Family Unit.
Turns out I'm staying in Val dor for another transfer, big surprise!! I think I'm going to be here for a long...time...which is good, we just barely seemed to have earned the trust of the members and they are starting to give us referrals and take us home teaching. This is excellent. It's about time we got things rolling here.
So, not much has happened here. We had a meeting with this die hard catholic man who's mission is to convert the elders. Normally I wouldn't have allowed us to meet with him, because it's what other missionaries would call a "waste of time." But when it's too cold to go tracting outside and your mission president says "You'll just have to find another way to do missionary work," I see it as a good opportunity to practice teaching. If you can remember, the first time we met with this man, E. Johnson inadvertantly tried to convince him that Jesus was a sinner and a catholic. The opposite of our intentions. And this man, pwned him with the bible.
So we were hoping for a better outcome this time, it was good practice for E. Johnson to refrain from bible bashing. So we get there and the first thing I ask him is "So...about baptisms for the dead...what's the catholic's deal on that?"
He had never heard about that before, so we looked up some scriptures and read through them. He uses an "Easy reader simplified" bible. This is frustrating. Because he's just reading someone else's interpretation. So he tried to explain to us than when Peter spoke of baptisms for the dead, he was speaking of Jesus, who is dead, and we need to be baptized of him. In a last ditch effort, I said "Well, let's look at the french version, for some clarification..." (Mhe is bilingual.)
Lo and Behold, in french it says, basically "Why are we baptized for those who have died, those who are dead, if they rise not in the end?" AMAZING. I love french. The spirit was in the room, the spirit of truth befell this man as he looked at that scripture, and a couple other ones that we pointed out about the spirit world.
He said "Man, you guys are the best missionaries that have come across here, none of them ever showed me stuff like this. I'll have to talk to my priest. I honestly have no idea about baptism for the dead, I'll have to look into it. This is interesting."
VICTORY. He has no intention of changing, but I feel good whenever truth is revealed, it feels great.
Well that's about all that's happened, we had a couple meetings with the Albanian. She is super crazy, and loves to talk about God. She has a lot of questions about Satan and God and the symbolic meaning of the fall of Adam and Eve versus the fall of the angel of the morning. We're working with her.
Well that's about all, we're having fun and working hard. Trying not to get frostbite.
E. Holm
January 31, 2011
January 24, 2011
January 24th, 2011
Family.
This week has been quite an adventurous one. We had Zone conference down in Ottawa, and we got to split some other missionaries. There are 2 elders covering all of downtown Ottawa, the lack of missionaries we have here is quite frustrating sometimes. One of these elders is our District Leader, Elder Hall, from England. They have a ward of 150 active, 300 less/inactive people. Needless to say, they have a lot of work ahead of them. Their work is very different from our work. Anyhow, I went on splits with Elder Hall, and we met this family, a family that downright left me with a migraine.
As we shared dinner, I observed that this couple were as happy as could be, no marital problems, and as smart as could be--they spent most of their time talking to Elder Hall about String Theory and all sorts of physics nonsense, but still had enough room in their brains to talk about poetry and literature with me, as well as Stem Cell theory. I hope to establish here, that they are really smart. It came to our spiritual thought discussion, and they sat us down.
We spoke of their beliefs. They joined the church for its family principles. They continued to search for answers. They didn't have a real testimony, they had questions, people just continued to tell them "wait until you get to the temple, you'll find answers there." So they waited, kept commitments and went to the temple. They didn't find any answers after they temple. Once I heard that I wanted to say "Well duh. Nobody has answers after the first temple trip." But they continued to go and eventually stopped.
Now they don't believe in God. The husband looked at me and held up 3 fingers
"There are things you know you know,
There are things you know you don't know,
And There are things you don't know you don't know."
Then he continued to speak
"I don't know if there is a God or not, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't need to know."
And Darned it all, they were the nicest people I've met in Canada. Super nice. Elder Hall asked the man 2 questions. In his stellar English accent.
"What if you're wrong?"
The man just laughed. "Ah the wager, who's wager was that again?"
"Pascal's wager" I mumbled.
"Ah yes, you see, I am a fan of stoicism, the belief of controlling your rational emotions. I've made a choice, if there is a God I will stand before him and honestly apologize and pay for the choice I've made."
"Aren't you afraid of not living with God, of Hell so to speak?" I asked him.
"You see, it would be irrational to live in regret, I can't comprehend what hell is like right now, why fear it? and once I'm there, I can't change it, why live in regret? It doesn't make sense.
Why do you fear Hell Elder Holm?"
I took a moment to respond. "I guess I fear it because I cannot comprehend the utter pain and suffering that comes with the consequences of Hell. I've been told that the consequences are beyond my comprehension, and that frightens me most of all. Rational or not. And it's not that I fear pain, or death or fire and brimstone--he nodded in agreement to this--but it's because I fear living alone, without love. Love from God, love from others, because love isn't a rational emotion, and is something I'm afraid Hell is lacking."
He looked and smiled at me, and said "And that is perfectly okay that you believe that, I accept that." Once again, so nice. At this moment, I felt sad for them. They believe they are so intelligent. Yet they lack the knowledge found in the heart of every child. It's sad, really.
Elder Hall then asked them, "So, if you don't believe in our church anymore, why do you keep your covenants? I see you are still wearing your garments."
The man answered "1. because I respect the people who witnessed me make the covenants, 2. Because they are so Comfortable!"
Yeah right, sounds like a huge JUST IN CASE WE'RE WRONG to me.
At the end they thanked us for our time, and said they were surprised when Elder Hall asked to come back. "Usually elders never come back after tonight, and the sisters always cry. I'm impressed with you two."
Huh.
Anyways, left that problem in Ottawa, back to Val D'or. We didn't have any investigators come to church, sad. But that's okay, the branch president came back up this weekend and took us out to a chinese buffet. It was at this buffet that I discovered Frog's Legs. Yes, the man you knew who could live forever eating nothing but chicken noodle soup and doritos, has decided to be adventurous with food. The world is upside down. Frog legs aren't too bad, they do in fact taste like chicken. They still came with the spine and everything though, that was a little difficult to get over.
Sunday was cold. A crushing -40 farenheit/celsius with wind chill. I have a video I'm leaving in My dropbox for those who would like to view. Also with this email, a picture of myself, after 20 minutes of tracting. Frozen eyelashes, nosehairs and everything else.
That's about it this week, transfer calls are this saturday, we'll see what happens.
E. Holm
This week has been quite an adventurous one. We had Zone conference down in Ottawa, and we got to split some other missionaries. There are 2 elders covering all of downtown Ottawa, the lack of missionaries we have here is quite frustrating sometimes. One of these elders is our District Leader, Elder Hall, from England. They have a ward of 150 active, 300 less/inactive people. Needless to say, they have a lot of work ahead of them. Their work is very different from our work. Anyhow, I went on splits with Elder Hall, and we met this family, a family that downright left me with a migraine.
As we shared dinner, I observed that this couple were as happy as could be, no marital problems, and as smart as could be--they spent most of their time talking to Elder Hall about String Theory and all sorts of physics nonsense, but still had enough room in their brains to talk about poetry and literature with me, as well as Stem Cell theory. I hope to establish here, that they are really smart. It came to our spiritual thought discussion, and they sat us down.
We spoke of their beliefs. They joined the church for its family principles. They continued to search for answers. They didn't have a real testimony, they had questions, people just continued to tell them "wait until you get to the temple, you'll find answers there." So they waited, kept commitments and went to the temple. They didn't find any answers after they temple. Once I heard that I wanted to say "Well duh. Nobody has answers after the first temple trip." But they continued to go and eventually stopped.
Now they don't believe in God. The husband looked at me and held up 3 fingers
"There are things you know you know,
There are things you know you don't know,
And There are things you don't know you don't know."
Then he continued to speak
"I don't know if there is a God or not, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't need to know."
And Darned it all, they were the nicest people I've met in Canada. Super nice. Elder Hall asked the man 2 questions. In his stellar English accent.
"What if you're wrong?"
The man just laughed. "Ah the wager, who's wager was that again?"
"Pascal's wager" I mumbled.
"Ah yes, you see, I am a fan of stoicism, the belief of controlling your rational emotions. I've made a choice, if there is a God I will stand before him and honestly apologize and pay for the choice I've made."
"Aren't you afraid of not living with God, of Hell so to speak?" I asked him.
"You see, it would be irrational to live in regret, I can't comprehend what hell is like right now, why fear it? and once I'm there, I can't change it, why live in regret? It doesn't make sense.
Why do you fear Hell Elder Holm?"
I took a moment to respond. "I guess I fear it because I cannot comprehend the utter pain and suffering that comes with the consequences of Hell. I've been told that the consequences are beyond my comprehension, and that frightens me most of all. Rational or not. And it's not that I fear pain, or death or fire and brimstone--he nodded in agreement to this--but it's because I fear living alone, without love. Love from God, love from others, because love isn't a rational emotion, and is something I'm afraid Hell is lacking."
He looked and smiled at me, and said "And that is perfectly okay that you believe that, I accept that." Once again, so nice. At this moment, I felt sad for them. They believe they are so intelligent. Yet they lack the knowledge found in the heart of every child. It's sad, really.
Elder Hall then asked them, "So, if you don't believe in our church anymore, why do you keep your covenants? I see you are still wearing your garments."
The man answered "1. because I respect the people who witnessed me make the covenants, 2. Because they are so Comfortable!"
Yeah right, sounds like a huge JUST IN CASE WE'RE WRONG to me.
At the end they thanked us for our time, and said they were surprised when Elder Hall asked to come back. "Usually elders never come back after tonight, and the sisters always cry. I'm impressed with you two."
Huh.
Anyways, left that problem in Ottawa, back to Val D'or. We didn't have any investigators come to church, sad. But that's okay, the branch president came back up this weekend and took us out to a chinese buffet. It was at this buffet that I discovered Frog's Legs. Yes, the man you knew who could live forever eating nothing but chicken noodle soup and doritos, has decided to be adventurous with food. The world is upside down. Frog legs aren't too bad, they do in fact taste like chicken. They still came with the spine and everything though, that was a little difficult to get over.
Sunday was cold. A crushing -40 farenheit/celsius with wind chill. I have a video I'm leaving in My dropbox for those who would like to view. Also with this email, a picture of myself, after 20 minutes of tracting. Frozen eyelashes, nosehairs and everything else.
That's about it this week, transfer calls are this saturday, we'll see what happens.
E. Holm
January 19, 2011
January 17th, 2011
Famille,
Remember how I said it was cold last week? Yeah... We went sledding for young men's last wednesday. It was roughly -15 degrees, Farenheit, with a fierce wind. I took off my gloves really quick to adjust my scarf, by the time I had reached up to my scarf and found the zipper of my jacket to unzip a little (to give me room to adjust) I had lost motor control of my hands/fingers. So I gave out a quick "oh" and jammed my hands in my pockets. I was rather stuck for a moment or two-just looking at my gloves on the ground, waiting for my hands to feel again. Carter's Russian hat has come in handy and works quite well up here against the wind. It's also a great conversation starter, because it's kind of ridiculous.
We pulled another investigator out of the area book. She has had pages upon pages of visits with Elders going for about 3 years now. Goodness me. But of course, I think to myself "It's about time then, for her to get dunked." I wasn't going to meet with her, until I found part of a manuscript under my bed. It looked like someone was writing a book, so naturally I read through it and edited it, slashing words and the like. I had read somewhere in the vast records of th new investigators records that she was writing something. We met with her and it turns out she is an author to be, and is writing a book. After explaining myself and giving back the partial manuscript, she looked over the corrections and inquired of my assistance. I have the first three chapters of her book in my backpack, soon to be corrected and handed back. SERVICE. Enjoyable service. She has a lot of questions concerning the apocalypse and book of revelations, and cavemen. I decided the other day to take an hour and read all of Revelations. BRAIN EXPLOSION. It was ridiculous. Of course she has a lot of questions. E. Johnson started explaining to her the entire facet of caveman-ism and how it relates to the gospel. I cut him off and told him to run it by me later, so as to avoid blasphemy again.
Later in the apartment he explained to me how cavemen had actually evolved from apes and that they weren't actually human, they just thought and walked and acted like humans. We had a little chat.
Cavemen question won't be answered by us, looks like.
I have found that Val D'or is the Twilight Zone of missionary work. Things work in mysterious ways up here. Elder Johnson and I have been praying very hard with great wrestling in the spirit to find a new investigator, and all the doors we knock each day are angry, sometimes violent in response. No one responds well to us.
Then, lo and behold, after sitting down Sunday morning and realizing we had no investigators coming to church, we hear someone walk in behind us and sit down in the back row of our little cultural hall. Immediately the members, all 8 of them, start talking to this man.
"Oh hello, are you the journalist?" (we had told a member and his wife about the journalist we met) "Nope," this new guy said, a little weirded out.
Two other people asked him the same question, by the end he was introducing himself as "a visitor, not the journalist."
We pulled him into investigator class, and lo and behold, he's from Salt Lake City. Apparently he works for Rio Tinto, the company that owns the Enormous copper mine in SLC and he's up here for work, for a long time. He speaks english too, thank heavens.
We asked him why he came to our church and he said "I dunno, I asked the Holy Spirit where to go to church today and he said to come here--so I googled your guys' church and found the address"
BAM.
He seems extremely responsive to the Gospel and has committed to read the book of Mormon, and we all know what happens when you read that book...
So what we learn from this is that God in fact does answer prayers, and when you thrusteth in your sickle, you will harvest. Your harvest there might sneak up from the other side of the field and catch you unawares, but it still comes.
Oh yeah, our 95 year old investigator that we gave a blessing too, is in fact in the hospital. She might become a pass off to the elders on the other side of the veil here pretty soon. Ah well, she'll get the message all the same.
So E. Johnson and I are down in Ottawa now, for zone conference, that was a really long drive. This is the first time we've been with other missionaries for about a month now..actually closer to five weeks. And they had cut nightly calls as well a couple weeks back, so we didn't even talk to other missionaries on the phone except on Sundays. Needless to say, it's nice to be around friends again.
Well that's about all I have to talk about this week, except that I cannot believe that Carter got a MASTER SWORD. Goodness.
Till next week,
E. Holm
Remember how I said it was cold last week? Yeah... We went sledding for young men's last wednesday. It was roughly -15 degrees, Farenheit, with a fierce wind. I took off my gloves really quick to adjust my scarf, by the time I had reached up to my scarf and found the zipper of my jacket to unzip a little (to give me room to adjust) I had lost motor control of my hands/fingers. So I gave out a quick "oh" and jammed my hands in my pockets. I was rather stuck for a moment or two-just looking at my gloves on the ground, waiting for my hands to feel again. Carter's Russian hat has come in handy and works quite well up here against the wind. It's also a great conversation starter, because it's kind of ridiculous.
We pulled another investigator out of the area book. She has had pages upon pages of visits with Elders going for about 3 years now. Goodness me. But of course, I think to myself "It's about time then, for her to get dunked." I wasn't going to meet with her, until I found part of a manuscript under my bed. It looked like someone was writing a book, so naturally I read through it and edited it, slashing words and the like. I had read somewhere in the vast records of th new investigators records that she was writing something. We met with her and it turns out she is an author to be, and is writing a book. After explaining myself and giving back the partial manuscript, she looked over the corrections and inquired of my assistance. I have the first three chapters of her book in my backpack, soon to be corrected and handed back. SERVICE. Enjoyable service. She has a lot of questions concerning the apocalypse and book of revelations, and cavemen. I decided the other day to take an hour and read all of Revelations. BRAIN EXPLOSION. It was ridiculous. Of course she has a lot of questions. E. Johnson started explaining to her the entire facet of caveman-ism and how it relates to the gospel. I cut him off and told him to run it by me later, so as to avoid blasphemy again.
Later in the apartment he explained to me how cavemen had actually evolved from apes and that they weren't actually human, they just thought and walked and acted like humans. We had a little chat.
Cavemen question won't be answered by us, looks like.
I have found that Val D'or is the Twilight Zone of missionary work. Things work in mysterious ways up here. Elder Johnson and I have been praying very hard with great wrestling in the spirit to find a new investigator, and all the doors we knock each day are angry, sometimes violent in response. No one responds well to us.
Then, lo and behold, after sitting down Sunday morning and realizing we had no investigators coming to church, we hear someone walk in behind us and sit down in the back row of our little cultural hall. Immediately the members, all 8 of them, start talking to this man.
"Oh hello, are you the journalist?" (we had told a member and his wife about the journalist we met) "Nope," this new guy said, a little weirded out.
Two other people asked him the same question, by the end he was introducing himself as "a visitor, not the journalist."
We pulled him into investigator class, and lo and behold, he's from Salt Lake City. Apparently he works for Rio Tinto, the company that owns the Enormous copper mine in SLC and he's up here for work, for a long time. He speaks english too, thank heavens.
We asked him why he came to our church and he said "I dunno, I asked the Holy Spirit where to go to church today and he said to come here--so I googled your guys' church and found the address"
BAM.
He seems extremely responsive to the Gospel and has committed to read the book of Mormon, and we all know what happens when you read that book...
So what we learn from this is that God in fact does answer prayers, and when you thrusteth in your sickle, you will harvest. Your harvest there might sneak up from the other side of the field and catch you unawares, but it still comes.
Oh yeah, our 95 year old investigator that we gave a blessing too, is in fact in the hospital. She might become a pass off to the elders on the other side of the veil here pretty soon. Ah well, she'll get the message all the same.
So E. Johnson and I are down in Ottawa now, for zone conference, that was a really long drive. This is the first time we've been with other missionaries for about a month now..actually closer to five weeks. And they had cut nightly calls as well a couple weeks back, so we didn't even talk to other missionaries on the phone except on Sundays. Needless to say, it's nice to be around friends again.
Well that's about all I have to talk about this week, except that I cannot believe that Carter got a MASTER SWORD. Goodness.
Till next week,
E. Holm
January 10, 2011
January 10th, 2011
Well family.
As you might have surmised, it is cold up here. I used to wish for sunshine, but in all reality I forgot the warmth that clouds bring. It always seems to happen at night, just as we are crossing the street, the clouds disappear and the moon lights up the road. It is a strange sensation, very similar to the "Eye of the Storm" scene in Day After Tomorrow; you know the one where everything starts freezing instantaneously, helicopters freeze in mid-air and people start dying left and right? Yeah, just like that. It starts in the fingers and toes and I can feel cold creeping up into me. Needless to say, we scurry from the open air like Furlings from the open field and try to find an apartment building to knock. There have been multiple occasions where I refuse to wear a hat (for I have this perpetual fear of baldness approaching-EVERYONE tells the missionaries they go bald cause they wear hats too much in the winter here.) my forehead loses all circulation and I sit in the car, looking in the mirror, furiously pumping my eyebrows up and down, trying to warm my upper face back up. I think I've already told you this. Anyways.
We gave talks in church this week. I find that I would rather give a talk in front of 600 people in English, rather than butcher my way through a French talk in front of 10 people who already know me really well, and will continue to be a great part of my life for a long time. It wasn't too bad, but it took me a really long time to find out how to say what I wanted-- E. Johnson was done with his talk in about 15 minutes, he just typed it all out in english and threw it onto Google translator...sigh...he learned the hard way that this does not work. A lot of people were confused.
We have 2 new investigators, that we've found. We tried to commit one, we call her crazy lady, because the first thing she told us is that an angel came over one day and had a smoke with her, and that Jesus stopped by one day at her mom's house and performed miracles. I have no doubt that she felt the spirit during these apparitions...and that's all I have to say about that. She's "too old to be baptized again" but we'll see. We've been spending a lot of time In Rouyn-Noranda, for both E. Johnson and I and the Branch here feel that that's where we need to work. We are slowly but surely progressing. We also had sacrament meeting in Rouyn-Noranda, where I got to be music conductor/soloist. Because no one knew the tune of the hymns selected, basically E. Johnson and I had to belt it out to lead everyone. And E. Johnson didn't have a hymnbook, so he put his head down and sat there laughing. It was basically a solo. So my advice to Hayden and Chandler and Noah-Join the ward choir and practice singing. I also got called to play the piano as well. It's a good thing I've got a couple hymns down, but I don't know how many times I can play "Sweet hour of prayer."
I'm growing more and more impatient with tracting. Which is shown in my contact-it's getting quite crazy for me. We'll introduce ourselves and it'll go like this.
"We're missionaries-"
"No no no"
"No it's true, we are missionaries,"
"No thank you, I don't have time,"
"Can we try another time?"
They start shutting the door, "yeah sure another time"
I take a step forward "What day is the best for you?"
"Uh..."
"How about tuesday, we'll be here around tuesday, at 3? Are you going to be here?"
"Yeah, sure." Slam.
We usually go a day early, at the appointed time, so they don't see us coming and ditch out on us. It has gotten quite effective. Effective meaning, we quickly discover if they are really interested or not.
Luckily we got in the Newspaper the other day, had an interview and everything, and we're going to contact the journalist, he was interested and might become an investigator. Now that's what I call a good interview. It's good to see my media classes really paying off up here, it's helped a lot so much. No other missionaries even knew that we could do what I just did up here. It's going to be fun up here.
Also, sad enough to say, my past gaming has helped quite a lot when talking to people. I can usually make a contact a potential by saying 3 words "Wii, XBOX, or PS3?"
Who would have thought?
Well that's our week so far, nothing too exciting yet, except that I heard from E. Cherry in Sherbrooke and all our investigators we found together are on the path to baptism, even the Gay guy. That was comforting to hear.
Peace,
E. Holm
As you might have surmised, it is cold up here. I used to wish for sunshine, but in all reality I forgot the warmth that clouds bring. It always seems to happen at night, just as we are crossing the street, the clouds disappear and the moon lights up the road. It is a strange sensation, very similar to the "Eye of the Storm" scene in Day After Tomorrow; you know the one where everything starts freezing instantaneously, helicopters freeze in mid-air and people start dying left and right? Yeah, just like that. It starts in the fingers and toes and I can feel cold creeping up into me. Needless to say, we scurry from the open air like Furlings from the open field and try to find an apartment building to knock. There have been multiple occasions where I refuse to wear a hat (for I have this perpetual fear of baldness approaching-EVERYONE tells the missionaries they go bald cause they wear hats too much in the winter here.) my forehead loses all circulation and I sit in the car, looking in the mirror, furiously pumping my eyebrows up and down, trying to warm my upper face back up. I think I've already told you this. Anyways.
We gave talks in church this week. I find that I would rather give a talk in front of 600 people in English, rather than butcher my way through a French talk in front of 10 people who already know me really well, and will continue to be a great part of my life for a long time. It wasn't too bad, but it took me a really long time to find out how to say what I wanted-- E. Johnson was done with his talk in about 15 minutes, he just typed it all out in english and threw it onto Google translator...sigh...he learned the hard way that this does not work. A lot of people were confused.
We have 2 new investigators, that we've found. We tried to commit one, we call her crazy lady, because the first thing she told us is that an angel came over one day and had a smoke with her, and that Jesus stopped by one day at her mom's house and performed miracles. I have no doubt that she felt the spirit during these apparitions...and that's all I have to say about that. She's "too old to be baptized again" but we'll see. We've been spending a lot of time In Rouyn-Noranda, for both E. Johnson and I and the Branch here feel that that's where we need to work. We are slowly but surely progressing. We also had sacrament meeting in Rouyn-Noranda, where I got to be music conductor/soloist. Because no one knew the tune of the hymns selected, basically E. Johnson and I had to belt it out to lead everyone. And E. Johnson didn't have a hymnbook, so he put his head down and sat there laughing. It was basically a solo. So my advice to Hayden and Chandler and Noah-Join the ward choir and practice singing. I also got called to play the piano as well. It's a good thing I've got a couple hymns down, but I don't know how many times I can play "Sweet hour of prayer."
I'm growing more and more impatient with tracting. Which is shown in my contact-it's getting quite crazy for me. We'll introduce ourselves and it'll go like this.
"We're missionaries-"
"No no no"
"No it's true, we are missionaries,"
"No thank you, I don't have time,"
"Can we try another time?"
They start shutting the door, "yeah sure another time"
I take a step forward "What day is the best for you?"
"Uh..."
"How about tuesday, we'll be here around tuesday, at 3? Are you going to be here?"
"Yeah, sure." Slam.
We usually go a day early, at the appointed time, so they don't see us coming and ditch out on us. It has gotten quite effective. Effective meaning, we quickly discover if they are really interested or not.
Luckily we got in the Newspaper the other day, had an interview and everything, and we're going to contact the journalist, he was interested and might become an investigator. Now that's what I call a good interview. It's good to see my media classes really paying off up here, it's helped a lot so much. No other missionaries even knew that we could do what I just did up here. It's going to be fun up here.
Also, sad enough to say, my past gaming has helped quite a lot when talking to people. I can usually make a contact a potential by saying 3 words "Wii, XBOX, or PS3?"
Who would have thought?
Well that's our week so far, nothing too exciting yet, except that I heard from E. Cherry in Sherbrooke and all our investigators we found together are on the path to baptism, even the Gay guy. That was comforting to hear.
Peace,
E. Holm
January 3, 2011
January 3rd, 2011
Hi family,
This week has been a crazy one. I have gotten to know E. Johnson rather well. And we will continue to get to know each other better, seeing as our zone conference is on the 18th (Kyra's birthday) and we won't be seeing any other missionaries until the 5th week of this transfer. Ya...5 weeks with one person, just one person. It's a good thing E. Johnson and I get along really well. To better describe E. Johnson, he is just like a ginger version of Alex Heder (watch Hayden's reaction). It's true, but this is good, I know exactly how to get along with him now. Like all Gingers he's got a fiery temper that comes out when people don't listen to us. Which is good, because it means he cares. He also does a lot of very funny things. I'll give you a couple examples.
Sometimes we cross english-only indians up here. Our english contacting skills are pretty bad. We contacted this one guy and started talking to him, he rejected our offer to learn more, so I offered if we could help him out and do service for him,
The man's face dropped. Immediately after the words came out of Johnson's mouth, I said
"NO, no we will not do that sir, but we would love to help out."
He did not take us up on that offer.
I'll keep you updated on the crazy things he says, it keeps things interesting.
This week has been a crazy one. I have gotten to know E. Johnson rather well. And we will continue to get to know each other better, seeing as our zone conference is on the 18th (Kyra's birthday) and we won't be seeing any other missionaries until the 5th week of this transfer. Ya...5 weeks with one person, just one person. It's a good thing E. Johnson and I get along really well. To better describe E. Johnson, he is just like a ginger version of Alex Heder (watch Hayden's reaction). It's true, but this is good, I know exactly how to get along with him now. Like all Gingers he's got a fiery temper that comes out when people don't listen to us. Which is good, because it means he cares. He also does a lot of very funny things. I'll give you a couple examples.
Sometimes we cross english-only indians up here. Our english contacting skills are pretty bad. We contacted this one guy and started talking to him, he rejected our offer to learn more, so I offered if we could help him out and do service for him,
the guy said "no, I'm good thanks"
I said "Are you sure? We'll help you with anything."
"Anything?" the guy said jokingly.
"Anything?" the guy said jokingly.
Then E. Johnson chimed in. This is where it gets weird. Johnson later claims that he didn't even realize what he said, until I told him, he thought he said "We'll clean your floors." But somewhere in the lingual blender there, it came out as "WE'LL LICK YOU'RE FEET!"
The man's face dropped. Immediately after the words came out of Johnson's mouth, I said
"NO, no we will not do that sir, but we would love to help out."
He did not take us up on that offer.
I'll keep you updated on the crazy things he says, it keeps things interesting.
We were walking some member's dogs, in the Canadian wilderness. All of a sudden a huge rotweiller/wolf mix came running at us. It kept falling into the deep 3 feet of snow, we'd see it for a couple seconds, then BAM, it would disappear...then pop up again, and disappear into the snow. I was laughing, and I turned to see that E. Johnson was gone, running down the street. I thought for a second, then turned to see the rotweiller rolling onto the road and finally picking up speed.
Needless to say, we got our exercise. We've been working real hard, and this week we have an appointment with the local newspaper to have an article put in. I'm liking this, partially because I think door-to-door is very ineffective. Why not just have a newspaper print our testimonies and deliver them to 20,000 residences? So that's our plan, and we're going to talk to the mayor on friday. As well as talking to the local TV news station about an interview...So pray for my french this week, hopefully we'll be able to communicate well this week.
New years eve was kind of "missionary like" because we literally had no food. We scrounged up some change and bought some potatoes. And had mashed potatoes. That was it. Just mashed potatoes. One of those wonderful missionary experiences, but now we have plenty of food, luckily.
We got a new investigator, but sadly I'm thinking we'll have to drop him soon. He is determined to convert us to catholicism. The first meeting we had, he asked us Why there is polygamy in heaven and why we stopped polygamy just because of the American laws, and why didn't Jesus tell Peter about the church in Americas. After he asked me this, I said "We are not prepared to answer your questions." (Having no intention to ever prepare to answer his questions) But E. Johnson didn't catch the drift there, and promptly began to answer his questions. All of it was pretty much blasphemy, that he said. And then he said,
"So, if the catholic church is true, then Jesus Christ is a sinner."
This offended the man. I usually try to back up my companion, but I don't know where he was going with this one. I just looked at him. And prayed. He tried to explain it, but he didn't understand enough of the catholic church to know what he was talking about. Sigh. Well. You know. He'll catch on soon enough. It's not about bible bashing and arguing, it never was.
We'll have a companion study on "not saying things."
Well that's about all I have for this week, I'll keep you updated with weeks to come.
E. Holm
Needless to say, we got our exercise. We've been working real hard, and this week we have an appointment with the local newspaper to have an article put in. I'm liking this, partially because I think door-to-door is very ineffective. Why not just have a newspaper print our testimonies and deliver them to 20,000 residences? So that's our plan, and we're going to talk to the mayor on friday. As well as talking to the local TV news station about an interview...So pray for my french this week, hopefully we'll be able to communicate well this week.
New years eve was kind of "missionary like" because we literally had no food. We scrounged up some change and bought some potatoes. And had mashed potatoes. That was it. Just mashed potatoes. One of those wonderful missionary experiences, but now we have plenty of food, luckily.
We got a new investigator, but sadly I'm thinking we'll have to drop him soon. He is determined to convert us to catholicism. The first meeting we had, he asked us Why there is polygamy in heaven and why we stopped polygamy just because of the American laws, and why didn't Jesus tell Peter about the church in Americas. After he asked me this, I said "We are not prepared to answer your questions." (Having no intention to ever prepare to answer his questions) But E. Johnson didn't catch the drift there, and promptly began to answer his questions. All of it was pretty much blasphemy, that he said. And then he said,
"So, if the catholic church is true, then Jesus Christ is a sinner."
This offended the man. I usually try to back up my companion, but I don't know where he was going with this one. I just looked at him. And prayed. He tried to explain it, but he didn't understand enough of the catholic church to know what he was talking about. Sigh. Well. You know. He'll catch on soon enough. It's not about bible bashing and arguing, it never was.
We'll have a companion study on "not saying things."
Well that's about all I have for this week, I'll keep you updated with weeks to come.
E. Holm
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