Week 13, 12/23/15

Hello cuties and Merry Christmas to everyone! I can't believe I've already been out almost three months and that I'm about to experience my first Christmas away from home.... It still doesn't seem real haha. 

 

Well this week was absolutely awesome!!  The two highlights were definitely mission conference and Lawerance's baptism. Mission conference was on Thursday in Edmonton, which meant we had to wake up pretty early to drive and get there in time to get Lawerance's name embossed onto a set of scriptures we got him as a gift. Driving down to Edmonton we hit -27 at one point (Celsius) I think that's like -17 Fahrenheit.

Merry Xmas to me!

Half the mission was there, so about 150ish missionaries, and it was about 5 hours long.  We had lunch, listened to an awesome training from our mission president, listened to some musical performances, and did a few other things.  It was fun to catch up with a few of my friends from my MTC district, and I learned SO much about how we can draw upon the powers of heaven to make us more successful missionaries. After that Elder Payne and I went out to eat at Red Robin with our district and a few other Elders, it was a lot of fun to get to know them better and make more friends in the mission field!  Sadly our waitress was a bit (ridiculously) slow, and we were there for like 2 hours  so we didn't get home to the promised land -aka Slave Lake until super late. 

Now onto the main event.  Lawerance's baptism was so great!  He was just radiant with joy the whole time.  In church the next day he was confirmed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost, and in gospel principles class he was saying how he could definitely feel the difference in now having the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. He was still radiating happiness!  After church he was ordained to be a Priest, and also set apart in a calling to serve as the Elder's quorum secretary!  We know he will make a great member:)  We love that guy! 

Fortunately we haven't been doing as much tracting lately because we've been busy, just preparing for the baptism, teaching a few lessons to several other investigators, service, and other usual missionary things.

Just wishing the lovely (AND LOUD) people upstairs a jolly holiday

We have had some issues at our apartment lately.  The people who live above us are so unbelievably loud and annoying. I'm not even exaggerating, 24/7 there is constant pounding and people running around and jumping and it sounds like they are trying to be as loud as they possibly can. It seriously goes all night, one night I woke up from it at 2:30 and then it is already started at 6:30 when we wake up. I've kind of gotten used to it though haha.

I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas and I really appreciate the cards and mail, it seriously makes my day, so thank you to all you true homies out there;) Love you all!  

 Elder Bonny

Week 12, 12/15/15

Hi cuties. This week was another good one! First off I know you're probably all wondering how things have been going with our gay investigator. Unfortunately he has been out of town the past week so we have been unable to meet with him again, but he still wants to meet, hopefully we can meet again sometime this week haha. We are still enjoying the so far very abnormally warm winter here. It's been hitting a balmy 25 degrees pretty regularly. Not gonna lie, I'm still cold all the time but from what I hear it usually gets down around -30 sometimes around this time of year.  Also, the subject of the email is titled the way it is because elder Payne and I both say quack occasionally and one of the more elderly members caught on and said full quack the other day and it was just really funny.... Kind of one of those "you had to be there" moments. 

I think I'll trade in my football pads for some hockey pads after the mish

Well on to some highlights from the week. Wednesday we went down to Edmonton for interviews with our mission president. I got to learn some great things from him, I love that man! I also got to talk with a few elders and sisters in my zone for a while and get to know them better (we never see them cuz Slave Lake is so far away from everything), so that was good too. Thursday we had exchanges and I stayed in Slave Lake with Elder Sortomme. It was a pretty productive day, and we managed to find a new investigator! 

We got together with these district Elders I did my first exchanges.  Meet Elder Sortomme

When we exchanged back we met at the trailhead for what was supposed to be a quick little hike to the geographical centre (that's how they spell it here) point of Alberta. Well sadly it wasn't quick because we pretty much got lost in the Canadian forest and hiked 30 minutes in the wrong direction. We probably wasted like 2 and half hours finding the right trail and the monument that was at the centre and hiked about 6 miles, trudging through 8 inches of snow in our snow boots. We were all pretty dang tired after that haha. 

Saturday morning we were able to do some service for two of our investigators named Warren and Sammy. It was pretty fun, we chopped a lot of wood and got a pretty good workout in the prOcess (how they say it here), and I got to drive a quad (what they call four wheelers) hauling firewood around the lot. We had some fun conversations with Warren and built our relationship there, he even wants to take us ice fishing now haha! Hopefully we can get them to church this next week eh. 


Another fun thing this week was the branch Christmas party on Saturday night. It was a Pajama party so one of the members made us these pretty extravagant onesies. We were quite the site not gonna lie. Maybe the church should always have missionaries wear onesies out proselyting because it was a pretty good conversation starter. There were a lot of non members there, the food was great, I ate lots of cookies, so all in all a solid party. 

The main event of this week was definitely our lessons with Lawrence. We met with him twice and we were able to teach him everything else necessary to get him ready for his baptism this Saturday. Elder Payne and I are honestly amazed at how ready this man is, and how dedicated he is to gaining a testimony. He said in a previous lesson he doesn't feel like his prayers are being answered. He admitted he was looking for a miracle, what he did was he prayed to receive an answer and then opened up the book to a random page and read a random verse. He said he didn't really receive a specific answer but more of a vague one. I personally think it was pretty specific, he opened up to Alma chapter 32 that talks about faith being like a seed, and how we need to plant it and nurture it to see if it is a good seed. Elder Payne and I knew that was the Lord telling him to continue exercising his faith by reading, praying, going to church, etc and over time his faith will continue to grow. In our lesson with him on Sunday night, the spirit was there so strong and as we testified at the end of the lesson, he realized the Lord really has been answering his prayers this whole time, and he told us that with tears rolling down his cheeks. We all could feel God's love so strong it was amazing :) seeing Lawrence's progression and the many miracles we have seen with him has definitely been the most rewarding experience of my mission so far. He is going to make such a great member! 

Well it's been a great week and I have a feeling this week will be great too!! Christmas season is the best time of year by far. I hope you all are trying to have a Christ-centered Christmas this year! Ya know I guess He is kind of like the reason we celebrate or something like that ;) I love you all, thanks for all the support!  

Elder Bonny

As a bonus - check out this awesome original missionary harmonica performance of "Slave Lake"...(not to be missed)

Week 11, 12/10/15

Ok first off, I sent a Christmas card to everyone who asked for one, hopefully they get there before Christmas...if not, oh well. 

Ok I know missionaries say it all the time, but this week seriously flew by! So much happened every day that this week just blended all together. At the beginning of the week we had a district meeting where our zone leaders met up with us, and we blitzed with them. Blitzing is when you go on exchanges but all stay in the same area, so elder Payne and I split up and each went with one of our zone leaders in Slave Lake, and we got a lot of work done. I went with Elder Rich, and we taught Lawrence a great lesson! I was kind of nervous about basically being the one to lead everything and do most of the teaching, but I was able to be confident and do a decent job. That was definitely an answer to my prayers. It was a great lesson and we helped prepare Lawrence more for his baptism and solidify his decision. I was able to learn some good things from Elder Rich and it fun to have them over to stay the night in our apartment. 

Hey President Park, can we go thrift shopping?

A few days later when we were tracting, we knocked on a door, and the guy who answered was super nice and after we gave our spiel, he invited us in and said, "oh yeah come on in I'm just chillin with my boyfriend." So we were pretty bummed right off the bat hearing that haha. What was even more depressing was that the lesson went great and he believed everything we taught, and he even committed to baptism  so he's going to be for a rough surprise. Oh and thanks to that, in our role plays in our companion study, we get to play the role of a gay investigator now.... It's been pretty... Interesting. Hopefully we handle things well with him haha. 

Probably the most eventful day this week was Sunday. We had twice as many people as we usually do at church! We had about half of our investigators there, and a lot of less actives as well. After church we got a call from a less active who asked us to go give a blessing to her son. We went to his house and... wow he wasn't doing too good. We just let him vent for about 30 minutes and pretty much every problem you can think of, he has been struggling badly with it. He almost seemed like he had demons inside or something at first. He was just so spazzy and had a freaked out look in his eye, and it was a little scary. After he vented, we told him how we can all be healed through Christ, and how we were going to go about this process, and told him some other things. After that we anointed and gave him a blessing, and I got the opportunity to give my first blessing:) It was such a spiritually powerful experience. After that, the difference in how he was acting from when we first arrived was night and day. He was so much more calm and peaceful.

A few hours after that he came to the Christmas Devotional with us, which was good for him. I loved Elder Bednar and Elder Uchtdorf's talks!! Hopefully we can help him get back to where he wants to be. Yesterday was another awesome day, we had a lesson with one of our favorite investigators, Len. We have asked him to be baptized a couple times, but he has heart problems and has said he needs to worry about that right now before he can get baptized, and whenever we ask him it stresses him out a lot so we have tried to make our last few lessons a lot more stress free, and we are going to focus again on baptism after Christmas. 

We also had a fun lesson with two of our newest investigators, Warren and Sammy. We taught them the first lesson since last time we taught the plan of salvation, and they had A TON of questions, just like last time. That's what made it fun:) we answered all of them pretty well, and they understood everything. The best part was at the end, they were kind of wondering what the Holy Ghost was and what it felt like, and Elder Payne and I both testified powerfully to them about how we know the Holy Ghost is real. After that Sammy seemed pretty amazed and she said she could feel the power coming from us when we were talking. "That's the Holy Ghost!" we told her. It was an awesome experience:) Well those are a few of the highlights from this week. I hope you are all doing well and are having a great Christmas season. 

Love you all!  Elder Bonny

Week 10 12/2/15

The WORD

Don't worry everyone, I still got to celebrate American Thanksgiving in Canada.  Thanksgiving was actually probably one of my favorite days on my mission so far!  The Parks (the awesome senior couple in our area who live right below us) had some of their family come up and visit them, so Elder Payne and I got to get to know them pretty well. We played basketball with them last P-day, got in a few prank wars with them, they took us out to eat once, and they invited us over to have their Thanksgiving feast with them.  I have to say they made us feel like family, and Sister Park is a magician with her cooking so it made for a pretty stellar Thanksgiving :) still wasn't the same without a turkey bowl though (Parker you lucky hoser). 

The challenge - fit as MUCH CANDY as possible on top

This week still would've been awesome though, even without Thanksgiving! On Friday we had a random, spur-of-the moment lesson/discussion with our investigator Vance who we haven't been able to meet with in forever.  He had a lot of questions we answered and we just had a really good discussion and we committed him to baptism on December 19th!  He didn't come to church though and he never has because he has some medical problems that cause a lot of problems for him, and our investigators have to come to church at least three times before we can baptize them, so that date is probably gonna have to be postponed, but we're still happy about it. 

We also had a lesson with our investigator Lawrence on Friday and it went pretty much as well as any lesson could go!  We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and we prepared a very detailed, precise lesson plan with a lot of scriptures from the Book of Mormon, and the scriptures we read were perfect for him.  He even said he felt like they were all pointed at him.  The spirit was there testifying to him through the scriptures, and it was so cool to see!  We cut our lesson at the point where the spirit was the highest and invited him to be baptized on December 19th (we asked once before and he said no).  He thought about it for a second and then said yes! :):):) after that lesson we were so pumped hahaha.  Basically just picture me after Malcolm Butler intercepted that pass in the super bowl last year.  Ok if I'm being honest we probably weren't quite as pumped as I was then, but you get the point.






Anyways, Lawrence came to church on Sunday and was smiling the whole time and looked genuinely happy to be there.  He even participated a lot in our gospel principles lesson.  So basically we are super hopeful and excited about how well he is progressing. In other news the Edmonton Eskimos, their football team, won the gray cup on Sunday.  That's basically the super bowl for the Canadian Football League.  Some people are pretty excited about that here.... But in the back of my mind I'm kind of just like yeah big whoop there's only 8 teams in the league  but hey if it makes them happy I'm excited about it too. 

On Sunday a member and her non-member friend told us to come over wearing our service clothes for a surprise with their family.  We were pretty confused but we went, and it turns out they planned a fun little gingerbread house building party for us haha.  It was a good time, got us in that Christmas spirit!  And then they fed us dinner too, they may or may not be our new favorites:) 

Well I guess those are all the big highlights of this week.  Oh, we also picked up two new investigators tracting last night named Warren and Sammy.  They are super nice and fun to be around and had a ton of questions for us.  We taught them the plan of salvation and a few other things and they seemed pretty interested!  We are stoked about that too:)  

Well I'm having a great time out here in Slave Lake and I hope you are all having a wonderful time back home!  Love you all, and I love hearing from you all too:) Now this email is over so take off eh!  

 Elder Bonny

Week 9, 11/25/15

Nothing like playing football in church clothes on a frozen lake - truly inspiring!

Can't believe I've been away from home for two months! Honestly it feels like A LOT LONGER.... But I look back and I have changed so much in the past two months it's pretty amazing! 

This week was a great week! We got another new investigator, she's a school principle and isn't super serious quite yet but the spirit will get her eventually ;) nothing too exciting happened this week. All the days kind of blended together, lots of tracting and a few good lessons with our investigators. None of them have baptismal dates yet but we have high hopes for a lot of them. 

                                         This is the way I have to warm up my feet in the apartment :)

I think the highlight of this week was Sunday, we got the opportunity to attend all three sessions of the Montreal Quebec temple re-dedication. It was so nice to just sit there and relax a little bit and feel the spirit. Also another highlight would be yesterday in our lesson with our investigator Len, we were going to teach him lesson 3 and we had a super detailed lesson plan ready. We get there and he had several questions about the Book of Mormon and what he read during the week, so we just abandoned our lesson plan and taught him about the Book of Mormon and read with him. It worked out to be exactly what he needed!

Well I'm doing great out here in Canada, but it is starting to get quite cold most days.  I hope you're all staying healthy and happy. 

Party on eh  Elder Bonny

Week 8, 11/16/15

This week was really good! Towards the beginning of the week I was still pretty sick and coughing all the time, I coughed up blood a few times so I decided to go to the doctor (I might have been influenced a little by my very concerned mother), and I got some antibiotics and I'm doing a lot better now.

my favorite Canadian dog/furball

The highlight of this week was definitely Saturday.  One of our investigators had a grandson recently pass away, and the funeral was on Saturday.  That whole entire side of the family is Catholic, so it was a Catholic funeral service combined with mass, and they asked elder Payne to do a reading at it.    It was pretty funny, he had no idea what he was doing and was kinda freaking out but he did a great job - haha.  The funeral was different than what I'm used to, but it was a good experience.  

After the funeral, everyone went over to our church building to have food.  There was seriously like 120 non members/ Catholics in our building, eating, visiting, having a good time.  There is definitely a different spirit in our church building than theirs, and I know a lot of them felt it.  We handed out a few Books of Mormon and pamphlets to some people as well, it was pretty awesome.  They were super grateful and appreciative.  After that we had about 45 minutes to clean everything up and get ready for the baptism of Sadie and Gage! It was an awesome, memorable experience for them and for me as well.  I was lucky enough to be able to baptize both of them and it was obvious I hadn't had much practice.  I forgot to say Sadie's name and I let Gage's toe come up out of the water. Oops ...hopefully I'll have other opportunities to hone my skills. So that was a pretty productive day!

The rest of the week prior was basically full of getting Sadie and Gage ready for the baptism and helping in preparations for the funeral.  We did teach a few lessons though.  Last Tuesday night we taught our investigator XXXX and his super nice family.  They speak Spanish so we had them Skype the Spanish speaking elders and they taught lesson one.  That was a big mistake haha....  The lesson went an hour longer than it was supposed to, and you could tell the whole family was getting irritated.  When it was finally over we told them we were so sorry for how it took, and if they let us come over again we would only take 20 minutes of their time.  We are going over there tonight, hopefully it goes well!  

We had three other investigators we were hoping could get baptized soon, one of them already had a b-date but she is moving away:(  The other two we were confident were going to commit to be baptized during our lessons this week but they declined.  Both of them are older, super nice guys who would make great members, they just need to make sure they're going to be 100 percent committed.  They'll get there eventually! All in all it was a really solid week.

I really have no idea what I'm doing here...

When I get back I'll need someone to go to a hockey game with me.   I went to part of one here, the Slave Lake Winterhawks.  It's like as close to a pro sports team as a town this big can get, but it was freaking cool to watch haha.  It's not like football when you're like "oh he should've done that", or you compare plays to other plays you've seen before.  I was just in awe the whole entire time cuz I can't imagine myself ever being able to do anything remotely close to it!  And they fight sometimes…so that's pretty awesome...

My teaching has gotten much better than what it was before...  like night and day.  I have gained a lot more knowledge about what I'm teaching so it helps me teach it more simply, but there's a lot of room for improvement.  I feel like I still have a long way to go until I'm actually good at it.  I've noticed the best way for my teaching style is just to bear simple testimony, that brings the spirit every time.. 

 Love you all, let me know how you're all doing!

  

Week 7, 11/10/15

Let me just start off by saying this week was super successful! We found 5 new investigators, one of them dropped us already but hey it still counts, one of them we committed to baptism:). We are teaching two more people tonight and we have faith that they will become investigators as well.

Even though this week was really successful missionary work wise, it was still kind of rough for me. I was sick on Wednesday and Thursday, and whenever I get sick it takes me forever to get all the way better, so I've been coughing and stuff a ton and probably will be for the next few weeks. I just kind of felt out of it all week I don't really know why haha. This week will be better though, hopefully we will be baptizing two of our investigators who are 9 and 11 years old this weekend.

Some family has requested more details on how the missionary work is going so I'll give a run down on our investigators for those who are interested.

There's XXX who is an older man who we taught the first lesson to yesterday and we invited him to pray at the end and I'm pretty sure he got an answer right then and there. He's been taught by missionaries before but didn't want to commit to it if he wasn't 100% sure, but he didn't seem to know anything we taught him so maybe the other missionaries just didn't do a good job haha... next time we are hopefully gonna teach his wife too, he's a really nice guy.

There's XXXX who has also been taught before, and was committed to baptism some years ago when her dad died, then she lost contact for a few years. We helped her move a huge TV stand into her house the other day and we asked if we could come teach her, we did and it went great and she committed to baptism.  She actually basically asked to be baptized!  But then we couldn't get a hold of her when we tried to arrange a ride for her for church, and our appointment fell through.  Later we found out that another one of their family members passed away recently, so we're gonna stop by soon and hopefully set up another appointment to teach her and her 4 kids

                           This is how we get pumped to go teach a lesson. Watch the excitement biuld  :)


There's XXXX and XXXX who we are hopefully getting baptized this Saturday, they are 9 and 11 years old.  Their mom is really nice, but they have it pretty rough. She has two other kids, is pregnant with another, her car is broken, they live 40 minutes away, she has to walk all of them to school and day care everyday and then work and take this course, and then walk them all back. I don't think her husband helps out much and he doesn't like the missionaries.

There's crazy XXXX who thinks we live in a dome and that the earth is flat and that aliens control everything, and that they are trying to break through the dome…no joke.

There's XXXX who we found and he just let us in, he speaks Spanish, we taught him the first lesson and it seemed to go pretty well, were gonna have the Spanish elders Skype him. He is promising and we are going to teach his wife too.

There's XXXX who we had previously set a baptism date for and we finally contacted him again last night.  He has just been way busy with work and would love for us to come over again.  Hopefully we can work towards a new baptism date with him, but like many, there are Word of Wisdom challenges.  He is a super nice guy!

So there's XXXX, he's older, and has a pretty bad disease on his neck and face called Wegener's Disease.  Unfortunately it causes him lots of pain and it sounds really rough. I think he believes the church is true, he just needs to come to church, but he won't cuz he feels self conscious.

There's XXXX who is really nice and comes to church every week but won't pray for answers and thinks there are other ways to salvation.  We need to think of a new way to get through to him. 

There's XXXX who speaks Tagalog, so we just set up appointments with her and she Skypes the tagalog speaking elders.   That seems pointless though cuz she just speaks English to them.  We both wish we could just teach her but it's their stewardship.

Me getting wrecked at a game of Risk after daily planning

We have other investigators also who we are trying to progress with but many are very busy and several can't progress until they get married.  If you made it through all that - congratulations!   We're super blessed to have the investigators that we do and to be having the success we are!

Hope you're all doing great, Jesus loves you:)  Elder Weston Bonny

Pre-mission Photo Shoot

'Oh, Canada'

Saying Goodbye, 9/23/15

Lots of hugs, smiles and nervous excitement, a returning sister, a few tears, and away he went!

Week 6, 11/3/15

Wow, so much has happened this week it felt so long!! It has been a really awesome week though.  And yes I do have a story to tell about Sasquatch but I'll save that for the end because I know half of you probably never even read my emails all the way through haha;)

  

This is what our mission album cover would look like...if we had one.                                   Lesser Slave Lake

Well, the beginning of the week we were still without our truck and walked literally all day Wednesday and didn't really even run into any people, it was a pretty lame day. Thursday and Friday were both pretty unproductive missionary work wise because we were cleaning our gross apartment that was filled with years of other missionaries gunk literally all day Thursday and packing up all our stuff, and then Friday (the day we finally got our truck back) we spent the whole day moving out of it.  We had a district meeting that morning though, and our district helped us move, so that made it a lot easier. Our new apartment is SOO nice compared to our other one... It might even be the nicest one in the whole mission haha lucky me:).The best part is that I got a new mattress and I actually look forward to sleeping now.... my old one was probably the worst mattress in all of Canada. I named it whinona because whenever I laid on it, it would moan and creak so much and it was like it was whining about me being on it hahaha... yeah I'm weird.

Saturday, Halloween, was a pretty interesting day hahaha.  We helped set up this haunted house at the city library in the morning for an hour or so and then had a skype training meeting with some other new missionaries and their trainers.  A little bit later in the day the library still needed more help in setting up, and they said they also needed more people to be popping out at kids and scaring them, and asked us.... So we put on masks and capes and scared people for an hour hahaha.  I never thought that's something I would do on my mission, but hey, service is service right?  Not gonna lie I scared some kids, and their parents, pretty bad.  After that we had supper (that's what everyone calls it here) at a member's home we had to go back to our apartment and be in the for the night.  So my Halloween wasn't half bad.

Sunday and Monday we finally got to do some actual missionary work again.  On Sunday, I fasted and prayed that we could find a new investigator.  We ended up tracting into a Hispanic man named XXXX and taught him the first lesson and a little bit about the Book of Mormon, and he seemed to understand pretty well, and said we could come back next week!  It felt good to finally get to teach someone new again!

Yesterday we had several opportunities to teach people and set up appointments to teach by doing service.  It was interesting, on Sunday we knocked on a guy's door and he said he doesn't appreciate door knockers at all and was kind of rude in rejecting us.  Yesterday this lady called us and asked if we could move this monster tv stand that had 3 different parts to it from another guy's house to hers.  We go to the address she gives us to load it up, and it's the same rude guy's house from the day before haha.  He instantly apologized when we walked in and told us about how it was a really rough day for him and that his mother had passed away, and invited us to come back later to "have a chat".  We also ended up getting an appointment with the lady who we moved the tv stand for, to come back and teach her AND her kids:)

It's important that we never judge people by just one little encounter, everyone has their own challenges in life and is going through something, so don't assume people are rude or bad when you don't know anything about them!  I learned the importance of that yesterday.

I told you our apartment was nice!  jk

OK, Sasquatch story -  the Parks (the senior missionary couple in our area) live two floors directly below us. One morning this week Elder Park noticed a dark shape moving towards the apartment through the woods. At first he thought it was a bear, but as it moved a little closer he said it looked like it was upright but it was moving too fast to be a human or a bear.  Then it disappeared as it descended down to the stream and went out of sight. For reals!  Was it Sasquatch?????!!!!! Who knows, it wouldn't be the first time it has been spotted in this neck of the woods.

Well I look forward to a great, productive week this week, and I hope all of you have a great week as well:)   Elder Bonny

this employee has been sampling too much inventory

  

Week 5, 10/27/15

How do you like our P-day handywork?

Well this week was a little less productive than last week, so I don't  really have as much to write about...  

A few random things:  I ate pigs ear the other day, it was weird, I've eaten more pie in the  last 4 weeks than I have my whole life, random teenie-bopper songs  that I always hated keep getting stuck in my head for some reason. Why can't that happen with songs that I actually like? 

Photos from MASSIVE fire back in 2011

They had a huge wild fire here in 2011 that burnt down almost a third of the town.   Most people didn't even have time to pack anything they just had to leave with their wallets and the clothes on their backs.  There all whole sections of town that have these really nice brand new houses so its pretty easy to tell if a house was burnt down or not.

 We had a few teaching appointments with investigators this week but  most of them fell through or they weren't home.  Our truck was in the  shop all week because we had to take it in to get a dent fixed that  another missionary caused like 4 months ago.... gee, I'm sure glad they waited until got here to fix it!   

So this week we had to walk everywhere or get a ride from the senior missionary couple in our  area.  We mostly ended up walking, which actually hasn't been all that  bad, its just a bit chilly.  Wednesday we had exchanges and I spent  the day with our district leader, Elder Powell.  I got to learn some  good things from him.   

The Tagolog speaking Elders paid us a visit

Saturday the Tagalog (the language Filipinos  speak) speaking elders came up from Edmonton, and we had a fun little  branch party/game night.  One of the Filipino ladies in the ward  (there's lots of Filipino people up here for some reason) invited like  20 of her Filipino friends and it was pretty cool.  We gave a little  devotional at the end and showed the "Because of Him" video and the  spirit was definitely there.  Then the time came for the missionaries  to head home and the other people set up a game of musical chairs, and  they had this huge speaker thing with a disco light set on top of it,  and when we ended up leaving they were playing musical chairs with  super loud Jay Z music, disco lights flashing everywhere, IN THE  CHAPEL (technically its the multipurpose room).  We just facepalmed  and left haha.  Gotta love  these Canadians/Filipinos.   

We finally got our blessed truck back  -  yeah!

The next day in sacrament meeting Elder Payne and I both gave 15 minute talks on the importance of members and  missionaries working together to bring people to Christ, and how to  most effectively do that.  I felt like we did pretty good (well he  did, anyone who went to my farewell knows I'm not the best public  speaker, slowly getting better though).  Everyone seemed to be pretty  impressed and inspired!  The only other highlight of the week was last  night, we taught a lesson about Christ's earthly ministry and His  atonement to a recent convert, and at the end of the lesson I bore my  testimony about the Savior and during that I really just felt the  spirit so strongly.  I know Jesus Christ lives, and He is our Lord and  Redeemer.  I'm really so grateful to be a part of His church  re-established on the earth today, and I'm so grateful for His  atonement and that sacrifice so that we can change ourselves and  become perfect one day. Love you all, party on:)  -Elder Bonny   
   

Its getting cold here...I'm soaking in the warm sun while I can.