Long Week

January 30, 2017

Dear Family,

It was a pretty long week, but also really good at the same time. We had a worldwide missionary broadcast that you may have heard about already since it's probably what every other missionary is going to mention in their emails this week but I like the changes. The First Presidency has given us the opportunity to use our Agency more with things like studies and such. Lunches are only a half hour and P-day starts two hours earlier. Planning is in the morning now instead of at night, and President Pratt now wants us in bed by 10. Reporting key indicators has changed, where we really only report about half of what we used to, which tells us what everyone's focus needs to be on, and it's something that I think will be awesome for missionaries once they get used to it. Fortunately and unfortunately I only have to live it for a month.

Thursday was our first time doing service at the blood clinic, which was super easy, and rather a little boring. We were the servers in the food area so when people were done giving blood we just assisted them in getting anything to eat or drink. We are planning on doing it once a week though. We also taught our investigator Mike, who is doing great. We taught a full Restoration, and committed him to pray about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and he said that he already prayed about the Book of Mormon. He sponged it all up, the spirit was very present in that lesson and Brother Steen was a great help as well. He's hoping to be baptized at the end of February and I pray it happens before I leave, haha. He came to church again for all three hours and is reading and praying regularly. He is awesome and progressing really quickly. He asked us if when ever we read or prayed if we got a warm or fuzzy feeling inside us. Mike recognizes and feels the spirit and he came to see that for himself as he has kept commitments. Pray for him!

We helped someone move a bit on Saturday, which I haven't helped someone move in quite some time so that was good again, not too many people seem to be moving in the winter. I don't blame them.

This morning we played some pool and shuffleboard with the Montague Elders at the Montague legion, where I used to help do service for an investigator there. Memory flashbacks when you go to familiar places, fun time though.

Love You!

Love Elder Ray

Service

January 23, 2017

Dear Family,

It's the last stretch of the runway.

Short week, seeing as how P-day was on Wednesday. During that day though we attended an online training for the Canadian Blood Services to start doing service there, so that will be good. Speaking of service we try to go to the soup kitchen every Friday evening to volunteer and usually there are three or four of us. That night there were quite a few volunteers, mostly high school students. We had like seven people, it was crazy and the kitchen was not big enough for all of us. More people, less work I guess. Haha.

Friday we had planned a basketball activity but invited people last minute and the only one to show up besides us was someone the sisters were trying to start teaching. So yay for him but it was pretty awkward with just the three of us. We couldn't really play anything so we just shots hoops for like 45 minutes. Oh well.

Church was good, we had Mike come today, the guy who showed up at the church the week before asking to be baptized. We followed up on his reading and he just finished 1 Nephi. Had a lot of good questions and even a lot of good comments during the class. He stayed for all three hours which not a lot of people do for their first time. After sacrament meeting he asked us if that was it and we said there was a class, do you want to go? He was very hesitant and thought for a long minute, then said he would. phew. Great guy, I'm super excited about him.

After church we had a lesson with a member’s husband who is not a member and he had the idea that God was not perfect because he made a mistake in creating non perfect people (he used Hitler for his example). So really we talked about Adam and Eve and Agency, which cleared it up pretty good. He says that he retracts that statement and his new one is that People are flawed, not God is imperfect, interesting lesson.

Love You!

Love Elder Ray

Surge Week

January 18, 2017

Dear Family,

We did what our mission called a Surge week, kind of like the Purge, at least that's what I wanted them to call it. Basically all meetings for the week were cancelled and unless we had lessons, which weren't too many this week for us, then it was constant finding, looking for new people to teach. Typically President Pratt wants us to do a minimum of fifteen hours of finding a week and this week everyone had to hit at least thirty. What hard work but the miracles that were shown throughout the mission this week were incredible. As a mission we found over a hundred new people to teach. Elder Wynder and I found three throughout the week, which is pretty great. Everyday there were different challenges like teaching short five minute Restoration lessons to as many people as would allow you to in the day or extend the baptismal invitation. It sure was a great way to motivate us more to be able to share the gospel with others in a fun and creative way. One of the challenges was to come up with a creative, effective contact. So this week we went down to the boardwalk and we tried what we called picture contacting. I held my camera and when we tried to talk to someone who turned us down right away, we would just ask them if they could take a picture for us. No one really declined doing that and what happened is it gave us a window of opportunity to talk with them while they took the picture, pretty effective, and we got a couple of good pictures out of it.

We served at a soup kitchen this week and put out a small stack of each of the pamphlets for the first three lessons. The fruits of that came on Sunday. We were sitting at the church when the doorbell rings, and we go to answer. An older gentleman was asking if our minister was here and wanted to talk to him about being baptized the proper way, saying that in his church they did it by sprinkling on the forehead. But he was reading a pamphlet that he picked up (the gospel of Jesus Christ) at the soup kitchen and read about baptism by immersion and felt that it was the right way, so he went looking, and what do you know, he runs into just the people he needs to talk to, the missionaries. We invited him in from standing out in the snow storm and only had about fifteen minutes before getting to another appointment. Quick lesson on baptism and authority! Miracles! We worked our tails off and prayed hard, and God placed Michael in our path to as he says, "Make sure he does it right so he can be saved." I know that this is God's work and that if we work hard, he can trust us.

We made a list of people who had met with missionaries before but stopped. But there was one where we had an address for it but we couldn't find the house. One day we were knocking near Bishop's house before dinner and ran into this guy named Raymond, sounded familiar to me. We talked for a bit and shared about the Book of Mormon and he said, "I only like studying from my Bible, it's a beautiful book, here I'll show you." Then he goes to a drawer and pulls out a large print copy of a triple combination, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. What! my eyed got so wide, it caught me off guard, thinking it was going to be some old looking Old Testament or something. He said he had another one that he kept in his car. We went back to follow up on a chapter we left him to read and he didn't understand a thing. He's not very comprehending and just agrees with whatever we say, even if he has no idea what's going on. Haha hopefully we can teach super simply and he can understand something, or maybe he just likes the company, who knows.

Had a lesson with this guy named Paul, who said we were welcome any time. Aaannddd, it turned out a little differently than I thought it was going to. We barely got to teach because he spent the whole time asking us questions, which I guess were good but a lot of it didn't pertain to anything. Nice guy though, gonna go back once more and see if we can teach anything this time, haha.

Transfers are this week and we just got our letters, the last time my name will be on it. :( I will be finishing my mission on... PEI. Yep I'm staying in Charlottetown with Elder Wynder and will be "dying" here, on the island, which is pretty sweet because I love this place. By the time I leave I will have spent almost eleven months, close to half, of my mission on this little Island, love it, will miss it hardcore, and the people here. You grow to love them, even if they are crazy! (I hope some of them read this)

Hope this week has been as awesome for you as it has for me!

Love You's!

Love Elder Ray

How many eggs and milk my comps and I have had
over the last three months, we saved them up just to see.

PEI street lights
red=squares
yellow=diamond
green=circle

Learning

January 9, 2017

Dear Family,

On Wednesday we had a mini zone conference in Moncton where we learned more on Obedience and also what the new years mission goals are.

We had a powerful lesson with our investigator Konrad, who is a members father. We talked a lot about the Godhead and Jesus Christ to help him with his concerns. It will take some time teaching him but he is great. Right now he doesn't understand the scriptures at all which doesn't really motivate him to try but we committed him to it still. He can't go to church because of physical injury, and he won't pray in front of us, only by himself. All the basics that will change over time the more he meets with us. It always happens, just takes one step at a time. What I like about him is that he has so much of the same beliefs, but he's not afraid to tell us when he thinks we are wrong, haha, makes for some great questions and discussion.

Not a big week, except for the snowstorm we had yesterday which caused church to be cancelled and us staying inside the majority of the day. No church as a missionary, what is this?

Love You's!

Love Elder Ray

That moment when you are walking down the sidewalk in PEI

We shoveled a walkway into the church

Happy New Year

January 2, 2017

Dear Family,

Happy New Year!

I remember the time when I thought 2017 was so far away, and now it's here, just like that. Seems to happen that way quite a bit.

Wednesday I spent the day in Moncton on an exchange and we taught a few lessons to their investigators.

We had to be in our apartment by four on new years so we weren't out and about when all the crazy parties were happening. There were some early fireworks that we could see from our window but that was about it. Went to bed at ten, Which was actually nice, but got woken up to a bunch of noise and pounding, looked at my watch and it was exactly midnight, typical.

On Sunday there weren't a lot of people at church, probably hung over, haha jk but most likely sleeping. Didn't have to teach the lesson though in second block because no one in our class was there to teach. Nice break I guess.

We did teach our investigator Jordan, who is progressing pretty quickly and is looking forward to baptism. His understanding of the gospel is really good, it does help that his girlfriend is a member and they talk it quite a bit.

Love You's!

Love Elder Ray