My life is pure comedy!

Hey family!

Good emails this week :) haha hopefully I can respond to everything! First of all, loved the pictures, thank you for those. It's literally the highlight of my week when i get photos from people.  Btw.....There's a new James Bond movie??? I only JUST found out about the new spider man movie! I'm officially an old, out of the loop missionary. Good thing Megan Hanlon sends me updates on Snoop Lion to keep me hip :)  It actually hasn't been too bad this week, and this weekend has been amazing except it's raining again today- if we get rain for 3 weeks straight we ought to get a few weeks of sun to make up for it! Ah well.

I realized I have not communicated anything about my companion at all to you- she is the funniest thing in the world. Literally, my life is pure comedy! All the missionaries around us look for excuses to call so they can talk to here, and I do not blame them one bit. Best moment with her this week was probably when she accidentally dyed her hair blue. TRUE STORY. I forgot my camera cable but I'll send you pictures next week. We were having personal study and all the sudden she screamed. I looked up and she was staring at her straightener in HORROR. She's been straightening her hair and set it down too close to one of her crayons she was marking her scriptures with and it melted onto the iron. We spent the next 15 minutes scrubbing the streaks out because we had a zone meeting that morning, and even though she looked like a little rock star and in any other circumstances I would have made her leave it for the day, we figured it may not be totally kosher as a missionary. Add that crayer to a list of things she's destroyed the last 2 months, like our pasta strainer that she melted on the stove LOL.

This upcoming week we're having a leadership training for all the zone leaders, district leaders, and trainers, which is exciting for a few reasons. First of all, I'm trying not to see it as a giant reunion but there's like 10 missionaries I'm so excited to see, including Sister Williams and her new baby! Second of all, I've been asked to do part of the instruction so me and another sister, Sister Tuia, are presenting part of the training. (No, I don't know her at all, we've been putting it together over the phone lol) So that's not intimidating at all.....It's only all of the leadership, so the best missionaries in the mission. Cool! Haha I am excited though.

This last week we started teaching 2 new people, 19 year old girls who are roommates. They have pretty much zero exposure to God and religion of any kind, so we're starting from square one, which is always a pretty special experience to see someone go from no faith at all to building a relationship with their Heavenly Father. I'm super excited.  This next week we're meeting with Kathleen and one of her friends. This is going to be the FOURTH person she's introduced us to to teach. She's 17. What the heck?? I swear, Canadian youth are the most inspiring thing!

Yesterday the son of a member back in Bowmanville was baptized. I never taught him officially, but Sister Williams and I were working pretty hard to soften him up while I was there. He was determined to NEVER join the church because he hates organized religion, so I'm pretty much dying of happiness! Sister Williams would be the person who got him too, one time we were talking to him about how many missionaries have tried to start teaching him and she looked him dead in the eye and said "Josh, I would never teach you. You don't want to know yet so it would be a waste of my time. When you're finally willing to stop talking and start listening I'll teach you." HA! He looked like she'd stolen his candy and was so insulted we were going to ask him to learn like the last hundred sets of elders had. A month later they started teaching him. That girl's a genius...
Why do I get the best companions ever?

Yesterday was also stake conference. The best and most insane talk ever was given by one of the ward primary presidents hahaha she spoke on how parents should use the primary music to teach their kids, and how singing the songs in context of the principles the songs teach will help them learn the gospel. The talk was seriously brilliant and I took tons of notes about teaching in the context of the gospel-reminded me of Cheryl A. Esplin's talk in April, my favorite talk from that conference- but the woman was a bit nuts. She sang a bunch of songs and acted things out. Afterwards the member who drove us to conference told us she's wanted to be an actress but couldn't afford the training so she'd become a teacher instead and had used her acting abilities there hahaha! Conference was great though, highlight was the fact that it was on Remembrance day (Canadian Vet's day, and it's a much bigger deal here) so we had a minute of silence and then sang all 4 verses of Oh Canada. That song has officially become soul stirring, I can't wait to glue it in the back of my hymn books like they do here.
 
Other than that, life is good. Had a bit of a stomach virus but I think that's going away now. This is probably way too long of a letter, but thanks for enduring it anyways.

Love yall bunches!!