Sept. 14, 2015

  

Last week we had a General Authority come to this mission!  He spoke to us and trained us. It was Elder Martino. He is a great guy. I learned a lot from him and it was exactly what this mission needed to hear. It was what our zone needed to hear too. He is going to give a talk in General Conference on Saturday afternoon, so keep and eye out for him! Some of the things that he taught were working with members and bishops! Members and bishops play a HUGE HUGE role in missionary work! When we teach a lesson, finding the right member will make all of the difference. Investigators need a friend and a fellowshipper so they have someone to turn to for help or to answer questions. This is because missionaries come and go, but their neighbors will stay. One big thing that we are pushing and I would like all of you to do it, is when you have the missionaries over for dinner, invite a less active family and or non member friend. Again, members have a huge role in missionary work!  

We picked up three new investigators last week! We taught Bob and Pat. You probably remember their names before. We have taught them once before. Bob and Pat are an older couple,and they are very nice. We had planned to teach them later in the week but we taught them a day before which worked out just perfect for the both of us. We taught about the Plan of Salvation because they experienced some deaths in the family. For the most part they agreed with everything except the spirit world after reading from 4 different bibles. They came to the conclusion to agree. The lesson went really well they invited us to eat dinner with them. We are going to have dinner with them on Thursday. 

Our new investigator is named Paul. He’s a really cool and nice guy, he loves to talk! Not sure if he likes the visits more than the lessons, but the first time we knocked on his door he invited us right in. He said that he had a headache all day and when we knocked on the door his headache went a way! He said the he knows we are sent from God and he believes like everything we believe in. 

We had a lesson with Rocio, again that was another good lesson! We passed her to the Spanish missionaries so they will teach her now. 

Love you all 

Sept. 7, 2015

I don’t have too long. We were cut short yesterday because of a teaching appointment. I have not too long to send this letter, before we will have to go and get on to the rest of the day. 

We are finely moved in! It was a long-some, tiring, move. Which is good because it’s just more experience. I think we are lucky because we do not own any pianos, or hide-a-beds, or anything above 6,000 pounds. It took awhile driving back and forth with one truck. Other days we had our Equinox. Last week on P-day we had a zone clean-up. We had to clean a missionaries apartment that both left last transfer. It was a mess! Very dirty. We had half of the zone there and some of the zone at our apartment to help clean it. Not because it was dirty, but because it had to be super clean for the inspection. We had the inspection and we passed! There was no damage but there was more cleaning to do like on the stove top, and the fan above the stove. Overall we passed with flying numbers. 

We had a lesson with Flora. It went well. It would have gone better if an iPad was not involved. haha 

We went on exchanges on Saturday with the district leader in Crystal Ridge. That was a lot of fun. I was with Elder Kelly. He’s from England and was just recently AP. We visited a LA member in the morning he was there but his wife was not. On Sunday his wife was at church as always and thanked us for coming by and said that it meant a lot to her.  

Bobcat in someones yard!

Aug. 31, 2015

This week mostly consisted of moving, and moving. The nice apartment we have now is empty and we will be cleaning it today. All Alberta contracts end at noon, but we were able to get an extension on the contract. Moving can be so stressful and very tiring! The members that we are moving in with are nice and they have a nice basement suite. We have our own kitchen, washer and dryer, and washroom. They have a tenant there now and he has to be out by the first, (tomorrow at noon). We were able to store everything in their garage until we move in which was so helpful! The tenant now is kind of a hoarder. Not trash, but its just junk. He has a lot of stuff. So it might take a day to clean up. We will not be able to move in on Tuesday but maybe Wednesday. So I guess now I can say that I was homeless on my mission for a few days. We have been living with other missionaries in the district in the Somerset Ward. It has been fun but I could not do that forever.

With this move we had to trade cars with the Calgary East Zone Leaders. They have a big Silverado 1500 that helped out a lot. That was when we got in an "accident". We took a load to the landfill and backed up into one of the dumpsters. Elder Gregory was backing me up and one of the workers was yelling at us from the other side of the lot telling us to go to dumpster 10. I could not hear anything all. All I knew was that I was good to keep backing up. We just broke the tail light, that was it. No other damage. 

Today we have to clean our apartment. We will have other missionaries there. Then we will hand in the keys. 

We had a lesson with David, he was baptized not to long ago. He is progressing faster than his sister. The first lesson she was not there, and the second lesson she was there but she had a tantrum and did not want to come out because she wanted to play with the ipad which was taken way. The lessons with them are great. Easy to teach no hard questions, and they remembered everything. Their hometeacher is our WML.  

Heidi has accepted a baptismal date! We met with her and brought a member with us, which was the best idea!  He is an older guy and is a neighbor of Gail's, I am so, so glad that we brought him because Gail is a member and is not able to move around, and she likes to talk. Heidi is her caretaker.  We teach Heidi at Gail's house. Gail loves to talk and is not shy to interrupt the lesson to speak whatever is on her mind. It’s always off topic. haha Its always the same stuff; Her farm she’s selling, her lawyers, and her daughter. Bro. Vance is the member we brought with us. He talked to Gail one on one and we were able to talk to and teach Heidi. This lesson was kind of the same as last time but we talked more about it.  We taught about baptism, taught about baptisms for the dead. We asked her if she will be baptized, and she said yes. She would not commit to a date yet because she still has questions. The cool thing was we are able to talk over them and they did not disturb us while we were teaching, the spirit had to have been there. aha 

We contacted this referral that we got. His name is Justin. He is a single dad. He has one daughter that is 2. One of his wife's  dying wishes was to have her daughter raised in religion! On Saturday we contacted him. He said that he would come to church. He did not come. So we will drop by again and see if we can teach him. 

These last two weeks have been awful! The air quality has been so bad because of the fire in Washington and BC. The smoke has made its way to Calgary. Just being out side makes you smell like smoke! The air quality was a 17 on a 1 to 10 point scale.

love you guys          

Aug. 24, 2015

This week was rough. There is not much to talk about because not much happened eh. We had zone conference. That went okay, I gave my talk/training. I think it was good. The day after that, the both of us got sick! We had just a normal cold. We were out for two days! That was hard not doing anything during that time. We could not go outside or talk to people. We are feeling better though, so that’s good. And we had a lesson with David and his mom. It was just a recent convert lesson. 

I know that this email is not as long or exciting and great as the other letters, but this is all that happened. 

We are moving! Right now we live in these nice apartments. It looks like a hotel! But I guess the Church wants all missionary housing to be $1200 or less a month, and our place is $1700 a month, its the most expensive in the whole mission, so that’s why we have to move. We are moving into a basement suite in a members house, they took us through and its really really nice! There are no complaints from me. That is what we will be doing next week. Moving and super cleaning the apartment. haha

We have been taking the Train more often instead of riding bikes. It’s fun to take the C-Train. We will be taking it alot more because it’s almost the end of the month and kilometers are running low! haha   

Aug 17, 2015

Aug. 17, 2015

This was a really busy week! We did not teach much because last week was transfer week. So it was a week filled with packing, saying good-bye, going to new trainers meetings, and transfers.  Elder Maughan is out in Lethbrigde East. My new comp is Elder Gregory! He was serving as a District Leader in Okotoks, which is in our zone, so I guess now I’m "training" him to be a zone leader. His uncle is Stephan Sharp Nelson! So that is way cool. I told him about Shaye so maybe I will be able to get some VIP back stage passes! haha 

So other then the packing and the transfers we had a zone goal setting. One of the goals that Elder Gregory and I decided was to hand out 10 Mormon.org card per companionship outside of normal finding and get 4 return appointments from that (which can possibly become new investigators because all you have to do is share a gospel principal and get a set return appointment for them to count as a new investigator). So at the end of the month we will have passed out 1650 or more cards and 37 or more return appointments or new investigators. The zone was excited for this and they are already going hard. There have been 6 copies of the Book of Mormon and like 6 return appointments and like 50 cards. So things are picking up!

We have a whole new zone. It’s big! Half of them are training! It’s a lot better than last transfer because there were missionaries that had a bad attitude and did not care any more because they were going home! So I’m glad that we have lots of new missionaries.

It has been raining lots here. I call it "Walk & Get Wet August" instead of Walk n' Talk! ahhaha just kidding:) but it has been raining a lot. We were only able to teach one person last week. That was Rocio. Her first language is Spanish but she speaks English really well. We brought some members with us from the ward that speak Spanish. That went really well. They spoke Spanish to each other and had a conversation for about 10 minutes, we just sat there listening. The spirit was there. Even though I do not speak Spanish I could tell what they were talking about. We talked about the Book of Mormon and the importance of it. That lesson went good. We will have another lesson with her on the 30th.

Love you guys