February 28, 2011

Family,

We got a visit from our Mission President, President Cannon and his wife. They came all the way up to Val D'or to inspect our apartment, and to interview us. My favorite quote from Sister Cannon is "Well, I can see you've cleaned up very well here, but that's not what concerns me, the fact that I have to walk uphill to get to the kitchen sink is a little disconcerting." That and the hotwater toilet and the broken door frames and locks and some other nonsense...President Condemned our apartment, and told us to start looking for another one. Ah.

Well, another week full of tracting and service. We actually tried many different service centers here in Val D'or, but none of them want Missionaries serving the community. Strange. Ah well, we still have some more places to hit. I can't wait until we attend the "Emo Anonymous" meetings. What better opportunity to share the uplifting joy of eternal happiness?

Things are going well, we had a part member family come, the member always tries to bring her children and her sister's children. We had an 11 year old boy ask for a book of mormon and to learn more. He said he knew what he learned in primary was true, because of the warmth in his heart and the Holy Ghost.

When the little boy walked into church, he didn't even know who Jesus was. Just goes to show, that age is not a determining factor of spiritual maturity. This young boy is ready for the gospel. I am excited to see it continue with him.

Well, Tracting has never been the same, we continue to have uplifting encounters wherever we go. This is a blessing, amazing.

I better get going, there isn't much else to say anyways.

Peace be the journey,

Elder Holm

Picture of the week. Frozen forest tundra land where we walk our member's dogs when they're out of town.

February 21, 2011

Fam.

This week was a long one. But we had quite the miracle occur this week. As we were planning wednesday night, E. Johnson and I quietly stared at our planners. No appointments. 5 hours of tracting to do. I take a deep breath and say "Well, tracting from 1-6"

Elder Johnson says no. I ask him what he means. He says that he won't go tracting for that long, that tracting doesn't work.

"Well, what else do you want to do?"

Silence.

I offer a suggestion "we could hit up the homeless shelter?"

"okay"

"That still leaves 4 1/2 hours to tract." This is where he snaps.

"IT DOESN'T WORK! IT IS A WASTE OF TIME."

Now, I felt that the response I gave him was a miracle in itself, because there were a lot of other things that I had in mind to say, but luckily just the right words came out, words I hadn't even planned on saying.

"Elder Johnson, what is it you want to do here?"

He grudgingly answered "I want to baptize."

"How bad do you want it?"

"Oh," he said "I want it bad."

"Just not 5 hours of tracting bad."

He snapped at this. "IT'S SO USELESS. YOU'RE NOT LISTENING. IT DOESN'T WORK. People just slam the door in our faces and cuss us out!!"

I found myself speaking a response I didn't understand. It was for us both really, I listened, just as intrigued as Elder Johnson, to the words I was saying, for it was the first time I had heard them as well.

"Elder Johnson. You aren't here to have success. You aren't here to baptize people. These are our goals, but not our reason. We are here to invite people. You must realize that we are successful with every invitation we offer to the people here. If you haven't noticed, I don't care if the people slam the door in my face, I just move on to the next one. Because I know that I have done all I can to help invite this person unto Christ. You are doing an amazing job, Elder Johnson. Because you are doing all you can. You have to learn to find your success in fulfilling your promise to invite all others unto Christ. If you can do this, you will be the happiest and most successful missionary in all aspects of the work."

Silence.

"Let me suggest something, for this is a problem for both of us. I know you have faith, and I know I have faith, so something has gotta give. Tonight in our companionship prayer, we will offer to God a week of meticulous work, a week where we give everything. And we will ask in return, for a reason to continue working. Is this something you will do with me?"

"Let's try it."

Now here is the 2nd miracle. We prayed. The next day, we prayed for inspiration determining where we should tract, and we picked a street. On that street, the first house where someone answered, they invited us in, and asked us. "So what is the difference between you guys and the other churches?"

We spoke for 15 minutes, discussing our believes, and left, everyone smiling and nice. If that wasn't miraculous enough, this pattern continued for the next five houses, all in a row. That day in all of our tracting, only 1 person would not hear us out, and he didn't even slam the door.

Now here is the funny part. We had never been treated with such respect and kindness since we got to Val D'or. Elder Johnson and I both regard this as a miracle. But we didn't get any new investigators, no one invited us to come back. Why is it that we feel so successful? Because we were able to fully invite others to come unto Christ, without the barriers of prejudice. We got to teach. We actually struggled a little bit, when it came to sharing our message, because usually we never get past the word "Missionaries" In our introduction. God answered our prayer right there, somehow managing to soften the hearts of the people, without robbing them of their free agency. This miracle was a work of art.

This experience has changed my mission, in ways I just can't seem to describe. Hopefully we will continue to have the faith to be obedient so that God can answer our prayers in the future.

Well, I think I'm going to end my letter there, that's all I have to say. Hope everyone has a good week!

E. Holm

February 14th, 2011

Family.

This week was pretty bad. Elder Johnson was sick the first half of the week and I am still recovering. Which meant that we did pretty much nothing. I don't think this bothered Elder Johnson much at all. Which bothered me more than the fact that we didn't get to do anything at all. BUT YOU CAN'T choose your companions. So here we are. Luckily we had an outstanding show out at church. Filled all but 5 chairs in the chapel. Amazing. Hopefully they'll be able to keep coming, I'm sure we can have another week like this one soon. Thank you so much for the packages, they really saved my week there. It took me a while how to figure out how to copy the pattern of that awesome scarf, but I believe I've got it down now.

I had quite a scary experience this last tuesday. I woke up at 2 o clock in the morning (because sleeping is overrated) and stood up to walk over to the restroom, when my left knee decided not to work anymore. I was VERY close to falling right on top of Elder Johnson, which would have been very upsetting for the both of us, but luckily I was able to land back on my bed. Not gonna lie, it must have looked pretty gay, like when Frodo in Mordor falls to avoid the gaze of the Sauron. I lied there for a little while, and tried again. No luck. So, really needing to use the restroom now, I hopped over to the bathroom, sat on the bathtub siding and rubbed life back into my knee for about 5 minutes. Fireworks going off in my knee is how I would describe it.

The rest of the day I was debating calling the mission doctor or not, nightmares of coming home early for some ridiculous knee dealio floating through my head. Quite terrifying, no joke. I finally ended up calling Elder Cherry, who blew out his knee in the MTC, and asked him how his knee felt before he tore it up. He then ratted me out to the Doctor. The doctor told me to take 800 mg of ibuprofen 3 times a week and some crazy leg exercises to strengthen my knee, and to call him on this coming tuesday to see "what the next step is."

Gah.

As I talked to the doctor, he asked if I had hit my knee directly at any point in the last year.
Thank you Hawaii.

So the moral of the story is, don't ignore knee problems in fear that they will postpone your mission. I'll be fine now that I've talked to the doctor, but a lot of unnecessary fear was thrown in there for a while. Quite a scare.

Anyhow, Valentines is great as a missionary. If you like being gay. But that's okay, because people support us. I've never received so many encouraging smiles as I did today whilst shopping. GAY. That's alright. Well, for now.

This week is make it or break it week, we need to get someone to commit to baptism if they are going to get dunked by the end of our transfer. Time is just flyin' by too quick, can't seem to fit enough work in the day here.

Well, that's about it. Thanks again for the packages, they were AMAZING. I think we have enough food to get us through the winter now, and plenty of handwarmers, I'll have to save those for next winter. You guys have a great week.

Love, (not gay)

E. Holm

February 6, 2011

Family,

This week was good, spent half of it in Ottawa again. We got a couple new elders and a new zone leader, so President told us we had to go down to meet them all. It's very difficult to work as a missionary in Val D'or only half the week. Anyhow.

We were having trouble getting to around our mileage limit on our cars, but luckily our elders quorum president helped us out this week. He's only lived here two years, he used to live in Montreal. After he lost his job and his house down there, he prayed and asked God where he was supposed to go to help the missionary work. And now here he is. He found a girl up here and is married, and lives here solely just to do missionary work. He's about dad's age.

This week we finally broke through with the members, they are starting to refer people to us to have us teach and our elders quorum president drove us to Rouyn Noranda, a small city where half our members live, and we home-taught with him to a bunch of part member families. Excellent. This guy would do anything for the work.

We spent the full day in Rouyn Noranda, from 1-9 pm. At the last house we visited, this man came out of the restroom, holding his stomach and walking as if he had ridden a horse for 5 days straight. We asked him if he's okay, he said no, very calmly, and said he might have to go to the hospital. I was sure he had herniated himself. But he insisted on Continuing the lesson. And this lesson resulted in a huge milestone in progress with one of our investigators.

After we got into the car to drive an hour and 15 minutes home, the first thing he did was whip out his phone and call his wife "Hello, yes I'm going to the hospital now, because one of my testicles is the size of a tennis ball." This was all in french, and it took me a minute to translate it in my head, and then I couldn't help but laugh. All the way home he winced with every bump in the road and towards the end was laughing/crying saying "oh I can't die like this, not like this!"

Now there is a man who gave everything for the work.

Well that's basically all I have for this week, I'll have more stories for next week I'm sure. The worst of winter is over, I survived! Have a good week everyone. And Happy Birthday to the old man over there!!

Love,

E. Holm