Riverside/ Dows Lake- Week 21

We did have to get a 2 week supply of food in case we get quarantined. Other than that, we are going on as normal. Zone conference and interviews were postponed this week. There are definitely less people on the buses. The bus drivers don't want to get infected, so they made the buses free so that no one goes to the front to pay. Everyone now enters at the back and stays there.

There was a recent broadcast about doing missionary work in a normal and natural way and so I have been trying to be more natural when I talk to people. Last night, I started just chatting with this guy on the bus and he eventually asked if he could give me his phone number. I thought that was interesting because usually I would be asking for peoples phone numbers. I was very happy because the bus is my least favorite place to be talking to people as a missionary. And then, later that night I saw someone I had given a Bible and taught some of the plan of Salvation to riding on the bus. 

Oh, that's one thing I have never told you. One method that is really successful here is putting up a "Bible ads" on Facebook to give away free Bibles. Elder Hsu and I put an ad up this past week and we got 20 responses! It was pretty insane. The comments were turned on so people started arguing about the Bible or saying stuff about us. One guy wrote, "they are LDS! Get your bibles somewhere else!" Another wrote  "Don't be lazy, go annoy people the traditional and knock doors" we were very tempted to respond "sweet, what is your address?" and I'm sure Dad would've gotten a kick out of that but we just muted the comments instead which is what we ought to have done when we made the post. We accidentally forgot. Anyways, the problem was that we had 20 requests but only had 3 bibles! And one guy was doing a youth Bible camp so he wanted like 10! (We were going to get more Bibles tomorrow with zone orders but those are now moved with the virus) so, it was pretty hard to choose who to give the bibles to out of the many requests. I started messaging the people and asked what there interest was in the bible. One guy said that his interest was that he had a lot of questions and that he had heard that the bible could help him address his questions of the soul. Whether it was inspiration or just the fact this guy had given us some promising information, we decided to give a bible to him. We drive to his apartment to deliver the bible, and this lady speaking loudly in French over the phone invites us in and a few moments later the guy comes out and we give him the Bible and then he explains to us that his cousin is a member of the church and that he had visited his cousin in Salt Lake City. He was very grateful for the bible and after explaining what we do as missionaries he wanted to meet up with us and talk more. We were on the Quebec side at the time tho, so we referred him to the elders there. (He not being Chinese or YSA) It was a way cool miracle. 

Went to help set up a wedding this past week. It was pretty fun. The guy that was getting married is the brother of someone we were teaching. Pretty good cake! 

But yes, the virus has made a lot of changes. It seems like there is a Facebook post from President Low every hour. Some senior missionaries will be going home this week and likely some young missionaries too. It is based on pre-existing health conditions and depression. The possibility of being quarantined literally just became a reality. Like Elder Hsu just read the announcement that knocking doors and going out is not allowed anymore. We can still go out for exercise. We are just supposed to work over technology. Pretty interesting eh? I never anticipated this.