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