Week 97, 8/8/17

Holy moly....  SO much happened this week.... Life is crazy right now!! This week was pretty much a week of all the hours of preparation and admin work that we have done over the past few weeks coming to fruition.   

Wednesday we had a 7 hour meeting where we trained about 75 missionaries on how to effectively use Facebook as a proselyting tool, and helped them to get started.  We also helped everyone set up their smartphones with the church restrictions.  It was honestly a long and brutal meeting but it was very necessary!  Setting up the phones was ABSOLUTE CHAOS but eventually and with the Lord's help, everything was good to go.  Thursday was awesome, it was Zone Conference and we just got to lay low and enjoy being trained and edified for a couple hours.  

I found out during the Zone Conference that my Papa Bonny passed away the night before.  He is such a great man and I'm glad he passed peacefully. I have been praying a lot and fasting for you awesome family members on the Bonny side that you can feel peace and comfort through this sad time in knowing that we will have the opportunity to see him again.   

 Friday evening we actually got to proselyte!! First time in a week and a half!! Oh my goodness it was so amazing, I love being able to invite others to hear about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  We didn't find any super prepared people, but we did have a zombie (what we call people who are so drunk/high that they are essentially walkers from the walking dead, in their own world and everything) follow us to our car and we  from the train ended up having to quickly get in the car and speed away from him hahaha. Great day!   

Saturday and Monday was HERITAGE DAYS!! I dont know if any of you can remember from last year, but in Edmonton once a year they do a huge festival where a whole bunch of people who live here from a whole bunch of different countries set up huge tents with all sorts of cultural information about that country, souvenirs, performances, and especially FOOD!  It is basically a big cultural showcase for a ton of different countries.  It is super cool how many different countries there are and how they can actually pull it off!  Not to mention how much amazing food there is.  Anyways, as missionaries we volunteer for the Food Bank to help them collect donations at the event, so we got to organize how to provide them with 24 volunteers for 20 hours, and how to get everyone down to the event, and then shuttle them down in the swag vans to the park.  I probably drove the same route about 30 times over those two days hahaha. On Saturday and Monday we got a little time to go around and check out the festival and eat some food, and it was awesome.  It was pretty rainy for most of it but we still had a great time.  We also had a couple great gospel conversations as we were collecting donations. 

  

Well I can't really think of anything else that is worth writing about unfortunately.  Oh wait just kidding! We also got the legendary TIWI boxes at Zone Conference that track where you are, yell at you for speeding, aggressive driving, not wearing your seatbelt, etc. And report all the stats to the Mission President.  They arent really all that bad though.  It turns out that we are the last mission in the world to get TIWI!  And we are the  3rd mission in the world to get smartphones... wow we must be super cool or something.  Hope you all have a great week!   

Weekly Scripture:  Alma 40:11-12 11 Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection--Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life. 12 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.   

Pics: All heritage days Weirdest food I tried: Ice cream palda from Azerbaijan (ice cream with noodles and water), it actually was pretty good Best food I tried: tie between chicken shawerma at Egypt and Ecuadorean meat empanadas.