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

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