Week 26: Merry Christmas!

Gingerbread village

This week was CRAZY!! And so much fun! There was so much that happened, so I'm just going to give you the highlights:

- My companion got sick on Thursday night (like, barfing all over the car sick, so that was exciting!) and so I started reading Jesus the Christ like every other missionary with a sick companion and then on Friday I was still sick from having the flu, so we just slept and played games and I built an entire gingerbread village. So that was entirely productive.

- On Saturday night, we volunteered at the Heritage Park nativity, which is a live nativity pageant put on by the Church. It was only, like, freezing, but I was so cold that I tucked handwarmers under my thick socks in my boots. We were at the information booth, so our job was to yell "welcome to the nativity!" and "thanks for coming!" And we got hot chocolate at the end! It was really good. And a little chilly.

- We had our special Christmas sacrament meetings! They were so good! And we got soooo much chocolate, haha

Chocolate!

- We went to visit this lady named Usma who we tracted into a few weeks ago and wanted to show her the Christ Child, but we just talked for a loooooong time about the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon. We taught her the restoration in her entryway, and she told us that Joseph Smith was probably just possessed by the devil and that our book really doesn't make as much sense as hers. So that was awesome! But she was really apologetic about destroying our beliefs and she gave us hugs and chocolates and makeup brushes and gave us each a copy of the Qur'an. It was really sweet and kind of funny.

- On New Year's Eve, our friend Joanna texted us and asked if we could come over and talk about God for an hour and we were like, um, yes??? So we called the hermanas in her area and we all went over and watched The Christ Child with her. It was so fun! And we gave her a Spanish Book of Mormon and she said she wanted to read it and start coming to church every week! It was sad to pass her off but it's gonna be so good!

- My friend Adam got baptized on Christmas Eve and I got to go! It was so cool and he gave me a special shoutout in his talk! He said that Sister Willis and Sister Bangura taught him some good lessons out of PMG, which was funny. I loved it!

- On Christmas Eve night, we went Christmas caroling with some elders in our district and we tried to stop by this inactive family in one of our wards that has been next to impossible to get in contact with, and this Filipino woman opened the door and offered us 20 dollars! We told her no thanks and she invited us in to have food! It turned out that the family we were looking for had moved, but they told us we could come back and teach them more about the Book of Mormon in January and do Bible study with them! So that was awesome.

Christmas blow-ups!

- Christmas and Christmas Eve! They were great! I love Christmas!!

Matthew wrote about how the birth of Christ was the fulfilling of Isaiah's prophecy: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." I am so grateful to know about God's plan for us to find happiness and peace! And I feel so blessed to be able to share the good news with the people I meet :)

I love you and am so grateful for all of your examples! Merry Christmas!

Sister Willis

Week 25: I get the flu:(

I got my flu shot last Wednesday because all missionaries are supposed to get the flu shot, but I KNEW it was going to make me sick, and here we are. I got a priesthood blessing from some elders in our district yesterday and then I took like 7 naps. But I'm speeding along the road to recovery! I'm still hoping for a miracle.

Besides that, we had a really fun week of finding and teaching! Last week, we thought we found the meanest street in our area, but this week we ACTUALLY found the meanest street in our area. We looked at our map and felt like we should go knock doors on this little col-de-sac but when we got there it was filled with HUGE houses. Which was terrifying, because there seems to be a direct correlation between how big people's houses are and how mean they are at the door, and at the first door we knocked on this guy opened the door and his wife yelled at us from the upstairs balcony: "no! no! no! not interested! go away!" And then at the very next door this old lady opened and we were like "Hi! We're the missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" and she was like, "you're WHO?" and we were like, "we're missionaries!" and she said "You're CRAZY!" And slammed the door in our faces! It ended up being okay because the lady at the next house let us show her the Light the World video and she cried and hugged us and said she was gonna sign up! So we were obviously there for her.

Not that much else super exciting happened, except that we had to speak in church on Sunday and I talked FOREVER and CRIED!! Classic. I also tried to make toast yesterday and, being fever-ridden, my judgement was so subpar that I burnt it badly enough that the fire alarm went off! That was cute. And we took cute cookie boxes with Light the World cards on them to the care center and the old people were SO cute! They were so excited to see us! And so nice! It was a great time! And we wasted away our Saturday waiting for our friend Joanna to let us over to come clean her house. It was not my favorite day.

That's all for me! 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 says, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." Don't let the world get you down! And don't forget to light the world! Merry Christmas!

❤🎄

Sister Willis

Haha enjoy these pictures of me being SICK! And my comp made us take a Christmas picture even though I have the FLU! So that's why I look why I'm miserable!

Week 24: Santa Baby

Hello! This week FLEW! Probably because we had lots of fun and Christmassy things to do almost every night, like TWO ward Christmas parties and a relief society Christmas activity and the first presidency Christmas devotional (which is always SO good). One of our ward Christmas parties was outside (which, in Canada? In December? Means COLD) so there was a giant heated igloo for all of the adults and missionaries to stay inside of while the kids did fun stuff like sledding and eating too many cookies (the too many cookies might have actually been me :)). And Santa came! To both parties, actually. We asked Santa for a picture and he put his arms around our waists. Which was... exciting. Our second Christmas party had a taco bar, but there was way too much food and so we spent most of the night helping clean up and then we got a whole bunch of leftovers, which was super fun because the next day some people in our ward took us to Costa Vida for lunch. I'm like 40% Mexican food.

Other than that, this week was relatively uneventful. On Saturday night, we were trying to decide where to tract so we drove into our area and Sister Lamontagne and I felt like we should turn in all the same places, so when we ended up on this little loop we were like, okay, we're gonna knock on all of the doors, we're going to find someone to teach here. We were SO excited. And it was seriously the rudest street I've ever tracted! People kept peeking through their windows at us and then not answering the door! Like, hello, I can see you! Anyway, that was not the most fun I've ever had in my life, but whatcha gonna do? We had a better time tracting on Sunday night when a nice Muslim lady let us in and she was so funny and we talked all about what the Qur'an and the Bible and the Book of Mormon say about Jesus. Shoutout to BYU world religions for preparing me to talk to every Muslim in Calgary! But our real miracle was that on Monday night we were tracting and nobody really wanted to talk to us but as soon as we got to the last door we hadn't knocked yet, a lady called out from the next house over and was like "are you the sister missionaries?" And we were like "yes!" It turns out it was this less-active member of our ward who we've been trying to get in touch with for WEEKS and we were in the right place at JUST the right time. Miracles do happen!

Because it's #lighttheworld season, we've been doing "service finding," which is basically employing the Ammon principle of finding new people to teach. We just go around in service clothes and shovel people's driveways and leave them Light the World cards (get some from your local missionaries!!) We haven't found anyone that way yet, but at least I got a good workout, lol. My back was niiiice and sore the next morning.

I had to give a training to our zone (missionary speak for share some thoughts with a bunch of other missionaries) about Christ and our purpose last week and I CRIED. Predictable. But I really liked Elder Holland's thoughts from general conference about constantly striving to find Christ in the chaos of our lives, which I feel like was a big point of the Christmas devotional. Elder Holland said "...in spite of everything else this [Christmas] tradition may offer us, it will mean little or nothing unless we find Jesus at the center of it all. To grasp the vision we are seeking, the healing that He promises, the significance we somehow know is here, we must cut through the commotion—joyful as it is—and fix our attention on Him." (forgive my editing!) He goes on to say, "Sisters and brothers, through the incessant din and drumbeat of our day, may we strive to see Christ at the center of our lives, of our faith, and of our service. That is where true meaning lies." I know that especially in this Christmas season, we find true meaning as we turn to Christ! Helaman said to his sons, "And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall" (Helaman 5:12). Don't forget to make this Christmas meaningful by making time to remember Christ!

 

I love you much! Merry Christmas!

Sister Willis

Week 23: Warm Hands & Warm Hearts

Best candy-cane shake of my life at Peters' Drive-in after teaching Sis. Lamontange's sister and her boyfriend.

Last week was COLD!! It was -15 every day from Wednesday to Saturday, which meant that my face hurt a lot and tracting was not very fun for us or for the people whose doors we were knocking on. When we woke up on Tuesday morning, there were full PIECES OF ICE on the INSIDE of our bedroom window. It's a little ... drafty. Last Monday we told our bishop that our hands were cold, so the next Sunday when he had us over for dinner he brought us a wrapped package as "a gift from the ward to the sisters" -- it was hand warmers! For our cold hands! It was so nice. Our hands are never going to be cold again!

Our hand warmers!

Yesterday, we went to stop by the family that told us to come back because they never responded to our text, and the mom, Joanna, was in the middle of cooking dinner but she told us to come in anyway! She wanted us to talk to her boys about Jesus and the meaning of Christmas, so we explained a little bit about what Jesus did for us and then we talked about how we teach people about the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and she told us she'd like to learn more about it! So we taught them the Restoration and her kids asked us all these questions about the Trinity and how God answers our prayers! She wants to come to church with us on Sunday and she wants her boys to come to mutual with the boys in our ward, and she said that they'd read the Book of Mormon together! The only problem is that her husband only speaks Spanish and they're moving out of our area in the next couple of weeks, but we can work with that! We have missionaries who speak Spanish in the southwest. She told us that when we first came by her house, she'd been praying for some help with her son, and she felt like we were an answer to her prayer, and that when we came back she was super busy but that she felt like she should let us in anyway! We're SO excited for her and her family! We know that God answers prayers!

The members in our wards our SO kind and feed us delicious food every night, and yesterday we had dinner with this Filipino family and they fed us ... WELL. We ate barbecue chicken and whole pieces of ham and garlic shrimp and half a place of rice and asparagus. It was SO good, but it filled us up! They fed us grapes and I was like, okay, I can do grapes for dessert, and THEN they brought out the mango cheesecake and THEN they brought out the ice cream. I didn't think I was going to be hungry for days! But it looks like I underestimated myself.

After being outside for 15 min. Our faces were
really red, but the camera didn't pick it up!

Last week we had Greek food with a family in our ward and they invited the Mandarin elders because they don't get fed as much as we do, but their dad kept calling it our "double date!" It was funny but they didn't really know how to respond. It ended up being okay because everyone said our dinner message was better 😉. After dinner we tried to tract but nobody wanted to open their door, which was understandable, so instead we went and got gas, but because Canada is forsaken some of their gas stations don't have the little clip to keep the handle up while you stay in the car, so I had to hold the metal pump with my bare hands in -15! I got through almost all of the verses of I Am a Child of God without crying, so I'd call that an accomplishment.

When we were tracting on Monday, we met this big, scary-looking guy in a huge house who actually ended up being really nice! He wasn't interested in our message, but he told us he grew up with a bunch of Mormon kids who went on missions and asked us where we were from and told us to come get him if anyone on his street was mean to us. It was a tender mercy and kept me going for the rest of the day. I was also DYING because Sister Lamontagne told him that she was waiting for her visa to Idaho and he was like "Idaho?! They can send you     anywhere in the world and you got Idaho? My friend got sent to Bordeaux!" It was SO funny. I love when we meet nice people tracting!

We've done a lot of service this week, including helping a lady with 4 cats and 2 dogs pack her stuff to move. The most thrilling part of this experience was that when we got there, she had done NOTHING, so we got to wrap her porcelain houses in her and her husband's dirty clothes! She had no fewer than 10 boxes of salt because "they don't sell this stuff anymore" and "her husband really likes it." We packed probably 3 dozen boxes and barely made a dent in all the STUFF she had. And she spent the whole time telling us about her cats' and dogs' favorite toys. I felt like I had to take a shower after we left. We also volunteer at a retirement center, and we spent no less than an hour and a half arranging and rearranging a model Christmas village because some people wanted cotton batting to look like snow and some people did not. It was the most effective use of time we've ever had. Period. We also helped a woman not of our faith move up into our area, which was awesome! She did try to pay the other missionaries, which was a liiiiittle awkward, but she seemed really nice! And she's going to get invited to our special Christmas sacrament meeting for sure. But my FAVORITE services were setting up a Christmas tree for a member of our ward and helping another member of our ward set up some of her NINETY-TWO nativities! I love Christmas! It's so much fun! Also, if you haven't seen The Christ Child yet you should watch it at lighttheworld.org! I love it! And I love that we get to remember the birth of our Savior this month!

1 John 1:4-5 says "And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. Then this is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." I love that! Don't forget to #lighttheworld and share the light and love of Christ this December! Get started by signing up for daily service prompts at lightttheworld.org and finding our church in your area 😉! 

I hope you're having a great start to the (American) Christmas season! Stay warm!

Week 22: Mom Fails

5 months out!

Two days ago, I was like, I wonder why the blowy thing in the front of the car is called a defroster if you just use it to clear up your foggy windshield? This morning, I figured out why. Leaving the church at 10:30 am, our front windshield was coated on the INSIDE with ice! I didn't even know that could happen! It's so stinkin cold!

Ice on the inside of the windshield

We had a super fun week of door-knocking up here in Calgary! We had a lot of miraculous experiences, including a lady yelling at us that she'd been asked to be taken off the "knock list" (which doesn't exist), a man shooing us off his front porch, and a woman telling us she was not interested through her floor-level screen window. On Saturday morning we were tracting and my companion asked this woman if she'd like to hear a message about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the lady was like "how long is it?" and I was like, "what?" And she was like, "the message?" and I was like "oh, we can do it in a couple of minutes!" And she was like, "Okay, go ahead, but I'm not converting to Mormonism. We're very happy with our religion." So I gave the WORST explanation of the restoration in the history of the world and every time I said "um" her little boys yelled at me that I had to do push-ups, because apparently the rule in their house is that if you say "um" you have to do push-ups. It was not productive and very embarrassing and she didn't even want our Book of Mormon because she hasn't read the whole Bible yet. Sad day. 

A cute sunet with new companion Sis. Lamontagne.

My new companion's name is Sister Lamontagne and she's from Raymond! Which is like, 3 hours south of here. President and Sister Keung went down to Raymond last weekend for stake conference and brought her up a hug from her mom. She's awesome and so so good to go. She's waiting for her visa to the Idaho Idaho Falls Temple Visitors' Center, but I hope they never take her.

While we were tracting this week, we met a woman who invited us into her house to share the Light the World video with her family, and then told us we could come back to teach them more about Jesus Christ! I was SO happy, I almost cried. So we're definitely going to be back ;) 

A boy named Adam who I taught in my last area texted me today and told us he's getting baptized on December 24! I'm so so excited for him! If you're following my long and dramatic weekly emails at all, he's the one who sent us a break-up text while I was playing piano in sacrament meeting. But I guess it just wasn't his time, haha. I can't wait! I love him!

Trainers with new companions.

One of our wards is doing a forty-day fast for missionary work, and nobody was signed up last Saturday, so we got to fast! It was good until, like, 1:30 pm, at which point I started feeling like I was going to die. Door-knocking was not nearly as fun and we were soooo cold and tired (the high up here is -10 today! Which is like 10 degrees Fahrenheit!) We told ourselves we could get ice cream after dinner if we persevered, so I took us to a Superstore out of our zone (which I didn't even know was out of our zone! our chapel was already out of our zone, so it was just... FURTHER out of our zone) to get cartons of ice cream after curfew! #momfail! I was like, I'm the most disobedient trainer in the world! I'm raising my child with bad habits! But it's okay. I'm gonna learn where our zone boundaries are for next time 😬

Sis. Bangua & Sis. Willis reunited for a picture.

Happy American Thanksgiving! Alma 36:3 says "And now, O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth, and therefore, I beseech of thee that thou wilt hear my words and learn of me; for whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trails, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day." I'm so grateful for the gospel! And especially for the knowledge that if we trust God, He will support us in all our circumstances. Don't forget to share the good news with your friends this holiday season! And don't forget to watch The Christ Child on lighttheworld.org and sign up for daily service prompts and invite your friends (or yourself!) to #comeandsee at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Sunday, December 22! Let's #lighttheworld this Christmas season!

I love you! Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas! Don't forget to be nice to your local missionaries! 

🦃🌽🙏💟Sister Willis

Another sunset selfie!