I didn’t get a chance to email last week, just because we had a really busy pday and got to visit the temple which was awesome! Anyways I am throwing some of my entries in this email from last week as well.

Thursday Pday

We had our preparation day on a Thursday since we were in Terrace during Zone Conference stuff on Tuesday. So today was pretty chill. Last preparation day we found this cool little digital picture frame; Elder Evans always wanted something like that, so we bought it. Unfortunately it didn’t come with a power adapter, but we found one that fit, and the voltage was pretty close to the same. So we came back home, he plugged it in and it turned on! Wish was pretty sweet. We unplugged it to move it to a different spot and it wouldn’t turn on again. We were unable to turn it on since, and I was worried we ruined it with the power cable. We went back to Value Village today and I found a cable that fit with the exact voltage and amps. This was it! I thought this cable was the answer, but after we plugged it in, I think we wrecked it with the other cable. But that’s okay, it was a miracle because we found another digital picture frame and it was unopened! Power cable and everything.So I’m just glad it worked out for Elder Evans. God is good! After that we were having trouble disabling the contact syncing system, but upon diving back into the code, I was able to clear up a huge technical misunderstanding. I realized that each area email runs the code to sync contacts and they each run an update contacts function on itself. Before I thought that the Canada Vancouver Mission email looped through every area email and copied the contacts over that way. After discovering this I was able to get the contacts to wipe and disable syncing so that was pretty good. I’m glad that God helped me figure that out.

Exchanges with Elder Bracket

I began an exchange with Elder Bracket (DL) today. Now I’m back in Surrey 3rd ward, which is kinda weird to be back, but it’s been good. Elder Bracket is super chatty, but he’s fun. He’s making a big decision right now, so we had some good discussion about it. His visitor record expires in October, but his time as a missionary wouldn’t be over till January. So he’s debating if he should extend his visitor record and stay out, or go home and finish the remaining time as a service missionary, or just go home early. He’s been praying about it and bouncing back and forth on those options. I tried to offer some good council, I hope it helps. We didn’t really end up doing too much, I helped him work through the referrals though.

Church Flyers & Phone Logging

I’m pretty happy with the work we were able to accomplish today. We had a wonderful spiritually filled district council from Elder Strong. We talked about the Christ-like attribute of diligence as well as strengthening and working with members. It was probably one of the best district councils I’ve been to. We also gave Elder Judd his Tiwi, but since he’s only had his license for a year we did a driving test to make sure he’s good. We drove to the gas station and back, and he did a really good job so I said he passed! We went into the office today to print out flyers for church; I had an idea that we should have passalongs for our Easter Sunday church service, and they turned out pretty well. As per usual, we got wrapped up in a sidequest at the office, but it was a really productive sidequest so no complaints here. We labeled and logged all of the phones that we have in the safe. Most of it is just a bunch of personal devices that don’t support Church Protections, so the missionaries will pick them up before they go home. Now hopefully, we can keep track of all the phones. Most of the phones we don’t know the missionary that it belongs to so we gave them codenames. Some of these include, but are not limited to, Courageous Corgi, Excited Elephant, and Weary Wolverine. We had a pretty good time labeling all of these phones.

MSC Form Video

We began today by doing some park finding. Unfortunately as we walked through the park we didn’t see anyone to talk to. At the end of our finding session however we did see a couple of guys with cameras doing bird watching. We didn’t want to disturb the bird watching so we began to head home. We started work on a MSC form instructional video. It’s a bit difficult to record videos without all the equipment, but we got a bit creative and made do with what we have. The video took a lot longer to make than expected, but we are almost finished. Hopefully it helps to clarify misunderstandings that missionaries have about filling out the MSC forms. After that we stopped by some inactive members' homes and gave out flyers for our Easter Sunday church service. It seems like it’s been super successful so far, we’ve had a lot of positive interactions with members we haven’t met. To end off the night we were going to stop by one last house. I found a nearby member, through the address in the navigation, and it took us to Dairy Queen. Kinda wacky it says the member lives at Dairy Queen haha! But we took that as a sign and got some DQ blizzards to end off the night lol.

6 Month Reflection

I’ve been so bad at writing in my journal the past couple of days so I’m just gonna write a 6 month reflection: I’m so grateful for my mission and all the wonderful people that the Lord has blessed me to be around. I’m grateful for Elder Evans, for his spirituality, his leadership, his example, and his love for the work and the people. He’s truly one of the greatest missionaries I’ve ever known. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve around Elder Hanson and Elder Lopez. They are such wonderful missionaries, and to be able to see the transformation in both of them over the course of a transfer was such a blessing. Elder Hanson is so down to earth, and it was amazing to see the work transform him. Elder Lopez is very diligent and hard working. I’m grateful to see that Elder Hanson and Lopez worked so well together and strengthened each other so much. There were times that Elder Hanson struggled after long finding sessions of no success, but Elder Lopez helped him push through. Anyways, I just hit 6 months and I’m so incredibly grateful for this amazing experience I’ve had so far. I see it as this wonderful gift from God, and I don’t think I could ever repay Him for all the ways I’ve learned and grown. I’m looking forward to the future and I’m so incredibly grateful for President and Sister Gill. They are some of the greatest people I know and it’s a blessing to be able to serve with you. I’m so grateful for their example and all the amazing things I’ve learned and will continue to learn from them. But most of all I’m grateful to come to the earth at this time and witness and participate in the gathering of Israel.

I’ll probably write a longer 6 month reflection soon…

Thank you everybody, I am so grateful for your love and support. I couldn’t do any of this without you. You all mean so much to me :)