Week 9

So this week was kind of slow and some weird things (as well as some cool things) happened. I guess starting with the cool, we got a bible referral and went to contact them, we had to try 3 or 4 times because nobody was home, then around 5 one night about 7 kids answered the door (all under 12) and were all super excited to see the bible. It turns out that the two oldest girls (11 and 7!) out of this family of 8 wanted to come closer to Christ. Crazy family though its hilarious, the two youngest are 5 year old twins who are just running around all over the place screamin haha. Their father isnt around so we are going to end up teaching the mom at first then hopefully get the kids involved if they can sit still for more than 3 seconds lol.

Saturday around two we visited an investigator from Ghana who is nearing the end of the discussions, but her family was cooking some really strong funky smelling fish, so after teaching the lesson we get into the car and realize that we smell super strongly of fish haha, so we go home and we had to wash all of our clothes and shower, then we got back into the car and it reeked! so we ended up trying to de-fish-smell all of our belongings until the ward halloween party that night, which was good because we got fed haha.

Honestly the biggest thing I got from mom's email (other than the zat's) was the food, all we get is pizza and store bought mexican! Its killing me, also my comp only likes cheeseburgers with only bun and meat so he wants to eat out alot. ew. 

I got a random package from the lds store with a pic of calgary temple was that you guys? its pretty sweet but idk were to hang it because I dont want to put a tack in it. 

Also I wrote down a bunch of artists and such I would like on my mp3 most of them are super boring.

Playlist:

Christmas (because im going to listen to christmas music year round and think about snow and cry)

-christmas music/hymns

-Last christmas by WHam please oh please I need that song

-trans siberian orchestra 

Motab

-pretty much everything motab just because maybe Ill eventualy be more obedient

Thats pretty much all that happened this week worth mentioning but I can attach pics now so I will describe those with a sentence or two. Most of them are from in the mtc because we dont really have the opportunity to take pics while in the car.

1. a picture of me and my mtc comp in front of a pic of missionaries who served in our mission in 1974

2. class at the mtc is super boring

3. Haha so this will sound weird but we had a bunch of spare time one day so we did a 'photo shoot' all the photos of me are on his camera though soooo

4. so now we are in cali and I was about to pick some of these cactus pears because they are so tasty and we saw this ole feller right before I stuck my hand in his house

5. Me and my trainer during weekly planning

6. Temple Trip! E. Dreher and E Nwobi and I were stuck in the back haha

Week 8

Ive been out for almost two months now, thats kind of crazy, 1/12ish of the way done! 

Transfer calls were on saturday, most of our zone is staying the same, my comp and I are staying in the family ward/YSA branch. This is the first time my comp has stayed somewhere for more than two transfers so I broke his 'curse' haha. 

I forgot my planner with all the wierd/awesome stuff that happened this week so its all gonna be a jumble and I'll probably miss a lot but I will try my best to get it all. First of all the only music we have is an efy cd that the sisters before us left in the apt so its all music about building confidence and wierd stuff like that, its awful but its all we have so we go all out singing it in wierd voices and such. This ended up being sort of awkward because I felt like having the window down after visiting an investigator and when we were singing we looked over and she was just looking at us laughing at the stop light, soooooo, super awkward. 

The temp has been sort of mild, only in the high twenties recently, but its supposed to cool down. I keep dropping hints in my letters to the President about seeing snow for Christmas haha. This week we sort of hit a wall, we ended up looking for an ice-cream truck for a full hour because it was so hot haha. Also instead of weekly planning we ground up a bunch of herbal sleeping pills and put it in cookies and fed them to our ward mates haha, we are super apostate. But then we saw this huge beetle on our prch which ended up being dead, but it was nasty huge like bigger than my thumb, not including the legs, so we incased it in jello and gave it to the ZL who was leaving as a memento to remember us. Wow as I write this down I realize how little missionary work we did that day, oh well. 

This week is super packed and promising so we are going to make up for that day of doing nothing. 

Yea thats about it that I can remember, I'll include more in next week I promise.

Elder Ockey

Week 7

Im gonna miss Canadian thanksgiving and the big american thanksgiving at the remingtons :(

I miss/love all of you guys!

So I dont have a whole tonne to email about since I just emailed last Wednesday. 

Maryn if youre cold when running cross country you just gotta run harder! I remember when we had cross country in school the harder you ran you either got warm or were to tired to feel cold!

Tell Jackson that he cant cut his hair till I get back that would be siiiick, then I get to shave it all off.

Yesterday E. Jennings and I and our ward mates E. Hirst and Nwobi were invited Christian's for some sort of Halloween/autumn party dealio, so that was sort of my Canadian Thanksgiving meal :). They had all of their kids and grandkids there so it was crazy haha. One of the grandkids really wants to move to Canada and was totally slamming Cali it was hilarious so I kept egging him on. Also Bro Christianson got some more spiders, he has a tonne of black widows its low-key sketchy. They are just chillin on the table. Also he said next time we go over for service we can hold his tarantula! Hopefully I will be able to upload pics by then and you guys can all see me flippin out haha.

A few days ago we were walking up to this door to contact a referral (who ended up not being there) but as we were walking along the sidewalk this homeless looking dude ran across the street to shake our hands and shouted "Hey! Happy Mormon Day!" haha its crazy all the people here.

We have this one less active that we visit on a weekly basis by his request. Its awesome because the last few weeks when we go its total role reversal and hes all like "I was reading in Matthew about hte end of days, would you like to read this verse?" and he has this notebook full of scriptures and stuff and he just ends up going into deep doctrine discussions it a good time.

We had invited an investigator to attend a baptism that the ZL's were having so that she could know what to expect (we are still trying to set a solid date with her) but she ended up flaking last second. This ended up being a good thing because the font was suuuuper low, like only knee deep and the person they were trying to baptize just fell backward instead of doing the chair squat so they had to try like 9 times before they got it to work. It was painful to watch haha.

Anyway transfer calls are this week and usually trainees and trainers arent split up but our mission has been getting more people the last few transfers than usual so they end up splitting up alot. I guess we will see what happens but I think that we will both end up staying together for another transfer.

Peace Fam ;)

Week 6

I actually remember most of what happened this week because I wrote it down!

We did some service earlier last week for brother Christianson, we were laying down a bunch of concrete blocks in his backyard. It was super hot but its good to get out of a white shirt and put on some shorts and a t-shirt. But the crazy thing is he offered us some water so we go inside and his counter is just fulled with jars filled with bugs. Straight up was kinda scary, he had some praying mantis' which we have seen around our apt as well, but he also had a bunch of black widows and brown widows. He told us that the pain from a bite is so intense that most people want to die soooo... Pretty much since then I check under my bed for spiders now because they are super common here.

We contacted a referral last Friday (with whom we have a return appointment today) but his son was watching Jurassic Park 2 during our lesson so I pretty much watched that whenever I wasn't talking haha it was the part when the big group of people show up on the island near the beginning. Man the struggle is real, we watch the district for entertainment :(

We volunteer at the food bank every week as well but this time was kind of different because we were there for 4 hours instead of 2, it was super busy and we restocked this fridge with apples and pears and that they said would go bad before they could give them all away so they told us to take some food with us, literally pushing it into our hands, and that's the short and simple story of how we stole food from a food bank.

On Sunday night we met with an investigator who struggles with smoking and we brought a member along named Bro Ledesma who is this super chill old dude. They started talking about working and how much things cost when they were younger, he then said that his got his first job when he was 25 after he was married because, 'no money no honey.' 

Our p-day is today this week because we went to the temple today, its outside of our mission which is kind of annoying because then we cant go as often but it was still sweet. I don't understand why they make us take p-day when we go to the temple because when you get out you can feel the spirit so strongly it would be awesome to teach but we aren't supposed to. 

We had exchanges on Monday which was kind of nice because my comp had started to get on my nerves a bit, I went with our DL Elder Nwobi, lets just say after 24 hours I was more than happy to be back with my assigned companion.

Love Elder Ockey