We are into the final transfer. 6 more weeks to work myself
silly. Not that this is a bad thing of course, I just want to finish strong!
Monday night we taught Melanie, once again with Jared.
She feels like God seems to be answering her prayers a lot more clearly, which
she is very excited about. She's still pretty shy about coming to our church
but we're confident she'll make it soon enough!
Tuesday evening: We were walking to an appointment that just
happened to be across the street from the mall downtown. The mall's parking
lot was right across from our view where we heard a nasty crunching noise and
saw a brand new white Jeep SUV flying in reverse through the entrance to
the parking lot, causing another SUV to slam into a barrier as it swerved out
of the way, avoiding what would have been nothing short of a disaster. The Jeep
finally stopped on the other side of the parking lot, backing into another car
taking out one of it's headlights...
Elder Okamoto and I decided to get close to see if everyone
was alright. Turns out there was a family of three in the car. The Mother and
her son got out of the car a bit shaken but no worse for ware. The young
daughter that was driving the car however had her eyes tightly shut and was
sobbing as she buried her face in her hands. A few moments later the mother
talked to the man involved in the accident and they sorted things out together
while we started talking to the 2 kids. By this point the girl driving got
out to get some fresh air, still breathing hard and crying. "It was my
first time driving with my learners!" she exclaimed. "Now I
don't ever want to drive again!" Her brother and us told her
that she didn't need to worry. That all of us make mistakes and now she will
know to be more careful.
We felt terrible for her. We wished there was something we
could do to help further. As I watched this poor girl, I thought to myself
are we not all a bit like this at times? We often do things either by accident
or intentionally that may bring harm to ourselves and others and it makes
us feel really bad. There is however, one person we can rely on to take
away our guilt when we mess up. Then we can walk away and strive
to not make the same mistake. In the end, everybody was alright with
only a bit of damage done to the 3 cars involved.
Well, with that story out of the way how did the
rest of the week go? Well, we taught the O family and cleared up
a couple of big concerns. The first was our stance on homo-sexuality and the
second was about plural marriage! We were able to give them satisfying
answers which they agreed on. This would be the
last time we would teach them before they pack up
their bags for New York. They won't be coming back until January 9th, 11 days
before I return home. When I told then this it seemed to sadden them
quite a bit, which made me feel sad as well. I just can't believe how
close I am to the end of what has been a remarkable 2 years.
To our disappointment, we got contact with Jignesh by
texting him how his Christmas prep was going. Then after he replied that it was
going well we asked him if he had read the Book of Mormon and he didn't
reply... Guess we'll have to try again some other time.
On Saturday I made a stop back in Surrey to see an excellent
stake Christmas Cantana. There were various songs to hear, many of
them outside of the hymn book. At the end we stood up and sung the Hallelujah
Chorus from Handel's Messiah. It was rather good fun. Elder Okamoto and I have
listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's version of that quite a lot so we
pretty much had it memorized. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones
outside of the choir who knew the tune off by heart.
So concludes another week of interesting experiences. You
don't really see what's in the world until you serve a mission. It's always
really cool to know that God often puts you in position to help
comfort people who need it, even if they only need a pat on the back
and gentle reassurance. May you all enjoy the Christmas break as we continue
another week of growth in the mission field.
Elder Maclean Samis
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