Letter #28

23 February 2015 @ 10:45 a.m.

So we had a pretty crazy week this week.

We are preparing Patrick, one of the recent converts, to receive the priesthood. He's pretty solid, he just has a few feelings of inadequacy. But hey, don't we all? (I do, definitely. But I'm getting better) Tuesday night we started a split with the Zone Leaders. It was way fun. I was in Champlain area with Elder Anderson on Wednesday and we had a full day. We got smurfed by a potential investigator (she was not home at the time we set the appointment) so we were able to teach a less-active member. After that, we had an appointment with a couple of ladies from Burma. It was an odd lesson because only 1 of them understood English well enough so she was translating the whole time. At first they seemed pretty open, but then they started closing off when we started explaining modern revelation. They were very Bible centered. And then, at the very end, we found out the lady who could speak English was their preacher. . . Which explained the great memorization of the Bible. But we had an amazing DA after. It was a less-active family that the ward had been trying to contact for years, and the Champlain Elders were able to set up a Dinner Appointment. They are both in the Canadian version of the FBI, aka the RCMP, and the father was even a body guard for the Prime Minister. We had an amazing little lesson (is was short because their 3 boys who were all over the place) and we shared Ether 12:27, which the mother really liked. We had some great conversations and as we were leaving the oldest boy asked if we could come back! 

Then, on Thursday, we took Elder Artica to the bus stop and he left to Trois Riviere and then that night we picked up Elder Hernandez. He's way cool. He's from Mexico and his a cool accent.

Friday was Zone Conference (yay!). We had some good trainings on how we can better work with our ward leaders. One thing that was emphasized was keeping the vision of strengthening our wards spiritually, and how some specific plans on how we can do that. Our stake goals are to 1. Strengthen individual and family spirituality 2. Learn to make and keep covenants 3. Love and serve God's children and 4. Rise out of obscurity and and shine truth and light. 

Later that night we played soccer again and the Spanish Elders even got some good contacts.

Sunday they announced some pretty big changes. The Ottawa stake is moving boundaries AND they reorganized our bishopric. So, some big changes are heading our way. And it is supposedly -19 degrees outside right now, not including windchill. And the snow has been coming down, which is nice because sunny days are colder than snowy days. But it's sunny right now. 

Yay freezing!

Elder Perkes

Funny postcard at the Zone Leader's apartment

"Arise and Shine Forth..." Ha, they have a different idea.

Shopping at Kanata

Some pants that Elder Aritca left me

Letter2 #26 & #27

16 February 2015

Happy Family Day everybody! It's a civic holiday where everything is closed so our pday is tomorrow, but it's better to email today. Anyways, last Monday we went to Winterlude. Unfortunately, all the stores and booths were closed, so we just looked at the ice statues. They were pretty cool, though.

Tuesday we watched the Hastening the Work of Salvation broadcast as a district. It's such a great broadcast and it is so helpful in explaining the role of Missionaries and Members. After that we went to Caeri Sled's house to give her a blessing. She's a recent convert and she had some medical procedures that she was going to be going through, so she wanted to us to give her a blessing. I was the one who offered it and it was great. She was so happy and thankful for it. Hopefully all will go well. That night we were invited to go ice skating with the youth! President said we could go!. . . Just not skate. . . We were disappointed. But then we had to go to English class.

On Friday we helped out with another ward Chinese New Year celebration (because my companion knew them from his first transfers and he speaks Chinese). We made a TON of dumplings, which were pretty good. Then on Saturday we were doing some planning at the church and there was a Valentines day dance, and a live band that was made up of a bunch of guys from our ward! It was super funny and we found out that our bishop could sing! and we have lots of other talented people in our ward. Right after that we were about to leave when Sister Adams (one of the senior couples) walked up to Elder Mataoa and said, "Elder Adams is going to buy you some new shoes right now." and off we went. Elder Mataoa only has 1 pair of shoes which he changes every few months. I accidentally flat-tired his shoes one day and the sole came off. He continued to wear them for a week until Elder Adams bought him some new ones. And then that night the Spanish Elders received a call saying that Elder Artica was being emergency transferred, which came to a surprise to all of us. He will being leaving Wednesday to Trois Riviere and Elder Hernandes (an old roommate of Elder Gonazalez). The reason being is that a new Spanish missionary is coming in 2 weeks early for some reason. So that's exciting.

So exciting stuff. Hope all is well! 

Elder Perkes

Our district

My favorite ice sculpture

9 February 2015

Couple of things that have been happening this week:

We were able to do some service for one of the Sister's investigators. She had a lot of stuff that she needed moved around and it would have taken her weeks to do it by herself. But she was very nice and we did what we could. After that, we went to the hospital where an elderly member had been staying for a couple of weeks. She had just moved from Nova Scotia but then had a hard attack. When we all walked in she was so happy. She could not talk very fast, but you could tell how much she appreciated the visit. I gave her a blessing and it was wonderful. She was so thankful and was on the verge of tears. She was so nice. Later, we visited Xander, who is now baptized along with his family. We helped him make some goals for Primary. Now we are working with Patrick, his dad, to get the Aaronic Priesthood, so that should be fun. We also did an english class on Tuesday. It was super... odd. One part-member family from our ward showed up, and only the mom sat in. She is from Ethiopia and her english is very beginner. So we tried our best to teach a little bit. I taught a little, but it wasn't awesome. The Spanish Elders say that they will be bring a few more people next week. We had a good lesson with Eric later in the week and we got a baptismal date set for him! He's cool and wants to do what is right, he just has some troubles with his work schedule and his girlfriend. But we will work it all out. We then played soccer on friday night and it was soooo fun! we had 11 people show up who all were non-members and they all had different backgrounds. We had a Spaniard, a Bulgarian, an Italian, a German, a Korean, a Mexican, and a few more. A few even started asking questions about the church! We do our best to have fun and keep it safe. I even played barefoot halfway through. It was fun.

Elder Perkes