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 😊

Week 26: Merry Christmas!

Gingerbread village

This week was CRAZY!! And so much fun! There was so much that happened, so I'm just going to give you the highlights:

- My companion got sick on Thursday night (like, barfing all over the car sick, so that was exciting!) and so I started reading Jesus the Christ like every other missionary with a sick companion and then on Friday I was still sick from having the flu, so we just slept and played games and I built an entire gingerbread village. So that was entirely productive.

- On Saturday night, we volunteered at the Heritage Park nativity, which is a live nativity pageant put on by the Church. It was only, like, freezing, but I was so cold that I tucked handwarmers under my thick socks in my boots. We were at the information booth, so our job was to yell "welcome to the nativity!" and "thanks for coming!" And we got hot chocolate at the end! It was really good. And a little chilly.

- We had our special Christmas sacrament meetings! They were so good! And we got soooo much chocolate, haha

Chocolate!

- We went to visit this lady named Usma who we tracted into a few weeks ago and wanted to show her the Christ Child, but we just talked for a loooooong time about the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon. We taught her the restoration in her entryway, and she told us that Joseph Smith was probably just possessed by the devil and that our book really doesn't make as much sense as hers. So that was awesome! But she was really apologetic about destroying our beliefs and she gave us hugs and chocolates and makeup brushes and gave us each a copy of the Qur'an. It was really sweet and kind of funny.

- On New Year's Eve, our friend Joanna texted us and asked if we could come over and talk about God for an hour and we were like, um, yes??? So we called the hermanas in her area and we all went over and watched The Christ Child with her. It was so fun! And we gave her a Spanish Book of Mormon and she said she wanted to read it and start coming to church every week! It was sad to pass her off but it's gonna be so good!

- My friend Adam got baptized on Christmas Eve and I got to go! It was so cool and he gave me a special shoutout in his talk! He said that Sister Willis and Sister Bangura taught him some good lessons out of PMG, which was funny. I loved it!

- On Christmas Eve night, we went Christmas caroling with some elders in our district and we tried to stop by this inactive family in one of our wards that has been next to impossible to get in contact with, and this Filipino woman opened the door and offered us 20 dollars! We told her no thanks and she invited us in to have food! It turned out that the family we were looking for had moved, but they told us we could come back and teach them more about the Book of Mormon in January and do Bible study with them! So that was awesome.

Christmas blow-ups!

- Christmas and Christmas Eve! They were great! I love Christmas!!

Matthew wrote about how the birth of Christ was the fulfilling of Isaiah's prophecy: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." I am so grateful to know about God's plan for us to find happiness and peace! And I feel so blessed to be able to share the good news with the people I meet :)

I love you and am so grateful for all of your examples! Merry Christmas!

Sister Willis

Week 25: I get the flu:(

I got my flu shot last Wednesday because all missionaries are supposed to get the flu shot, but I KNEW it was going to make me sick, and here we are. I got a priesthood blessing from some elders in our district yesterday and then I took like 7 naps. But I'm speeding along the road to recovery! I'm still hoping for a miracle.

Besides that, we had a really fun week of finding and teaching! Last week, we thought we found the meanest street in our area, but this week we ACTUALLY found the meanest street in our area. We looked at our map and felt like we should go knock doors on this little col-de-sac but when we got there it was filled with HUGE houses. Which was terrifying, because there seems to be a direct correlation between how big people's houses are and how mean they are at the door, and at the first door we knocked on this guy opened the door and his wife yelled at us from the upstairs balcony: "no! no! no! not interested! go away!" And then at the very next door this old lady opened and we were like "Hi! We're the missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" and she was like, "you're WHO?" and we were like, "we're missionaries!" and she said "You're CRAZY!" And slammed the door in our faces! It ended up being okay because the lady at the next house let us show her the Light the World video and she cried and hugged us and said she was gonna sign up! So we were obviously there for her.

Not that much else super exciting happened, except that we had to speak in church on Sunday and I talked FOREVER and CRIED!! Classic. I also tried to make toast yesterday and, being fever-ridden, my judgement was so subpar that I burnt it badly enough that the fire alarm went off! That was cute. And we took cute cookie boxes with Light the World cards on them to the care center and the old people were SO cute! They were so excited to see us! And so nice! It was a great time! And we wasted away our Saturday waiting for our friend Joanna to let us over to come clean her house. It was not my favorite day.

That's all for me! 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 says, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." Don't let the world get you down! And don't forget to light the world! Merry Christmas!

❤🎄

Sister Willis

Haha enjoy these pictures of me being SICK! And my comp made us take a Christmas picture even though I have the FLU! So that's why I look why I'm miserable!

Week 24: Santa Baby

Hello! This week FLEW! Probably because we had lots of fun and Christmassy things to do almost every night, like TWO ward Christmas parties and a relief society Christmas activity and the first presidency Christmas devotional (which is always SO good). One of our ward Christmas parties was outside (which, in Canada? In December? Means COLD) so there was a giant heated igloo for all of the adults and missionaries to stay inside of while the kids did fun stuff like sledding and eating too many cookies (the too many cookies might have actually been me :)). And Santa came! To both parties, actually. We asked Santa for a picture and he put his arms around our waists. Which was... exciting. Our second Christmas party had a taco bar, but there was way too much food and so we spent most of the night helping clean up and then we got a whole bunch of leftovers, which was super fun because the next day some people in our ward took us to Costa Vida for lunch. I'm like 40% Mexican food.

Other than that, this week was relatively uneventful. On Saturday night, we were trying to decide where to tract so we drove into our area and Sister Lamontagne and I felt like we should turn in all the same places, so when we ended up on this little loop we were like, okay, we're gonna knock on all of the doors, we're going to find someone to teach here. We were SO excited. And it was seriously the rudest street I've ever tracted! People kept peeking through their windows at us and then not answering the door! Like, hello, I can see you! Anyway, that was not the most fun I've ever had in my life, but whatcha gonna do? We had a better time tracting on Sunday night when a nice Muslim lady let us in and she was so funny and we talked all about what the Qur'an and the Bible and the Book of Mormon say about Jesus. Shoutout to BYU world religions for preparing me to talk to every Muslim in Calgary! But our real miracle was that on Monday night we were tracting and nobody really wanted to talk to us but as soon as we got to the last door we hadn't knocked yet, a lady called out from the next house over and was like "are you the sister missionaries?" And we were like "yes!" It turns out it was this less-active member of our ward who we've been trying to get in touch with for WEEKS and we were in the right place at JUST the right time. Miracles do happen!

Because it's #lighttheworld season, we've been doing "service finding," which is basically employing the Ammon principle of finding new people to teach. We just go around in service clothes and shovel people's driveways and leave them Light the World cards (get some from your local missionaries!!) We haven't found anyone that way yet, but at least I got a good workout, lol. My back was niiiice and sore the next morning.

I had to give a training to our zone (missionary speak for share some thoughts with a bunch of other missionaries) about Christ and our purpose last week and I CRIED. Predictable. But I really liked Elder Holland's thoughts from general conference about constantly striving to find Christ in the chaos of our lives, which I feel like was a big point of the Christmas devotional. Elder Holland said "...in spite of everything else this [Christmas] tradition may offer us, it will mean little or nothing unless we find Jesus at the center of it all. To grasp the vision we are seeking, the healing that He promises, the significance we somehow know is here, we must cut through the commotion—joyful as it is—and fix our attention on Him." (forgive my editing!) He goes on to say, "Sisters and brothers, through the incessant din and drumbeat of our day, may we strive to see Christ at the center of our lives, of our faith, and of our service. That is where true meaning lies." I know that especially in this Christmas season, we find true meaning as we turn to Christ! Helaman said to his sons, "And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall" (Helaman 5:12). Don't forget to make this Christmas meaningful by making time to remember Christ!

 

I love you much! Merry Christmas!

Sister Willis

Week 23: Warm Hands & Warm Hearts

Best candy-cane shake of my life at Peters' Drive-in after teaching Sis. Lamontange's sister and her boyfriend.

Last week was COLD!! It was -15 every day from Wednesday to Saturday, which meant that my face hurt a lot and tracting was not very fun for us or for the people whose doors we were knocking on. When we woke up on Tuesday morning, there were full PIECES OF ICE on the INSIDE of our bedroom window. It's a little ... drafty. Last Monday we told our bishop that our hands were cold, so the next Sunday when he had us over for dinner he brought us a wrapped package as "a gift from the ward to the sisters" -- it was hand warmers! For our cold hands! It was so nice. Our hands are never going to be cold again!

Our hand warmers!

Yesterday, we went to stop by the family that told us to come back because they never responded to our text, and the mom, Joanna, was in the middle of cooking dinner but she told us to come in anyway! She wanted us to talk to her boys about Jesus and the meaning of Christmas, so we explained a little bit about what Jesus did for us and then we talked about how we teach people about the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and she told us she'd like to learn more about it! So we taught them the Restoration and her kids asked us all these questions about the Trinity and how God answers our prayers! She wants to come to church with us on Sunday and she wants her boys to come to mutual with the boys in our ward, and she said that they'd read the Book of Mormon together! The only problem is that her husband only speaks Spanish and they're moving out of our area in the next couple of weeks, but we can work with that! We have missionaries who speak Spanish in the southwest. She told us that when we first came by her house, she'd been praying for some help with her son, and she felt like we were an answer to her prayer, and that when we came back she was super busy but that she felt like she should let us in anyway! We're SO excited for her and her family! We know that God answers prayers!

The members in our wards our SO kind and feed us delicious food every night, and yesterday we had dinner with this Filipino family and they fed us ... WELL. We ate barbecue chicken and whole pieces of ham and garlic shrimp and half a place of rice and asparagus. It was SO good, but it filled us up! They fed us grapes and I was like, okay, I can do grapes for dessert, and THEN they brought out the mango cheesecake and THEN they brought out the ice cream. I didn't think I was going to be hungry for days! But it looks like I underestimated myself.

After being outside for 15 min. Our faces were
really red, but the camera didn't pick it up!

Last week we had Greek food with a family in our ward and they invited the Mandarin elders because they don't get fed as much as we do, but their dad kept calling it our "double date!" It was funny but they didn't really know how to respond. It ended up being okay because everyone said our dinner message was better 😉. After dinner we tried to tract but nobody wanted to open their door, which was understandable, so instead we went and got gas, but because Canada is forsaken some of their gas stations don't have the little clip to keep the handle up while you stay in the car, so I had to hold the metal pump with my bare hands in -15! I got through almost all of the verses of I Am a Child of God without crying, so I'd call that an accomplishment.

When we were tracting on Monday, we met this big, scary-looking guy in a huge house who actually ended up being really nice! He wasn't interested in our message, but he told us he grew up with a bunch of Mormon kids who went on missions and asked us where we were from and told us to come get him if anyone on his street was mean to us. It was a tender mercy and kept me going for the rest of the day. I was also DYING because Sister Lamontagne told him that she was waiting for her visa to Idaho and he was like "Idaho?! They can send you     anywhere in the world and you got Idaho? My friend got sent to Bordeaux!" It was SO funny. I love when we meet nice people tracting!

We've done a lot of service this week, including helping a lady with 4 cats and 2 dogs pack her stuff to move. The most thrilling part of this experience was that when we got there, she had done NOTHING, so we got to wrap her porcelain houses in her and her husband's dirty clothes! She had no fewer than 10 boxes of salt because "they don't sell this stuff anymore" and "her husband really likes it." We packed probably 3 dozen boxes and barely made a dent in all the STUFF she had. And she spent the whole time telling us about her cats' and dogs' favorite toys. I felt like I had to take a shower after we left. We also volunteer at a retirement center, and we spent no less than an hour and a half arranging and rearranging a model Christmas village because some people wanted cotton batting to look like snow and some people did not. It was the most effective use of time we've ever had. Period. We also helped a woman not of our faith move up into our area, which was awesome! She did try to pay the other missionaries, which was a liiiiittle awkward, but she seemed really nice! And she's going to get invited to our special Christmas sacrament meeting for sure. But my FAVORITE services were setting up a Christmas tree for a member of our ward and helping another member of our ward set up some of her NINETY-TWO nativities! I love Christmas! It's so much fun! Also, if you haven't seen The Christ Child yet you should watch it at lighttheworld.org! I love it! And I love that we get to remember the birth of our Savior this month!

1 John 1:4-5 says "And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. Then this is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." I love that! Don't forget to #lighttheworld and share the light and love of Christ this December! Get started by signing up for daily service prompts at lightttheworld.org and finding our church in your area 😉! 

I hope you're having a great start to the (American) Christmas season! Stay warm!