Faith, Hope, and Charity

So for the past while I've been studying the correlation between these three attributes and how they fit into the gospel. This last week was a culmination of all that study.

It all revolves around two experiences I had this last saturday and sunday.

The first is with Tom. (which I did not fear for my life eating at his house again. it was actually really good) But, one of the people who lives with Tom who I'll refer to as the way that Tom calls him: CURTISSA! So Curtissa was talking about all the bad things that have been happening in the world and Tom basically said "it ok Jesus come" And "Jesus come" When Tom was saying that I couldn't help but smile at the Faith and Hope that he has in the gospel. I hadn't really heard a testimony like that from him before as well because he always talks about "People want good life. but they no worka they no studya" It was a good experience.

The second is with a lady at church. She was so good to us because she was taking somebody that we took to church that day under her wing. It was so good to see. But, she is someone who I've noticed doesn't "know" too much about the gospel. She thought that Adam and Eve ate a poison apple :D It was all good :) But, she has so much faith in this gospel and something she said that day that I saw in a whole new light is when she was talking about how she didn't know that there was a "mormon" church in town until she found the Elders one day. What she said about it was great she said "when I found this church it put back into my life a purpose that had been missing for years"

Now both of these people show so much Faith and Hope but they also show so much Charity as well. Tom feeds the missionaries whenever they are "hungry" This other lady gives of herself so much as well. This correlation between Faith, Hope and Charity is real. I have witnessed it myself in not only these two who some would say don't have much going for them but in so many people out here. It was truly a remarkable experience.

I feel like the last time I emailed and this time I emailed are completely different :) It's a good thing I think I'm going to survive my mission :) Potatoes gonna potate. The church is true.

*from my email*

Mom:  Just FYI. I just looked at the temperatures in different places. We are at 32. You are at 19. St George is 52 and Mesa is 59. I'm glad you have a warm coat and things to keep you warm.

Calvin:  Honestly we had an above average week this week for missionary work but nothing crazy happened. So i'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to make it through the transfer. It's so weird seeing the temperature in Fahrenheit I'm so used to it being Celsius now. It's been fairly warm comparatively these last few days and we should be getting into the positives sometime soon. It's good :)

*from dad's email*

I too love reading about the missionary stuff in the Book of Mormon. I always liken the scriptures to myself in interesting ways. With those stories (Ammon's missionary experiences) I notice how they teach the same lessons as us.

WORTH READING

So. This week has been one heck of a ride. I'll list out the things that have transpired within this 7 day time limit and then write the individual stories below.

First thing: (not as bad but made me sad) We closed up the Melville house this week

Second: We watched somebody go through a seizure

Third: We traversed town in -40 degree windchill (whoops)

Fourth: We survived something I'm sure was going to give us food poisoning

Fifth: We rekt a coyote with our car and in turn got our car rekt

So yeah if the rest of my transfer goes like this I might get Emergency Transferred to the Spirit World.

First of all I was very sad about closing the Melville house. It was what I called home for so long and now it's empty and barren. But, one fun thing we got to do was drag one of the chairs that we were taking to the dump behind our car. If I have time I'll send pics. It really did happen.

Second, the seizure happened to one of my friends I've made out here on the mission. I won't say names and stuff but it was freaky. I was so glad that his mom had told me that he has seizures sometimes but Elder Cox didn't know. So he was going to shake our hands and he started jumping around and said "getting a little twitchy" and just like that he was down. I almost caught him on the way down but he hit his head pretty hard. Elder Cox was stunned for a bit while I was rolling him on his side but soon ran in to get his mom. She rushed out and checked him out. We weren't going to call 911 until he got out of it for a bit then went back in. So I called 911. Looking back on it I was honestly surprised how calm I was during the whole thing. I blame it on my training and preparation from scouting and NYLT. So yeah we went with them to the hospital and gave him a blessing. It was a day.

Third, I have made an observation that when you get to a certain temp. It doesn't feel like cold anymore it just feels like pain. It's not fun I would not recommend it to anybody.

Fourth, Tom a Taiwan native had us over for dinner. He loves feeding the missionaries and loves feeding them a LOT of food. But, when chicken goes from the freezer, to under the bathroom sink to thaw it, to putting it in a pot of boiling water, to our plates in less than 45 minutes I was scared. I did indeed eat it and survive. He also put corned beef out and I ate that as well.

Fifth, and this happened last night, we were coming home from the H's and we had just got done joking about pulling us out of a ditch when not five minutes later we hit a coyote. The dumb beast decided to run along the road and not into the ditch and we cared more about our lives than it's life. So we hit it going at a decent speed and launched it about 50 yards into the ditch. I wasn't the one driving so I was just freaking out. But when we were going back to check it out we saw pieces of stuff on the road and they were red. So we were like "We'VE JuST BlowN this COyoTE to BITS!" it wasn't until we got closer to the incident that we saw that they were pieces of our red car. So yeah I'll send some pics of that as well if I have time.

Lots of fun. I really hope that I survive this transfer but if not I love you all or as the natives say it love youz.

TRANSFERRRRSS

Welp this week has been out of the ordinary just like any week that has transfers in it. First of all Elder Cox my new companion is from St. George. He's been out for 18 months and this morning that's all that we talked about. It feels like I'm never going home. I should give a bit of a back story. For some reason in this mission it's a thing for the older missionaries to always say to the younger missionaries that they're never going home. It really does feel that way when you're as new into the mission as I am. Even though at the end of this transfer I'll be 1/4 of the way done with my mission.

So for the story of transfers. The first thing that happened was I finally got into the tie trading business. I finally acquired enough ties from grabbing them from refuse piles that people were willing to trade with me. So I got some pretty decent ties at an even better price. It was a lot of fun and I've never seen so many ties in one place. 

Also in Regina during transfers I got to drive quite a bit. It was a lot of fun and it reminded me of the days driving everyone to and from school. I only went up onto the curb twice. Nobody died. 

Also during the day that I was stuck in Regina waiting for Elder Cox I got to billet with Elder Randall and Elwood. For those of you familiar with Smithfield you should know some Elwoods. It was a lot of fun to be able to talk about home and stuff with him. Also he was trained in Yorkton just like me so that was even better and a bit interesting seeing as we're from the same place. Also Elder Randall is a blast so I was glad to be with him. 

Also for awkward moment of the week. Elder Cox and I were in Melville and we were driving around with a super less active because he was showing us where is adopted brother now lives. When we got to the house the guy who answered the door wasn't who we were looking for but he was quite the beauty. He looked like he had just woke up but he was wearing a unicorn onesy. I just went with the flow and afterwards our friend told us that the Unicorn onesy was one of those beauty buys from value village. It was great :)

Love you all and have a great week

Lockpicking LVL 2

 

This one has 300 presents there.

 

 Presents!

 The BBB

The Pres's Vehicle

The District

I'll be talking more about how I got to level 2 in one of my skill sets but for now I'll talk about transfers. So..... drumroll.... I'm staying in Yorkton and Elder Spell is moving to the O-Zone (Ontario Zone). I'll be receiving Elder Cox here which funnily enough he's related to me through the Elder Wiltse line. There will be Missionaries getting put up in Kamsack/Cote so it's back to what Elder Spell and I started with. I'm not going to be the district leader in Yorkton though. They decided to move that to Elder Grant (who's been in this district for ages) and Elder Ringger who was a zone leader up in Kamsack. Major upsets for this district yet again. But, they'll be a lot better changes than what we've had before. I'm pretty yoked to be staying in Yoketown because I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to say goodbye to all the people in our branch.

So to go to the subject line of this email. I'm pretty proud of myself actually. I should probably be more humble but hey it's a great achievement for me. So to preface this I had lost the keys again. This time we still haven't found them... But, there was a package in the mail WOO! :) it contained three ties, two of which were from past missionaries. So now the senders of the package know who they are and who to blame for this conduct of mine ;) But anyways there was a package in my mailbox and I really wanted it but we still hadn't found the keys. So by divine help we found a bobby pin in the church. After we found that and got back to the apartments I was just waiting to go and see if I could get in. So when the coast was clear I had Elder Spell watch out for me and I went and tried my luck at getting to my package. After around 10 tries, I FINALLy GOT it!! I was so happy with myself and declared that I had reached level 2 on lockpicking. :D

Another great cultural thing that happened this week is I had my first Smudge. We were up at this families house out in Cote last night for a turkey dinner. Before we had our dinner Joe the head of the house asked us if we wanted to smudge. Smudge: n a prayer of sorts involving bringing sweet grass smoke over ones head to purify the energies of the body. So that is how I smudged for the first time. It was quite the experience there and the bannock was soooo good. I'm not sure if I've told you about Bannock before but it's a traditional bread made by the natives out here. It is so good and the Bannock we had last night was deep fried which makes it even better. I was going to learn how to make it but now that Elders are going to kamsack I don't think I'll have the chance.

This story is for my mom. This week while I was on exchanges with Elder Grant in Yorkton we met a man named Probh we were looking for an Iqubal but we met Probh. He was originally from India and was Shii or however you spell it. He had a turban on that's all I got for you. But we were able to hear about some of his traditions and talk about a lot of fun stuff like that. He told us also that he was getting married in a month in an arranged marriage back in India which was interesting. It was even more fun to joke about how is women problems are just starting :D

Overall this has been a most excellent last week of the transfer. It'll be quite interesting this week and I should have some more stories next time. Love you all and Happy New YEars