Week 42: Homeward Bound!

Sis. Bueno pointing to the Medicine Hat Teepee.

Well, I wrote a few weeks ago about how much easier it is to talk the talk than walk the walk. In the weeks since then I've been doing LOTS of talking the talk, but now it looks like it's time to walk the walk! I got a call from my mission president last night saying that I'm being released because of my asthma, which is...kinda lame? Anyway, I'm flying back to DC on Monday afternoon, so I'll see you all (or most of you, from an appropriate social distance) next week!

In the meantime, I still had a VERY exciting last full week in the mission field! It turns out I actually don't have tonsillitis, but the nurse thought I had mono instead for a hot second and then my sore throat went away entirely! And it turns out I'm okay. A minor miracle? Faith healing? On Thursday my throat was still a little sore and we had a video call lesson with some members and they asked if they could bring us fudgesicles and I was like, um, of course? The lesson I learned is that you can't ask members for ANYTHING because we opened our door and there were THREE bags of groceries on the doorstep. They're so sweet. We are VERY well provided for. 

Because we don't have dinner appointments with members of the ward anymore, we get to watch movies on our phones! So far I have seen Ephraim's Rescue, 17 Miracles, The Singles Ward (for like, the 12th time), and The Other Side of Heaven. They all made me cry. Except for The Singles Ward. But we've still been hanging out with members by having online lessons with them! We shared a message with our stake president and his wife on Elder Stevenson's talk from General Conference about doing a spiritual seismic upgrade. After the lesson, Sister Salmon (the stake president's wife) asked how we chose that talk and we said that it just stood out to both of us. And she told us that it was inspiration because that was the one talk that both she and President Salmon fell asleep during. The Spirit works in mysterious ways.

On Saturday night we had a lesson with one of our returning members who really struggles to keep the Word of Wisdom (for my friends not of our faith: not drinking coffee, tea, or alcohol, or using tobacco or other drugs) and he LOVES his coffee, and we've been trying to help him strengthen his testimony, so we talked a lot about promises associated with reading The Book of Mormon and asked him if he'd stop drinking coffee if he knew that it was true. He admitted that he probably would, and we talked about the power of acting in faith in order to receive a witness and Sister Bueno invited him to throw away all of his coffee so he wouldn't be tempted to drink it! Well, he did NOT like that idea, he kept saying "oh no! oh, no no no!" and making crying noises. He couldn't bring himself to get rid of it, but we did come up with a better solution: after the closing prayer, we drove to his house and he threw coffee to us from 6 feet away inside his house. So now we have a grocery bag with 5 bags of coffee in it in our apartment! It was in our pantry on Saturday night and we opened the pantry on Sunday morning and the whole thing smelled like coffee. He told us it was like $18 a bag, so it turns out that we have $90 worth of coffee. Good times!

On Monday we went to volunteer at the food bank and they're always giving the missionaries a WHOLE bunch of treats, so I was like, watch them give us a whole cake today! And then when we were at the food bank, Donovan (the guy who is in charge) was like, "don't forget to grab a cake on the way out!" That is what we like to call the spirit of prophecy.

Obviously, the highlight of my week was EASTER! #Heisrisen! We did the worldwide fast on Friday and then on Sunday we had an awesome sacrament meeting with our district and our members gave us Easter gift bags with toilet papers and copies of the new proclamation on the restoration. It was awesome. Our members are the best! 

This week I've been reading 2 Nephi 31 (yes, I know that I'm BEHIND on my Come, Follow Me), and verse 12 says "And also, the voice of the Son came unto me, saying: He that is baptized in my name, to him will the Father give the Holy Ghost, like unto me; wherefore, follow me, and do the things which ye have seen me do." I love that! If there is something I have learned on my mission, it is that Christianity is all about FOLLOWING Christ. As we remember Him during the Easter season (and every season!), He invites us to follow in His footsteps and become like Him! Even though people at Church aren't perfect, we're all trying to be a little bit more like Jesus. So we all have the opportunity to learn and grow and forgive and change together. Just how it was meant to be!

I hope everybody has a great week! I'll write you from Maryland!

ALL my love (or as President Keung would say, arohatinonui),

Sister Willis ❤

Week 41: House Arrest

General Conference Breakfast

Last Wednesday night we got a call from the mission nurse saying that if anyone had any symptoms we needed to let her know immediately. And I had kind of a sore throat so I told her that and we were IMMEDIATELY brought into a 10-day isolation in case I had the coronavirus! We spent all week inside our apartment. I have spent upwards of ten hours every day on the couch. And because Canadians don't wear shoes inside, I haven't put shoes on for almost a whole week! My sore throat was all gone by Sunday, so I was like, HA! I DON'T have covid! And then yesterday I woke up and my throat was hurting again and last night the mission nurse called and left a message saying she wanted to check in and potentially lift our isolation, and I was like, oh HECK. My sore throat is back! There's no way we're getting out of isolation now. Anyway, we called the nurse and explained the situation. I was very confused because normally sore throats don't leave and then come back. And then, all of a sudden, the nurse was like, "Sister Willis, have you had your tonsils removed?" And I told her that I have not had my tonsils removed and she made Sister Bueno check my tonsils in the light and sure enough, they were nice and inflamed! So that was super fun. The nurse came over to check it out last night and she said that I for sure have infected tonsils and that the infection is spreading to my lymph nodes! So the good news is that I do NOT have coronavirus and we're not in isolation anymore! The bad news is that instead I have TONSILLITIS! The nurse is trying to get me some antibiotics to kill the tonsillitis. Hopefully that works out soon. 

Nutell-2-Go from the food bank

This week has been a lot of sitting. Sitting during meetings, sitting watching conference, sitting during lessons. The good news is that we've had a lot of lessons! Without travel time and with the video call breaking up, it's pretty easy to keep our lessons short enough to squeeze a bunch together. We spent the end of last week talking with a lot of our members about the restoration to get everyone nice and prepared for general conference. Which was AMAZING! Everybody always asks what everyone's favorite talk is and every time someone mentions a talk I'm like, that's it! That's my favorite talk! Because they were all so good. But I really really liked Elder Renlund's talk about the new heart and Elder Uchtdorf's talk about video calling the missionaries! You're bored, your local missionaries are bored, and they would love a referral! Go to comeuntochrist.org to get in touch with them 😉. And it really hit home when Elder Holland quoted the returned missionary who said "I didn't come this far to only come this far." We had a mission-wide meeting on Monday (over zoom) and President Keung talked about the children of Israel and Lehi's family who were on long and difficult journeys but who decided that they had not come that far to only come that far! It's helpful for me to remember that I am on a journey with a destination! We have come so far and we have so much farther to go. So we're just going to keep finding joy in the journey.

We played phase 10, watched some pioneer movies, and I worked on our puzzle. We had two good lessons with our friend Rafael and he asked us how someone would join the church and so we explained the importance of baptism and invited him to be baptized on April 25! He said he'd think about it. And we got a text from our friend Jasmine who was going to be baptized on April 12 saying that she didn't think she was ready yet. That was kind of sad, but we had a good lesson with her last night and were able to talk more about God's love for us and how we can find strength. She's super sweet and I'm proud of her and hope she can find peace!

April 10th Day of Fasting Infographic

I have been thinking a lot these last few days of how mindful God is of us. On Saturday I was having a Rough Time and right after the evening session of general conference our zone leaders showed up on our porch with a whole pan of nanaimo bars. So I kind of unloaded on them. (In our defense, we'd been inside for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT).  They were super sweet about it and they came JUST at the right time. And then the next day they showed up with some mail and asked me if I wanted a priesthood blessing. I was in isolation so I wasn't sure if that was allowed but I called the mission president and he said that I could go to the church if I wanted a blessing. For my friends not of my faith, when you get a blessing a priesthood holder puts his hands on your head and speaks the words that God gives him. You can get different kinds of blessings, but this one was a blessing of comfort and counsel. And in my blessing, the elders told me that I would be able to see God's love for me as I read the scriptures (and I was like oh yeah, okay, I already knew that, I'm doing everything I need to be) and then they said that I would ALSO be able to see evidence of God's love if I took time to look around me. And all of a sudden, I remembered so many times in the last few days when people had showed up and reached out and said just the right things at the moment when I needed it! For example, during the Saturday Evening Session of general conference (side note: 4 women speakers! that's a record!), I was struggling and then at the end of his talk, President Eyring said "The Lord has a plan for your service." And I felt like he was looking me straight in the eyes and talking right to me! There are messages from God all around. We just have to look for them!

Medicine Hat Missionaries taken before isolation

And on that note: Doctrine & Covenants 64:33 says "Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great." I am trying so hard to not be weary in well-doing and trust that the Lord can take my small efforts and make great things. I am so excited to see miracles this week!

I hope you are all well! Happy Easter! #Heisrisen!

Love,

Sister Willis

President Nelson has invited us to join in a worldwide day of prayer and fasting for relief from covid-19 on April 10, Good Friday. If you're interested in uniting your faith with ours, check out the infographic!

Week 40: OOHHH WE'RE HALFWAY THERE!

Manna (Brownies) from Heaven!

On Thursday I hit my 9 month mark, which means -- HALFWAY! And we are DEFINITELY living on a prayer. Everybody always talks about having a mid-mission crisis. Apparently mine is covid-19. We aren't confined to our apartments (yet) but the missionaries in Calgary are so we're pretty sure we know what's coming. Luckily general conference is this weekend! There's no better time to be trapped inside your apartment than for general conference. And there's no better time to hear the words of the prophets than in the middle of a pandemic! 

Last Thursday we had transfers, so we took a quick road trip to Lethbridge, which is about two hours east of Medicine Hat. Everything was mostly alright except for 11 areas in the mission closing due to the fact that we lost all of the elders who had been out for 21 months AND no new missionaries could come in from the MTC in Provo. But then, on Friday, we had -- TRANSFERS PART 2! We found out that all of the international missionaries were being sent home, quarantined for 14 days, and reassigned to missions in their home countries. Luckily the US of A is not quite international enough for the Church to start chartering us planes home. We lost a few dozen more missionaries, but some of them can't even go home because the borders of their home countries are closed! Things change every day, and every day missionaries get moved around. But I'm still here! Partying it up!

We haven't been able to go into people's homes for a couple of weeks now, but luckily the members of the Medicine Hat 5th ward are literal ANGELS sent directly from the presence of God to feed my companion and I a ridiculous amount of sugar. On Thursday morning, our relief society president hung a bag on our door with a puzzle and a roll of frozen cookie dough; on Saturday, a member dropped off TWO PANS of frosted double-chocolate brownies (one gluten and dairy-free, for Sister Bueno, and one full of butter and flour, for me); the stake president's wife gave us dinner on Monday and included a 5-pound bag of sour gummy dinosaurs (dino-sours, they're called) and homemade chocolate chip cookies; and last night our doorbell rang at 8:00! It was (if you can guess!) a sweet member of our ward walking her dog in the snowstorm. She gave us some kit-kats and mike & ikes and told us to stay safe. Basically, if I get sent home because of the coronavirus, don't be surprised if I'm looking a little chunkier.

Yesterday we were supposed to have MLC (mission leadership council: a big meeting with all of the zone leaders and sister training leaders in the mission) in Calgary, but CLEARLY that was NOT going to happen. So instead we had a big zoom call! So many of the missionaries have gone home since the end of February, when we had our last meeting, that it was kind of crazy to see all of the new people! But life goes on. And we thank heaven for technology! We've been able to have so many lessons with members and people we're teaching through hangouts and zoom and messenger and google duo even though we can't meet with people in person! For the longest time, everybody would always talk about how God prepared this technology to hasten His work and I didn't really buy into it. I thought it was great that we COULD use technology to do family history work and share the gospel, but there was no way that could be its primary purpose. And look where we are now! Thanks to the devices we have in our hands and the years of experience that we've had with social media, we're going as strong as ever! President Keung even started posting on Facebook! Which is a miracle all of its own!

At the end of last week, the zone leaders had a little bit of a rocky relationship with some of the companionships in our zone, so they decided to take a page out of the Relief Society book and offer up some baked goods. We tried to teach them how to make cake mix cookies but instead of following the recipes we sent them they just followed the recipe on the cake box, so they made a bunch of mini cakes. Which is exactly what you'd expect from two 20-year-old boys. They called us, very concerned about their cake-cookies, and then decided that they would still be an acceptable apology offering if they were frosted. But they didn't have stuff to make frosting. So Sister Willis got to make chocolate frosting for the zone leaders, who showed up to our apartment with the cookie-cakes ("they taste like clouds!" they said), and we all stood in the doorway frosting the treats. I think the missionaries forgave them, so it might have been worth it.

This morning I read Doctrine and Covenants 128:22, which is taken from a letter written by Joseph Smith and says, "Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad." I am so immensely grateful to be part of so great a cause! And it is powerful to me to recognize that where most of the world has shut down, we are still working hard and going strong! In this battle we're fighting we already know who wins! And so we're still girding up our loins and getting to work. It's a HAPPY time to be a disciple of Christ! And it is SUCH a happy time to be a missionary!

I love you! Take a little extra effort to be a missionary today!

💙💙💙

Sister Willis