Week 17, 1/24/16

E. Hunsaker and I having a "Blue Steel" competition.  Who wins?

Hi everyone! This week flew by so fast! Whenever I come to write these emails I always reflect on the week and what we did and I can't remember what day anything happened on because everything just blends together haha. Every day feels like a week and every week feels like a day... That's mission life for ya! 

Check out these awesome Captain Moroni socks!
Becha never seen that before.

E. Bonny - we still don't understand the "Quack" reference...?

Anyways, this week was great. At the beginning of the week we had a district meeting in a town about an hour and a half away called Athabasca. It was a great district meeting, but sadly the highlight was probably my lunch haha. Let me just give a little brief cultural background real quick... Here in Alberta, we have these wonderful creations called donairs. The donair has taken over this part of Canada, there are donair/burger shops wherever you look. They put donair meat and sauce on literally everything, there are regular donairs,

donair burgers, donair pizzas, donair salads, donair poutine (French fries with cheese and gravy, another Canadian delicacy), etc. Before district meeting I got a donair calzone, and it was probably about the size of my head, maybe a bit bigger. I know most of you probably don't have any idea what a donair is, but let me just say when I come back to the states I am bringing a donair shop with me. They are heavenly. 

The next few days after that weren't super eventful, we had a great lesson with our investigators Warren and Sammy, and they half committed to baptism! I say half because it wasn't on a specific date and there are still a bunch of hurdles they will have to get over, like they still haven't been able to come to church. They basically said they are open to the idea of being baptized.  Every week we make a lot of progress with them though, and we are both confident that they will be at church next week. On Saturday we had lessons with some of our investigators that went pretty well. Len is our old friend who is such a nice and he has come to church the last two weeks, we are really excited about that. The other one, Nick, is a recent convert's brother who is our age who is interested in learning what we teach. We haven't made a whole lot of progress with him in a spiritual sense, but after every lesson we play ping pong with him. It has really helped us improve our relationship with him, and we think that's probably one of the only reasons he wanted to learn more after our first lesson with him, because he knows we are actually real people haha!

Other than that a whole lot happened this week because it was SO COLD on Saturday and Sunday especially. We couldn't do much because of the cold. On Saturday it was -30 with windchill all day... Yeah I'm not even joking. We still knocked on quite a few doors though. That night we did a little science experiment.... We threw boiling water off our balcony into the -35 degree weather and.... I'll just let you watch the video;) Yesterday my comp was sick most of the day so I basically just laid in bed and read scriptures and read about some of cool ancestors. We ended up doing a little work later in the day but not too much happened.

Hanging out with this HUGE Mastiff that likes to slobber all over my coat.

This email wasn't super spiritual so to finish off this already long email I would just like to let you all know that I have a simple and strong testimony of this gospel. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that Joseph smith was a true prophet, called by God to help restore the one and only Church of Jesus Christ to the earth in this last dispensation. I know that we have living prophets today, and I know that because I have prayed and received answers through the power of the Holy Ghost. I'm so grateful to have this gospel in my life and for the opportunity to share it with others! I love you all, and I hope you have an amazing January 19th, 2016-January 25th, 2016😛 thanks for all the support!    Elder Bonny

Week 16, 1/16/16

I took E. Hunsaker out to the lake shore on our way back from exchanges.  I may or may not have driven on the ice.

Hey there cuties. This week was great! Hopefully you all had the best week ever and you can tell me about it today... And not to sound desperate for emails haha but even if you had a crappy week I would still love to hear from you guys;) This week started off with exchanges, our district leader, Elder Powell, came to Slave Lake with me and we had a good time. There are these two massive mansions here in Slave Lake that I have never had the chance to tract before, so we knocked on both those doors and it was kinda intimidating. One of them answered and said they weren't interested and the other one we could tell they were home but nobody answered... Oh well everyone deserves a chance to hear about the gospel right? The rest of that exchange wasn't super productive, basically everybody was busy or not home. Thursday night we finally got to meet again with Warren and Sammy.  They hadn't been answering our calls or texts or anything for a while, so we were getting pretty bummed out, but we finally got to teach them again and it was great.  They are definitely still interested in learning!

Pointless selfie with E. Powell

I would say the highlight of this week was Friday. We had been planning on taking a trip up an hour and a half north to a sketchy town called Wabasca, so we had a bunch of appointments set up with less actives up there and with a former investigator who wants to be baptized!  The Parks came with us and between the two of us we visited two less active families, two other less actives, and our former investigator, Tanner.  All of our visits were much needed and very productive!  Some of the families and people up there can't really come to church all that often because of the long trip and other reasons, and they were very grateful to feel the spirit that missionaries bring into their home. Most of the people we visited found a way to get to church on Sunday so that was good to see :)  We didn't end up getting back to slave lake till about 10:15, and I totally thought I would get to finally see the northern lights on our drive back but no luck still :( I'm starting to think they're not even real and the whole world has combined against me for one big prank or something... So if that's true can ya'll stop please?    

Yes, Elder Bonny...the northern lights (aurora borealis) do in fact exist.

Our branch mission leader and his wife.  They are awesome but are leaving for California  :(

Sunday night we got to watch President Russell M. Nelson speak the worldwide YSA devotional and it was SO GOOD. He talked about how we are the "Millennials" who are preparing the world for the second coming of Christ, and all the different ways we can avoid Satan's ever increasing influence on the world. The whole thing was so cool. Other than that not too much happened this week. Yesterday we helped Lawerance cut down a big tree and cut it up for his firewood supply for most the day. We had an appointment with our gay investigator but surprise surprise... It fell through. I hope you're all loving life and remembering to pray and read your scriptures and do the important things. Love you all and go pats this Saturday!!      Elder Bonny

I didn't get the before picture but the after of the stump will have to do.  I love splitting wood!!

Week 15, 1/4/16

One last district pic before transfers

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! Well this week was a bit of a downer at first because my bff Elder Payne got transferred:( I had been dreading that day for a while.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to be trained by him.  We did some good work and had some good times that's for sure! 

Wednesday was transfers and I saw my first moose on the way down to the city :) and then after that I saw 3 more, so that was pretty cool. But the main event of transfers: I got my new comp Elder Hunsaker! I scored again with this guy.  He's from Syracuse Utah, he's served his whole mission (6 months) up in Fort McMurray so far, and he's super great.  We are both pumped to do some good work together! 

Elder Hunsaker!

Well there weren't too many highlights this week other than getting a new comp.  The whole rest of the week up until Sunday was kind of rough, adjusting to a new companion and getting him up to speed on the area, and the work was pretty slow.  New Year's Eve was no different than any other night haha.  Earlier that day we helped someone move for like 6 hours, we moved so much stuff!!!  We were both so tired by the end of the day.  Saturday we drove clear out to a cool, secluded place called Fawcett Lake, and visited with a less active.  She is probably the most stereotypical "cat lady" on the face of the earth haha she's awesome.  So we talked cats with her for a while and shared a message, it was great. That was probably the most exciting thing other than transfers that happened this week. 

Gorgeous sunrise on the way down to transfers

I absolutely love Sundays in the mission field.  Being able to just go to church, relax a little bit, partake of the sacrament, and feel the spirit is so rejuvenating! Sunday night we were able to stop by all of our investigators and set up appointments!  We were super stoked about this because all of them have been acting super flakey and not answering our calls or coming to church or anything haha. Well that's basically all that happened this week worth mentioning haha.  

I hope you all had a fun last week of Christmas break!  Love you all!   Elder Bonny   

Week 14, 12/29/15

Wow just like that Christmas has come and gone!! I hope all you cuties had the best Christmas ever.  Mine was definitely great for the most part!  I'll get to that in a bit. 

 

On Wednesday we drove a couple hours to Barrhead to have a district meeting, and they told us to wear ugly Christmas sweaters so we could have a contest and bring a gift for a white elephant gift exchange.  We got there and E. Payne and I were the only ones wearing ugly sweaters, so we definitely won. You can be the judge of who won the contest between Elder Payne and I.  The gift exchange was fun and the rest of the meeting was great as well!

Christmas Eve was a bit of a slow day, we weren't really able to do much actual missionary work.  One great thing we were able to do was we wrapped up 25 Books of Mormon with "A Savior is Born" cards inside with a little explanation/testimony we typed up, and gave them as gifts to all our apartment complex neighbors.  Hopefully some good will come from that!  That night we had supper with a fun family and we played Phase 10 with them for a bit.... I beat everyone but the nine year old kid.  I just didn't have the heart to crush his spirits on Christmas Eve alright? ;) 

Christmas morning just felt like a pretty average morning aside from opening the rest of our gifts.  It didn't really feel like a special day until we got to Skype home, which was such a great time!!  I loved every second and that's probably why it went by way too fast.  After that I'll admit, I was pretty homesick and down for a while.  We had plans to go over to some really nice, fun investigators' home and they cancelled, and our backup plans fell through too! After looking for something to do for a bit we decided to just do weekly planning haha.  Weekly planning is basically the pits for us most of the time, so we were pretty depressed at this point.  It's amazing though, by the end of weekly planning we were both back to our normal, goofy, quacked up selves!  That was definitely an eye opener to me how simply forgetting yourself and going to work can bring happiness and help us forget our problems! 

After that we went to the long term care facility in the hospital and helped the nurses feed the residents there.  Like we literally took the spoons in our hands and put the food in their mouths haha... It was actually a lot of fun!  Making sure all the food actually got in their mouths and not all over their face was more challenging than it might seem, but we did our best.  It was so awesome to see how our service there affected the people.  They couldn't even really understand us when we would talk to them, but somehow our visiting them seemed to make them happy.  We were there for about an hour, and then wished everyone a Merry Christmas and left to go eat supper at a member's home, which basically turned into a branch party. Overall Christmas turned out to be a great day!  It didn't really feel like Christmas, but it was definitely a memorable day.

Other than that, the only other piece of big news from this week is that Elder Payne is getting transferred     We both knew it was kind of inevitable, but we have grown to be super close friends in our time serving together and hearing the news this morning was pretty saddening.  I know whatever challenge lies ahead will ultimately be for my benefit though, and I look forward to it! I love you all, and I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year as well:)

 Everybody meet Elder Francis Payne, the Christmas elf Ugly sweaters feat president park aka president swag  What we did on Christmas Eve