October 20, 2014

Oh man, sooo much has happened. I'm so excited I have some time today to send some recent stories of what has happened lately! I think I'm fully adjusted. I don't get home sick at all, I mean I totally miss all of you guys but I don't get depressed when I think of you because I want to be with you, so that's good, right? Except I had MOS a little, I heard that a lot of you were in P-town recently. That's so awesome! I bet it was a blast! Toronto is already getting super cold, so I'm going to die this winter. The other morning it was 0 degrees Celsius and super windy. I thought it was like 0 degrees Fahrenheit so I might die.   

INSPIRED QUESTIONS GONE WRONG: A big focus as missionaries is asking inspired questions. The spirit has to be at all of the lessons and we have to be in tune  and listen to the spirit so we can really address our investigators needs with gospel principles. This has totally been a struggle for me but I have some funny stories out of it so I guess it's not all bad. 

1. We were with Mark, who is one of our new investigators. He has no religious background so towards the end of the lesson we were teaching him the importance of prayer and how to pray. I asked him what things he was grateful for that day so he could think of what to thank Heavenly Father in his prayer. Then I asked him, "If you could ask any question to Heavenly Father, what would it be?" I thought that was inspired. He was supposed to say something like, "Oh, I'd ask him if this Book of Mormon that you're telling me about is true. Or if Joseph Smith really was a prophet from God." Anyways he was like, "yeah, I think I'd ask to see those gold plates!" HAHAHA Woops. Don't ask for that in your prayer. 

2. We were teaching restoration with Tony. We use a pamphlet to teach, and on the cover is a picture of Jesus Christ holding a lamb. So I asked, "what do you notice about Jesus Christ in this picture?" I was expecting him to say something about how it looked like Jesus really loved the lamb. He was holding it so close like he was protecting it. BUT Tony said, "Man, it looks like Jesus really likes that little lamb. It's too bad he had to eat it for dinner!" HAHAHA WHAT!? I totally started laughing and could not stop. It was bad!! Because he thought it was funny to, so we were laughing for a while.

Anyways, an inspired question is apparently a question that you can't answer so I guess I need to keep working on that! :) 

CREEPERS OF THE WEEK: 

MAYBE HE WAS DRUNK: We were walking on the streets and I was passing out mormon.org cards to everyone. One man seemed interested in learning more but then he asked me how old I was and if I was single soooo we told him we had to go. As we were walking away he yelled out, "someday we will be married, so start looking forward to that!" EW. A man started rapping to me in a different language one time, that was nice.... Until he tried holding my hand. I wish I knew Spanish.  

BENJAMIN: We met him at a bus stop and he was saying he wanted to learn more so we set up an appointment with him. His daughter was home so we went in and taught him. He was not focusing and kept asking us questions about our personal lives. He made a couple super weird comments so we decided to cut the lesson short and leave. I was feeling awkward and wasn't thinking and said, "well if there is anything we can do for you, let us know." And he was like, "Yeah, can you move in with me." GROSS!!! We passed him to the Elders in our ward but after Benjamin found out he didn't want to see missionaries anymore. 

JASON: He was very nice and interested in learning more so we gave him a mormon.org card with our number on the back and set up an appointment for Sunday. I thought he was normal but then the texts started rolling in. 

"Hi Daytona it's me, Jason, I'm wondering if I can share a song with you next Sunday?"

"Could I show you a tap dancing song that we can sing to?"

"Daytona can I tell you what the song is called?"

"It's called fur Daytona I will show you Sunday also Daytona may I teach you the dancesteps for the song!?" 

We saw the 4 texts and told him we didn't listen to music or dance because we are fully focused on our message about Jesus Christ. 

"Daytona are we still meeting on Sunday?" 

"Daytona I'm looking forward to seeing you again."

"Daytona it will be nice to see you again."

"May I phone you Daytona" 

"Can I phone you later tonight or you going to call me this week?"

"Are you single Daytona?"

Apparently he thought the phone was mine? And apparently he thought my last name was Daytona? And apparently we need to pass him off to the Elders...

As if this wasn't bad enough we also have

HAROLD: I guess I talked to him on the bus and gave him a mormon.org card. His texts.

"Hi"

"How are you?"

"We met on the bus, I was the one wearing orange :) You asked me if I was a construction worker."

We scheduled an appointment with him...

"Are you single?"

So we clarified that we share a message about Jesus Christ and we could teach him at the church if he wanted to learn more about that! 

"Yes, if you are going to be the one teaching me about God."

"Ur my angel."

So yeah, the Elders get 2 referrals from us this week! 

SUNDAYS: The ward out here is awesome! I get to participate in so many things every week so that's been fun. Last week we taught primary which was a blast! And almost every week I get to play the piano, or lead, or pray, or something! :) I've been called up to bear my testimony two times (sometimes the speakers don't show up!) and I gave a talk last Sundays. I didn't get nervous at all soooo that's new, and very nice! But I talked about the "Gospel of Jesus Christ." And focused a lot on faith. I had a couple investigators that were planning on coming to church and I felt like that could help them. The talk went really well and I got so many comments about how good I did. Everyone was so nice! Vikas asked me if I am a professional speaker back home!? HAHAHA Definitely not. But I did a shout out to Mom in my talk!! I told them about how she had 5 kids when her husband died and how she found out she was pregnant with me. Mom-again, I'm super sorry!! Bad timing! haha. But anyways, she had a crazy hard situation. And it would have been easy for her to question God and His love for her. But she trusted the Lord and acted on her faith. She continued to raise her kids in the gospel. Mom - you're a rockstar! 

FIRE: Q-What's the worst way to wake up at 1:30 AM!? A-Having the super loud fire alarm above your bed go off! So this happened a couple nights ago and it was the worst. Of course I woke up as soon as it went off but then we just sat on the bed. I stood up and looked out the window and saw lots of fire trucks. Well that freaked me out so we decided we should probably go outside. We only saw one lady in the hallway who was running with an empty card behind her! HAHA I didn't think it was funny then but now looking back... What was she doing!? Anyways we're on the 15th floor and since we couldn't use the elevator we ran down lots of stairs! We made it outside and started talking to people. One lady said that this drunk man on the 7th floor was throwing his glass bottles from his balcony. Like that's bad, but why would the fire alarm be going off because of that!?  Anyways 45 mins later we realized there was some sort of dangerous leak in the basement so we could go back inside and back to bed. But for a while things were pretty crazy!!

COUSINS ARE EVERYWHERE: So the other day I was on the bus and two Elders who I haven't seen before come on. That's always funny. Anyways I started talking to one of them and the other missionary came up and was like, "Hey, we're cousins!!" This missionary is cousins with Mitch Henderson so we are somehow related! I met his mom and Mitchs' homecoming and she e-mailed the Elder to let him know I was coming out and to keep an eye out for me. So that's cool right? The next day we were at church and Elder Sessions was saying something about how he was related to John Taylor. HOLD UP. W-WHAT? We pulled out our pedigree charts. (I love how we both had them! Missionary nerds!) But we realized that we are like 3rd cousins. Cool. I can't wait to meet more cousins! :)

BAPTISMAL INVITE: We were teaching Benjamin (not the creeper) the Restoration, and at the end I invited him to be baptized. And he was like, "I've already been baptized." Arg. We're thinking he didn't understand how the priesthood authority was lost and then restored again. This happens all the time. So we retaught him. Again he said, "No. You don't get it. I was baptized like 3 years ago." So explain it, maybe more simply this time. And finally he was like, "No, I was baptized into your church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!!" Ohhhhh. I was laughing so hard!!! Isn't that hilarious!? Then I was like, "so why haven't we seen you at church!?" His records are still in Jamaica so he wasn't on our ward list. 

JILL: Everything was going really well until we taught her tithing... She is super tight financially. She said she spent $10 on groceries for the week. I didn't know that was possible. Anyways she's been praying about it and continues to read and pray. If she gets her answer this week she will be baptized this Sunday. We try to focus on the blessings that come from paying tithing.

STANDARDS: We were able to hit standards of excellence again! YAHOO! Only about 15% of the missionaries here hit it this week so we were excited. We're lucky to be in this area because there are people EVERYWHERE!! 

SCRIPTURES: I finished D&C so I've been reading the old testament (I've never read it all the way through :/) and it's way hard to understand so I've been reading it with the student manual which is awesome. So the bible is a little crazy!? Like Lot's wife and daughters? Anyways I'm learning a lot and I'm glad because when black people ask me questions about the bible it scares me. 

Oh man, this is a novel. Sorry! Well you are all the best!

LOVE YOU!! 

 There is this place called Tim Hortons and it's on EVERY CORNER HERE. It's a coffee shop and has donuts that are delicious. There is one across the street.... BAD NEWS! 

My apartment is bomb! OK it's actually pretty ghetto, but isn't the view so cool!? The first day I opened the door to go stand on the balcony and it was NASTY!!!! Like 20 birds live out there. I cleaned it up on one of the first P-days so I like going out there now :)

 

Balcony view in the evening. 

 This one time it rained so hard for 30 mins and we were walking outside that whole time.