August 18, 2013

August 18, 2013

Salut everyone!

We had a good week this week. on Wednsday we went on exchanges with the zone leaders and I went to work in Longuiel for a day. We have spent quite a bit of time at the James Family's home this week. Their son Scott just reactivated himself after several years and moved back in with them (he was in Ontario). He had a really good relationship with the Elders there and his parents desperately want that with us. He is planning on going on a mission in a year, so we are working with him to help him prepare. We've eaten at their house 4 times now as a result, and it has been awesome to get to know Scott and see how the Gospel has re-kindled his faith and desire to follow Christ.

Wow a family reunion! i didn't even remember that that was happening. I hope that you guys are having a good time. Yeah I would probably whine about camping, but inside I would still be very happy about spending time with my extended family. 

I'm still wondering if Eric is serving English or Spanish? You might have already answered that, but I can't remember. it's so crazy that everyone in my peer group is leaving on missions. Could you guys find Eric's (or Elder Larson's) e-mail for me? I want to be able to communicate with him. 

This week we lost Junior, who was progressing very well. He moved back to Montreal suddenly and we have no idea where he is so we can't refer him to other missionaries. All we can do is pray that he finds the Church again. Gabrielle, who just married Jeremy Bergeron (a member) is extremely close to baptism. She is completely ready, but is afraid that she isn't ready yet. We visited her on Thursday and brought along Aubert, a 17 year-old recent convert who is the only member in his family; he is awesome. We talked about testimonies and the need to grow our faith through action. We left her with Alma 32 and a commitment to pray individually and with her husband to help strengthen her assurance that this is the right path. On the way home afterwards (it was nine o'clock) Aubert suddenly told us to turn around. He felt that we needed to commit her to baptism. We stopped and prayed, and we decided to do it. We turned around, went back into the building, knocked on their door, and commited Gabrielle to be baptized in three weeks. The spirit was extremely powerful. She said, we think for the first time, that she wants to be baptized. She is still pondering the date, but we have every confidence in her. A love of the Gospel and a testimony by the spirit shines in her eyes.

We also started teaching Mike this week. He is a middle aged firefighter turned administrator in the fire-department (due to cancer in his lymph nodes. His left lung was damaged by the radiation therapy) who already intends to get baptized. He is divorced from his first wife and is dating a member down in South Carolina. He intends to marry her, and wants to be a part of the same church as her. Now all he needs is a testimony that it is true. He is a self-described workaholic and his schedule is insane. He speaks English and French perfectly, and fed us Tim Horton's doughnuts (seriously there are about ten Tim Horton's in Sherbrooke alone. Apparently their goal in Canada is one Tim Horton's for every 500 residents. Everyone here likes Tim Horton's). He has a hard time coming to Church here in Sherbrooke because he only gets to see his kids on weekends, and they aren't terribly interested in the Church (they are older teen-agers and he doesn't want to force them to do anything). Also he is in South Carolina a lot.

That is just some of the stuff that has been going on this week. I hope you guys are doing well. I know this gospel is true. There is no where that I would rather be right now than on my mission. I love you guys!

Also is Dylan's e-mail d.young@myldsmail.net? I'm not sure if I have the right one.

August 12, 2013

Hey guys, how is it going? 

In terms of outward results this week began much worse than last week. Alex, the guy who we knocked and he agreed to a baptism date, dropped us suddenly. He didn't give an explanation or anything. He just yelled through the door that he wasn't interested anymore and to go away. It was devestating. The next morning I was so sad and upset that I vomited my lunch all over the bathroom. 

The week got better after that. We didn't have so many lessons, but we finally managed to contact in person the Belanger familly (our refferal from the ward mission leader) and they are Born-Agains, but their greatest passion is missionary work. They love what we are doing and want to hear our message. The father works at a Domino's Pizza because he has never had time to develop a career due to the decades of missionary work he has done in Mexico and Taiwan. They have eight kids, and the kind of faith in Christ that I hope to obtain in my life. All they need is the restored truths of the gospel in their lives. Also Brother Belanger (as we hope he may come to be known as) seemed to perk up and become especially interested when he heard that there is a prophet on the earth again. Our first lesson with them is on Wednsday. Almost all our lessons this week are on Wednsday. We are doing splits with the Zone Leaders and I am headed to Longiel on Wednsday. Oh well, at least the first lesson will have the benefit of two experienced missionaries. 

We also had a second lesson with a young man named Junior. He comes from the Dominican Republic, and is learning French. He's way ahead of me. He likes religion and has a lot of questions about things that are answered by the Plan of Salvation. We asked what he thought of getting a Mormon baptism, and he said that he thought it would be cool. He has talked with lots of missionaries from other churches, but we are the only ones he says that he has really liked. He offered us juice and apples. His next lesson is also Wednsday.

We have a lesson with Gabrielle (the one who married a member) on Thursday. It sounds like she is really close to baptism. We hope that we can help her make it all the way there. We havn't really met her yet, so i can't say too much right now.

Other than that we have just knocked mostly. We do go to ward council, but they haven't had it for two weeks now. We have had some talks with the Bishop, but our goal is to really work on getting the members involved more. Knocking is a very slow way to find investigators.

French comes. it improves each week. The Quebec accent is difficult to understand, but I am beginning to learn the differences in pronunciation. The people here in Quebec are extremely kind, unless you mention religion, then they get uncomfortable and try to make you go away. We talked to a man sitting on his porch who was really nice up until he found out we were missionaries. Then he got really agitated and said that he had to leave to work because he was already late for work. We walked by his house the other way half an hour later and he was still sitting on his porch. We stopped and joked with him about it for a minute. He was really embarassed, but still didn't want to talk to us.

I hope everyting is going well at home. This week Elder Murphy's sister and her husband were in Montreal and got permission from President Patrick to come buy us lunch. The Lunch was nice, but it took several days for Elder Murphy to re-focus on Missionary work.

I'm glad you guys got your own set of missionaries. Sisters are the best. No one likes slamming doors in their faces. The "Sister Effect' is very real. At the MTC when we would go and teach volunteers member-lessons they were always nicer to the sisters.

I hope that all is well back home. I hope that Grandma and Grandpa's French friends enjoy their stay in Washington. It's awesome that Ronnie is going to be 2nd class before he even turns Twelve!! i can't write more because I have to write the weekly letter to the mission President now. Have a good week everyone!

August 5, 2013

Hey guys!

Thanks to those who e-mailed me this week. I enjoy hearing from everyone. This second week in the field has been a pretty incredible week. Yes I am still a greenie, though in French someone is blue rather than green (they still say green here in Quebec because no one is from France, and so they use a lot of English expressions). We still did quite a bit of tracting this week, but we went from zero investigators to about nine. Some of them we knocked into and some of them we found in the lists of previous investigators, and two were left by the previous companionship. The crowning event of the week was when Virginie came to church, liked it, and found out that someone she already knew was a member. She had been talking with the elders for about a week before the transfer. She has some unusual beliefs. She is around 25 and is something of a new-age hippie. She is vegetarian, pacifist, doesn't believe in marriage, calls God "the Great Spirit," and doesn't understand Christ and won't pray in his name because she thinks he was killed by God (she doesn't really know the story very well). Despite these difficulties, she really likes the Book of Mormon, and enjoys reading it. Also the Gospel Principles lesson yesterday was on the Word of Wisdom and she really liked it. She has been addicted to drugs and alcohol but is quitting, and has been over ninety days know without either. She wants to try and quit coffee and tea, and loved the stuff about eating healthy and exercising. We hope that these two points can be a sufficient start to build a faith and understanding of the gospel.

We have had a few miracles so far. The first is when we went to visit a less active who wasn't there. We decided it would be a good time to call the referral we received from the ward mission leader. We called up this family of 10, but the husband wasn't home. We talked to the wife and agreed to call again today when she knew his work schedule (he works a lot apparently). The important part of the phone call is that the woman talked at us for 45 minutes about how much she loves missionary work (they're evangelists). After the phone-call finally ended, it was 8:40, the time when we usually drive home for the night (yes we have a car. Most areas do; biking is very rare here because it is either pouring rain or snowing for 9 months out of the 12, and it still rains quite a bit during those other three months), but Elder Murphy said that we should try to contact at least one person so that the evening wasn't completely wasted. I agreed. We went into the apartment building that our inactive lives in and pushed the buzzer for the room just after her's (we usually start at the top of buildings and she lives on the bottom) and the person let us in. His name is Alex. He seemed interested in our message, and I think he really felt something. He listened and when we asked him to commit to baptism on the 14 of September, he said yes. We set up a time to visit him again, and are really excited about him.

The other miracles are much smaller. We knocked into a woman who has been inactive for twenty years. Her records weren't even in Quebec, they're probably still in her home town in Colombia. We also met many Hindu and Buddhist people in the less affluent areas. The native Quebecois are the people who slam the door on us, but these non-christian immigrants are incredibly kind. They always talk with us, and often invite us in and offer us drinks before they even know who we are. We haven't had too much success teaching them the gospel, but they really are wonderful people.

We are teaching two really cool families of immigrants from central Africa. Pelegea and her daughter have awesome testimonies of Christ, and can really feel the Spirit in  the message of the Restored Gospel. Dorcas and her family of young children are looking for more peace and guidance in their lives. We are trying to get both to come to Church, and Dorcas seems interested in coming, but we are still working with Pelegea because her current church's meeting conflicts almost exactly with ours.

The other investigator that we have that is really moving forward is Gabrielle, who has been investigating and progressing for a while, comes to church every Sunday, and just married an active member of the ward on Saturday. She will probably get baptized soon.

Sorry I forgot my camera again today. You guys will have to wait for next week to see them. It's awesome that Grandma and Grandpa came back. Is the French guy that Jordan is supposed to marry coming soon? I joke of course; I still think Jordan will go on a mission. Did T and Paige get my letters? I'm sorry I haven't sent a handwritten letter yet, I'm just so busy. Also I need to buy Canadian stamps.

The first two weeks have been tough. It's been a challenge adjusting to the lifestyle, but each day improves as I see the blessings that this calling brings into the lives of others. Also each day goes a tiny bit faster than the one before. I'm beginning to fear that by the time I reach the last quarter of my mission I will go to bed and wake up to find that a transfer has passed. Already this past seven days felt half as long as the first 4.

I have a testimony of this gospel. I can see the Spirit testifying of its truth in the eyes of even those who reject just the sight of us. I am just beginning my mission, but I have already seen that no matter how firmly someone tries to desensitize himself, he cannot escape the Light of Christ; no matter how firmly he denounces the gospel, in his heart he is not so sure of his words. We met a young man named Subash, who was converted to Christianity as he was immigrating from Nepal. His belief in the Bible is such that he flatly refuses to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet simply because he is not mentioned in the Bible. We shared scriptures and tried to better explain how the Bible was assembled. We could see on his face as he struggled with what he was feeling. In the end he agreed to read the Book of Mormon, but wouldn't agree to meet with us again. We hope he can find the truth of the book.

I'm just about out of time now. I am doing great here in Quebec. I hope that you guys are doing good. I love you and I'll write to you again next week. Also when I get some stamps I will write a letter to Ronnie.

Love you all,

Elder Hardy

July 29, 2013

Hello!

So first off, I am in a mid-sized town named Sherbrook. It is south of Montreal and pretty close to the U.S border. Despite this everyone mostly speaks French. All the meetings are conducted in French at church, and all signs, stores, and non-personal interactions are in french. The town has two universities so there are tons of students here. It also has lots of old people. There aren't a lot of normal families here.

They did find my bag. Apparently it happens a lot, so the A.Ps knew exactly what to do. It's weird that delta lost my bags. They are usually pretty reliable. 

As for mail, send it to the mission office or home. Be warned however, we only get to pick up our mail when we gather in Montreal for transfers. It will be six weeks before I can pick-up the stuff you send me :(. 

My trainer is Elder Murphy. I forgot my camera today, else I would send pictures. He is from California and he has been here for a little over a year. He's awesome. My spoken and written french is coming along okay, but the darn accent in Quebec is so difficult that I almost never know what is going on.I have faith  that it will come. I've only been here like five days. 

I am not sure how we are going to eat. Sherbrooke has two teams and we live in one apartment. Three of the four missionaries are knew to the area, and the previous Elders left the apartment looking like a disaster zone. There was junk everywhere, and there was just barely enough food for us to stay alive. We're going to go shopping after this, so I will be able to tell you more. The members here are wonderful. There is one ward for Sherbrooke and the surrounding towns, and it isn't huge, but the members are great. We have two dinner appointments for this week, one tonight at Sister Obando's and one later with another family that I have forgotten the name of. Elder Murphy says that two in a week is pretty good for this mission.

It's been hard this first week because the previous Elders didn't keep good records. The one person they seem to have been close to baptizing got married to a member on Saturday, so will be on her honeymoon for a week. The result has been tons of door to door work. We've found that the well established people living in houses here almost never even let you get past the word "missionaries" before slamming the door. It's the people living in the shabbier apartments that will talk with us. These people are mostly immigrants from South America (Especially Colombia) Africa (Central Africa mostly) and Middle Asia (Nepal especially). They are very humble and friendly. Just yesterday we were trying to get someone to buzz us into a large apartment building and we were let in by this wonderful little Nepali family. They spoke better English than french, so I was able to play a bigger role in the discussion. They let us right in, sat us down, the wife gave us glasses of pineapple juice, and we talked with the husband for a while (the wife didn't speak much french and no English). We didn't end up getting anywhere in terms of investigating the church because the family worships Buddha (who actually never claimed any divinity but I refrained from bringing it up) and believes that all religions are correct. We had a really nice discussion, but they didn't really understand the need to study a religion other than their own. 

We also found in our area book a nice family from Rwanda that had been progressing, but had inexplicably lost contact with the missionaries. We phoned them up and they were still interested. We set an appointment and visited them yesterday. The Husband wasn't home so we couldn't come in, but we talked with Susan, the wife, for a while (she speaks french, the husband only speaks whatever Rwandan's speak). She found Christianity when she was a young wife in Rwanda, and has always been searching, trying to find which is the best way to follow Christ. I was able to talk a little about the priesthood and bear my testimony. She seemed intrigued by the idea of testimonies. We have high hopes for her and her family. 

We also visited Yves, a young man from here in Quebec who was baptized a few years ago, but never comes to church. He loves the book of Mormon and the gospel, but doesn't entirely understand it. He suffers from severe ADHD, and I'm not sure how much he is capable of. His life has been very hard. The list of people close to him that have died in the last few years is very long, including his grandpa (who was his father figure), a girlfriend who comitted suicide, his sister's boyfriend died in a car crash (which caused his sister to get into drugs), and a week ago his four year old son (he's unmarried and 22) died in a car crash when his foster parents took him on a trip to Montreal. He claims that the gospel is the only thing keeping him going. He doesn't understand the word of wisdom (he smokes and drinks, but knows not to drink coffee), and doesn't understand the importance of ordinances and Church attendance. He is a really nice guy, but is pretty much impossible to teach. He isn't capable of listening for more than a few seconds, and can't stay on one subject for more that a few seconds before straying into stories about being in street-gangs like the Hell's Angels and the Sharks. These are obviously figments of his imagination (there really aren't any gangs in Sherbrooke) but his roommate and roommate's girlfriend confirmed that all the stories about dead people were true. We might keep visiting and trying to help him, but his ADHD is a huge barrier. 

At church we met a guy named John. He was baptized a few weeks ago. He speaks absolutely no french, but feels the spirit powerfully at church. This Saturday he went to the temple to do baptisms. He was really nervous to go, but he said the moment he touched the door of the building all of his fear vanished. He gave a powerful testimony of the temple, and said that he wants to go back as much as possible, if even just to touch the house of the Lord. The bishop speaks very good English, and many of the members have some English. We also met three teenage siblings, one boy about 13 and two girls around 14 or 15. They were visiting Sherbrooke, but whomever they were with wasn't a member and wouldn't go to church. So they found the building, found out when the service was, and came by themselves. 

That's just about all the stories I have so far, except the guy who told us that Christ was the anti-christ, but my time is running short. I'm glad that the play went well. Did you hear that Ralph Smith is going to the Bronx?! I'm out of time now. Love you guys. This Church is true. Bye!