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💟❄💟