry I've been such a picky eater before now.

I came, I conquered, I waddled home.

May 9, 2017

Our new apartment is pretty great. In-suite laundry, dishwasher, they've got it all. Though we don't have WiFi...

As the subject suggests, the Steak Challenge happened when we blinked. And let me tell you, I have never felt so proud of myself. I know that sounds weird. But after defeating such a foe as the 39.3 oz. Steak that was put before me, along with a full plate of mashed potatoes, carrots, corn, and also 1/4 of a Key Lime pie, I feel like a winner. A fat winner, but a winner nonetheless.

In other news, we had zone conference on Thursday! And it was also coincidentally Elder J.'s birthday! We also did a highway clean up with our ward on Saturday, which was interesting. We found some pretty fun stuff on the side of the highway: a cat skeleton, "weed"-infused cotton candy, part of an electric fence, and there were also some cows that followed us for a bit. Canada is fun eh? 😉

Elder S. says that his favorite ice cream is a Butterfinger shake with caramel from Dairy Queen. So, I'm assuming he's not lactose intolerant. I have had some Canadian Butter Tarts, but only once. Walmart has them and some members brought some for a ward party that happened. They were definitely bigger than the ones my dad made, but they tasted about the same. One interesting thing is that there is a lot of maple flavored stuff here. Candy bars, butter, soda probably. It's kinda fun.

When I think of "something I'd only see in Canada" I think of the hockey here. The Edmonton Oilers are getting really far into the season this year, and people are freaking out! When a game is on, we can't even go tracting because people are too busy watching it. We see the Oilers flag 30 times more than the Canadian flag!

On the subject of spiritual thoughts: I heard a talk recently and it confirmed what I was already thinking of, that miracles don't change us and make us want to follow Heavenly Father's plan. When we read the Book of Mormon, we see how Nephi's older brothers' hearts were still hardened after seeing angels, hearing the voice of God, and being shocked by the power of God through Nephi. It is only through the repentance process that we can change to align our will with God's.

"What a Fine Life"

May 2, 2017

So we did it, we conquered winter! Hopefully. It snowed a bit (a lot) earlier in the week, but it's been nicer the last 4-5 days. I don't want to say that spring is around the corner though, because "mother nature" will hear it and will curse the land with an eternal winter. Though, let me tell you guys, it's really warm here. Elder S. was even wearing a short-sleeved white shirt recently! I didn't even think I'd need any of those.

Also Elder S. and I are getting to know each other a little better; we have both been trying to scare each other in our free time. We have some fun videos from it.

It's been a pretty interesting week, too. Most of the week we were either tracting or cleaning, but we did finally have a lesson with A.! We just kind of talked to him and tried to get to know him a bit so we could teach to his needs. But the lesson went well and we're scheduled to come back on Wednesday! We also had a lesson with M. "the heathen" & B. who are former investigators that we tracted into on accident. We knocked on their door and they let us right in, saying something like "There you are, come on in." We were a bit confused, but we weren't complaining. And after about an hour and a half of them telling us all about their other experiences with missionaries (which is quite extensive) and telling us what they thought about our religion, we went on our way. They were really fun, but they didn't seem too interested in hearing the lessons.

Recently we've been spending a ton of time packing, cleaning, and unpacking. We did actually successfully move out of our old apartment and into the new one! It took up our entire day yesterday, but we did it! Now all we've got to do is unpack everything and do a deeper clean of our old apartment before the end of the month. In some cases (at least our case) the place that they send us to is a place where missionaries have lived for like 4-5 years. Just think of how much junk that many missionaries could leave behind (and there is a lot)! We had a crossbow, about 7 coats, a lot of boots, scented cubes(?), 5 lamps, a wolf blanket, a bucket of (recent) Halloween candy, and a questionable box of stuff (and by stuff I mean things that we didn't even know existed).

Someone who is preparing for a mission should go to LDS.org and watch some of the videos on there--Mormon Messages especially. One that we've been using a lot with our dinner appointments is "The Will of God" in the Gospel Library app (at least I think that's what it's called). Or, just explore the Gospel Library app some. There are some really cool things in there.