Missionary Letter #19

Unfortunately there are no castles in Canada, only apartment complexes and Canadian mobs shoveling driveways. Pitchforks and torches included. I tease them but they only get that mad when Tim Hortons closes on Christmas. From what I understand people go crazy up when they don't get their coffee and doughnuts and get themselves up into a coffeefrenzy, supposedly there are a number of maimings every year by these normally peaceful people. #killedbycrazedCanadians
But what do I know, I'm just an American.

This week was awesome, if not a tad strange , they changed standards on us so we're going to be focusing almost entirely on investigators. Apparently we've been working so hard on retention that we haven't been working on finding or baptizing. Which needs to change. Me and Elder Cruz are getting ourselves all psyched up about it. It begins today so I'll let all y'all know how it goes next week.

Since Christmas is in full bloom I'll share my thoughts on the Canadian winter...

"No."

Just kidding, it's actually very pretty. It's like a 'polar bear six feet away from you' kind of pretty. In the way that if you don't tread carefully you could just disappear.

We saw one guy this week walking on a snow bank, we thought he was doing good until he sank into it like quicksand. He pulled himself out quick but it was crazy to see how deep the snow could get in some places.

If you need a visual imagine the scene from Princess Bride where Buttercup falls into the quicksand. Now cover that with snow and instead of ROUS put fisher's there instead.

(FIsher's are vicious, I didn't know what they were until I got to Canada but they'll tear your face off.)


So switching to a more spiritual gear, I want you (yes you) to take out your scriptures and open up to Alma 38. But before you do answer me this... Do you know who the man Shiblon is??  If you do you've passed the first test. If not then allow me to explain.
So the prophet Alma has 3 sons. One is named Helaman, who is a super good guy that becomes the next prophet. The other is Corianton... Who's not quite as good but we get a lot of good scriptures because of him so we can't complain. And Shiblon, the middle child. He is the great 'average do-good' guy. He served his mission and was persecuted severely, but you can tell that Alma has a lot of love because he stuck it out to the end.
There's a great lesson here. Shiblon was a great man and even though we don't know much about him we can see a few things.
He loved the Lord.
He loved his fellow man
and, He got the work done.

This week I'm going to try and study Alma 38 and surrounding chapters because I love them so much. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and the more I read it the more I've come to love it.

Elder Wolford