Guess I'd Better Come Up With A Subject, Eh?

Ack, I can't believe I forgot to title my emails two weeks in a row. *facepalm*

Okay, you should probably know the drill by now.

Summary:

- Yay, I didn't get transferred! But Sister LaFrance might. :0

- A little time for art. :D

- 'Tireless Tuesday' :l

- Lots of texts

- Lots of Zoom calls

- Lots of phone calls

- Cool analogies from my dad that everyone should know about! (I'll bold the start of that paragraph or something so that those of you who won't read the whole thing will at least get the good stuff)

- Why are the leaves already turning yellow and orange?!

- Phone issues. >:(

- ELDER WONG!

- Sweet members who give us food! :D

- You get a baptism! You get a baptism! Everyone gets a baptism!

- Heh heh, spiders. >:D

- Yay, eye infection. -_-

- Did you know the Mormon Tabernacle Choir did Marvel songs? >:)

- Weird dreams 

- Sister LaFrance says Tony the tiger betrayed her because he supports hockey in Canada but soccer in the US. XD

Longer version:

I didn't get transferred this week! There are a few reasons behind that. One of them is my frustrating phone, which I'll get to later. Needless to say, I miss apple products. :( 

Sister LaFrance will be going to her original assignment soon! She was called to serve in Temple Square, but was reassigned to Edmonton for now since the borders are being weird. She got an email last night and a call today from President Cowley. She's going to get ET-ed (Emergency Transferred, haha) in a couple of weeks. The 29th, I believe. 

I got a bit of free time the other day, so I started drawing a picture. I made a sketch with pencil, but I'm outline and shading (trying to, haha) with pen so that it won't make graphite smears in my notebook. Once I finish the drawing, I'll post it on Facebook. (And once I get my phone working. -_-)

I'm beginning to despise Tireless Tuesdays, but we had something great happen last Tuesday! We returned some pans to a sweet member and took a different route to the church. We passed the house of a super nice guy who's interested in church and the gospel but has been very hard to get ahold of. He's not being intentionally invasive, he's just had a crazy schedule lately. We had a nice talk with him outside and shared a scripture. I believe we also set up a time to help him with some yard work. I'm excited to get to know his family more!

We forgot to bring dinner to the church and it was about an hour to walk back to the apartment, so we bought some gas station food. I got nachos and the cheese was way spicy for me. XD  If anyone knows me, they'll know that I have the lowest spice tolerance of any human being. My companions were laughing at me. I still ate the nachos because I was hungry, but it felt like my mouth was on fire... nearly as spicy as some deer jerky my dad has made. XD

We've been doing a lot of phone calls and Zoom meetings. A few lessons fell through, but we got to talk to a sweet Sister that has a really neat conversion story. (Once again, I wish I could share names, but... Canada's privacy laws. :D) We were able to talk to a guy that's really struggling and we're trying to set up a time to meet with him in person because it's kind of hard to hear him over the phone. 

If you don't have time to read the whole thing, take some advice from my dad! 

I was able to share a couple neat analogies that my dad taught me during a lesson this week. I'm going to slaughter the exact phrasing, but I hope I get the general idea across. 

"Sometimes reaching out to someone who needs help but doesn't want it is like trying to pet an angry porcupine. The resulting quill-marks in our hands are evidence that we're trying." (Personally, I love porcupines, especially Quilliam from SeaQuest! He's like a super friendly dog with a few prickles. XD) 

My dad also tells me that he met some people who thought they couldn't choose anything in life because the Lord already knows what they'll do. They were under the impression that their lives were planned out for them. He told me, "The Lord is like the world's most accurate weatherman. He knows what choices we will make because He knows us. A weatherman uses tools to predict the weather, but he can't change the weather. He can't make it rain, he can't change the temperature, he can't stop the winds. Heavenly Father knows what we'll do, but because He loves us, He'll never take away our agency."

(Hope that was similar to what you told me, dad!)

It's fall already! :0  I'm not ready. Some days are still warmish, but it's definitely brisk in the mornings, and it's been cold some evenings. There's been a bit of rain and lots of wind. There's this one road that we drive down every day near the church and I swear the leaves get more golden every time we drive past it. Some trees are losing their leaves already! I hope we can figure out the church's heating system--and our apartment's heating system--before it gets too cold!

I got my phone, but it's not working. I keep trying to set it up, and every single time it says there's an error with signing in and to try again later. It made me super frustrated--to the point where I went outside and chucked some crab apples at a brick wall to vent my feelings, haha. XD I might have anger issues. But we're trying to get someone to help me set it up with all the right missionary apps. So... sorry, but I still can't take pictures, and I haven't figured out how to attach the ones that I have to emails yet. 

We got the privilege of hearing from Elder Wong of the Seventy this week! He came to the mission and we all gathered around him in the church gym. We had to wear masks, of course. He's such a hilarious Elder and I love his teaching style! He had all of us participate. When we spoke, we'd stand up and introduce ourselves. He also kept asking us all to hold our breaths, then take off our masks and smile at him. Then he'd be like, "Now put those back on, before we get arrested!" He had such an infectious laugh.

I learned so much from him. What really stuck with me was an object lesson he taught us about not pouring too much information on people. He had some Sisters hold a big jug of water representing all of their knowledge about the church. He told them, "It's heavy, yes? You want to get rid of it. No, you want to share it with other people. Go ahead!" 

A couple of Elders were called on. One of them had a glass on his head. XD  Elder Wong told the Sisters to teach him all that they knew. They filled up his glass and it dripped in his hair. Then, the next Elder had a sacrament cup. The Sisters were only able to get a bit of water in before it overflowed.

Elder Wong explained how when we missionaries meet people, it's sometimes our first instinct to just dump all of our knowledge on them. We overflow their cups, or their capacity to learn. If we overwhelm them, we might make them not want to come back. We need to pay attention to their needs and capacity so that we give them sufficient knowledge, but not enough to overflow them and make them hesitant to learn more. 

There was a nice family of members that we went to who gave us some food. It was a delicious loaf of pumpkin bread! We've eaten most of it already. XD It tastes amazing with frosting. We haven't had any other member dinners, but people keep giving us nice things like salads and cookies. The members are super nice!

We had two baptisms this Saturday! The first was a sweet little girl who likes to draw dragons. I drew her a dragon and we gave her a little sketchbook. :D We weren't able to see her entire baptism because we had lots of other stuff to do, but there were a bunch of people there to support her.

Another friend of ours got baptised! She's been meeting with missionaries since the beginning of August. We spent most of Saturday preparing for her baptism in the evening. So many sweet members were willing to come, and a bunch of them made treats for afterward. We had a bit of an issue printing out programs because there was this dumb printer paper with a church logo on it that messed up the font. We printed a bunch by mistake and kept screaming and trying to stop the printer while it kept spitting out all these mis-printed forms. XD We eventually found some better paper in the library, but it took some searching.

This Saturday, another friend of ours is getting baptised! Her daughter was baptized about a month ago and we're so excited to see her receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. She was going to be baptized next week, but her family wouldn't be able to come. We were worried that she'd cancel or push the date back, but we were absolutely ecstatic when she wanted to get baptized sooner. We're going to have a couple more lessons with her this week!

Also, another friend is getting baptized next week too! Four baptisms in a month! :D (That's a lot for Canada, particularly the Edmonton mission.) I'm so excited for this one too. He's a super spiritual guy and a very deep thinker. None of his words are wasted when he speaks. 

When we were filling up the font on Saturday, I noticed a couple of spiders floating in it, so I yelled at my companions to stop the water. I splashed into the font (It didn't have much water in it, but it was enough to get my feet wet) and I saved one of the spiders. Sister Spackman killed the other one with a mop. :'(  But I was able to put the one that I saved outside. I love spiders, in case ya'll don't know, and I felt glad. It was a little yellow sac spider, in case anyone's curious. Probably not, but oh well. I just love spiders. XD

Welp, I'm prone to styes and I have a very annoying one today. Basically it's just an annoying, swollen eyelid that hurts whenever I blink or touch my face. :l  Hopefully it'll clear up soon.

Yesterday, my companions were totally rocking out to some MoTab Marvel (That's what they called it, haha). The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has sung a lot of songs from movies. It's all on gospel library, but you have to look hard for it! 

I had a bizarre dream the other night. I'd stolen some iguanas from SeaQuest and they were bright, neon colors. Then they turned into chameleons and parakeets. XD  I also had a crazy dream about rabbits earlier in the week. I don't remember all of it, but there was a lot of water and some weird raccoons too. My dreams are always super vivid and confusing.

Last, but not least: Sister LaFrance has found most differences in American and Canadian culture to be very amusing. However, when I told her that in the US, Tony the tiger (from frosted flakes cereal) supports soccer, she had a mini existential crisis. XD It was kind of funny. She was like, "But they're frosted flakes! Like, frost as in ice! For hockey!"

This week was so full of stuff... I feel like my emails are getting longer. Well, to finish up, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone for supporting me! I hope you enjoy my small novels every week! Keep reading your scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon! And help out your local missionaries! We love getting member referrals. :D

Sister Howard