Week 30: I get kissed by a boy

We teach ESL on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and last night this 20-something year old guy who's super jacked and likes winking at people decided to say goodbye by giving everyone a kiss on the cheek, because "that's how they do it in Mexico." So. That was awesome! And a tad bit unexpected.

The biggest news from this week is that we got a NEW WHIP! We traded in our 2017 Toyota RAV4 for a 2020 Nissan Rogue! Fresh off the lot, baby! With 18 kilometers 😎. We are LOVING that remote start life.

We're trying to do better about being Spirit-led in our finding efforts because it tends to be SUPER difficult to find people to teach in our area, which mostly means driving to a street, praying, deciding it's not the right street, and repeating that 4-6 times or until we get it right. It's SUPER frustrating after about prayer number 3, but on Monday afternoon we were going through this process and we FINALLY got to a street we felt good about, so we started knocking doors and the first guy we talked to was like "we're not interested, but could you move your car? my wife is coming from costco and she's got a bad shoulder and she's gonna have to carry all the groceries in from the car." So that was super awesome. #miracle!! Our actual miracles on that street were meeting this black guy who was on the phone but told us we could come back on the weekend (#elect!) and accidentally tracted into this part-member family with these cute kids who we have not seen or been able to contact FOREVER! I had no idea that they lived on that street and so I was standing on the doorstep STUNNED and asked them how they were doing and if we could come back this week and they said YES! So we're gonna go hang out with them tomorrow! I'm super excited. I guess God knows that I'm too wimpy to go talk to them on my own, haha.

My favorite part of living in Calgary is that we get chinooks that raise the temperature from -30 to -5 in one day. I don't love that the pressure and temperature change gives me a MASSIVE headache and makes me feel like I'm going to die through all of church. Sometimes you just need to take a chinook nap! But sometimes you don't have time for that, so you just drink diet pepsi and try to power through it!

We volunteer at the retirement home in our neighborhood most weeks, and yesterday we got to sit in on the exercise class! It was mostly doing the "live long and prosper" sign from Star Trek to help your brain (which I CANNOT do with my left hand. it was super embarrassing.) and standing on one foot to practice balance and rocking from your toes onto your heels. We were like, wow, that was NOT an exercise class, and then our calves were sore at dinner. So maybe it was more my speed, haha.

At our dinner on Sunday night, these members of our ward had us go on the BYU relative finder and figure out everyone we're related to. Your girl is related to 37/44 US presidents and 17/17 latter-day saint prophets! Booyah! And some people who came over on the Mayflower, which I actually did NOT know. So that's kinda awesome!

1 Nephi 10:19 says "For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round." Don't forget to seek that personal revelation! Especially in preparation for general conference!

Love you! Talk to you next week!

Sister Willis 

Week 29: Baby it's COLD outside!

Frozen faces!

It's so cold!! It's so so cold! I am colder than I have ever been in my entire life! Before windchill, it's -33 degrees Celsius. Which is almost -30 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is. So so cold. It's so cold that there's ice on the INSIDE of our bedroom window. It's so cold that when we drive into our parking garage at night, the windows fog up from the temperature difference and then immediately the condensation FREEZES on the -30 degree window. It's so cold that all of the members tell us that we should NOT be tracting because if you walk more than a block or are outside for more than 10 minutes you will start to get frostbite. And I don't want frostbite! So we don't go tracting.

The last time we went tracting was on Sunday afternoon, because some elders in our district wanted to help us to find more people to teach in our area and they decided that -25 was the PERFECT temperature for tracting. We did not talk to anyone who was interested in our message, but everyone we talked to was very concerned about us being outside. It was Sunday, so I was wearing a dress, but I was wearing a shirt AND a sweater under my dress, thermal tights, leggings, socks, a scarf, gloves, and a hat (toque. as they say in Calgary). And we had handwarmers and we were STILL cold. Super awesome! I love it! Some guy opened the door and we asked him if he'd be interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon, and he was like "Well, I am interested in Jesus Christ...and, I'm interested in the Bible...and I'm familiar with Mormonism...but no. I don't think I'd be interested in pursuing that." I was like, okay, that's fine, but could you PLEASE just SLAM the door like everyone else instead of making us stand outside in the freezing cold? He was NOT elect. But it turned out okay because the elders ran into this lady who had been taught previously on their way to see someone else and she said she'd just been looking at her Book of Mormon right before she saw them! So we're going to go teach her on Thursday. It's also SO fun because every SINGLE person we meet tells us to "stay warm!" I don't think they understand that the place to stay warm is inside the house? But they never invite us in. So I guess they're not THAT concerned about us staying warm. smh.

We had zone conference yesterday, which is a big long missionary meeting, and our car doesn't have remote start, and driving out of that parking lot in that cold car was actually the coldest I think I've ever been. It was awful. I put my hands on my legs under my dress to keep them warm. It barely worked. I never, ever want to be that cold again. 

We've had kind of a hard time finding people to teach because we live in kind of an, um, ~affluent area~? And we really feel like good things are coming in our area, so we decided to go HARD on Thursday and Friday to find people to teach before it got cold. We stopped by everyone we could think of and tried to be super Spirit-led in our tracting and be positive and expect miracles, and we found... NO ONE! Which was not awesome for us. But we had some fun times! Like Sister Lamontagne literally almost falling backwards off some guy's step when he opened the door (I was seriously holding her up while she had one foot on the stoop, haha) and me WHACKING my head on a potted plant hanging from the portico of the very next house! Not our finest moment. 

We started teaching a little girl who lives in our district but outside of our area whose mom only wants sisters and not elders. The girl's name is Naomi and her friend Katerina from upstairs was over, and we asked Naomi if she had any questions about what we talked about (praying and reading the Book of Mormon) and this girl Katerina raised her hand and was like "I can name ALL of the Star Wars characters!" Which was not only not a question but also not related at ALL to what we were talking about. She kept asking us whether we're all going to have to go to Mars when the oxygen runs out, and I had to tell her that she can ONLY ask us questions about God because we only know about God and not about anything else. We were teaching Naomi how to pray and Katerina was like, we never pray in my house! And we were all like, you can pray if you want to! And she was like "Why would I want to talk to God? My life is GOOD! I don't need God! You guys need to get God out of your head for ONE MINUTE and think about something else!" It was SO funny. I felt like I was talking to an angsty YSA or a 60-year-old man. Guess it starts young!

1 Nephi 9:6 says "But the Lord knoweth all things from the beginning; wherefore, he prepareth a way to accomplish all his works among the children of men; for behold, he hath all power unto the fulfilling of all his words. And thus it is. Amen." One thing that I'm learning and working on is trusting that the Lord really is preparing ways to accomplish the things that He wants to get done because He loves His children! God's plan and God's timing tend to be WAY better than mine, haha. He is the best person to trust!

I love you all! Have a great MLK day (not a thing in Canada) and STAY WARM!

💟❄💟Sister Willis💟❄💟

Week 28: "Are you nuns??"

Fueling our ever increasing Diet Coke addiction. (Even though today is diet pepsi, lame.)

Sister Lamontagne and I were doing service at the retirement community in our neighborhood yesterday, and all of the residents ... struggle to hear? So they talk about us very loudly and think that we can't hear! Anyway, one lady came over to us and was like, "are you girls nuns? My friend was wondering!" So we told her that we're missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and this other lady was like, oh! I was baptized as a Mormon! So we talked to her about it for a little bit and she came back over a few minutes later and she was like, actually, I think that you girls are probably from the REFORMED Church of Jesus Christ, because Mormons don't dress how you're dressed. So we had to explain that we only wear jumpers because we're missionaries and NOT because we're RLDS. It was lots of fun.

We had a MAJOR #missionaryfail and forgot our dinner calendar two weeks in a row, so we didn't have dinner appointments on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, OR Saturday last week. That meant a couple of things. First, that we ate through almost all of the food we bought on p-day in, like, three days. Second, that Sister Lamontagne and I played a LOT of dice. We printed out Yahtzee boards on the church computers and just... wasted away our dinner breaks rolling dice. I get a lot of full houses and yahtzees in twos!

Homemade cookies!

On Thursday, we practiced our favorite finding and reactivating technique, called baking cookies and giving them out to people! We dropped them off to our friend David, who has not responded to our texts in TWO MONTHS, and now apparently has a French roommate? Anyway, the French roommate opened the door and could speak very little English, but did tell us that we're beautiful, so that was a win. And David texted us! Finally! Cookies soften the heart! 🍪💝

 

We went on companion exchanges with our sister training leaders this week, so I got to go up to the northeast of Calgary with Sister Barrow! I love her and we had a blast, and when we were at dinner the woman who was feeding us asked me if I'd say the prayer and I was like, yes, of course, and after she was like "that was beautiful! I think missions are really good at teaching you kids how to pray." Which is only relevant because her husband got there partway through dinner and so he asked me to say the closing prayer after we shared our lesson, and we were all like ... okay?? And the wife was like, "she said the prayer on dinner!" And he was like, "oh, it's okay, she needs practice!" So I got to pray TWICE! And then in the car on the way down to our meeting with the stake president, we got a phone call from the assistants to the president and I had NO idea what was going on but THEY asked me to pray! Lots of prayers for Sister Willis!

We started teaching ESL this week, and it was SO fun! There were so many people there and I was working with this girl named Camila who already speaks pretty good English but she kept teasing me for not speaking Spanish. It was cute and we had a good time!

Kraft Dinner! Which is Canadian mac & cheese. 

I think that's about all from up here! I am SUPER excited to do Come, Follow Me for the Book of Mormon! One of my favorite scriptures from this week is super obscure and rarely quoted so I thought I'd share it with you :). Nephi says "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them." (1 Nephi 3:7). I love Nephi's example of faith and trust in God! He knew that God had asked him to get the plates from Laban and he didn't doubt that God would provide a way, even after they had failed over and over again! One day when I grow up, I want to have as much faith as Nephi :)

Have a great week! Don't forget to do your Come, Follow Me!

Love, 

Sister Willis

Week 27: Parking Ticket

Enthusiastic Tracters!

On Thursday last week we got out of our dinner appointment and there was some guy who had backed his car up to our car and he was messing around on our front windshield, and the other car was on so he was standing in the exhaust and the red lights in the dark and I turned to my companion and was like "oh my gosh! someone is stealing our car!!" And she was like, um, no? I don't think so? It turned out just to be some mean parking enforcement officer writing us up a $40 ticket for "parking within 1.5 meters of a driveway". It was awesome because I didn't know that was illegal, but I guess the guy who owns the house we parked in front of called to report us for our violation! And the parking guy was like "you guys are lucky you came out now, I was about to have to call the tow truck!" Suuuuper lucky. He just sat there in his car in front of us for like 10 minutes, and missionaries have to have their companion back them up if they want to reverse, so we just sat there behind him and waited for him to move. I don't think he was thrilled.

I think I'm allergic to my new hat because I woke up the day after I wore it with bumps all over my forehead, so I took Benadryl and I ZONKED out during study time. And it's still not all the way better? So pray for my skin!

A big Santa.

Because we have phones, we get to do this fun thing called online proselyting, where we join Facebook groups and message people scriptures and videos and the like and ask them if they'd like to learn more about the gospel, and the other day this girl said yes to Sister Lamontagne! So we set up an appointment to call her over messenger and we were waiting for her to pick up and she BLOCKED it! It was awful! We had this cute lesson planned for her! It was... not a win.

We hang out with this part-member family every Monday night to do Come, Follow Me with them (and I am SO excited about Come, Follow Me for The Book of Mormon!! It'a gonna be great!) and their 12-year-old daughter brought down the crystals she got for Christmas and I convinced her to name one of them Sister Willis! So now I have a crystal named after me 😊. I also convinced her to name two of them Moron and Nimrod. In honor of our study of The Book of Mormon this year.

Tomorrow is TRANSFERS! I'm staying with Sister Lamontagne for 6 more weeks in the BEST AREA in the whole mission (barring something happens with the visa situation?). We're excited! And I hit my 6 months last week! Time flies!

In honor of finishing The Book of Mormon yesterday, this week's scripture is Moroni 10:32! "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God." I am so grateful for the truths about God and His plan that are taught in The Book of Mormon! And I'm so excited to study them this year! I know that as we read The Book of Mormon, we are able to feel the power of God in our lives!

Happy New Year! I love you!! 🎊❤🎊❤🎊

Sister Willis

We found a BIG santa!! & we're practing being more enthusaistic tracters 😊