Bonjour à tous! How is everyone doing? Are y'all enjoying the summer heat? It is finally starting to be warm here. The other day it was about 31 degrees and humid and yesterday was actually about 28 and relatively dry so it kinda felt like back home. For all of you who don't know, the first of July is Canada's National Holiday. It is also the day that everyone renews their leases on their apartments or moves. They spend the day moving everything and then later that night there are tons of parties. I hope you all back in the states have some fun plans for the 4th! Anyway, this week was pretty fun. Here is a run down of what happened.
Last Wednesday we got a call to do some service for one of the sisters in the ward so we got dressed and went painting! When we showed up it was just us and this 74 year old lady that was there so we went for it. We started and finished the living room before we had to leave. After that we picked up one of our amazing ward missionaries named John. He took the bus all the way in from Montreal to be with us that night. We tried to pass by a couple of people and we had a few appointments fall through but it was all good in the end. We were able to visit a less active that I haven't meet yet. He is pretty cool but has some mental problems that makes it hard for him to learn a whole ton so we just are helping him learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ. After that we got some dinner at McDonald's and then went to our last appointment for the day and she was home! Her name is Carolle. She is a pretty less active member of the church and before we didn't really know why or what she needed but our lesson went really well and she opted up to us and were able to help her with some things. It's amazing how quickly the spirit will enter a room as soon as you start testifying of simple truths.
Thursday was interesting. We started off with studies and then had lunch with the bishop and his family. We had a really nice discussion on our plans of helping the members do mission work and help the less actives come back. Bishop wanted to invite every member in our ward to do two simple things. 1. Pray for personal missionary experiences. 2. Pray specifically for a less active that you want to see back at church. They are two really easy things to do but with the power of prayer and willingness to act on impressions, we will be able to see awesome things happen. Or in spiritual words, By small and simple things are great things brought to pass. On thing we read in preach my gospel is that with every invitation, there has to be a follow up. Bishop asked me to put my computer skills to work and make an excel sheet to report all of the follow ups and progression of members. I quickly through something together and then Bishop and I talked about it a little and the I added a few more things. Everyone has talents! Make sure you find out what yours are and USE THEM! After that we went back and painted another room at the house while the 74 year old lady finished the rest of it because she had stayed there all day the day before and that day just painting. Super impressive. We were able to share a little bit of who we are and what we do as missionaries with her. It was nice. Later that day we had a couple of pass bys and lessons that were good and we also were able to go back to the less actives house that we regained contact with the day before and actually had a good lesson with him. He said he might be able to come back to church in a week!
Friday was the first official day of the new mission!! Our missions and the mission of Halifax are officially ONE! President Low arrived Thursday afternoon and President Phillip's left Friday morning. There are definitely going to be some changes and adjustments to both halts of the mission and it's going to be exciting. That morning we had a district council meeting with the Zone leaders and Sister Training leader. It was pretty good. My district leader invited our bishop to come as well so we were 11 people this week instead of 6. It was a nice change of normal. We had a nice discussion with bishop about what we are doing here in Sherbrooke and how the others can do the same thing but adjusted to their areas and needs. It was neat to see the other ideas and thoughts of all of the other missionaries. There is power in numbers. After that we lunch with Sister Lachance and read from Mosiah 4. Its a pretty neat chapter. We then went over and help Pascal move some things around his house and helped him unload and load his little trailer full of stuff. We then tried to get some finding time in but didn't get too much out of it and that about finished up the day.
Saturday was pretty slow. Not a ton happened but we did get a call from our ward missionary, serge, saying he had a referral for us. He had met this guy Friday night while he was out for dinner and said he approached him and asked if they could talk. Most people at this restaurant know serge personally because he is there almost everyday and loves talking to people. He also likes sharing his beliefs so most people know his beliefs and know he is a member of the church. This guy told serge his life story and said he wants to change his life and wants to stop drinking. So that's where we came in. We were supposed to meet up for lunch and talk but he never showed up, which I'm a little grateful for because this guy is a part of Hells Angels up here aha. Yeah, we meet a lot of interesting people as missionaries but a lesson to be learned from all of this is that it is never to late to repent. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are always there for us when we need them. Their arms are stretched out towards us continually and all we need to do is truly repent of our sins. Jesus Christ suffered and died for all of our pains, sufferings and sins and all we need is to turn towards him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Or in the words of Disney, He saved our lives, and we are eternally grateful.
Sunday was pretty good. Because it was the 5th Sunday of the month, it was missionary Sunday. Bishop talked about member missionary work and invited all of the members to do those two things and told them all that the missionaries full time and ward with him will be following up to see if they have chosen some less active to pray for. I'm excited to see what happens in this ward because of what the members will do. After church we had some finding time. Not a ton of people where home but we did find this dude from south Africa who has a super thick accent and is pretty open to the gospel. Later that night we had dinner with the family Herring except half of them were back in the states for the holidays so it was a kinda small group but it was good. Mike's son was still there and he is not a member so when we got to share the spiritual thought, he was able to participate more. It was nice. We then were able to visit the awesome MacFarlane family. Their oldest daughter was upstairs this time so we were able to talk to her a little bit this time. They have 5 kids but two of them are a little less active but the oldest is on a mission in Arizona and we talked to the daughter about her mission and she is slowly preparing for it. She wants to go but is waiting to do some schooling first. That was about it for Sunday.
Yesterday was insane. We woke up at 6am and looked out the window. And what did we see? Well not popcorn but just a thick layer of fog. It was pretty cool but it didn't stay very long and it was a relatively dry day. They don't call it the national moving day for nothing. We helped with 2 people moving and everywhere we went we saw different people packing and unpacking their houses. We ran over to the bishops house and started helping their neighbors move at 7am. With a little lunch break in there somewhere we finished around 4 or 4:30pm. We then went home and ate some food and then headed to the second person we were helping. They had a giant flatbed trailer that we just loaded everything on and strapped down. We then had to drive it across town and unload it on to the second floor of the new apartment. The stairs were really steep and they left us in charge of carrying all of the heavy stuff. We had two couches, a couple heavy desks, and a deep freezer with some food in it. It was crazy. By the end off all that we were so dead tired. We the went over and finished the night with FHE with the LaRoche family. It was really nice just to sit down and talk about the gospel again and not have to worry about moving stuff. This week was Sister LaRoches turn to do the spiritual message. She gave us all a piece of paper and then we had a contest to see who could write down the most of the modern day prophets. I only got 10/17. We then talked about the importance of prophets and why it is important to remember and do what they say. It was actually pretty good.
That's about it for this week. I hope you are all having fun and staying healthy. I want to invite you all to do the same things we invited our members to do. Pray for some personal missionary experiences and choose a less active member in your ward and pray specifically for them. I love you all and wish you the best this week!
Love you all!
Elder Beckstrand
Cathedral
Bat boat
Moving day!
No comments:
Post a Comment