Week 4: Picture This!

Sis. Willis along with 21 other missionaries arrive from the Provo MTC to the Canada Calgary Mission.

You're a totally normal citizen of Calgary, CA, waiting at a bus stop or train station when all of a sudden, a red-faced, sweaty-haired gremlin swamp monster comes up to you and asks if you're interested in watching a one-minute video about church & community. You guessed it! The red-faced, sweaty-haired gremlin swamp monster is me! After biking a couple of miles in 25-degree weather (which is 80ish? Fahrenheit degrees)! I made myself memorize the Standard of Truth and D&C 4 while doing planks and wall sits so I was already sore and tired by the time we had to bike around and I only got like 7/8 of the way to crying while we went uphill. It's fine. I'll be swole soon enough.

Sis. Willis with Pres. and Sis. Keung

I feel I am WELL on my way to being a Real Missionary! I am unlocking MANY achievements as I have now: street contacted in downtown Calgary, taught a lesson, been to a baptism with someone we're teaching, pulled weeds out of a lady's garden, tracted, been backed away from on the street, gone to zone council, eaten at a member's house, been asked to speak next Sunday, and ridden a bike in a skirt when it was 14° (like 50° Fahrenheit) and raining! It's nicer now but last week it was COLD! In July! I used to think I liked the cold but now I'm not sure that I'm spiritually, emotionally, physically or intellectually prepared for winter. In September.

Sis. Willis and Sis. Bangura

My trainer's name is Sister Bangura! She's from England but her parents are originally from Sierra Leone which means she has the second-best accent in the world behind President & Sister Keung, who are Maori and say awesome stuff like "Heavenly Fahthah" and "The Savya" and "The Book of Moh-min". I could listen to them talk ALL DAY. They also taught us Whakaria Mai, which is How Great Thou Art in Maori and when we sing it I feel like I'm in Moana. AND we're learning this traditional Maori dance to perform as part of a cultural exchange we're doing with one of the First Nations tribes as we help clean up the reservation. Do I have the best mission in the entire world? I believe so.

I'm currently serving in the Brentwood YSA ward in the Northwest of Calgary, but because it's YSA our area stretches all the way west to Banff. We get to go to Banff once a year and Waterton, in the south, once a year, and so you'd better believe I'll be sending some pics.

Sometimes being a missionary means getting injured for the sake of the Work. For example, my right foot is all messed up because on Monday morning I dropped a shampoo bottle on my toe in the shower and it was bleeding all over for a good 15 minutes and THEN I pulled something in the top of my foot playing cäpture the fläg in church clothes for Family Home Evening. What can I say? I was performing valiant service. 

In Canada, they really do say cäpture the fläg, where you take the jerseys out of the bäg and have to go to jail if you get tägged. They also say "graj" for garage and they don't have Reese's, they have Reese. It's almost like a foreign country or something. You also get money for plastic bottles so you bet we're going to the bottle depot today.

Pres. Keung, Sis. Bangura, Sis. Willis, Sis. Keung

The original title of this email was Planes, Trains & Automobiles because this week I've taken the UVX, Frontrunner, TRAX, a plane, the mission president's car, the mission van, our mission car, the Calgary transit, and a bike! We are for SURE going places. AND your very own Sister Willis is the Designated Driver because her companion doesn't have a driver's license. This is Very Stressful because we drive on average around 50 kilometers a day and I am just now starting to get a feel for the area. And sometimes U-turns are illegal even when there's no no-U-turn sign?! It's madness.

All of our lessons but one fell through this week, which meant that we got to go finding instead! Finding is a great exercise in my companion telling me that I get to talk to the next person and me working up all my courage and then not doing it. It's SO much scarier than I thought it would be. And there are lots of Muslims in Calgary who are SUPER willing to talk about Jesus Christ, as long as you just want to talk about how He was a great prophet who paved the way for Muhammed. Unfortunately that is NOT our message and so it sometimes gets a little dicey. What can you do.

Contacting downtown the first day was hard because I used to be a totally normal and nice person who people would talk to on the street and once you add one (1) name badge people back away slowly and tell you to move on and wave you away from them. However, we also did some stop-bys and when this cute lady saw us and our badges she was SO excited and grateful that we'd come to see her grandson and we stayed and talked with them for like 40 minutes. There is definitely a message there but I haven't had enough shower time to figure it out yet, so stay tuned.

Action shot!

I tracted for the first time on Sunday and NOBODY wanted to talk to us during family dinner (surprise surprise) and so it was mostly just me walking door to door, trying not to cry and whispering "find them that will receive you" over and over again, but I quickly realized that this was NOT about me because nobody here KNOWS me. It was in that moment that I learned that I would NOT have what it took to be an early Christian because they were all super psyched to be persecuted for Christ's sake and there I was, casually hoping that people would just ... not see the badge. Luckily it was a learning experience and I repented and remembered this scripture in 2 Timothy that says "Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." So there we go! We're right back on track and we tracted yesterday and I even talked to some people. That's called character development.

Last night was p-day eve which meant I got to clean the bathroom and I wondered why it smelled like pee but it turned out I had been spraying AMMONIA GLASS CLEANER on everything. Luckily I Febrezed it over so now it just smells like "Hawaiian Breeze" (ou Brise Exotique 😉) instead. We're gonna say it's fine.

I'm trying to even remember what happened in the MTC. I know your girl (& her wonderful MTC comp!) taught relief society on her last Sunday and we had the most beautiful and moving topic of all time: dispensations, apostasy, and restoration. It ended up being okay because we stole the idea where you stack the gospel principle cups to represent the Church and then pull out the foundation to illustrate how the Great Apostasy happened. We found a bunch of things that were lost & restored and scriptures to go with them and after the tower fell we gave everyone a cup and our discussion took all of class! And no leaders yelled at us! Hooray! 

Last MTC photo. An Elder Willis and a Sister Willis!
(and two other missionaries to make the picture legal!)

I was going over my journal entries from my last three days in the MTC to find something fun and funky to tell you all about, but literally every other paragraph has "and I cried" in it (which honestly? should not surprise anyone I've EVER met). To be fair, they did sing Savior, Redeemer of My Soul at departure devotional, so I feel that one was warranted.

I love you all! Sorry for sending the longest email of all time!

Sister Willis

Week 3: God is our Loving Heavenly Father and He lives on a planet near a star called Kolob

This is how Sister Strauss told us that we should NOT begin our lessons. She said we need to SIMPLIFY when we teach the Plan of Salvation and that it's important not to teach people everything you know, so I jokingly asked her if you could teach people about Kolob and she said that no, NEVER, you should NEVER bring up Kolob. I asked if we could have people start by reading Abraham 3 and she said absolutely not. I asked if we could just casually introduce it in the first lesson. She was very exasperated. She said no. But THEN I asked her what we should do if we bring people to church and the opening hymn is If You Could Hie to Kolob. And she told us that in that very specific scenario, we can tell the people we're teaching that Kolob is the name of a place in heaven. Good enough for me.

A nice class time nap

There were French toast sticks in the cafeteria this morning and I have wanted French toast sticks all week, so this counts as convincing evidence that God answers prayers.

This week, Sister Stolrow and I taught Chloe and Emma for the last time. We taught them both about the Plan of Salvation and I think it really clicked for them. They said they weren't confused and felt like we understood their needs and felt peace and comfort and touched and "positive new thoughts" so that's pretty good! It's going to be weird to get in the field and talk to real investigators. I'm so grateful my trainer will know what she's doing. 

It was Sister Leavitt's parents' birthdays!
They sent us lots of treats.

On Tuesday night after devotional, the piano was playing Hark All Ye Nations and all the missionaries sang the words very quietly. It was very cool. 

I was reading 1 Nephi 11 this week and I was reminded of how much I love it. Nephi wants to know the interpretation of his father's dream and the angels shows him a vision of the birth of Christ, and then the angel asks him if he understands the meaning of the tree of life, and it is then that Nephi realizes that the tree represents the love of God. It just reminded me that the greatest testament of God's love is that He sent His Son to us. I love the Book of Mormon!

This week, I learned that it's what in your heart that matters. I think that's very true.

Love to you all,
Sister Willis

 District kickball

Week 2: In Which I Hear the Voice of God

It said "Sister Willis, I love you and you're doing great. It's gonna be okay." It was actually Sister Hampton talking into her water bottle from the top bunk, but that is a minor and barely relevant detail. Sometimes God talks to us through other people.

The people who say time starts to fly after the first Sunday aren't lying. Wednesday through Sunday of last week felt like the longest days of my life. I told my branch president on the second night that I really thought I was going to be confined to live out the rest of my days in the Provo MTC, but yesterday I got an email from missionary travel saying that my time in the MTC is coming to an end and giving me my flight plans! I leave on July 17 with 20 other missionaries to the Calgary airport. 

We've started playing sports with our district during exercise time and it's been so much fun! We played kickball and basketball and volleyball and I actually wasn't all the way the worst! It turns out that your chances of succeeding in volleyball increase infinitely if you actually try to hit the ball. Who knew! As Michael Scott once said, "'"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -- Wayne Gretzky.' -- Michael Scott." 

On Sunday night we went to choir and watched the devotional by Kelly Mills, who is the director of MTCs. He talked about how the world tries to change people from the outside in but the Lord changes people from the inside out. Then we watched The Character of Christ, which is an old MTC devotional that Elder Bednar gave, which was SO GOOD! He told us that we need to get over ourselves and realize that our mission is not about us! And then he quoted Neal A. Maxwell, who said "The Atonement would not have happened if not for the character of Christ." He said that the character of Christ is that He always turned outward when the natural man turns inward and that the only way that we will ever find ourselves is by losing ourselves. It was SO GOOD and also the only time I've ever heard an apostle imitate the cookie monster: "I want cookie! I want cookie NOW!" It was a good night.

On the Fourth of July we "got" to go to a religious freedom devotional at 9:15 where they showed clips of Elder Rasband talking about how important it is to protect and defend religious freedom. While we watched the clips, they turned off the lights and so we watched the fireworks going off all around Provo out the window. The efy kids wrote "MTC" on the field in lights, which was very cute. Then we got to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks out the window. We had special permission to go to bed late to watch the fireworks, which was kind of nice, but we still had to get up at 6:30 the next morning, so we're never ever going to make up those hours that we lost. It was a very patriotic night.

Yesterday we took turns teaching our teacher with the rest of the class watching in an observation room, and during our turn she told us that it would be good if we used a scripture to talk about how the Holy Ghost talks to us, so I started looking for the one in 1 Kings, and she was like, "No, from the Book of Mormon." She told us that maybe we could use Enos, which turned out fine expect for the part where the end of the verse talks about God smiting thy brethren for their iniquities, (super good for the first lesson about prayer!), but when we finished our section of the lesson we went back with our district, and everyone was like "we're really surprised that Sister Willis didn't just know a scripture off the top of her head!" So, I have clearly set expectations far too high. 

We watched the "Because of Him" Easter video in one of our classes, which I LOVE and watched dozens of times in the spring, and everyone teased me for smiling so big. What can you do? It's a good one. Highly recommended.

Love you all lots! Read your scriptures & say your prayers

Sister Willis