Week 17: It FumiGAtion!

Companions with cute note to fumigator.

This title only makes sense if you've heard "Motivation" by James the Mormon, which is awful and I would not recommend listening to, but all of the missionaries have it so it's been stuck in my head! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9RWmZ_lGlo Anyway, this week we finally got our apartment fumigated to kill the bed bugs, but we didn't realize until the exterminators weren't there at 12:20 that our 12-4 fumigation window meant that the fumigators could show up any time between 12 and 4 and NOT that they were going to be fumigating for four hours! Well, that was NOT going to fly because we had a meeting at 12:45 and church from 1:30-3:30, so we tried to call, but nobody was in the office because it was Sunday, so we just ... stuck a note on the door by the buzzer telling the fumigation people that we were in a building nearby (the church! I'm sure the other tenants were THRILLED to see this notice) and that he could give us a call at our number when he got there and headed back for correlation meeting and church. Which was the primary program! I love the primary program! At the beginning, the member of the bishopric conducting the meeting asked us to stand up so the ward could see us and told us that he'd have us get up and bear our testimonies at a later date, but we didn't hear quite right so we all started to get up to bear our testimonies! He had to repeat that he meant we could share on another day. It was a little uncomfy, but the primary program was so good! I firmly believe that primary Sunday is Jesus' favorite Sunday. I cannot think of a sacrament meeting filled with more pure light. But even though the primary children did a great job, they did not take up the full hour, so at the end of the meeting the bishop called us up again to bear our testimonies! For real this time! Which was good. A little stressful. But good.

Baptism!

The highlight of our week was April's baptism on Saturday! April is a cute 10-year-old girl from a part-member family and she was able to be taught the lessons and be baptized! Her older brother gave a talk and her less-active siblings said the prayers and were able to be witnesses, which was awesome! We love our prophet and we love continuing revelation! Sister Willis also got to play the piano, which was less stellar, but still passable, I think. We were SO hungry afterwards and we found a Canadian IHOP! Which was a great time until I ate WAY too many pancakes! But it was worth it!

Before church on Sunday, we had a ward conference leadership training (at 7! a! m!), and it was so good! They invited the young men and young women quorum and class presidencies, which was awesome, and the whole thing was about how understanding Christ's sacrifice and His love for us makes us want to love and share with others. Which is so good and so true! Missionary work is ministering!

IHOP run! 

This week, we taught a lesson to a cute family with less-active parents and three little kids and it was SO much fun! When I first came on my mission, people told me that YSA was the best place to be, but I LOVE the family ward and I love! teaching! children! They were so excited about missionaries and learning and the Book of Mormon and talking about Jesus! I love it! It was so much fun and they are so pure and genuine! So so good!

We went to visit a man named Bruce in the hospital so that they could give him a priesthood blessing of healing. Bruce is not a member of the Church, but he has two sisters in Salt Lake who are and so he's familiar with the Church and the missionaries. He likes to feel the Spirit, and so after the elders gave him a blessing, he asked ALL THREE of the sisters to say prayers! It was sweet, but a little ... funny! And awkward! Haha. All over good.

We went to dinner with a cute family with two little girls and their mom had built them a house out of a cardboard box and after dinner they practiced knocking on the door and saying that they were missionaries asking if whoever was inside wanted to learn about Jesus. It was a great time.

Raking and bagging leaves.

The funniest moment this week was when a new member in one of our wards invited us over to dinner with one of the missionaries who taught her, but we already had dinner plans that night, so we texted the family who were supposed to feed us and asked if we could postpone, and they said no other night would work for them, so we just ... had two dinners scheduled! One after the other! My companion Sister Fetters taught me that the key to double dinners is to not let either family know that you have a double dinner, so at our first appointment we ate just enough to look like we'd eaten a whole dinner, but not so much that we were full, and then headed to our second appointment, where they didn't even feed us dinner! It was so bizarre! They just wanted to read scriptures from Come, Follow Me and chat with us! I guess it worked out kind of well, but we were starving because we didn't eat enough at our first dinner! I just ... wonder why they signed up on the dinner calendar if they weren't gonna feed us? But all's well that ends well, I guess!

Movie review! They skipped Nephi's ENTIRE vision, which is incredibly upsetting, because 1 Nephi 11 is in Sister Willis' Top Six Favorite Chapters of the Book of Mormon! We were also excited for a big leadup to Nephi's wedding, with lots of eyes and a cute proposal, but they just jumped straight to the wedding feast! Lame! At least we got one kiss out of it. And it was all very moving and uplifting with the bow situation and the Liahona and the like. You should watch it if you haven't yet!

In ward conference, the stake president read Jacob 1:7, which says "Wherefore we labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God, that they might enter into his rest, lest by any means he should swear in his wrath they should not enter in, as in the provocation in the days of temptation while the children of Israel were in the wilderness." Jacob talks about how his knowledge of the gospel and of the reality of things to come caused him to desire the welfare his people and to labor among them to teach them! I love that! I love that being converted to Jesus Christ makes us want to share the gospel with others, and I love that I get to do it all the time!

And I love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Willis

Week 16: Happy Thanksgiving!

District Council

I spent Canadian thanksgiving eating breakfast with my mission president in his pajamas, washing everything I own at a downtown laundromat, and hanging out with my bishop and his family for two and a half hours! I think it's safe to say that this has been the most bizarre week of my entire life to this point! And I hope it stays that way!

On Thursday, we had transfers, so Sister Bangura and I were running around getting all our last-minute errands and stop-bys done, then drove to the chapel to pick up our new companions! Mine are named Sister Fetters (who is from Alpine, Utah and has one transfer left) and Sister Murray (who is from Barrie, Ontario and is waiting for her visa to the Salt Lake City Temple Square mission. She came out with me). We found out this week that we all have a common ancestor in England, so I'm sure there will be more to come on that!

All of our problems really started on Friday morning, when Sister Fetters found a BEDBUG scurrying across her sheets! We quickly checked all our sheets and found another one on Sister Murray's bed! We spent all morning playing phone tag with the mission office, our landlord, and our building manager and eventually called the mission president's wife to ask her what we should do with our clothes in our apartment and she told us to just come stay at the mission home. We've been here since Friday night and our mission president and his wife are out of town now, so we've just been hanging out here alone! I feel like a kid at their grandparents' house, only with a LOT more pictures of Jesus. But it's been good! And hopefully they send someone to kill the bugs soon!

This week has been CRAZY, so I've decided to just send a list of some lessons I've learned!

1. Canada has some chip flavors that the US doesn't have. People talk a lot about ketchup chips and alldressed chips. Alldressed chips are good; ketchup chips are bad.

2. Most Canadians have more than one thanksgiving dinner! They spend the whole weekend celebrating the holiday! I've eaten so many pumpkin pies!

Playground handprints!

3. Playground construction is...Not as organized as I would have imagined. We helped build a playground in one of the neighborhoods we serve in with the other missionaries in our district, and the construction workers were just kinda... grabbing whatever looked right and bolting it in. And people have to push up each section of the playground after they put the roofs on! We also had to smooth out the concrete that keeps the equipment in the ground by hand with trowels, and it was a workout! But we put our handprints in it, which was cute. I never thought I would have learned playground construction on my mission, but God's plan is better than our plan! A fun fact is that orginially, this email was going to be called "Kaboom!" after the Parks & Recreation episode where they build a playground in one day, but too much other stuff happened for that even to be the highlight of my week.

4. If you forget to pack your proselyting shoes to change into after service, you might end up wearing dirty white superstars to your appointments!

5. Costa Vida is better than I gave it credit for. I have eaten TWO sweet pork salads in the last week. It felt healthier than it was.

6. Two people is harder to keep track of than one, but you bond SUPER quickly when you find bedbugs and are basically living out of a car!

7. If you wash all of your laundry together, your whites might come out... a little blue :/

8. Diet Coke is God's gift to man. I was super sick on Tuesday and after a nap and some Diet Coke, I was cured! Healing elixir!

9. Marmite. Is disgusting. My mission president told us you're not eating it right if you don't spread enough that you can see your teeth marks in it. This is false. I would highly recommend avoiding it all together.

10. Family ward is LOUD. I forgot how loud it was. I have not been in a family ward since June 23, 2019, and I was like, why are all these kids screaming during the sacrament? How am I supposed to ponder! But I'm sure I'll adjust.

11. Apparently bedbugs come out at night because they're attracted to the carbon dioxide we breathe out! I hate it!

A not quite Bob Ross paint night.

12. It's hard to paint like Bob Ross with dollar store brushes and acrylics (and very limited training or practice). We were invited to a youth activity last week where we followed a Bob Ross painting, and I was STRUGGLING (along with everyone else), but I was thinking about how Bob Ross is all about trying your best and finding joy and seeing the beauty in things that don't go as planned and how he'd probably love all our terrible acrylic paintings that we tried so hard on. And I'm a missionary so everything has to be a spiritual thought, so I was thinking about how most of our lives are clumsy attempts at following Christ and we're constantly messing up and falling short,     but I think He probably loves our earnest attempts and our best efforts, no matter how short we may fall of perfection! It makes me think of "Silent Night, Love's Pure Light" by Sister Eubank from last December's Christmas devotional! Which is a great talk!! Love her!

The other highlight of my week was that I got to go to the temple! The Calgary temple is BEAUTIFUL and as soon as I walked in it felt like home! I love the temple!

The Lehi's Dream Book of Mormon video had some... interesting cinematography elements that I'll let you pick apart on your own, but the question that stood out in my mind while I watched the video and read 1 Nephi 8 this week was this: what does it look like to partake of the fruit of the tree of life? What does it mean to be partaking of the love of God? What were Nephi & Sam doing that Laman & Lemuel were not? I'm still working on answering my own question, but if you have answers, you know where to find me!

1 Nephi 9:5-6 says "Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me ... for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not. But the Lord knoweth all things." (okay, I kind of edited to my liking, but I think I left the message in tact!) I love that Nephi didn't understand why the Lord was asking him to do certain things, but he knew enough about the character of God to know that the Lord has a greater and more perfect understanding than he did and he trusted that knowledge! I think that trusting that the Lord knows best and keeps His promises to us if we are faithful is one of the most consistent differences between Nephi and Sam and Laman and Lemuel. Be a Nephi!

President Uchtdorf has told us that we can be grateful in any circumstances! This thanksgiving weekend, I am so grateful for an awesome mission president (and his awesome wife), inspiring companions, and tender mercies (like finding parking spots we can pull through so we don't have to missionary back in every parking lot!) I'm grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and for the knowledge of a Savior! And I am so so grateful for the privilege of serving Him all the way up here in Calgary! I know that true joy and peace come only from knowing God and His plan! If you know someone who needs that message ... ask the missionaries! They can help you!

And I am grateful for all of you! Happy Thanksgiving!

Love 🌽🦃🍂🥔🥧

Sister Willis

Week 15: Bye Bye Brentwood!

Downtown Calgary

Your girl is getting TRANSFERRED! To a family ward! In the southeast! In a trio! Crazy! They took both my companion and I out of the area, so we spent the last couple of days packing and cleaning and saying goodbye to people and writing notes for the new sisters who will be in our area. Fun fun fun!

This week has been crazy and busy, which is just how we like it! We went contacting downtown last week and this lady yelled "I like your braids!" at Sister Bangura, and then she said "Come over here, ya Mormons!" She told us that her dad baptized her when she was eight and when we asked why she wasn't a member of our church anymore, she said "because I'm not a Mormon! I drink coffee!" Her friend asked us if we were giving anything away and we said not really and he asked if we had any money and we said no and was like "what's in that bag you're reaching into then" and the lady was like "hopefully not a gun!" It was lots of fun. I told them all I had was copies of the Book of Mormon and the lady said "you'd better get to working then! Get on! Leave! Hopefully Joseph Smith says some prayers for you!" She proceeded to use some choice words to describe what Joseph Smith was. We were like, you're the one who called us over here! Good good times! We love it!

We met another guy downtown who liked us a lot when we were talking about Christ and then called us the children of sin when we talked about the Book of Mormon. He told us he burns the Book of Mormon every night! We tried to bear our testimonies and get outta there, but he was NOT having it and would quote truly random Bible verses at us and act like they proved a point? It was all something like

Sister Willis: anyway, I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that it testifies of Christ, and that if you pray-

Our friend downtown: "thou shalt have no other gods before me"

Sister Willis: ???????

We met a kid named Scott at the bus stop, and we taught him the first lesson on Friday! He had lots and lots of questions about the Biblical and archaeological validity of our argument and I tried to have lots of answers? He'd ask a question about where it said something or other in the Bible and I'd flip through the New Testament and he'd say "oh no, you're scaring me with that!" But he watched general conference! And he's meeting with the sisters next week!

And with that, it's time for the general conference highlight reel! Elder Holland started conference with a meme; Elder Vinson told us to be fairdinkum for Christ; Elder Bednar compared Satan to a cheetah; they announced that President Nelson was speaking in the middle of the Saturday afternoon session and I almost barfed; they got rid of young men presidencies, young women classes, and the young women theme (which now talks about Heavenly Parents!); President Nelson adopted us all as his grandkids, laid down the law about women and priesthood power, and announced temples in women's session; TWO women spoke in the general sessions; and President Nelson told us to #getprepped for a PARTY at April general conference. Not gonna lie, I a little bit thought that he was gonna tell us to pack our bags and go to Missouri, but I'm just Dramatic and I always think that. Oh well. 

Carving pumpkins with the zone!

I loved Sister Craig's talk about receiving personal revelation and how much the prophets and apostles talked about reaching out to others on the path of discipleship! Love your God and love your neighbor!

Movie review! We LOVE the female representation in the Book of Mormon videos and we LOVE that Sariah and Ishmael's wife are valuable and contributing members who recieve revelation for their families! We also love the part where Laman is seething while Nephi is preaching and then turns around and DECKS him. Iconic! 

This week's scripture comes from a BYU devotional I was listening to this week! Exodus 23:9 says "Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." All of us know what it feels like to be a stranger, and the Lord invites us to use those experiences to empathize with those who feel now that they don't belong! Remember when you were a stranger, and reach out to those around you!

I love you all! Have a great week and stay warm!!

Sister Willis

Week 14: It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

Frozen hair!

Everywhere you go! It snowed all weekend long, which was super nice because it was still SEPTEMBER, and I don't have boots so I just... suffered on the way to church! I actually love the snow and I got away with drinking lots of hot chocolate, but when we tract I sometimes can't feel my toes. I felt something moving around in my shoe on Sunday and for a second I thought my tor fell off and was moving around in my shoe! It didn't, I'm just dramatic. I get through it by thinking of my pioneer forbears who had to trek barefoot across the frozen plains and who probably complained a lot less than I do in all of my many layers, haha. It hit freezing (0 degrees Celsius!) for the first time on Saturday morning and didn't get back up until Monday afternoon. I'm secretly convinced that people who use Celsius are wimpier about temperature than people who use Farenheit because "it's -2!" sounds SO much worse than "it's 28!" But I've not conducted a scientifically sound experiment or comprehensive analysis of the relationship between temperature units and perception of weather, so I could be totally off. And driving in the snow is awful! I've never slipped on ice before, but on Sunday night the car was seriously just going wherever it felt like. I was going very slow and praying very hard, and we made it home safely! The Pentatonix Christmas album probably helped. 

Sis. Willis & Sis. Willis at the fireside.

This weekend, we had a Come & See musical family history fireside! We were at the stake center rehearsing and performing from 3 to 8:30 on Friday evening, so it was ... long. But it was fun! If you missed it, you can go check it out on the Come & See Fireside Facebook page! Or get the link from my Facebook! My mission president's wife said I looked like I was having a great time 😉

On Saturday night we had a combined relief society high fitness activity that was like half an hour away from our apartment and it wasn't until we had driven there in the snow that we realized that (1) we should NOT have eaten dinner right before working out and (2) normal people work out to regular music and not MoTab (TabCATS?)! We decided it was probably safe because it was a relief society activity, so we did some burpees to Shawn Mendes and I totally drank water even though I was supposed to be fasting. And I FELT it the next day.

My big mission milestone is that I hit 3 months last week! Only 15 to go!

Movie review! The new Book of Mormon video came out on Friday and it's great! I like the tender kiss Lehi gives Sariah and the part when Nephi yells at his brothers in the cave! "You have SEEN an ANGEL! Wherefore canst thou doubt?" But without a doubt the HIGHLIGHT is when Nephi PINS Zoram to the ground. Overall I would give it a 10/10 and not an 11/10 because I was disappointed by the lack of blood spurts! But it's okay! I love love love the Book of Mormon and we don't really give out copies, and as that lady in that one BYU devotional said, "If you don't like it, change it!" So I packed up a bunch of copies and started trying to give them out. I gave one to a kid named Scott at the bus stop yesterday because he said he loves Jesus and is saved and knows we believe in angels and gold plates, but that's about it. We're meeting with him on Friday. Share what you love!

Joseph Smith said, "I feel, like Paul, to glory in tribulation; for to this day has the God of my fathers delivered me out of them all, and will deliver me from henceforth; for behold, and lo, I shall triumph over all my enemies, for the Lord God hath spoken it. Let all the saints rejoice, therefore, and be exceedingly glad; for Israel’s God is their God." (D&C 127:2-3) I love that even though he went through hard hard things, he had faith that if he put his trust in God, God would deliver him. And it's true! When we trust God, things work out in the end.

Your girl is PSYCHED for general conference! I am so so grateful for living prophets and apostles who love us and guide us! I'm sure it's gonna be full of good stuff! But, despite my best efforts, I haven't heard any conference rumors! So that's your job this week! Start a general conference rumor!

I love you! Don't forget to read your scriptures, say your prayers, and prepare to receive personal revelation this weekend! I pinky promise that if you listen, you'll hear the voice of God!

All my ❤,

Sister Willis