March 3, 2014 - Nanaimo South

Hello again everybody and welcome to another weekly update. It's been quite the adventurous week at the turn of the month. On Tuesday I went on my first ever companion exchange with Elder Rolfson in Duncan. Another fellow Edmontonian, Elder Rolfson is truly an amazing missionary. Though it was hard getting used to the way he did things, I learned a lot from him and we had a blast with each other. We also brought an 18 year old member named Matt to teach some lessons. Like Elder Rolfson, Matt is loud, funny, and energetic. When he saw my last name on the tag he immediately thought of the Nintendo character "Samus." A lot of people think of that character when they hear my last name it seems. :P

Anyway we taught a couple of quality member present lessons (I can't remember their names since they are not in my area) during these visits I found that for once I wanted to do something I never wanted to do before, TEACH LESSONS. I'm finally starting to crack my shell and moving forward to teach more of the lesson! It seems that God is helping me and I'm so grateful that he's helping me do it. :) At the end of the night Elder Rolfson and I traded a few ties and we talked a bit about the day. Elder Rolfson told me that even though I'm on the quiet side, when I say something it is extremely powerful. He also said that I showed a lot of humility. I never really understood what my strengths were before I served a mission but to hear this from a missionary like Elder Rolfson was truly something to remember.

 We visited Shrey and Divyeth on Wednesday and taught them about the restoration. We can't be sure if they are interested in getting baptized but they seemed to understand what makes our religion so important and how following it can bless their lives. We had been unable to see Clara because her family had gotten sick this week.

 On Thursday Elder Groeneveld and I went tracting without finding anyone for a couple days. It was getting late and we stopped the car and I said a prayer to help us find at least 1 person before we went back home. The very first door we knocked on belonged to a young Chilean woman named Danny who had recently started looking into following Christianity. She told us that she was opened to hearing our message and was eager to meet with us again. We gave her a Book of Mormon too! The only downside was that she told us she was moving back to Chile in a couple weeks so we may not be able to teach her very much before then. Still, if this isn't a prayer answered then I'm not sure what is! 

Then came the mission conference on Friday. We took a ferry from the island to Richmond and spent the night with the Korean speaking elders. We woke up sore and early in the morning and went to a chapel in Vancouver where we waited for a very special guest to arrive. It was D Todd Christoferson of the 12 who came! We all got to line up and shake his hand before the meeting started and it was so cool to be in the presence of one of the apostles of the Lord! After his talk we were opened to ask him some questions. One of the sisters in the congregation asked him "What would you tell us after having a rough day?" He simply replied "Welcome to the club." he then explained how those who reject do not reject your message, they reject Christ's. That's something I sort of knew but never really thought hard about before.

We boarded the ferry back to the island the next morning just after blowing some money on expensive ice cream at the docking terminal. We just can't resist spending money on food, especially Elder G. :P

 Yesterday after church we tracted again and found another new investigator named Robert who loves reading the bible and wanted to learn more about our beliefs. He had messed up his foot and was on crutches so we decided to give him a blessing before we left.

 

 That about sums up the week. By the sounds of things my companion and I will start working in the town of Ladysmith for a few days. It should be fun and there's lots to look forward to. Hope everyone's doing well at home. Miss you lots!

 

With love from,

Elder Maclean Samis