Nov. 23 2015

Well it’s this time of year again where the temperature drops and the snow falls, (even though that happens most of the year). But more importantly it’s Thanksgiving! And even more importantly it’s American Thanksgiving. It’s a great time to take some time and give thanks for the things which we are thankful for!

I have a greater appreciation for the Eternal things in life, like Family, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His Church, and the thing which we are all focused on, Eternal Life. I'm also very thankful for all of the love and sacrifices which were made by you in my behalf, and I am happy to be on a mission. Time files, last year at this time I was still in British Columbia. I'm also thankful for everything that I have been given. 

This week will come and it will go just as fast as it came.

Make sure you always remember and never forget the sacrifice, blood, tears, sweat, hard work, foot steps of blood, dedication, passion, and the lives which were given to get to this wonderful country America, and to get the freedom that we have! God Bless America!  

I'm really looking forward to this week. Canada does not shut down like the sates do on Thanksgiving Day. They don't really do it in October either. It’s another day. This Friday is Black Friday. It’s the same day as the states. We are going to a member families’ house for Thanksgiving, the Judd's. They are in the bishopric in the YSA ward. I hope we have turkey, ham, corn, potatoes, and pie. For Canadian Thanksgiving they made the best homemade pecan pie it was so so good! 

I want to talk more about the lesson we had with Fred two weeks ago. We taught him the Plan of Salvation. That was one of the most powerful lessons I have taught. The spirit was there and you could tell that everyone in the room could feel it. Fred came to church that week. He also came this Sunday, but we forgot to tell him that there were no meetings because of the temple dedication. 

The temple dedication was so so good, there were a lot of blessings promised. President Eyring gave a wonderful talk and that is where most of the promises came from. He said don't be too quick to forget the work that you do for the dead, because they will not be too quick to forget you. They will watch over you and help you and keep you safe. I thought that was cool. 

We had Zone Conference last week. One of President Miles counselors was there, President Stephen. He is a wonderful guy. He is so missionary minded, and he has stories for days! President Miles asked him to bear his testimony to our zone and another zone that was with us. President Stephen lives in the NW stake, the same stake as the stake president that came with us to the lesson. President Stephen talked about that stake president (President Steele) and how he went to a lesson with some missionaries to teach his friend, and how he was late for a meeting because he was with his friend and the missionaries. He knew that we were there and we taught him, and President Miles pointed us out, so he knew about this lesson and how great it went. What made me happy was what President Stephen said in his testimony, "That stake president is on fire!" "He is pushing missionary work harder, he’s more missionary minded". That made Elder Christensen and I so happy. I was smiling from ear to ear. We are going to meet with Fred again this week, we want President Steele to come again because they are really good friends and President Steele knows a lot! Then after that lesson we will find some fellowship in the ward, there were a lot of members that introduced themselves to him. 

This week was a miracle. We have a goal every week to find a new investigator. At the end of this week it was not looking too promising. We were both praying really hard. We had a dinner apt. with a LA at 6 but he called and had to postpone it to 7 because dinner would not be ready, so we rearranged our schedule.  We try and go contact this family where we think they live, there are not members and we had helped them move. We knock on this house... no answer, so we walk back to the truck and there is a young man cleaning up leaves and sticks in his yard. So we ask him if he wants help. He says no. We start talking about who we are and what we do. He says that he would be interested and that he is not doing anything on Saturday! He gave us his name and number. He said he is 18 so that’s YSA! So it’s perfect!     He said his name was Khaled.

We also got a referral that we contacted, by phone because he was not at that address at the time. His name is Lloyd. He is interested in Family History and Genealogy, so Grandma because your a professional at that, I’m going to refer him to you! ;)    

So here's a funny story... 

This  last week we were going to get new tires for our truck, so we ordered some tires from Canadian Tire. Of course they did not have any in stock, so they ordered some.  Three days later they called us saying that they were in, so we took the truck in. They said that it would be about an hour and a half from when they got the tires in. So we were like okay, so we called other missionaries to pick us up and take us home so we could weekly plan. 3 or 3 and a half hours later, Canadian Tire called us saying that they only have 3 tires! They do not know where the 4th one is, or if it even came, so they put the old tires back on and we picked up the truck after our dinner appointment. We had to take the other missionaries’ car because dinner was a long drive or a very very very long walk.  So needless to say we still had our old tires on, and Canadian Tire called us back saying that they found the "lost" tire, and our name is on the tires so now we have to some how find time this week to get them on. 

I wanted them to put on some BIG rock crawlers, or some huge mud tires because of the inconvenience, but that probably is not a good idea. haha :)