Family, Friends, and Others,
First off, sorry my email last week was pretty lame, I forgot to prepare what I wanted to write so it was just kinda rambling and boring. I don't blame you if you didn't read it. But this week's will be better!
Things in general are going awesome here! We're starting to get the hang of everything and we've been talking with lots of people and have a lot planned for the upcoming week.
About 20 minutes after I sent last week's email began a very stressful adventure. We do emails in the church genealogy room, which is locked. We have a key though. We had to run to the restroom real quick so we just ran and did that and just left our stuff in there, keys phone, coats, etc. When we came back from the restroom the door had closed and locked our stuff inside! :( We spent about an hour looking through the church trying to find a phone number to call using the phone in church here but we couldn't find any. We didn't know what else to do so we walked from Mt-St-Hilare across the bridge to Beloeil where our ward mission leader Fr. Barry lives. It was about a 4km walk in the rain. It wasn't too cold though. But he wasn't there. So then we went to a recent convert who lives on that street, Denis. He said he didn't have Fr. Barry's number so we walked back to the apartment complex where a member Sr. Petit lives. She called Fr. Barry who said he didn't have the keys to that room. The only people who had keys was the clerk (wouldn't be back until 8pm) and the bishop (lives about hour and a half away, works). So we figured we could just wait at the church until 8 because we didn't know what to do. Denis drove us over to the church and waited with us for a bit. I'll talk more about him later, he's so funny. Then Denis wanted to get us some poutine because we didn't have lunch. So we drove to some place about 20 minutes away that he know but it was closed, so we had to find another place. We got it and brought it back and then we called Fr. Barry just to see if he knew anything or anyone who could help. He said that the high priest group leader might, so we drove to his house. He had a key! Drove back to the church, opened the door, and got our stuff about 6 hours later. We didn't have time to do anything else that p day... Denis was definitely the hero of the day though and that poutine was amazing even though it was like 2 hours old when we finally ate it. Lesson learned, keep your stuff with you!
Denis is our most recent convert in the MSH ward. He's about 50 and has some memory troubles I think. But he can talk for ages. He has the craziest stories and just goes on and on. This Sunday we had a broadcast stake conference and beforehand they were showing videos of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing. In Québec, the french word tabernacle is a really bad swear word, along with some other religious terms. We were sitting with him and a young couple who speak English and French, They were trying to explain to him about the name Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Denis was just kind of shocked. He's so funny haha.
Something we've been doing a lot this week is contacting former investigators. We had a really cool experience with that. We knocked on the door of a former investigator named Nemesi. She was taught a little bit in 2012 but dropped because she wasn't interested, or seemed that way according to the Elders then on her teaching sheet. She told us she was still interested and we could meet the next day. Our lesson went really well. We went over our purpose as missionaries and got to know her and her religious beliefs. She really opened up to us. We asked about prayer and she told us that she's been praying a lot more recently, trying to find direction in her life. And then we came and knocked on her door! Wow! We closed with a kneeling prayer that she offered. She gave a really great prayer, got really emotional and the end and couldn't really finish. She just said "Amen," stood up, and went to the other room. Elder Deakins and I weren't really sure what to do but I know we all really felt the Spirit there. We have a lesson with her this Friday, hope it will be just as good! That's something I really thought a lot about before my mission, finding people like Nemesi who are ready and have been prepared by the Lord. I truly hope we can help her and I hope I can find more people like that and be an instrument in the Lord's hands to bring them back to Him. Hope you all have an excellent week, love you!!
First off, sorry my email last week was pretty lame, I forgot to prepare what I wanted to write so it was just kinda rambling and boring. I don't blame you if you didn't read it. But this week's will be better!
Things in general are going awesome here! We're starting to get the hang of everything and we've been talking with lots of people and have a lot planned for the upcoming week.
About 20 minutes after I sent last week's email began a very stressful adventure. We do emails in the church genealogy room, which is locked. We have a key though. We had to run to the restroom real quick so we just ran and did that and just left our stuff in there, keys phone, coats, etc. When we came back from the restroom the door had closed and locked our stuff inside! :( We spent about an hour looking through the church trying to find a phone number to call using the phone in church here but we couldn't find any. We didn't know what else to do so we walked from Mt-St-Hilare across the bridge to Beloeil where our ward mission leader Fr. Barry lives. It was about a 4km walk in the rain. It wasn't too cold though. But he wasn't there. So then we went to a recent convert who lives on that street, Denis. He said he didn't have Fr. Barry's number so we walked back to the apartment complex where a member Sr. Petit lives. She called Fr. Barry who said he didn't have the keys to that room. The only people who had keys was the clerk (wouldn't be back until 8pm) and the bishop (lives about hour and a half away, works). So we figured we could just wait at the church until 8 because we didn't know what to do. Denis drove us over to the church and waited with us for a bit. I'll talk more about him later, he's so funny. Then Denis wanted to get us some poutine because we didn't have lunch. So we drove to some place about 20 minutes away that he know but it was closed, so we had to find another place. We got it and brought it back and then we called Fr. Barry just to see if he knew anything or anyone who could help. He said that the high priest group leader might, so we drove to his house. He had a key! Drove back to the church, opened the door, and got our stuff about 6 hours later. We didn't have time to do anything else that p day... Denis was definitely the hero of the day though and that poutine was amazing even though it was like 2 hours old when we finally ate it. Lesson learned, keep your stuff with you!
Denis is our most recent convert in the MSH ward. He's about 50 and has some memory troubles I think. But he can talk for ages. He has the craziest stories and just goes on and on. This Sunday we had a broadcast stake conference and beforehand they were showing videos of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing. In Québec, the french word tabernacle is a really bad swear word, along with some other religious terms. We were sitting with him and a young couple who speak English and French, They were trying to explain to him about the name Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Denis was just kind of shocked. He's so funny haha.
There's this town in my area called
Saint-Hyacinthe. There's something strange about it man. I don't know
how to describe it. It has a little bit of everything it seems. I've
noticed three things in particular, it has a lot of immigrants,
churches, and food processing plants. There are a lot of people from
Colombia and Nepal and all over really. I've been keeping track and
we've talked to people from 10 countries so far. And we're in the
outskirts and country! I don't know why they're some many immigrants in
St-Hy, it's about an hour outside of Montréal in the country. Also,
there's tons of old buildings and churches. There's a cool little
"downtown" area. And I'm like 90% sure one of the TALL pictures is of
that area. Only people who were in the MTC recently will know what that
means, but one of the pictures was entitle "Quebec Town" and I'm pretty
sure it's St-Hy. Random! On the south end is where all the factories and
such are. It's spooky, who knows what goes on in there. It would be a
good town for a horror movie, it's just a little too big. And isn't
Saint-Hyacinthe a creepy name? Also there are certain times is smells
like chocolate fudge there. And it's at random times and random
places... Can someone look up and tell me if there's some creepy stuff
that went on there! I know there must be! But it's cool, I like it
there.
Last night we were in St-Hy and we
talked to this one guy on the street. He had a long gray ponytail,
circular wire frame glasses, a flowery scarf, and a blazer. He was kind
of crazy! He started going off on some crazy beliefs he had. I can't
even explain, it was in English though. Then he was talking about how we
take all these things around us for granted (which has some truth to
it!) and how in the Old Testament there was a man who sold his
inheritance for a bowl of lentils (Esau?). Then he was talking how
people are like Esau and he said something kind of flustered like and
said (I think) "and we say billy-bong diddly-doo and a bowl of beans"
and he just kind of looked at us, staring for a couple seconds. It made
my night. Then he was talking about how he "used" to be a hippy, but he
hasn't really gotten older, I don't know how to even explain it. So many
interesting people that you probably wouldn't meet unless you were a
missionary trying to talk with everyone...
Something we've been doing a lot this week is contacting former investigators. We had a really cool experience with that. We knocked on the door of a former investigator named Nemesi. She was taught a little bit in 2012 but dropped because she wasn't interested, or seemed that way according to the Elders then on her teaching sheet. She told us she was still interested and we could meet the next day. Our lesson went really well. We went over our purpose as missionaries and got to know her and her religious beliefs. She really opened up to us. We asked about prayer and she told us that she's been praying a lot more recently, trying to find direction in her life. And then we came and knocked on her door! Wow! We closed with a kneeling prayer that she offered. She gave a really great prayer, got really emotional and the end and couldn't really finish. She just said "Amen," stood up, and went to the other room. Elder Deakins and I weren't really sure what to do but I know we all really felt the Spirit there. We have a lesson with her this Friday, hope it will be just as good! That's something I really thought a lot about before my mission, finding people like Nemesi who are ready and have been prepared by the Lord. I truly hope we can help her and I hope I can find more people like that and be an instrument in the Lord's hands to bring them back to Him. Hope you all have an excellent week, love you!!
Elder Rosenlof
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| Elder Deakins, me, President Patrick, and Sister Patrick |
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