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
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