Week 21a: new companion who dis

PLOT TWIST!! I just got a training call from President Keung so it looks like I won't be hanging out with Sister Magno. Sad day. But I guess I'm having a baby!! Pray for me!

Week 21: new comp who dis

All of the missionaries in the North with Elder Nielsen.
Sister Fetters and I are in the middle because we are the tallest sisters in Calgary!

Hello my friends! This week is TRANSFER WEEK, which means that last night we almost threw up while we were waiting for transfer notices to come out! My new companion is Sister Magno and she's coming up from Taber, which is like, two and a half hours southeast of Calgary! A fun fact about my mission is that missionaries in the north (aka Calgary) and missionaries in the south (aka everywhere else in southern Alberta) NEVER see each other because it's too far to drive, so everything is separate for the north and the south. Everyone who knows her says she's great, so I'm excited :)

Last week, Sister Fetters got sick, and then she got even sicker, so we spent all of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sitting in our apartment while she was recovering. I read... a lot of scriptures and tried to drink enough Emergen-C to intimidate whatever virus she had, which I think worked because I didn't get sick! So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way! Pray for my immune system! I cancelled all our dinners because Sister Fetters was on her deathbed (like, pretty literally, she wanted to be euthanized) so I spent the week eating through all of the food in the house and taking some looong naps. We love missionary work! I also read the whole new white handbook (which is no longer white!) and it was super fun & funky. Check it out on the gospel library app under missionary >> missionary training >> Missionary Standards for Disciples of Jesus Christ!

On Thursday night, we spent three hours waiting in a walk-in clinic to see a doctor and most of it was a battle between my dumb lizard brain, which wanted to watch Dr. Phil on the tv, and my one remaining righteous brain cell, which wanted to keep reading D&C 76 because Elder Nielsen promised us that if we studied all the scriptures in the boxes in Preach My Gospel we'd be scriptorians. I mostly held out until the lady at the front desk switched on Jeopardy, at which point I entirely gave up on studying and just tried to guess the answers with the old lady next to me. I got, like, three of them right. I think my grey matter has decayed since I've been out here because my memory and my ability to read out loud are, uh, suffering. But it's fine! It'll all come back eventually! I hope!

District Picture

Yesterday was the saddest day of my life because I had to kill my companion! Aka drop her off at the mission home! We listened to all kinds of depressing end-of-mission music that I'm too young for on the way there, and then we loaded everyone's luggage into the trailer and gave hugs and left! I did steal back my mug that I accidentally left at the Keungs' house when we were living there and that they'd since put with their collection of mugs on their mug tree, so that made it worthwhile, but it was so sad! I was not a fan! I want my comp back! Right now I'm with another sister whose companion also goes home today, and we're hanging out in our areas and covering all of our wards until we get our new companions tomorrow, so that's fun and crazy times.

I'm sure it's not surprising to anyone that it is SNOWING in Calgary (part 100!) It snowed all day yesterday and there are like 6 inches of snow on the ground right now. It's okay because we're going to #lighttheworld by shovelling everyone's driveways for them, but I slip on the ice and fall flat on my face while tracting! Twice! I just went down mid-sentence. I'm sure it made a lasting impression on whoever may have been lucky enough to see.

I was reading in Alma 19 today, which is a baller feminist chapter where first King Lamoni's wife gets told that she has more faith than any of the Nephites and then my FAVE, Abish, gathers all of the people and like, raises the queen from the ground! It was awesome! I love it!

I'm like, mostly caught up on Come, Follow Me from the 5 days that I was straight chillin' in our apartment, so this week I read James 1 and OBVIOUSLY I like verses 5 and 6 but I also really like verse 27! It says "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Remember to love God and love your neighbor and you'll be all set!

I love you all! I hope you have a great week and that it's not too cold! Stay warm!

Sister Willis

Week 20: The Mess

We found this horse in someone's front yard and it felt very important to document.

aka my life!! "The Mess" is actually a name we use for this block in our proselyting area where the missionaries who were here before us had started teaching, like, half of the families! We have an app called area book on our phones and we can see where people who have been taught by the missionaries live, so there were just a bunch of grey dots right on top of each other! Hence, The Mess. We went and visited it on Saturday night and lots of people remember the missionaries who were here before us, but nobody wanted to hear our message. Sad day. It was also -15 degrees outside. Which is ... chilly.

We were FINALLY able to move back into our apartment with 10 days left in the transfer, but when we got there on Sunday all of our stuff was taken apart, knocked over, and pushed to the middle of the room, and our whole place smelled like chemicals! I guess the exterminator was very ... thorough. We lit candles and brought all of our stuff in and started putting everything back together on Sunday night, and when I put my things on the vanity, they all fell into the toilet! I almost cried. In fact, I think I did cry. It was a long day.

Sister Fetters and I performed in both of our wards on Sunday! She sang Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy and I played the piano. In the first ward, the page in my hymnbook kept flipping back, so I had to lean wayyyy over to read the notes and keep trying to push it flat! It was very stressful! And in our second ward the piano wasn't even open when I went up to play, so I had to deal with THAT in front of the whole congregation. But Sister Fetters did great :). In fact, our bishop asked us to pick a song to perform to the Christmas program! We had to let him know that Sister Fetters leaves next week and will NOT be here for the ward Christmas presentation.

Monday was Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the states) which means that yesterday was the official start of the Canadian Christmas season! This is very significant because I LOVE Christmas! They were playing Christmas music while we were grocery shopping this morning. It was a great time.

Sister Willis & Sister Clarke

We had exchanges yesterday, so Sister Clarke, one of our STLs, came to our area. It was good, but she is far more enthusiastic about walking places than I am. We just walked all day. But we gave out lots of copies of the Book of Mormon! I had several missionary fails, including (1) accidentally giving out the pass-along cards that the hermanas left at our apartment with the wrong phone number and wrong church address, (2) accidentally taking us to a Costa Vida outside of our area (and ordering the chile verde enchiladas because I thought they looked nice and warm and did not anticipate them being too spicy to taste), and (3) dropping off some diapers that our ward members donated to a lady not of our faith in our neighborhood on the way to a meeting so that we didn't have time to share anything when she asked us if we wanted to come in! We'd dropped off most of the diapers earlier and she had been taught by other missionaries but told us that she didn't think that our church was the place for her, so I guess I assumed that she wouldn't want us to stay and visit? But I guess I was wrong! #fail

We do service at a retirement home, so we were there for a few hours on Thursday and we were lucky enough to attend a presentation on prostate cancer! It was a beautiful slideshow filled with very detailed diagrams of the male reproductive system. We were struggling a little bit to keep it together. We were also blessed to be able to help out at happy hour, which was mostly old people yelling at us for wine. It was, frankly, very unsettling. The best part by far was building a big puzzle of a deer with a guy named Ed. He was very supportive every time I found a piece that fit.

Missionaries at the Movies!

Last Wednesday, we got to go to the MOVIES! The discount theatre where we live was showing The Fighting Preacher, which is a new movie directed by T.C. Christensen about the couple the Church sent to Palmyra to live on the Joseph Smith farm after they bought it. It was so good! I cried! But I cry super easily, so that might not mean much. And this cute member paid for tickets and snacks for us and the elders! It was so nice! 10/10 would recommend.

I guess this week you get TWO movie reviews! I do not understand why they would make a video of Lehi reciting 2 Nephi 2 on various backdrops and skip Nephi's vision, which is like, in my top 5 favorite parts of the Book of Mormon? And I'm pretty sure the whole liahona thing is ahistorical. But whatever. I did like that they made it more of a conversation between Lehi and his family and less of a monologue (even though it was still pretty much a monologue). It's fine. I guess the best doctrinal chapters don't always translate into the most exciting 15-minute films.

In Mosiah 26:20, the Lord tells Alma (the og one) "Thou art my servant; and I covenant with thee that thou shalt have eternal life; and thou shalt serve me and go forth in my name, and shalt gather together my sheep." I was thinking about this and about the "feed my sheep" part of the New Testament, and I was like, wow! Jesus really likes to talk about sheep! I don't think anyone has ever had a calling from the Lord that wasn't at least in part about feeding and gathering sheep! And then I was like, obviously! He's a shepherd (citation: John 10:11)! And that's what shepherds do! They think about sheep! Anyway, I think it's important as we go into Christmastime (and all the time) that we remember that we and everyone we come in contact with are loved of the Good Shepherd! And that we do our best to minister to those around us, even if our attempts are less than perfect ❤.

I love you! Stay warm!

Sister Willis

Week 19: I lose a companion:(

Sis. Fetters, Sis. Murray, Sis. Willis

After waiting in Calgary for 3 and a half months, Sister Murray finally got her visa to the states and is now preaching the gospel on temple square! Our companionship now fits much better on doorsteps and we moved the mattress out between our two beds, so now everything feels a little empty in a depressing way! And our musical duet that we were planning on for sacrament meeting is now a solo with piano accompaniment. Sad day.

Elder S. Gifford Nielsen of the Seventy (who is also the president of the North America Central Area and works in Church Mission Headquarters, which, if you don't speak church, means he is Fancy and Important) came to visit our mission last week, so we spent Halloween in a big meeting with all of the missionaries in Calgary, Elder Nielsen and his wife, and our mission president and his wife. We talked about lots of good stuff, but Elder Nielsen also came to our stake conference (a big meeting with lots of congregations!) on Saturday and Sunday, so it all kind of just ... blends together. The most important thing to know about him is that he is 6'5 and was a quarterback for both the BYU Cougars and the Houston Oilers. Our mission president didn't even reach his shoulder, and Elder Nielsen kept putting his arm on President Keung's head and saying "I love this little guy!" It was a grand ol' time. The most important thing he taught us was that our motivation for ministering to others has to come out of the two great commandments, which are to love God and love your neighbor! But you already know that! 

When we were sitting at lunch with a counselor in our stake presidency and his wife, they were asking us where we're from and I said that I'm from Maryland, just north of D.C., and he said "DC! You guys won the World Series last night!" According to my companions, I "freaked out", but I think "loudly exclaimed" would be more accurate. Apparently Elder Nielsen, who is from Houston, was less excited about the Nationals' victory. It's okay, because my mission president, who lived in DC before coming to Calgary, got out his Nationals hat at breakfast the next day. Go Nats! I love my DC sports team!  

Halloween!

Those of you who have been following the bedbug saga know that we have been living in the mission home since the beginning of the transfer (going on four weeks now!). We moved in with some other sister missionaries from Monday night to Thursday night because Elder and Sister Nielsen were going to be staying there, which is, ya know, fair. We moved back in on Friday because Elder and Sister Nielsen were planning on staying in a hotel for their last two nights, and when we got home, the Keungs' daughter Crystal asked us to go downstairs and strip the sheets on their bed. When we went into their room, a whole bunch of their stuff (including his whole suit and her laptop) was still in the room, but we took the sheets off anyway and brought them up to Crystal, whose parents had just texted her to tell her that Elder and Sister Nielsen would be there to pick up the rest of their stuff in five minutes! We hurriedly tried to make it look like we hadn't just been messing with their bed, went into our room (which is RIGHT across from their room) and shut the door! A few seconds later, Crystal knocked on our door, telling us to go up and take pictures with the general authority! And we were half ready for bed! One of my companions was in her pajamas! We took 15 seconds to get back dressed and try to look presentable and went upstairs to shake hands and take pictures. It took about 44 seconds for Elder Nielsen to find out we're staying in the mission home because we have bed bugs at our apartment! We love it!

The fumigators were supposed to come to our apartment to kill the hatched bed bugs on Sunday between 12 and 4. When we got out of our church meeting on Sunday at 11, we had missed calls and texts from the fumigator, who had scheduled us incorrectly and showed up at 9 instead! We called to tell them what had happened, and they said they didn't have any open spots until SATURDAY! So we're crashing at the mission home for 5 out of the 6 weeks this transfer! Which is just ,,, grand!

On Friday, the women in the wards that we cover had a craft night, and lots of people brought friends not of our faith, so we got to go! A bunch of people brought different kinds of soup, so I ate SO many bowls of good soup! I felt like I could die, but it was worth it. The highlight of the night was when I was making a cinnamon candle and all of a sudden my face started to burn! I went to put my candle in the fridge while my companion waited in the gym (which is a no-no), and I saw one of the members that we know pretty well, so she said "Sister Willis! How are you doing!" and I told her that the left side of my face was kind of burning and she said that it was bright red! Which NOBODY could have been bothered to tell me earlier! We pretty quickly decided it was the cinnamon oil, so she grabbed me an allergy pill while I put cold water on my face, which was a BAD IDEA! I took chemistry, so I don't know why I didn't remember that oil is nonpolar and doesn't dissolve in water, but I just spread it up my forehead and down my cheek! My companions finally decided to see if I was okay, and by the time they came in I was rubbing dish soap all over the side of my face, which was significantly more effective at stopping the burning but also made me look pretty dumb! Ever since then, they've been doing their best to keep me away from cinnamon, even though I keep telling them that I HAVE eaten cinnamon before and been fine, I just can't rub concentrated cinnamon oil on my skin! But what's a relief society craft night without a good story. And it smells really good!

We showed up a couple of minutes early to one of our appointments this week, so we decided to call people who might be interested in learning more about the gospel, including one man who had called Sister Murray and her previous companion and scheduled an appointment that he didn't show up to. He told us that we could come over right after we were done teaching our friend Wayne, and we were SO excited! We couldn't believe that someone was willing to make time for us right away! We found his house and he told us his name was Martin and he was from South Africa. That was about where the conversation stopped being fun. He spent the whole lesson making fun of us for not knowing the Bible as well as he does, made up a fake god that he told us he believed in to prove a point, and told us we were going to hell before we made up an appointment we had to go to and got out of there! It was NOT a good time and he was NOT a good guy! The strangest thing is that he found our number online just to do some weird Biblical jiu-jitsu on some 20 year old kids! It was... not the appointment we expected. But at least we learned the medical definition for brain death.

We had some good appointments with our friends David and Wayne! It's so good to see and help people who want to change their lives and come closer to Christ! Missionary work is fun because you get to learn to love people super quickly. And there's nowhere I'd rather be! Even though it was -15 degrees this morning and we've had about 5 near-death experiences from our brakes locking in the last 24 hours! I can literally feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins every time we drive! If anyone has any tips about surviving the snow, send them this way!

District Farewell party for Sis. Murray!

Movie review! I think I'm getting a little more acclimated to old Nephi? I do love his wife and babies! So cute! But the water and clouds looked... a little fake. I guess the Church couldn't pay to ACTUALLY film on the water, which probably means that they're spending our tithing on, like, helping people, which is nice. Other than that, it was a good time. I like when Laman says "Look at me, I'm Nephi, I'm so righteous!" Because I feel like that's an accurate portrayal of sibling relationships and probably just didn't make it into the plates.

Mosiah 7:19 says, "Therefore, lift up your heads, and rejoice, and put your trust in God, in that God who was the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and also, that God who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, and caused that they should walk through the Red Sea on dry ground, and fed them with manna that they might not perish in the wilderness; and many more things did he do for them." I love that Limhi teaches the people to have faith in God by showing the ways that He has blessed those who trust Him! I think that leaning on our past experiences or those of other people when our own faith may be weak is super important! It's awesome to have congregations where we can take turns strengthening and reminding each other who we are and Who we trust! And it's awesome that we all get to be on both sides of that strengthening!

I'm so grateful for all of you! Your friendship and your examples have made me who I am today! Have a GREAT week and start getting PUMPED for Christmas!

Love,

Sister Willis

Week 18: Visiting Teaching & Funeral Potatoes

Chinook Sunset

Sunset Selfie!

Miracle week! We saw the hand of God SO MANY TIMES this week! On Friday morning, we were tracting houses (missionary speak for knocking on doors), and a man opened his door and counted us! "One, two, three, yep!" We offered him a Book of Mormon and he told us that three BOY missionaries already gave him one, so we just gave him our card and told him to call us if he ever wanted to learn more. When we were on the next doorstep over, he peeked his head out the door and asked if we had copies of the King James version of the Bible, because there was a picture on the pass-along card we gave him! We said of course, and he asked how much one would cost, and we told him it would be free and that we'd love to drop one off to him! So we did (when he was finally home, haha)! We love spreading the Word^TM!

Timmy's hot coco!

On Saturday, we were going through a list of people in our area who said they might be interested in learning more about Jesus Christ and following up on them. We knocked on one lady's door and the person we were looking for had moved out, but a young couple with a baby girl had moved in! We told them we're missionaries and they told us they've been looking for a church to start going to, and I nearly cried. OBVIOUSLY, we told them where and when our church service is, so we'll see if they show up! We stopped by lots of people who didn't answer the door, but the two people who did open up scheduled appointments for us to come back and teach them more! It was a great time! Other minor miracles of the day were that I found wool socks in the back of the car to cover my exposed ankles (it was SO COLD. Like -9 degrees Celsius, which is 16ish degrees Fahrenheit. But it got down to -18 yesterday! And on Friday there was a wind warning for the city of Calgary and I had to struggle against the wind to keep our car between the lines on the freeway. Crazy!). AND we went to Tim Horton's to get hot chocolate and we found these super cute Alberta mugs! Which OBVIOUSLY we bought! Love it! We also had dinner with a member of our church who had been baptized a little over a year ago, and we taught her more about the temple, and she's super excited! We had a great time!

A GIANT lap dog.

We had dinner with a family on Thursday night, and their parents asked us if we could share a message about the Godhead for their little kids, so I spent the longest time looking through old Friend magazines to try to find something cute to do with them and we finally found this cute little rhyme about Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, and we taught it to them and made them sing I Am A Child of God with us. It was so good! I love kids! Not holding babies is for SURE the hardest mission rule, especially because our ward has SO many babies. A two year old boy hugged me around the legs last night and I almost cried! I love teaching kids! We did the cup activity for the restoration for an eight-year-old girl who's preparing to be baptized, where you stack all the elements of Christ's church and you pull out the priesthood and it comes crashing down. She was super smart and already knew everything, haha. Which is the best kind of lesson to teach.

Vermicelli for Sis. Fetter's B-day!

We've been teaching our friend David every few days for the last week. He's in his early sixties and watched part of general conference and decided that he wants what we have in his life! Which is awesome! We're teaching him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ today, and we're going to ask him if he wants to be baptized! Crazy times! He does call us his "beautiful girls" and likes to take pictures of us and give us things, which is ... a little uncomfy ... but then he always brings it right back to how he loves to learn about Jesus! So! All good!

On Monday morning, we had a meeting with our mission president and all the missionaries in Calgary. Besides telling us to share a confidential document with everyone in our wards, he also said that "before now, all the relief society has done is visiting teaching and funeral potatoes! Unless they've served a mission, they've never done missionary work in their life!" I was SO UPSET! Women are baller member missionaries! Anyway, it ended up being okay because his wife got him back and we got Costco poutine afterwards, which is apparently the best poutine in Calgary. Love Canada!

I have no comment on the new Book of Mormon video, other than adult Nephi makes me uncomfortable. I just can't with the hair. And Nephi coming out of nowhere to shock his brothers while they're just chilling does not seem like his finest moment, but whatever. I wasn't the director.

In 2 Nephi 2:4, Lehi teaches his son Jacob that "the way is prepared from the fall of man, and salvation is free." In John 14:6, Jesus Christ says, "I am the way, the truth, and the light." Christ is the Way that was prepared for us from the beginning! It's so cool to get to teach people that God loves us and has a plan for us! I know that Christ really is the only way back to our heavenly home! And that He loves us dearly! Which is SUCH good news!

I love you! Have a happy halloween and don't forget to start listening to Christmas music on Friday!

🧡🕸🖤🕸

Sister Willis

Mission home sleeping situation.

Not quite legit sleeping situation at other sisters apt.