Week 38: Doomsday

TP our members hid for us on our doorstep!

I know that this is SUPER ORIGINAL and nobody has heard yet but it's literally the end of the world! We're not quarantined (yet) but we can't go tracting anymore, church is cancelled, and nobody wants to leave their houses! And the elders who are at 21 months are getting shipped home next week! Our mission president's wife sent us an email telling us to stock up on nonperishables so we went to the store on Saturday morning and I saw more empty shelves than I've ever seen in my entire life! There were zero rolls of toilet paper. Zero. And now I have lots of chef boyardee just in case of emergency!

But, life goes on!! On Saturday night, we were able to see our friend Josh get baptized! With all of the changes, we had to reorganize the whole thing pretty last minute, but everything turned out okay. He's the sweetest and I'm so excited for him! I love that kid!

Exchanges.

On Friday we had exchanges with the sister APs up in Calgary, so we got to take a nice road trip on Thursday night! All week it had been like, pretty warm, but winter came back in like 3 hours, so the summer clothes that I packed were not sufficient for the -26 degree weather that we were facing! They lent me lots of coats and scarves and hats, though, so I ended up being okay. The bigger issue was that tracting was banned, so we were only allowed to street contact (street contacting has since been banned), and nobody wanted to be outside with the snow and the coronavirus! We spent a lot of time in the heated church building trying to figure out what we were going to do about church on Sunday.

Which leads us to... church on Sunday! We hung out with lots of members and I did more Come, Follow Me than I've done in a long time. It was probably good for me! Except we went to one member's house and I heard their HUGE dog barrelling down the stairs and before I could do anything to protect myself, he was peeing on my coat!! It was not ideal. But it was okay. The member washed it for me and now it smells like laundry detergent!

Because nobody wants human contact, we've been having kind of a hard time getting appointments and the food bank has been having kind of a hard time getting volunteers! So we were able to solve each other's problems! We have been doing a lot of bagging food at the food bank and because people can't come in to pick up their orders anymore, yesterday we got to deliver people's food orders to their houses! It's basically the same as missionary work! King Benjamin said that when you're in the service of your fellow beings, you're only in the service of your God :)

John 16:33 says, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." I'm so grateful that we because of the gospel we can have peace despite our circumstances. Knowing that all of this is part of a bigger plan has helped me so much! There's nothing better to be doing than sharing this message with other people :)

Love you all! Stay healthy!

Sister Willis