The New I.T. Guy
The Call 📞
The time was 7:24am, I was going through my highly creative exercise routine, which only consists of jumping jacks, planks, and pushups. Mostly just jumping jacks though haha. Anyways I was doing my exercise, getting my jumping jacks in; I hear my companion answer a phone call in our bedroom, I then entered the room assuming it was just a member calling. I then hear President Gillask to speak to me in private. At this point my heart was already racing from them jumpin jacks, but now it’s racing a little faster. I tried to hide the fact that I was somewhat out of breath from my exercise, I’m hoping that it didn’t sound like I was so nervous I was struggling to breath haha. Anyways the big news came in that was discussed between him and my comp last week at the temple. I am now one of the mission technology specialists for the entirety of British Columbia!! So that’s super duper exciting! Now I getta look forward to fixing people’s phones and stuff, it’s gonna be epic! There’s only to MTS’s in the whole mission, one of them, Elder Yamashita is up in Terrace right now, and I’m the other one! Which is kinda cool cause I gotta meet him just before he left to Terrace. When I was on an exchange with Elder Livingston we drove him to the airport. I’m pretty excited for this new assignment! We talked to the social media sisers some more about the referral video project. They made some changes and we are going about it a different way. We’ve come to the conclusion that we are no longer making a video, there’s going to be information sent out by the stake to each ward regarding the instructions. Which is totally cool and honestly works better for our whole busy schedule. Not too much happened today, just lots of contacts and district council.
Buncha Lessons 👍
We almost had a groundbreaking four lessons today! But that’s okay, one of them fell through and we had our other three. The first one we gave someone who reached out to us through Facebook, a Book of Mormon. He was super nice and interested in expanding his religious knowledge through reading it. We’ll probably meet with him again sometime so that’ll be great! There was also another person there, I believe it was his brother. Idk, he was pretty nice as well, he’s part of the Sikh faith but he was chatting with us so that was cool. We met with Thilak again today. He’s awesome! Just a super nice guy that’s going through a lot of hardship. But I’m super grateful for the opportunity to assist in helping him spiritually. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it was pretty good. I’ve felt like my teaching ability has definitely improved a bit, I still got so far to go but I’m glad that I am getting closer. He also makes really good Indian food so we are very grateful for that. He’s working on his resume right now cause currently he is working two jobs which gets really busy for him. He’s hoping that he can find one job that pays well enough. Fingers crossed his new resume will help him find a better job. We ended off the night with another lesson with the Davis’s. Paul was working on fixing the Christmas lights. Cause they got the epic ones that are wired in series so when one of the LEDs on the strip go out, all go out with it. Anyways we shared a quick lesson about Jesus' early years in Luke 2. It was really good! Usually Sister Davis has to find the scriptures or bug Paul to pull them up but he just got them pulled up on his phone and was ready to go. He seems like he’s a lot more engaged with the lessons which is so good! After the lesson Sister Davis was so sweet, she expressed her gratitude and appreciation for the lessons that we prepare. She said that she really knows that we take the time to prepare each and every single lesson and make sure that it’s for them. She was super duper sweet, and I think she’s seeing spiritual growth in Paul which is wonderful!
Ward Christmas Party 🎄
It’s fast and testimony Sunday everyone! It was pretty cool, our friend Ishan that came to church last Sunday, came again! We also got him his Persian Book of Mormon. Another one of ourur referrals also came to church. They were really nice, they stayed for second hour too! We just pointed him in the direction of the Hindi class. We also had the ward Christmas party today! It was so good! Brother Prasad got Sherry a ride, so she was there too! We are super glad that Sherry was able to connect with the members more. She was having dinner with them, it was awesome! The food was so good, especially right after the fast. The bishop informed us that one of the youth’s friends, that was coming to church and activities with them, was asking how they could join the church. Which is absolutely awesome, we are going to have to hunt them down and chat with them some more sometime. Anyways, we watched the Christmas devotional by the first presidency. We finished off the night by meeting with the James family again. We shared a little lesson about fasting with them. We learned that they have to take the cab to church each Sunday. Which really puts into perspective how much they sacrifice to come to church. They both work all week to support their family. But they make sure to take Sunday off and pay even more money to get to and from church. That’s gotta be a real test of faith.
Dry Cleaner & Canadian Cash 🇨🇦
Most of our day was spent in the apartment and contacting our big list of people that are interested. So not really too much happened. I finally got around to converting my U.S. freedom units to Canadian dollars. So that was pretty cool! The conversion rate is 1.38 so my $196 U.S. dollars turned into $270 Canadian dollars. Also the dollars are made of plastic so that’s pretty neat. We also picked up our stuff from the dry cleaner. It was only $20 to clean a suit, which is cheaper than I expected.
Spiritual Thought 🙏
Spiritual gifts are special blessings to worthy people for either their benefit, or to use them in the blessing of others. Spiritual gifts are so powerful, and I believe they are something we don’t speak about enough in the church. Everyone is given a gift by the Spirit of God. Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained that “spiritual gifts are endless in number and infinite in variety.” Some examples of spiritual gifts include, charity, organization, patience, optimism, courage, peacemaker, healing, faith, discernment of spirits, tongues, knowledge, and working of miracles. Elder Larry R. Lawrence of the seventy taught: “I sometimes visualize a large storehouse up in heaven, completely filled with spiritual gifts, available to all Saints who have the faith to ask for them. Unfortunately, not too many are asking, so the storehouse is always overstocked.” With this Christmas season coming up I invite you to seek Spiritual gifts. These gifts will not just be given to you, all nice and wrapped underneath a Christmas tree. But will come as you faithfully seek them. I can testify that these truly are the best gifts. I mean we all give pretty great gifts to each other, but just imagine how eternally great the gifts are that come from Heavenly Father.