June 27th, 2011

Dear Family,

Well this week was just crazy. The ward finally split, it was probably not as big as a deal for everyone else as it was for Elder McRoberts and I. We were on the edge of our seats during the whole sacrament meeting. We now have the Terrebonne Ward and the Mascouche Ward. I`m terribly excited to go to church all...Sunday. Woo. All the spanish families will be in the Terrebonne ward, it will be interesting.

A missionary from the Mascouche ward came home this last week. He walked into one of our district meetings while he was waiting to be released by the stake president. Poor man, he just looked terribly bewildered and lost. On Sunday instead of hanging out with everyone at church, he just came and manned the doors with us. Everytime he sees us he looks like he wants to cry. He must have worked really hard on his mission in Tawain. And with my year mark coming soon, it just made the future that much darker.....

All our investigators are going well. Life is good! Enjoy summer! Here are some pictures of the Flood clean up! I can`t remember if I had sent these...

peace,

Elder Holm

June 20th, 2011

Family.

Well not much happened this week. The only big thing I can think of is the HERNANDEZ REDEMPTION. We had lunch with the Hernandez family this last Saturday. I was more than determined to come out victorious. We walked in and she was baking SIX home made deep dish pizzas. All large. ah. I was 2 slices short of eating a whole pizza myself. My goal was one more slice than Brother Hernandez. It was so difficult. Halfway through the last slice, I realized that I wasn`t going to make it. I excused myself to the bathroom and vomited just a little, and then dropped to the floor and did 20 crunches as fast and as hard as possible. It`s amazing how much that helped. I walked back to my plate, and Brother Hernandez said "ah, you must not like pizza, you`re eating so slow." To our surprise I took the last have and gulped it down in three bites. 7 slices total, sbarro sized, takes two hands to hold pieces. Victory. Then we got dessert. Sister Hernandez used an entire breyers carton of ice cream between me, elder McRoberts and brother Hernandez, sprinkled with strawberries and raspberries. As if divine intervention, some really interesting conversation shot up, and half an hour later I was able to slurp down the last bite of ice cream. VICTORY. Then the intervention. Sister Hernandez started talking about what happened last time. And mentioned that she had found some TOMATO SLICES in the trash can. Elder McRoberts had been caught, there was no escape. Sister Hernandez told us, pointing to me "I am really mad at him, but at least he was sincere, and didn`t try to lie and cover up by throwing away the food." But she was really nice about it. HAHAHA. Oh sweet goodness. But now we are all on good terms, and she is going to feed us smaller portions, "like she did with the pizza" Sigh... She still doesn`t understand that missionaries can`t eat 4 times the normal person`s diet on a whim. They gave us a leftover pizza on Sunday, and jokingly said to Elder McRoberts "Now don`t throw this away, this doesn`t belong in the trash, you eat it." Poor Elder McRoberts, but at least they didn`t find the chicken...that would have been so horrible.

We had the two brothers at church this week, they really want to get baptized. They kind of terrorized primary, I feel bad for their teachers...but hey, what can you do? The work continues. Another girl in the ward who is 10 will be baptized on the 2nd of july, we`ve been teaching her.

Well, that`s all from my end, except that the mail strike has stopped all mail, in and out. So if you`re sending stuff, hold on to it until the end of the strike!

Peace,

Elder Holm

June 13th, 2011

Family,

So this week was pretty rockin`. As usually nothing really happened during the week, except our wonderful investigator who was supposed to be baptized soon called us this last Tuesday and dropped us, without really giving us a reason as to why. OUCH. Now I know how all those girls I dated in high school felt..Haha...ah...okay. But it`s okay because all we had to do was call her fellowshipper and ask her to talk to our investigator to see what`s up, and report back. We knew what they were going to tell us however, because after a couple days of turmoil being ignorant to her problems, we fasted all day and discussed and prayed for her for an hour and a half during weekly planning, finally ending with a prayer and immediately after the prayer we each wrote a letter to her. Elder McRoberts and I shared later our letters with each other and discovered that they both covered the exact same concept. That she didn`t know that she could actually push back her baptism date and that she is just nervous and scared. Good old answers to prayers. So it was no surprise when we heard from her fellowshipper today that she still wants to be baptized but just wants to take a little bit of time with it, and not be dunked in 3 weeks total from her exposure to the church, because she was nervous and scared. Understandable. And take note, had we not spent all last transfer building strong ties with members, there would have been no net to catch this woman as she fell from investigation. Member work is the reason this investigator is going to be baptized soon. Very important.

We two Haitian twins on friday, both nine years old and just dying to get baptized. They are being transferred to our ward because the branch their family attends has no other youth. Their older Brother and sister are members, their parents aren`t...yet. The elder brother is...Hayden, but black. The last thing he said to me as we left was "Oh, he be BOSS" in his black slang talk...in english. He`s a hoot.

On Saturday we headed out to Venice! Venice, Quebec that is. Just on the north shore of Lac Champlain. 500 members gathered on Saturday to help with the flooding damage that occurred. We were stationed in a little trailer park in Venice, where it was still pretty flooded and very devastated. It was sad to see the people just living in ruins, but we did a lot of good and helped them out a lot. I`ll send some pictures. Before we left for Venice, all the volunteers gathered and we sang I am a Child of God, everyone singing in their native tongue. French Spanish and English were most prevalent, it was really cool. I wish I had recorded it. I`ll send some pictures soon.

Our ward here is splitting! It will be two soon, and the transfer just began. President Cannon has promised another set of missionaries here to help, but until next transfer we have to man two wards all by our lonesome. It`s going to be a very busy transfer. Exciting stuff! It may sound kind of boring to you, but a ward split really just rocks your world as a missionary, it`s crazy. President Cannon sounds very frustrated with the lack of missionaries coming in.

Well, that`s all I have to say about that. Oh, except one last thing. Canada Post is on strike.....no mail.....ah....Satan is a tricky son of a gun who won`t hold back any cheap shots. It`s going to be a long summer. Have a good week and Enjoy the sun!

Peace,

Elder Holm

June 7th, 2011

FAMILY.

Well Elder McRoberts and I are really flippin out. All the members we`ve been encouraging and working hard with are catching the spirit, and the Gospel is flowing forth. My favorite memory took place Saturday night, we were standing in the chapel talking to our committed investigator, filling out a calendar of when we can visit her and teach her to prepare her for her baptism next saturday, when a member came up to us and interrupted our heavenly baptism conversation with the question "Hey elders, when can you come teach my daughter? She hasn`t been baptized yet and we really need to get on that." We of course have never experienced multiple people asking us to help them or their families to baptism, this was just fantastic. We have had no less than 4 investigators at church each week for the past 3 weeks and we are running out of time to meet with people in the week. What a lovely problem to have. Let`s just hope that the work continues and we continue to live up to the work!

We taught our investigator after the calendar set up, and we taught her about the Law of Chastity, The law of Tithing, and the Word of Wisdom. Her response was "Well I`ve never liked coffee or tea, smoking is gross, and I casually drink but that won`t be hard to give up. Tithing is an obvious blessing in waiting and I have a testimony of this. The law of Chastity is just commen sense."

Huh. Wow, well there goes that. Sometimes when people are super prepared by the Lord, missionaries feel useless. We have had very little to do with the conversion of this woman, but I don`t mind that in the least. She has been waiting too long for the Restored Gospel in her life, and on the 18th she'll enter into it.

We were asked to help with the Ward Ball after our lesson on Saturday. They had a DJ and everything, it was very well set up. (We had helped with the set up as well). As we walked in, we quickly utilized ourselves as the ward photographers, and some members walked up to us and handed us cameras. I received a Nikon D60, just like the one I lost to the pacific ocean...it was really nice to hold that camera again. We swarmed around the spanish families, and the Quebec families, and took lots of pictures. The two hours we were there they only played 1 french song and 1 spanish song-the rest were american hip hop songs. And 90 percent of the people there had no idea what the lyrics were, they don`t speak a lick of english. It made me realize what a headache pop culture music is nowadays and how much my taste of music has changed. Just us and Mindy Gledhill, that`s all we need.

It`s been a grand week, our fridge is full of the activity leftovers, and we have plenty of work to do.

Peace,

Elder Holm