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

Aug 11, 2015

Okay so this letter has the last two weeks since I missed last week because I did not have time to write a full letter, although I had time to reply to your emails, which I hope you enjoyed.

Reading all of your emails, it sounds like to me that these last two week have been crazy! Caleb! You are one tough kid! All of the stories I read of you crashing on your bike and breaking your arm, waiting for the doctors for 3 days because they can’t do anything, Tanner beating you up with your broken arm, doctors pulling on your arm for 20 minutes… It sounds like you’re turning out to be like your oldest brother! Just one tough stud! I fell off my bike and broke my thumb years ago, and you broke your arm! That only shows who's the tougher one! haha Now you get to wear that sick cast on your first weeks of school! You will have to have Tanner, and Dallin treat you like a king because of your injury Caleb! Haha. Make sure that you do not sweat too much while you are in that cast. Try not to get it dirty, and make sure that it does not get wet! Or else it will smell SO SO bad. There will be an awful stench from that cast.  

 We had a lesson on prophets with Rocio on Sunday August 2^nd. That was a good lesson! She told us that for some reason everything that we have taught her she has remembered. She has been more open and she enjoys what we are teaching her.

 Last Monday August 3rd  we went to Banff with a family in the ward, It was a holiday in Canada so the place was packed. We spent most of the day there and visited Lake Louise, Marine Lake, Banff, and Johnson Canyon. We are only allowed to go once a year as missionaries so I was glad that I was able to go. There were lots of other missionaries there as well. 

We had a lesson with David and Flora. We taught them some of the lessons like; the Plan of Salvation, Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 On Wednesday we went to the temple, which was amazing! It has been a LONG time... We went with some members. Their son was going through the first time. He leaves on his mission soon. The trip to the temple was crazy! It started to hail paintball-sized! There were cars pulled over under the over-pass to wait through the storm, its kind of dangerous to drive on the highway when cars were blocking two lanes under the overpass. Luckily we made it safely! :)

We taught another lesson to David and Flora. They are still on date for Saturday of next week. We taught Heidi again. We did not know what we were going to teach her because she has been taught a lot, and not really progressing. I said we should read 3 Nephi 27 with her and talk about baptism.  When we went over there she said that she has been reading! We read 3 Nephi and asked her what are her thoughts with baptism. After more reading, and praying, and lessons she should be baptized. :) 

 Last Saturday on August 8 at 3:00 PM David and Flora were baptized! We had two baptisms on Saturday. They went really, really well! I was so happy to be there. There were about 48 members and friends that showed up! There was lots of support, love, and friendship in the room. They had some friends in a different ward who are converts of about 8-9 years and the father of that family baptized Flora and David. Maughan and I were witnesses for the baptism. On Sunday they were confirmed members of the Canyon Creek Ward by our bishop and they received the gift of the Holy Ghost. We got to stand in the circle. That was a great experience!

Transfers are this Thursday. I will be staying here. I’m not getting transferred, for which I’m happy because that will be my 3rd one-and-done and 2nd in a row. Maughan is getting transferred and he will be training as a District Leader. He is going down after 9 months of zone leader.

With this month of "Walk and Talk August" there have been many, many miracles in the mission. We get texts from the APs that we forward to our zone of the miracles that happen! It is so amazing to see the Lord’s hand in the work. Some miracles seen: our missionaries run into this guy who has already read 20 chapters in the Book of Mormon before they meet him. 2 lessons later they put him on date for baptism.

More miracles: these missionaries decided to fast for their investigators that they would come to church. None of them came, but during gospel principles, a person that they have never seen before was there. After church they walk with him home and a couple of minutes after that he says that he wants to become a member of the Church, and he is on date.

There are many miracles that are happening in this mission. This is only the start. We are well on track to reach our mission goal of 50 baptisms