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!