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