Innisfail Chapter 10

Wow I have been here for a long time. I have been here for 10 weeks already. Where did the time go. Half of the time I still feel like I came out of the MTC yesterday.

Well this week was jam packed with a lot of crazy, exciting, inspirational, incredible experiences. I don't know if I can tell about it all.

Monday

Today was a pretty relaxing pday. We did the usual. We cleaned up the bedroom and then and met some of the young men at the church for some basketball. Oh joy basketball. Well I needed to catch up a ton in my journal so I pretty much just sat on the sidelines and wrote in my journal. I didn't mind. We then went back and got ready to go to the Ellingson's for dinner. We had a lot of fun over there. They kids are so much fun to be around and the Ellingson's are such great people. We then went and met with Charlie and Lee. We taught them the first part of Lesson 1 that we hadn't before. It was really great. They are really starting to understand. We invited them to take a church tour. They aren't interested in going to church, but wouldn't mind a church tour. They are incredible.

Tuesday

Today was kind of a disappointing day. We left and went to talk with James. We ended up having to drop him. He wasn't willing to act on the things that we invited him to do. He still wouldn't take a Book of Mormon. We then went and did mormon.org time. I still love that hour each week. We then went and tried by a lot of potentials and formers. We had dinner with the Ellis' in their house. They are official moved in now. They still have somethings to unpack from boxes, but they can live there now. I still love going over there. We then went on exchanges with Rocky. I was with Elder Talauega. He is from Samoa. We went and tried by some more formers and then just went back. It was the first time that I was ever really on my own to plan out the day. It was rough, but I was able to plan out a pretty good day.

Wednesday

Well I thought I had planned out a good day. We had our studies and then went to the Stonehockers. We then went back for lunch. We were supposed to meet with former after that, but she had to cancel. We went to see Bro Votary instead. We shared a Bible video with him. "I am the Bread of Life." It is really an incredible video to watch. All of them are. We spent the rest of the day trying formers and potentials. We had a lesson with the Blanchards. The point of the member lesson that we share is to get them into PMG to the point that they could teach us the lessons. They have really taken to it and are ready to teach us on the next appointment. We then had Dinner and then went and met with Darren. He is super cool and we were able to start teaching him. He had a lot of concerns from his church and what's to know what we believe. We were able to have a new investigator. We then drove up to Red Deer to switch back. We had to wait for a little while, but we switched back and then drove to the ZL's apartment to stay the night, since we were going to ride with them up to Edmonton tomorrow.

Thursday

I honestly don't know if I can accurately tell everything that went on today. Well today was mission tour. Elder W. Craig Zwick came to our mission to talk to us. The whole mission, except for the elders in Yellowknife, came. We were able to hear from him, his wife and President and Sister Manion. I took so many notes. When Elder Zwick first got there he wanted to shake everyone's hand and be able to meet each one of us individually. That was cool. He then talked to us for a little while. He talked about how we should "simplify and intensify" our teaching. He wanted some of us to come and teach the rest of the mission. That would be scary. The Assistants were to choose one companionship from each of the 8 zones to come and teach. The companionship would come up. One would announce what principle anywhere in PMG they were going to teach. The other would then share a recent experience that they had with it. The other would then share a scripture and testify. It was supposed to be about 3 minutes long. Well as soon as he told us what was going on, everyone started to panic a little bit. You didn't know if you were going to be called on or not. I had a feeling that we would. So the assistants picked one companionship from each zone. He started with some from the Edmonton zones. Then it started to go to the outlying. I was right. We were picked. Lucky us. I was truly pretty terrified. We went up and did really well. I was shaking, but tried to stay calm. After each companionship taught, he would ask what went well. He got up after us and asked the mission, "What could they have done better?". No one raised there hand. "Exactly. What did they do well". A lot of people had comments. It was incredible. It really made me realize that I know what I'm doing and am doing it well. The meeting kept going and we were really able to hear a lot of inspiring messages. We had lunch which was really fun. I got to see everyone from the MTC again. We are still super close. Each of our zones was also able to have a picture with Elder and Sister Zwick and President and Sister Manion. It was cool. We then went back and were able to hear from Sister Zwick and more from Elder Zwick. It seemed like revelation was just pouring out of his mouth. Originally the meeting was going to be finished at about 4:00. It lasted until almost 5:00. I just wanted to stay and hear more. It was so incredible. We then went and talked with some more people. We were almost some of the last to leave the building. We were lucky to still see people from our zone there. We rode with some of them and ran to subway to grab a quick sandwich before we had to be at the temple. Yes we got to go to the temple. It was incredible. The new temple video was amazing. I just loved being in there. We don't get to go very often as missionaries and I really loved the chance that we were able to go this trip. The temple workers had to tell us to leave so they could close. We got out at about 10:00. That is the latest we have ever stayed out. It's about and hour after curfew. We then struggled, but finally caught a ride to the Assistants' for the night. I was in spiritual overload that night.

Friday

Well today we had to drive back to Innisfail and return home from our Missionary Vacation. We got back to our apartment a little after 10:00 am. It was hard to try and refocus and get back to the work. The only thing that really happened that night was we went to see Jeff. We went and read the Book of Mormon to him. He is able to understand it a little better that way, but we just can't keep going as often.

Saturday

Well I can't really say that much happened today either. We were able to have a good visit with Mary w/ the Ellis'. They hadn't talked in a while and we were able to show them all some of the bible videos. We were able to have a pretty good discussion after each one. We went down to Bowden later that night. We went down and within 30 minutes we had blown through all of our ideas and still had an hour and half left. We did a lot of tracting that night.

Sunday

Today was amazing. Shauna came to church. She is solid. She told us she won't make a commitment if she doesn't think that she can follow through. She came and is willing to come again. We just have a hard time meeting her. We are really hopeful. We had lunch with her at the Ellis' after Church and were able to talk to her about somethings that she learned. She really enjoyed it. It was amazing. We were finally able to get someone to church!!!

Oh this last week was pretty crazy. A lot happened. I'm still trying to let everything sink back in. We had a pretty great week.

I hope all is going well. I love to hear about what's going on.

"If it isn't worth it, it won't be hard. Because it's hard, it is worth it."
Elder O'Neill