Woah, this week has been absolutely wack! We’ve been running around all over this place, so sorry if this email sounds like a jumbled mess, hopefully it comes together.

Exchange with ZLs & The Winning Shot! 🏀

I went on exchanges with the zone leaders today. It was great! We’re kinda in a dilemma right now, since the transfer day was pushed back, all the missionaries that were leaving already left. So our district leader (Elder Bultsma’s) companion left and now he’s just with the zone leaders. Since we hadn’t done any exchanges this transfer we were squeezing them at the last minute. Everything started getting a bit crazy with all of the exchanges. So basically what happened is I went with both Zone Leaders and my companion went with the district leader to his area. So both of us left our area which never really happens so it was a bit wack. We did a bit of finding on the exchange which was really good. I’m terrible at finding so it was great to see some of the things that they do in their finding efforts. After that we headed to the store to grab some art supplies for a poster. They host a basketball night at the church that a lot of non-members attend, so the idea was to make a poster of our beliefs and put it up. So hopefully those that may be interested in learning more can see the poster and reach out. Anyways, it turned out pretty well, we had our Plan of Salvation poster setup and ready to go. After a couple good games of basketball we headed back home and finished off the night. I’m terrible at basketball, but we had a great time! I did actually manage to score a shot, so in my eyes that was a success haha! It also managed to be the final winning shot, which was pretty epic. Idk how I managed to do that, I’m just really lucky I guess. More importantly we did have some people check out the poster so that was a success. While we were on the exchange we had a lesson with one of their friends at the church. We talked about the sacrament, eternal families, and the Savior’s Atonement. The message was really powerful. We showed him a video about why we have the sacrament and remembering our Savior and all that he’s done for us.

The Exchange with DL

We began another exchange and this time I was with Elder Bultsma in his area. We drove back to his apartment and had some dinner. We then drove back to Richmond to give Sister Toomey a blessing. She’s one of the senior missionaries that’s going home in a couple of days. She’s going through some hard times right now, and she asked Elder Bultsma to give her a blessing before she left. So we headed over and had a nice chat with her, and she received the blessing from Elder Bultsma. I’m so sad to see Sister Toomey leave, she brings such a sweet spirit to the district council every week. We didn’t realize but the transfer travel news was just sitting on the desk in the office. And Elder Bultsma was just looking through the papers, not realizing what it was. Sister Toomey didn’t know what it was either, but she figured it out pretty quickly and snatched the papers from Elder Bultsma haha. It’s okay he only saw the travel plans for two Elders. After all of that fun stuff we headed back home from Richmond. We’ve been bouncing around so much lately, but we are making it work. It’s been quite crazy because neither me or my companion has been in our own area in the last couple of days with all the exchanges and stuff. Since Elder Bultsma can’t drive, I’ve been the one driving us back and forth, so that’s been good getting more driving experience in Canada. Not gonna lie it’s gonna take a bit of getting used to the speed limits. Everyone goes like 15 km over the speed limit. But we have these Tiwi tracking devices in our cars that only allows us to speed 10 km over the limit. If we go over it reports it on your driving profile, which happens way more than it should haha, but it encourages missionaries to stay safe. Anyways the first 20 minutes I was driving I got like 4 speeding reports because I had no idea what the speed limit was haha. But I figured it out pretty quickly and that’s not a problem anymore.

The News 📰

My companion got a call from the mission president, I didn’t know at the time but he just received news that he was going to be a Zone Leader in Fraser. All he told me was that we both were going to have new companions and he started packing. While he was on call with president I was also given an assignment to handle giving out SIM cards, apartment keys, and car keys to all the missionaries that need them for transfers. So that’s gonna be super duper fun, we’ll be at the mission office bright and early and hopefully try to coordinate all of that. Later that night I received a call from the Assistants and I was informed that I was going to be a District Leader. I was honestly surprised, I don’t think I’m ready to be a District Leader, but I’m gonna do my best. I feel like I’m not very qualified for that yet, I don’t have as much experience as everyone else in the district, so I don’t know how much I can help everyone else. But I’ll certainly do my very best and I know with the Lord’s help, it’ll work out. The next day we received the transfer board. My new companion is going to be Elder Day who will be my senior companion as well. There’s also going to be another set of Elders coming to Richmond, and we’ll be ward sharing with a set of Sisters here in Surrey. We definitely needed another set here in Surrey 3rd ward. It’ll be great because now they can work through all the referrals with us, and we can give them some of the sisters we were teaching as well. We were struggling to meet with a lot of the sisters before because we couldn’t get a brother that can join us for lessons. So that’ll make that work out so much better now.

Transfer Day 🫠

This was the most stressful day of my mission so far. I had no idea how wacky transfers were gonna be. When we got to the mission office, I was given a spreadsheet with all the instructions for SIM cards, car, and apartment keys. Many of the keys I had to retrieve from other missionaries and swap them for another key. While I was reading through the instructions and trying to figure it all out, the assistants got a call from president about some last minute changes to the transfer board. I was informed that Elder Day isn’t going to be my companion and instead Elder Murphy will be taking his place. So basically they are now gonna swap places. There were also a few other last minute changes, but they finalized everything and submitted the board. While I figure out all the keys and stuff my companion will be with one of the old assistants moving furniture and desks to and from apartments. So I’ll be with Elder Bultsma as a temporary companion until Elder Murphy gets to the office. He just received the news that morning so he’s gonna be super busy packing everything up. We went into the Relief Society room and that’s where all the missionaries will be going before their training meeting. We had like 25 missionaries show up, and I got to see my MTC companion! I did a bit of catching up with Elder Rowley, as I multi-tasked with all the keys and stuff and made sure I was getting all the keys to the right missionaries. I started to get pretty stressed out cause I didn’t have all the keys I needed to give out to all the missionaries. It was a lot of information overload at once and they all left for their training meeting. After that I realized that I needed to get the keys from some of the missionaries that were there previously. But I wouldn’t be able to do that until after they finished their training meeting. We knew we would be waiting anyway so me and Elder Bultsma ran over to Subway really quickly to grab some lunch. We quickly ran back to the office, and we were trying to figure out what happened to one of the keys with the assistants. They thought they gave me the key, but I didn’t remember having it or giving it out. So we were stressed out trying to find this key. Luckily after some searching around and contacting missionaries, the assistants found that one of the keys that we already had was for that car. I’m so glad it worked out, and I didn’t lose the key, I would’ve felt so bad. Elder Shipley and Elder Day made it to the office, and we needed to take Elder Shipley to the bus station back in Surrey. I needed to be at two places at once so I could swap the rest of the car keys with the other missionaries that were coming back from training meetings. So what I decided to do was to throw the keys in the office with sticky notes on who needs to grab the key and leave their key there. We threw all of Elder Shipley’s stuff in the car and I started driving them back to Surrey. Luckily we figured out pretty quickly that Elder Shipley forgot his Tiwi card so we quickly turned around and ran back to the mission office. When we made it back we got his Tiwi from his old companion and we ran into my new companion, Elder Murphy. I was trying to figure out if we should just throw all of Elder Murphy’s stuff in the car too and just head back to our apartment after, because we would already be in Surrey. But I still felt like I needed to help out at the mission office, and we didn’t really have much room in the car. So I quickly headed back to Surrey with Elder Day, Shipley, and Murphy. I was so stressed out, I didn’t want Elder Shipley to miss his bus. After an hour of driving we arrived at Gilford mall in Surrey. The mall is huge, and there’s multiple transit bus stops, so we were trying to figure out where exactly his bus would be. After driving around the parking lot and calling up the other Elders, we located the bus stop which was right across from the recreation center. And thankfully, after all that stress, we got Elder Shipley on his bus on time. We then drove back for another hour back to Richmond and figured out a few more issues in the mission office. I was helping Sister Toomey with some technical issues, a few other Elders with their Whatsapp, and I started calling a few other missionaries to figure out the phone numbers of the SIMs I gave them. Anyways, it was a super long day. There’s so much to write about, but honestly I just need some more time to think about everything that just happened.