Vacation to Vancouver Island

We traveled to Vancouver Island for Zone Conference! And wow, it was such a cool experience! We took the ferry from Tswassen early in the morning; it was scheduled to leave at 7am. So we quickly got up and ready at 5am, and began our journey to the ferry port. Once we arrived on the ferry we sat in anticipation to see the island. Elder Evans hasn’t had the opportunity to visit Vancouver Island so he was pretty excited to see it. Once we arrived we were picked up by the Victoria Zone Leaders and began heading to the stake center. Unfortunately the breakfast was too expensive for us, so Elder Evans was hoping we’d be able to have enough time to pickup some McDonald’s on the way there. But there wasn’t enough time so we just headed to the Zone Conference. We survived till lunch, so it’s all good haha! Once we arrived at the church Elder Evans and I were talking about the unique architecture of the building. It looked pretty sweet, not your typical stake center. We got to meet all the missionaries that were serving on the Island and that was a really cool experience. This was my first time meeting all of those missionaries. Elder Evan’s old companion, Elder Beisinger was also serving on the Island. We made quite the surprise appearance when Elder Beisinger saw us. It was such a cool experience sitting in for yet another Zone Conference in the same transfer! It was quite funny when the missionary that was conducting announced our names as the Social Media Elders haha. We had everyone confused; the mission used to have Social Media Elders, but currently we just have Social Media Sisters. Anyways, we had another really awesome Zone Conference! Lunch was also super-duper good, too bad we ran out. I was gonna go for seconds, but it’s probably for the best. After lunch we did our Preach My Gospel app training yet again. We split everyone in two groups, and they were taught by the Assistants and the other group was taught by us. Afterwards they would rotate, so we ended up giving two PMG trainings, once again. I was surprised to see that President Gill sat in for the trainings once again. Our training went really well. I definitely feel like we made quite the improvement from the last training. We incorporated a scripture at the beginning of it, because we both felt like our training was so concerned about the application, it was missing the doctrine. Obviously it’s a very application based training, so that’s naturally going to happen. But I thought it was really good to focus on the why, and not just what. It wasn’t like we didn’t focus on that in our last training, it was more of just a side note. It turned out really well, we had a lot of great council and discussion. The missionaries brought a lot of great questions to the table that allowed us to counsel and come to a conclusion that can help us further the work of the Lord. After the training President Gill came up to us and told us that he whispered to Sister Gill that we reminded him of Elder Holland and Elder Cook. All of the ferry’s were booked and the only one we could get was the one that would leave at 9pm. Which would mean that we wouldn’t get home till around 11pm. President Gill gave us the thumbs up on it, so we still had a few hours on the island before our ferry left. We just hung out with Elder Biesinger and Elder Jung and drove to Victoria with them. They took us to this super awesome poutine restaurant, and the guy that works there is a member so he gave us discounts!

Fast Sunday

Good old fast Sunday! This Sunday was pretty good. Sister Gill came to sacrament meeting, unfortunately President Gill was in meetings so he was unable to make it, but we’re glad to see Sister Gill! None of our friends were able to attend, hopefully they can come next week. We had a super good Sunday school class, had some good chat about Isaiah and Nephi with Come Follow Me. Sister Gill had some really good insights, it was great to be able to hear the discussion. After that we gave a Priesthood blessing to a member; they’re going to have a surgery on their finger and wanted to have a blessing to help. We then came home and began our exchange with Elder Jones and Bracket. I’m staying in Richmond with Elder Jones and Elder Evans is going with Elder Bracket. We had some good studies together, and did some Facebook work. The senior missionaries gave us a text and wanted to see if we could join them for dinner. We headed over to their place, and they made some really good homemade pizza and cookies. It was a great way to end our fasts! We had a quick lesson with them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Elder Jones did an awesome job teaching it! He’s only been out for 3 weeks, but he’s been working with Elder Bracket on teaching it really simply. We were planning on doing some finding outside afterwards, but it was pouring rain outside and we saw some lightning so we ended up just doing some more Facebook work. But it’s all good, overall it was a really good day.

Spiritual Thought

“Many of the things you can count, do not count. Many of the things you cannot count, really do count.”

“Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. … Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’” (Mere Christianity, New York: Collier Books, 1960, p. 167.)