Week 43, 7/19/16

Hey hosers.  Get ready for lots of pics from this week.... WE WENT TO JASPER NATIONAL PARK.  Well I'll try to make this email short and sweet.  Basically everything I wrote about last week that sounded promising either fell through, hasn't been set up yet, or wasn't actually as promising as it seemed.  The only person we ended up meeting with this week was Zxxx and his fam.  The lessons with them are still going great!  Hopefully next week I will have something to say about Gerry, Keir, Connor, Violet and Loice, Maxwell, or any other random person we happen to talk to:)  

Something pretty cool happened on Sunday.  We ran into this Muslim guy named Mustafa last week who I taught the restoration to on the street forever ago, and invited to church.  He doesn't speak great English, and didn't seem super interested, but he was super nice and humble (if they are humble, anything is possible).  He looked super happy to see us and apologized for not coming to church.  We invited him to come this week, and he actually ended up coming!  He went to the wrong ward but hey we can address that later haha.  We are gonna visit him on Wednesday, and we are pumped.  

So grateful to these guys for offering to take us on an unforgettable 
pday trip to see a part of Canada that we never would have otherwise!

Now onto the highlight of the week: JASPER!!! In this mission we can go to Jasper National Park once if a member offers to take us.   It is in the Canadian Rockies north of Banff and west of Edmonton. A while ago a member in our ward who is the 2nd counselor in the stake presidency offered to take us with his son who got back from his mission 7 months ago.  We left at 5 am on Saturday morning.  AHHHH IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE THE MOUNTAINS AGAIN.  The mountains there are the most amazing and majestic mountains I have ever seen.  We had an awesome day walking around waterfalls, doing a sick hike next to a sick mountain and a sick glacier, walking around this island on a beautiful lake right next to another awesome looking huge mountain. I'll just let the pictures do the talking.  Gosh it was such a fun day.  Talk about tender mercies... I can't even express how awesome the whole thing was so I'm not really going to try.  Don't worry we switched our pday to Saturday to do it.  

Well folks, that's it for this week.  Hopefully Greenfield will turn into Redfield with all the flaming hot missionary work fire that will ignite this week eh?  God is good, He blesses us a whole bunch, especially when we do what's right.  

Love you all, toodles.  

Weekly scripture: Alma 30:44 44 But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.

Week 42, 7/12/16

Hey yung bludz.  This week was different, memorable, and awesome.  Basically just like every week in the mission is, but this week especially.  First things first: There is a 90 percent chance a member is taking us to the most beautiful place in all of Alberta for the day on Friday! With that being said, pday is technically on Friday so I won't be able to respond to any emails till next week.  

Well on to the highlights.  Tuesday night was fantastic.  Every Tuesday night we have "Gospel Night" at a single member's home where we basically just talk about the gospel and his conversion.  Every first Tuesday of the month, our eternigator (who hasn't officially met with missionaries for a lesson in like 6 months because he is offended in 635 different ways) Gerry comes and joins.  We see him all over the place but he will never agree to meet with us for a lesson or tell us what his problem is.  A couple weeks ago he told us he was preparing a rant for the next gospel night, so he could lay his issues out on the table so we could help him.  Well, he did just that and it was totally great!  We were able to listen to him and help him a little and most importantly build his trust.  He agreed to meet with us to go through the lessons again soon.  Still haven't got anything officially set up but this is a huge step for him in the right direction!  

Wednesday afternoon we visited a former eternigator family who never ended up getting baptized because of some legal issues with the parents, and them taking offence to the way things were handled (wouldn't it be nice if people could just get over things?) but they still love the LDS church and have very strong love for the Savior. The fathers name is Graham.  We stop by every so often and talk to them a bit and nothing ever really comes of it, but they other day he asked us to come by and give him a blessing.  So of course we went over and talked with him for a while about challenges in his life and how he wants to come back to the church but there's a bunch of reasons why he feels he can't.  We gave him a blessing of comfort (and I have never been so distracted while giving a blessing because he was holding his little son on his lap and the kid pooped his pants during the blessing and it smelled AWFUL) and set up a time to come back and talk more about his concerns.  So hopefully we will start teaching them again this week!  That night we also found and taught a new investigator named Maxwell who seems pretty interested and sincere.  The only problem is he is SUPER busy and the only time he has free, he likes spending with his family.  

Friday I was on exchanges in Rutherford and Elder Wilde and I got ambushed by the most CRAZY HAIL STORM IN ALL ETERNITY.  It was totally nuts, I will attach pictures and videos below.  Other than that the exchange was pretty average, we taught a few quick doorstep restoration lessons to some people who seemed pretty interested, and listened to the most crazy insane guy I probably will ever meet in my whole lifetime.  That night when I got back from exchanges we went straight to our appointment with Zeke and his family.  We taught them the 10 commandments, and got Zeke on date for baptism on August 13th!  Super exciting:) I have really grown to love that family.  We had a couple appointments set up with Keir (the super awesome recent Muslim convert) and Connor (the 17 year old we taught at the mall) on Saturday but they both fell through:( still very hopeful for them though! 

Also on Saturday morning we had a "meet the mission president" meeting for our zone.  President and Sister Pattison both spoke to us and gave us some awesome motivation and counsel, the spirit was SO strong there.  I also got to see my homies Elder Payne, Elder Alvey, and the Parks:)  

Last thing.  We volunteered to help out at the Canada vs China women's basketball international games that were held here in Edmonton at the University of Alberta on Saturday and Monday night.  This is what I was talking about when I said this week was different haha.  It was super cool though!  These games were basically just preparation and practice for the olympics coming up in August.  We were ushers one night and helped out with security the other night.  We basically just made sure nobody sat in the reserved section who wasn't supposed to and made sure everyone who entered the door we stood by had "blue stamps."  Once the game started though, we had very little to do so we basically just got to watch the game:) There was also free food for us, we got free shirts, got to talk to a few people about the gospel too!  Canada won both games.  The Chinese women shoot the ball very weird and are very spastic when they play haha.... They could all wreck me though and they are fetching Olympians so I should probably stop saying mean things like that. 

Well folks, that's it for this week.  Every day is a different adventure of its own up here.  The work is coming along here in Greenfield though!  I love the people here (especially the people who don't reject us hardcore), I love being a missionary, I love you all, and I love the Savior:) Have a great week and pray for the weather to be good in beautiful Jasper on Friday, and pray for me to not get too trunky when I go there lol.  

Sorry my emails are always so long. Byeee.  

Weekly Scipture: 1 John 4: 7-9  7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.  8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.  9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

                                     EPIC HAIL STORM AND ITS AFTERMATH

Week 41, 7/4/16

Hey cuties! This week was... Pretty different but great!  Getting a new mission president and Canada Day made it an eventful week.  I wish I could say the 4th of July made it eventful too but.... Well they don't celebrate it in Canada, obviously :( 

Here are some highlights from this week:  Thursday we taught Zxxx and his family again.  We taught about the importance of prayer and scripture study, and it was a pretty good lesson!  They are all learning so much and every time we go over it seems like they absorb more than last time.  At the beginning of the lesson before we even started teaching him, he raised his hand and said, "I found out that my dad can't baptize me, so I was wondering if one of you could baptize me."  We thought about it for a minute and then said no, we didn't really feel like baptizing anyone.  Lol kidding of course we were super excited!  We talked with his mom after and apparently the situation with his dad has now been resolved in the sense that they now know he can't see his kids for a while.  The uncertainty of that was the only thing preventing him from being on date, so now that they got that sorted out we are pretty sure he will be on date for July 30th after we meet again on Friday!  We are pumped! 

Friday was Canada Day, and boy was it an adventure.  We started out the day with weekly planning, which is about the least adventurous thing about being a missionary, then went and got some donair poutine and shakes with some Elders in our district for lunch to celebrate Canada Day.  Not long after that they texted us and asked us to help someone move with them, so of course we said yes.  Little did any of us or the 7 other missionaries who ended up helping know that the move would take the whole rest of the day!  It was brutal!  We loaded and unloaded two 45 foot truck loads to the very top full of stuff for a non-member lady.  I don't understand how one person can have so much stuff haha.... It was definitely the most crazy, hard move any of us had ever done.  My forearms and hands were sore, bruised, scratched and mangled the next day.  We even had to end up staying out helping way past our curfew because they only had the truck for the night.... It was just not the best situation ever, and we had a hard time helping the mission president understand the late night, but it was definitely an adventure for sure, and the lady was very appreciative of our help.  

USA  !!

Saturday was great!   We were still super tired from the day before but it ended up being a great day of missionary work.  We were tracting in an area that we haven't tracted much before, and the first door we knock on, this guy comes around the corner of the house and we don't even finish our door spiel and he says, "Yeah totally come on in! Would you fellas like some drinks?" Haha we were pretty taken back. This guy's name is Keir, and he is the coolest guy ever!  We didn't really teach a uniform lesson one to him, but we were telling him about what he can expect from meeting with us and what we do, and we told him to feel free to ask questions and then he started asking away.  He recently converted to Islam, he loves learning about religion and he had a lot of really good, honest, sincere questions about our doctrine, the nature of the godhead, polygamy, and other things I can't remember.  We were able to answer all of them pretty well and he was impressed.  We also snuck in all the principles of the restoration into our answers as well, so we basically taught him the first lesson and answered his questions at the same time.  He is just a really great, truth seeking guy.  He accepted the invitation to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and meet with us again, and gave us treats for the road when we left.  He is the coolest ever!  Hopefully I will be writing more about him in the future.  

Yesterday (Independence Day) there wasn't a whole lot of highlights as far as missionary work goes, but we were able to have a fun little 4th of July lunch- basketball activity with most of our district. Definitely missed the parades and fireworks this year for sure though.  

Well that's it for this week folks.  We are going to officially meet President Pattison on Saturday and we are excited for that.  Oh, I also got to go the temple this morning.  That is definitely the best part about being in the city.  The temple is actually in our area!  Never forget how blessed we are to have such available access to the House of the Lord:)  

Love ya - Elder b

Weekly scripture: 1 Nephi 22:7 7 And it meaneth that the time cometh that after all the house of Israel have been scattered and confounded, that the Lord God will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles, yea, even upon the face of this land; and by them shall our seed be scattered.🇺🇸