You Know It's Cold Out Here Today?

January 14,2019

This week has been good, a little cold but good. 

Monday was pretty decent did the usual stuff, and then in the evening we did some tracting in the snow. 

Me and Black started out on a walk downtown during pday to look at random places but we only made it a half block before we saw a Chinese buffet and decided to take a step in there for some lunch/dinner, and that concluded our walk about downtown. 

Tuesday, we had a long district council with Flin Flon and the Saskatoon zls. We got to the church at 10 and didn't start DC till 11.20 and then we didn't finish till 1 so that was kinda crazy. 

Had a meeting for Elder Black at 3 for the new district leaders in the mission which took us a while, but it was good to listen in on. 

Tonight tracting we had a fun experience with the people on the block we were knocking, a lot of people when we knocked in their door would open it a little or not even open it, and after we were done our little introduction would say " you know it's cold out here today, aren't you guys cold??" or "you know this is a dangerous place (meaning all of portage) to be tracting at night, you guys are pretty brave..." even had one guy warn us of a big black dog that had been wandering that area of town that isn't too friendly. There was one door that I knocked on and with my back to the window I couldn't see but black was saying a lady kept peeking through the window at us every time I knocked, so me being me I decided rather than just the usual 2× I knock I'd do three to see if she'd come and actually talk to us, and it usually works that way when we do that. Sure, enough after the 3rd knock she called out "who is it, what do you want?" I said we were missionaries, and that's when she flung the door open and cracked the screen door a bit and said " you know it's dark out here and it's very creepy! You don't knock on someone’s door a bunch when you see them in the window, you just go away! It's rude and it's very creepy when you keep banging on the door!" I had to try so hard not to laugh and give her a sarcastic remark. I mean I see where she's coming from but at the same time it's like for real. 

Wednesday, we had another district council, mine this time and it went alright. Did some training on preparing people for baptism, and then we did a little scripture chase.

Funny story though, elder black for some reason he didn’t wear his coat over to the church and when we got there the door was froze shut. So, there we are standing outside the church for about 10min playing with the lock trying to get it to open while black is freezing to death. We did get in, it just took some lock lubricant de-icer, and a little bending of the key...not the first time that doors froze on us.

Spent most of the day tracting and stopping by people which was alright, got a little cold but we survived. 

Had a different experience tracting that night. First door we knocked on for the night we got a guy that answered, and it was blacks turn so he tells him who we are and all that, explains the book of Mormon to him a bit and so the guy he reaches his hand out for black to hand it to him. The guy looks at the front, then the back, then we swing it into his yard! Tells us to never come back again (in a kind voice) and closes his door... So, I went out and got the book and put it on his door step, and we proceeded on lol. Gotta love portage!

Thursday was a crazy nothing went as planned day. Transfer train was supposed to be here by 1 but when we called them at 1 to see where they were they told us they had broken down just outta Brandon, so that meant they were at least another 2hrs away before getting here. 

Did some tracting and stop bys while we waited around, but by 5 we got a call from them saying they were just gonna drive on threw portage and do the switch tomorrow, so basically, we could have planned our day out normal and we coulda done it just fine since transfers didn't happen how they said they would.

Black wasn't too happy with them for pushing it all back.

Friday we finally got switched around! By the time we got k Nelson all settled in, did weekly planning, and comp study it was time for us to head over to Eric's to help him out before we all went out to the Plamer's for dinner and games. 

Elder and sister Jensen came out to the Plamer’s to and we all had a pretty good time together. Did some nerf wars with the kids and bro Palmer, Eric and the Nelson's were too powerful of a team cause no one could beat us, even if they had 4 more than us.

Everyone's decided by the end of a game similar to werewolf that the Nelson boys are trouble, cause we were both bad guys and conspired together without them knowing it was us, so we won. It was pretty fun.

Saturday bro Stewart called us up and asked if we wanted to come with him to support stake pres. Gruninger JV team out in McGregor so we said sure why not.

They were kinda sad games when you compare them to the JV teams from back home but hey it was alright, they ended up winning the tournament 53-35. The wall of girls in front of us wasn't too happy about that cause their team lost to ours.

In between games we did comp and came home and tore apart k Nelson desk so that bro Borczuch could bring him a new one on Monday. That was an experience and a half takin that big metal desk apart with limited tools we had but we gotter.

Sunday was pretty good, Eric got sick so he couldn't speak today, and the other speaker didn't show so that was messy. Lucky for us today was a day or miracles and brother oh man I can't remember his name right now, he's from Neepawa so I knew him back in the day, super good guy but anyway he was there for the stake and he helped us out and talked. Elder Jensen he filled up the rest of the time so that was nice, and they were both good talks.

After church us and the Jensen’s had lunch over at the judges, and that was good as usual, little on the long side though for us missionaries but good non the less.

Came home did my little thing with elder Jensen, did comp study, then it was time to go back to the church for the Y.S.A. devotional. By the time that was done we didn’t have much time left before 9 so we cleared out area book, and I mean cleared out area book... All our potential people and some investigators had no information about them, no address, phone numbers, nothing so it was just a name and that was it. Well that's no good to us so we deleted all of them. We now have 5 potentials... Gonna be a fun transfer rebuilding our area book up!

kinda a crazy week with transfers and everything going but it was still good!

Well love ya all talk to ya next week! 

Riley's last companion of his mission is Keston Nelson. How awesome to be companions with your cousin. I'll bet their great grands are looking down and smiling to see them serving the Lord together.