Saturday, July 27, 2013

Innisfail Chapter 5

This week has been pretty long but fast at the same time. I can't believe it's already Monday again, but last Thursday seems soo long ago.
We had a lot of things happen this last week. I'm pretty sure I'm just going to do a day by day run down from now on.
Monday
I told you a little bit of our plans for last Monday, but things were really weird. So we went up to Red Deer to meet up with the Elder in Rocky, so that we could get bags and possibly Khaki pants. I mostly stayed pretty quiet when they were shopping. First off it was weird to be in a mall as a missionary. You know you stand out and you just keep going. They were looking at Khaki pants and were trying to find less expensive pants than $40. If anything I learned working at Tommy that you can't get Khaki dress pants that would be in good condition for less than $40. They were also looking at Shoulder bags since backpacks aren't allowed anymore. I was a little surprised at those price. They were $100 for the cheap ones. All I can say is that I'm glad I already had one. We then went to try to find somewhere for a haircut. That didn't happen. One place was a salon that was booked and the other was a walk in place with and Hour and a half wait. So we just went to the Bower Chapel and played basketball with some of the zone. We went to the Christenson's for dinner and Bro. Christenson's Daughter was in town visiting from ....guess where... Utah. She lives in Layton (which I know isn't close) and said when she drives back home she would be happy to take things back. I don't know if I have anything to send back, but I might so be ready.
Tuesday
We had a really cool lesson with Tom and Mary. Mary is considered a less-active member, but she doesn't even know she is a member. Tom is in rough condition. He has Parkinson's and now has an eye infection so he is barely able to see. On top of that is just came down with pneumonia. We just went over and shared a lesson with them trying to say 'Christ' as many times as possible. We are going to try and meet with them every tuesday. We then went to the Beckwiths (who we went with to the bird farm). We were able to show them the pictures of the blue birds that they missed, and we invited them to take the lessons. They declined. We are still going to keep in contact with them but it isn't really going to go anywhere. We then stopped by the Ellis' to tell them about it and keep them updated. We then had dinner with Bishop Mower. His wife was out of town so it was just him. We had dinner and he went and changed to go visit some LA's. It was pretty rushed, but it was good to see his excitement.
Wednesday
Service Day
Today was a day all about service. Sister Dyck called us last night and asked if we would teach gospel principles again, because they were going out of town...again. We told her we would if she would cut our hair. She used to work in a salon for years. So we finally went and got to have a haircut. It was hard to describe how to cut my hair, since we have just gone to Lori for all of these years. It looks pretty good and I'm not bothered by it anymore. We then went and helped out at the Library. When you think of a missionary doing service at the Library you never think of wiping off board books. We spent about an hour wiping off all of the board books that the little kids suck on. It wasn't bad just not something you think of as a missionary. We pretty much went back to our apartment and starting preparing a potential investigator list for ward correlation. We didn't have any addresses written down so we drove around getting them. It was funny with some houses that we didn't want to stop at so we did a quick drive by to find the house number. We then went and helped the Food Bank move to a new location. They were in a run down warehouse and apparently someone backed up in to the side of it so they had to move since the wall was now caving in a little. They moved behind the Co-op. It is a much better place for them in my opinion. We then had ward correlation and it was a very successful meeting. We got the assignment to prepare a 15 minute presentation to present to Ward Council at the end of the month. It will be a great way to get the work moving forward.
Thursday
Today we had a follow-up training meeting up in Edmonton. I didn't realize how long of a drive it is. It didn't seem like it the first day since everything was still so new. We got up there and I had a really great time talking to everyone from the MTC. It was so much fun being able to see almost everyone again. The only ones who weren't there were Elder Webb, Christensen, and Eyler, since they are in areas that are too far away from Edmonton. They had to phone in instead. I got a lot more out of the meeting being there, than I would have otherwise. It was backwards because instead of me standing around waiting for Elder Marsh to finish talking with everyone, it was him trying to tell me to go, because I was talking to everyone. It really was nice to see everyone again.
Friday
The only thing that really happened was that we got a new potential investigator. They live right next to the Joseph's. It is going to be hard to meet with them, because they are always on the go, and we really don't go to Springbrook that often. We really didn't have anything else too exciting happen today.
Saturday
"No Effort is Wasted"
Today went pretty rough. We were pretty much planning our day as we went. We had planned out things before hand, but we had to rearrange things constantly. We were going to go over to Hubert (the guy who lives across the street) and have lunch with him and his wife. Well He took longer to get home than we thought and his wife had to go to work. We ended up going to an appointment and coming back. We were able to talk with him for a while. He wanted to know what our future life plans were. We tried to talk to him about how our eternal goals were guiding our temporal and trying to tie in gospel principles during it. We asked him if he would take the lessons. Of course it was no. "I pretty much know what you believe". We were just trying to give him a basic understanding and he declined. We then went to go talk with Gail about maybe coming to church or taking a church tour. She wasn't home of course. We got in the car and Elder Marsh was super bummed out. It was another switch up. He even told me. You should be the one getting down and I should be trying to lift you up. We just talked about how we are doing everything that we can, but people still have their agency of whether they want to accept it or reject it. We tried to stop by a few more people and really didn't get far with anything. We then went to talk to the Ellis' about how the Relief Society activity went. (Carolyn Beckwith went with Sister Ellis) It went really well and we were able to talk about things. It was a really good visit. It kinda pumped us up. The Ellis' are so missionary minded that it can be really uplifting. When we got home, I was flipping through trying to find something in PMG and I came across the section "No Effort is Wasted". It was pretty uplifting and a great boost.
Sunday
Today was pretty great. I found out the magic of the 3rd Sunday of the month. It was Pot-luck lunch after church. Church was pretty great and then it was even better with Pot-luck. We then went back to the apartment to finish off 12-wk for the week and got ready to go. We went and visited with one LA and then went out to Drew Ellis' (the Ellis' son). It really reminded me of dinner at Peg's except there was actually room. Her sister was in town with her kids from South Jordan and her parents were there for dinner. It was buffet and find a place to sit. We shared a message with the adults and any of the kids that came in. We finished and left. It was strange because it was just "ok, thank you for dinner, bye" and walk out. No one took us to the door. It was just different from other dinner appointments. We then had another Sunday night curse. We have no success in talking with anyone on Sunday nights.

The recap of my days seem pretty long, but I actually have to try and tell only the important parts. I could go on and on about everything and wish I could just write all day. but then again it could get pretty boring.
Well that was my week. It had it's ups and downs, but I'm trying to stay positive through it all. I can tell you that next week will be a crazy one so hope your excited for that email. I'll start by saying that we get to go to the zoo today with Bro and Sis Burns.
I love being able to hear about everything that is going on.
I love and miss you,
Elder O'Neill

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