July 27, 2015

Scary week this week just because of the tornado.

Actually it just made it cool and exciting! It was weird to see a tornado up that close and to see a real one! We were in the Chevy dealership getting an oil change on our Equinox when that happened. We were inside, and our car was inside when the golf-sized hail came down. I have a video of it, the hail came down and it exploded as it smashed on the road and the brand-new cars in the lot. I would only imagine that would be the worst nightmare of the Chevy dealer to have hail damage on ALL of the cars in the lot. But insurance covers hail damage. All of the insurance companies in Alberta came together to help prevent hail. Whenever a storm starts to form they fly these planes around and spray something or they do something that prevents hail from falling. It’s kind of cool.

The same day we got a call from the APs that connected the call from some sister missionaries in a different zone. They said that there was a member in their area who was in the Foot Hills hospital that wanted a blessing before his surgery the next morning. It was about an hour drive because the traffic was the worse I have seen. Anyway we found the building and the room and we were able to give him this wonderful blessing. He was older and he was scared and had some anxiety from what awaited him, as I would think anyone would be that had to go into surgery. I was the same way when I had to get my wisdom teeth pulled. 

We had a lesson with Heidi again, not really progressing at all, not reading the Book of Mormon and she has been taught the first two lessons so far; Restoration and Plan of Salvation. We were going to teach her lesson three the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with an invite to baptism but that did not happen. Instead we talked about the Book of Mormon and the importance of it. That gave her a better understanding of it I could tell as we left. 

 Whenever we teach her it is always so so hard because she is a caretaker of a member in the ward. The member is old and forgot everything about the Gospel and she still thinks she’s Catholic and always talks about something random or talks about stuff that reminds her of something else when we teach. Like this last lesson she talked about dinosaurs, and how they found the new biggest dinosaur bird and it had feathers. Those lessons are always fun to see where they go... not really. 

We have two new investigators! We will have two on date for baptism next week and that will be followed by two baptisms! We have been working with this less active. She is now becoming active! She has been to church two times in a row with both of her kids. Both of her kids are over 8 and not baptized. When they attended Bishop’s son’s baptism they said that they would like to be baptized! The mom is supportive of their decision to be baptized. So we have to teach them all of the lessons before they can be baptized. When the mom came to church for the baptism that was her first time being in the church building in over 10 years. For this week, our focus is her 10 year old daughter and her 14 year old son. 

On Friday we went on exchanges with the Aps. I thought that I was staying in my area so all during the week I have been thinking of people that we can visit and things to so do so we stay busy the whole day. When that day came it turned out that I was working out of my area and that I would be working in the APs area. I was with Elder Smith. He’s a cool guy. I was working out of my area, so all of my plans went out the window, and I looked at Elder Smith’s planner and pretty much the whole day is finding........................... When that time came to find, my inward attitude had to change. Otherwise we were wasting our time and finding without faith. I give the suggestion that we do a Power Hour. I have done Power Hour once before in my first area, Power Hour is this: before you go tracting and knocking on doors, you go to a members house first and tell them what you are doing (tracting their neighborhood), share a message, and ask them to pray for you and do spiritual things like read scriptures or conference talks, and ask them to keep a prayer in their heart as you knock on doors for that hour. Then you return and report. 

The first time we did that was successful. The first door we knocked on we got a number, and they said that we could come back some time. Then we got another number in that same neighborhood. We did another one the same day in a different neighborhood. Again the first door we knocked on we got a number. We were talking to this mother with kids in a "richer neighborhood" for 30 minutes on the front door. She gave us her number and again said that we could come back some time. The kids were somewhat interested too, but they are way young. Both times the first door we knocked on we got a number. 

That was the week. Maybe next week we will have two baptisms!