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