The Texan

This week has been pretty decent, still did lots of tracting but not as much as usual since we have all these sales company's out knocking.... starting to cause problems with our tracting plans.  On Saturday we were out tracting at 10am, the first door we knocked on wasn’t home, and as we walked out from behind the house there was JW's knocking on the front door, and down  at the other end of the street there was another herd of them!!  So we left that street and went to one across the road. With our luck we knocked on a street that they had already knocked to!! The guy wasn’t too happy about that, but once we told him we weren’t JW's he was a bit nicer.  So we ended up just heading back to the apts and doing companion study.

Sister Angell Jr. fed us on Saturday night.  Almost didn’t get to eat there though... her husband wasn’t there so we needed fellowship.  We sat out in the car for 25min before they found Bro. Gwin who was more than happy to come eat her food! So we were glad he was around so we could eat!  She had a bunch of food, we didn’t even eat most of it because she had so much!  And she was worried she wouldn’t have enough for everyone :)

 

People up here still ask me if I’m from Texas, and they are shocked when I say "nope Alberta".  Tippets doesn’t think I sound like a Texan but everyone else seems to.

 

Had a little prayer with Raymond, an Indian buddy of ours that we said a prayer for probably my first week out, guess he needs the blessings.  He always comes to us at the weirdest times, and places but hey if you want the elders to pray for you I guess you gotta do that.

 

Got lucky here yesterday and didn’t have to give my Sunday school lesson!  Sister Angell sr showed up and took over for me. I was more than happy to give her the lesson.

 

Found a few new investigators this week.  Richard, Donald, and Joseph.  They are all very interesting individuals, but they are still children of god.  That’s about all for our week up here in Flin Flon, not too much exciting but that’s alright.

 

Hope everyone is doing good back home!

 

Love you all!

 

Talk to you next week!

 

                                                                                                   Riley enjoys photography like his mom.

Knockin in a Blizzard

Well his week was pretty long and cold.  Most the week we did finding, and most the time it was snowing, so that made it awesome!  People looked at us like we were crazy when we knocked on their door out there in the blizzard, and 99 percent of them didn’t want to talk with us.  Two houses were especially fun... one lady came out and told us to get our Jesus crap off her property and that she’s a roman catholic she doesn’t need our Jesus crap!  The other lady told us to get the heck off her steps and to never come back! because apparently we had been there three times already.  All you can do really when that happens is laugh and go to the next door.  

Found Roger this week finally, taught him a lesson and read the Book of Mormon with him for a bit, but we'll see what happens there...

 We saw Kurt for the first time this week not drunk outta his mind, had a good little talk with him, didn’t get a lesson with him but we did find out he’s found a job that'll hopefully keep him busy and away from drinking.

Found a new investigator this week so it wasn’t all bad!  His name is Thanuj or TJ since tippets can’t say his name ha-ha.  He seems pretty solid from what we can tell, now we just gotta convert him to Mormonism.
Had a lesson with Shyann yesterday for the first time since I’ve been here.  She even called us up to have us come over.  We taught her the restoration since she had forgotten pretty well everything they taught her before.  Sounds like she’s done with the party life finally!
I gave a talk in church yesterday on Christ and his Atonement.  Seemed to go pretty well.  Had a bunch of less actives there for it so hopefully it helped them a bit. 
After church we thought our branch was going to self-destruct...  I guess Pres. Garrett sent a few kids home with their parents because they were being too crazy.  That didn’t go over well with the natives that showed up for the first time in months, they all figure they are getting picked on cause none of the white kids get told to be quiet or nothing.  So me and Tippets left ASAP so we didn’t get pulled into the middle of all that.  Hopefully the branch can learn not to be so sensitive to all this stuff or it will fall apart here in Flin Flon...
But yeah that’s how our week went for us, hopefully this week is a lot better and a lot warmer.

I wish I was home to see Shaylee but I’ll be home soon enough.

Love you all!  I’ll talk to you next week!

 

 

Exchanges in Thompson

Well this week has been super busy, but really good.

 We had exchanges with the Elders in Thompson on Wednesday-Friday.  On the way up, me and tippets saw some beavers on the side of the road, so we stopped quick and tried to stone them, but no luck...

 Wednesday we had ZTM (zone training meeting), learned a few things there, and got some sleep during it too... it was over Skype so they couldn’t tell we were all asleep for some of it.  Had a cool experience with street contacting up there.  So it was the 3rd guy me and elder Gee talked to since we started, and he stopped and we talked for a while and I guess he was into drugs pretty bad till one day here this last week he was sitting in the smoke of all his buddy’s and he got this feeling that he needed to change his life.  So he stood up and cussed them out and told them to clean up their lives and hasn’t looked back since.  He’s been at these little drug and alcohol meetings for the past few days trying to quit, even said he was going to come to our church on Sunday but didn’t make it, so he said he would come this week to church.  He thought it was kind of cool that we happened to run into him on the street there when he was thinking about our church, so we got some contact info and then he was gone.  The next ones to come up the street were mine to talk to, and it was a family of 5.  I stopped them and got talking, did my usual hey we are missionary's from the....and we are sharing a message today about Christ today and how through his gospel we can find peace in this life and it will bring love and comfort into our family....  Something like that anyway, and this lady started to cry, we didn’t know why or anything, and then she said to us, "now I know for sure someone is out there watching over me and my family."  So we asked her a little bit about what she meant by that and she told us that she had been praying this whole week to have some kind of answer to a question she had, and there we were walking right at her and stopped to talk to her.  It was a very cool thing to see how the Lord works with all of us and makes things happen for those in need.  So we got all her contact info too and she seems like she was really wanting to know what we had to say, and how we could help her, so hopefully Thompson Elders can help her out.

  Also almost got kidnapped with elder Gee that day...some drunk Indian really wanted elder gees day planner, but elder gee wouldn’t give it to him ha-ha so they got into a little argument over it, and then the guy just tried to take elder gee since he wouldn’t part with his note book!!  Luckily the guy’s daughter saw him doing this and came to save us.

  Me and Elder Darley got sent off together on Thursday, not sure that was the best idea considering we are both still in training, but it was fun!  Didn’t get into any crashes on the road, and didn’t get backed into any corners with peoples Qs on the door.  We were however late getting home... by 6min.  We got stuck on a ladies door for 25min talking about miracles, and how she raised her husband from the dead with her faith in god.  She was interesting, but super fun to talk to!  As we left she stopped us and asked how old we were and we said 18, and she’s like oh my daughters 17.  Whatever she meant by that we don’t wanna know ha-ha.

  When we got home Friday it was 20 out so that was a nice change from -5 in Thompson.

 Found 2 new investigators that night too!  Peg and Joe, they are in their 60s, and have been to every church it sounds like, except ours.  So we talked with them for an hour and a half, Peg loves to talk!

But they invited us back for a lesson and an early dinner tomorrow with them, so we are pretty excited about that!
We have 4 dinner appointment's set up this week.  One with Peg and Joe, Then the Davis's, then Sister Angell Jr, and then the Cormack’s on Easter Sunday!  So we are going to have lots to eat this week.

  Elder Tippets gave me the lead in a lesson this week finally! But guess what the topic was, Law of chastity.... Luckily it was with Gordy, a member in our ward that comes to all our lessons with us when we need him, so it wasn’t too bad.

  Guess the mission is having a bed bug problem again.... so we are all on spring cleaning duty today so that we can try to keep some of the apartments from getting them.  Ours is pretty clean, so we aren’t too worried about them in our place.  But I’ve seen a few others that I could see having them...

  Well that’s about all for this week!

  Miss you all, but I’ll see you soon! Love ya!

 

Tippets and I are going to be here in Flin Flon untill he "dies" in June. I may even be here till July or August.

Picture of me out side of Thompson by a sign.

 

Forgot my pillow and under armor long johns in Thompson..... So I got to wait a month to get those back now.

  I like the sheep! (Easter pkg from home)

 

 Elder Gee and elder tippets jacked my camera during exchanges!

Why is the Devil so Persistant Today?!

Well this week has gone by really fast, hard to believe it’s almost been a month out here already!

This week we did lots of service for people, shoveling snow out from their homes so they don’t flood, it was nice to get to use my hands for something other than knocking doors!
The few days we did tract this week we didn’t do so well, everyone seemed to be drunk the one day.
We were walking down Aspen grove to see how Shyann was doing and these two drunk Indians were walking towards us, I said to Elder Tippets, "here we go" and sure enough the one big Indian stopped us and was like, are you guys Mormons!?  We said yeah, then it was all downhill from there.  He went on about how we shouldn’t go around preaching to everyone about how the lord will help them get out of their addiction because he can’t, only we can help ourselves!! As he was talking he spills his beer all over the place from shaking his hands for emphasis on all his words.  The other kid behind him couldn’t even stand up hardly, he was tripping over himself standing still.  So we talked a bit longer with this guy and then somehow got away so we could do what we came down there to do.  We tried Shyann but as usual she wasn’t home... so we walked back up towards our place to see another person we thought we should talk to.  On the way back we saw those guys again, this time they were driving... and they stopped when they saw us.  The guy we were talking to leaned out the window saying, "we still have some conversation with you" and then they tried turning around in the middle of the road to come back to us.  While they were trying to do that we tried to sneak back behind a house so we didn’t have to waste the rest of our night talking to these guys, but we were to slow.  They called us back, and us being the guys we are, went back trying to use the excuse that we had others we needed to go see, but it didn’t work.  They were like "hey we don’t wanna hurt you, we just wanna talk." "We need your help, isn’t that what you guys do is help people?"  So we talked with them for a good 20-30 min about everything under the sun really.  They had us split up, because they both wanted to talk to us but didn’t want to get out of their car to do it.  Tippets went to the one side with the guy who didn’t like us preaching false things, and I got put with the guy who couldn’t stand up.  His thing he wanted help with was to stop his addiction of choking himself... but I never really got to say much cause he talked the whole time, which I was fine with ha-ha.  Everything I said, or he said, somehow came back to him demonstrating his addiction to me, and saying " you see how my neck is white on this side and dark on the other?  That’s because of my addiction.  You know what my addiction is called?"  That’s pretty well what our conversation was like for the whole time.  Tippets guy even got out of the car to talk to him, and when I saw that he was getting out I was thinking, oh no what did Tippets say... but he was just getting out to demonstrate stuff I guess.  So when we finally got away from them tippets called 911 so they could keep a look out for them on the roads.
After all that, we went to see Kurt who is always fun to talk with cause he's a little different, you can tell the whole time Tippets just wants to get out as soon as he can, but I love it ha-ha
John answered the door and said that they were in there celebrating Kurt’s wife leaving him, Kurt was a little out of it so he told us to probably try back another time.  Just as we were leaving Kurt popped out wondering who John was talking to, and seeing it was us, he insisted on us coming in to visit and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  So we came in and got talking, it didn’t take long to figure out how drunk Kurt was, all we had to do was look at the big target drawn across his fridge with butter knifes sticking out of it, and all the beer cans scattered across the kitchen table.  We have been there enough, that Kurt knows he needs it to be quiet when we come so he went to turn the radio off for us, as he got up he started to walk and then stopped, he looked like he was having some trouble taking the next step, then he turns around and says to me " ah you're on my cape!" then laughs and walks the rest of the way to the radio.  He thinks he’s pretty funny, and it doesn’t help that I laugh at all his little cracks at Tippets or John, or really anything.  He told me I should be the Brille Cream boy or something, looking so nice over there in his kitchen for the ladies ha-ha.  He always says something about me or my hair like that.  As we left he shook our hands and as he shook mine he got real close and then was like " oh no, no kissin!" hahaha he’s an interesting soul, but he’s pretty fun.
On the way home that night we were walking out about half way across the road and a little firefly car comes burning past us, missing us by like 3 feet.  Tippets yells out " Why is the devil so persistent today?!"  He was right, seemed like everywhere we went that day we couldn’t do anything because everyone was drunk or trying to kill us.  But it was a good day none the less.
Earlier this week we taught a guy named Michel on the front steps of a store on Main Street, it was kind of cool.  Little different setting but we felt the truth of our words and I think he did to.
We also had a fun encounter with a U-Haul truck this week.  We were walking down the road going to do some tracting on Queens, and we heard this loud truck coming down a nearby block, from the sounds of it we figured it was a big jacked up truck with the muffler taken off or something, but nope it was a U-Haul truck with a hole in the exhaust burning around town making as much noise as possible.  Later we saw them stuck in the ditch with 5-6 younger guys out trying to get it unstuck.  As we walked by some of them shouted out “oh the Mormons are here!"  and "here come the Mormons!"  But we didn’t pay any attention to them and kept on walking.  They were there trying to get that thing out the rest of the night from what we heard.
Well that’s about how my week was.

Love you all and I hope everything makes sense in the email.  Talk to you next week!

I’m about half way through the B of M now!!!

Do you remember that Costa guy from conference yesterday?  I shook his hand my last day in the MTC!!! He gave almost the same talk there too.

                                  Selfie in our small meeting house.

Zone Conference in Brandon, MB

Well this week has been pretty good I’d say. We had Zone conference on Friday down in Brandon, so we drove 8hrs on Thursday to get there.  Found Dallin’s (Riley's friend from Glenwood) grandparents on the way to Brandon, they gave us dinner along the way so that was nice! They even gave us lunch on the way back from Zone conference!

I gave a talk in Zone conference on the importance of obedience, and for all of you that know me, that’s a hard subject for me to talk on because I am not the most obedient one out there, but I think it went well.

Going down to Brandon was like going to Florida, it was plus 10 there and no snow!!  It was -10 back in Flin Flon and snowing when we were gone.  It was really nice yesterday, -5 and sun!!

We didn’t know if we were going to be able to go to church yesterday, all of our priesthood was supposed to be gone, so that meant we wouldn’t have any fellowship there for us.  Lucky for us Bro. Longmore called us like 10 min. before church and said he was going to be there! Elder Tippets and I taught Sunday school and priesthood, since everyone was "sick" but it was good practice I guess for us.   

We got a new baptismal date this week with Roger, one of our new investigators we meet on Monday.  He’s set for April 29 2017 and we are praying he follows through.  We also don’t think he can read, so that’s making it hard for him and us to read the B of M with him, but we are getting somewhere with him anyhow.  

Did lots of tracting again this week, haven’t found anyone new yet sadly, but oh well we can’t knock all of Flin Flon and not have someone interested in what we have to say, I hope...

I have a feeling this week is going to be a good week, so I’m excited to see what happens!

The work here is tough but I know that in the end whatever effort we put into this place something good will come of it.  

Love you all and I hope your all doing good back home!

Hope you can read my letter and work through my spelling errors.

 I want to know if you get fed by others, or if it's you and your comp making your meals? 

 It’s us making most of our stuff. Dallin’s Grandma has fed us the most, and she’s in Dauphin 5hrs away.  Haven’t been fed here in Flon yet... but we are hoping to be fed soon.

Oh and one thing I forgot to tell in my big letter.  We got stuck on wed. out on one of the ice roads in Denare Beach... We were on our way home and Tippets wanted to show me the ice roads.  Right was we went out to them and got going I knew it was a bad idea, but we kept going and the snow got deeper and deeper till we finally got stuck in our little Nissan.... so we tried for a while to get out but no luck. So we tried a few members homes, but all the men were gone.....walked across the lake to bro Angels place and nothing there either.  By this time it was 9:30, so it was past time to be home.  Our last resort was to try our new friend we met only 2hrs before, Scott Thompson, a less active who hasn’t been to church in 30yrs and a brother in-law to Bob King that kid singer that came to Raymond forever ago.  Anyway he was nice enough to come and help us get out, but not even his truck could get out to us so we pushed our way out and got home at 10:20!  We are planning on going back to Scott’s place to split wood or something now for helping us out that late at night!  

 

Love ya talk to you next week