Innisfail Chapter 6

Monday
So I mentioned that we were going to the zoo, but that didn't end up happening. We were going to go with a LA member, Bro Burns. He has some health conditions and can't really walk all that well. So we would have had to get a cart, but we didn't plan enough time to get it all squared away. We will probably go in a couple of weeks. So instead we went back to the apt and had a nice relaxing day. Dinner is a bit confusing to explain. We had dinner with the O'Connell's at the Darby's with Bro McLeod and Bro Nagel. It was a pretty fun time. The Mosquitoes attacked my ankles so I had like 9. I had 5 on my right side of my right ankle. That itched. We received a referral from Elder George up in Edmonton Sunday night that we went and tried to contact. He opened the door saw us and shut it. Yep that is typical.

Tuesday

It was an interesting day today. We went to drop off a part-member list to Bro Day and he told us about this guy who is building his fence, Josh. Josh is Bro Day's hygenists' husband. Bro Day had offered our help to him a while back but he declined. He heard about the work that we did at John Mills' Farm and told Bro Day that he could use some help on the fence. We ended up helping him out later that night. Bro Day had to go back to work and we went to help at the Food Bank. We were hoping we would be able to talk with more people than we did. We pretty much only really talked to the people working there. It was still a good service we did. We then came back changed and went out to see Bro Nagel, since we had dinner with the Darby's. Yep two nights at the Darby's. We talked to Bro Nagel about what it was like on his mission in Denmark. He would have been there about 60 years ago. Dinner with the Darby's was fun. We made Sushi. It was fun. Bro Darby didn't want to risk the raw fish so it was mostly vegetable rolls. There was some smoked salmon, but it came across a little stronger flavor. It was super cool. Now I can roll sushi. Still don't know how to make the rice, but it doesn't sound too hard. We then went back and helped Josh move some boards around Bro Day's yard that he was going to put up. FYI Bro Day's yard is pretty big. So we were hauling boards on our shoulders. I found out something about myself that night. I have really boney shoulders. Typically it is pretty easy to carry the boards over your shoulder, but I don't have a soft, flat spot. The are pretty boney. It hurt for a while and I found out when we got in for the night that I had bruised my left shoulder.

Wednesday

Today was a pretty cool day. So we had the usual morning schedule and then went to the Library for our Mormon.org time. We both spent a lot of time on FamilySearch. It was really cool. The Darby's are like the Moon's. They are Family History pros. They were telling us that the church has started telling people that if they are having a hard time going back in their own lines then they should go sideways and forward. So while I was on Family Search I tried that. It was pretty cool. I was looking up records for Emerson Edison O'Neill and found two different Census records for him. One was when he was still living at home and another was one with his wife and kids living in California. I was able to update some of the information on him and his wife, I added his kids in and then it made me realize that they might still be alive. They would be in their 80's, but we might have relatives in California. It what I was able to find off of a census. Mom you should go on and look at the sources for them. It is amazing the things you can find. It was a really cool experience. We then went and visited with Bro Votary and then went and talked with a LA lady named Betty. She was baptized many years ago, but doesn't agree with some of the doctrines. She came across confrontational, but she is just confused. We then had to run and meet up with the Rocky elders for exchanges. We were like half and hour late. I went with Elder McFall out to Rocky. We first went to the scheduled dinner appointment, but we showed up late and they were leaving to go see the air show that night. We then stopped by another family nearby, the Christensen's. Bro Christensen has been pretty sick lately. They believe in Chinese Medicine, pretty much all natural healing. He was staying somewhere else. The rest of the family has been sick as well and since we were there Sister Christensen asked if we could give the family a blessing. We gave a blessing to 2 of their sons and her. It was also really cool. We then went to drop something off at the Ward Mission Leader's house. They are a Philippine family and asked if we had had dinner. We told them no and they offered to feed us. It was interesting. She had cut up a fish and boiled it. Then served it over rice. I had to be careful of the bones and skin as I ate it. Very different, but it wasn't bad. We then tried by a lot of potentials and ended up tracting for a little while. Not much success so we went back to the apt.

(sorry this email is so long)

Thursday

We had morning studies and then headed back to Innisfail for multi district meeting. We went back and grabbed some subway then met everyone at the apt. 10 missionaries in our apt. It was a blast. The areas there were Innisfail, Rocky (obviously), Olds, Three hills, and Red Deer 2 (aka the ZL's) It was super fun. I was able to talk with Elder Eyler again. We then had the multi district meeting at the church. It was really good and the ZL's gave us some good ideas to involve the members. We are going to try and start presenting that soon. We then went and met with Bro Burns. I can't remember in between but then we went to the Joseph's for dinner. We were hoping that we could teach their oldest daughter, but apparently with some miscommunication and we weren't. We didn't even really get to share a message, since Bro Joseph had to take his son to soccer. We then went back and helped Josh with the fence some more.

Friday

What a day. We met Bro Day at the church so we could plan out our presentation to the Ward Council. We spent about two hours coming up with a plan of what we wanted them to do and how to present it. He then took us to BP for lunch. We went back and had weekly planning. We then when and helped Todd (He is a potential, might have mentioned him before) with his fence. (yes a lot of fence work). We helped him put up the frame boards and dig some post holes. It was a good time. He was asking some really good questions too. He invited us over for dinner tomorrow to pay us back for helping him. We asked if we could teach him a little about what we believe and he said yes. Finally a chance for a first lesson. We then went to the Tewson's for dinner. It was a pretty good time. It was a late dinner appointment because he had work. We got their and dinner wasn't even ready and his wife wasn't home yet. It ended up taking a long time there so we didn't do much the rest of the night.

Saturday

We had our usual morning and then we went to help Josh again. Well our phone was being weird and Josh actual tried to text us to say he had to go to Calgary to get his tools fixed, we didn't end up getting that message until about two hours later. So we went over to help and he wasn't there. Bro Day called him and he said he would be right over. He explained everything and then while he went to go rent so equipment we moved more boards. He came back and said to keep going, he was going to go home for lunch. We kept going and then about when we had to go he came back. Oh well. We were still able to help him out a lot. The Day's were going to take some bottles and cans to the bottle depot. It's like recycling, but you get money back. We needed to go to so Elder Marsh said, "If you take our bottles you can keep the money". Bro Day "If you take our bottles you can keep the money." He ended up filling our trunk and back seat with bags of bottles and cans and jugs. $76.95. He let us keep it and we are using it for laundry money. We were then able to have a cool lesson with some members where we applied the ZL's training. It will really be helpful in the future. We then had dinner with Todd. Pretty much, it took longer than expected and he isn't really as interested as we thought, but we still consider him a new investigator.

Well I have to end it there. It was a pretty eventful week.

FYI we had transfer calls this morning and ...We are both staying here in Innisfail.

Love and miss you all
Elder O'Neill