Mission Office/Montreal- Week 1

This week was really great! I throughly enjoy being back in Montreal, but I also miss Ottawa and everyone I met there. I've met lots of new, nice, and interesting people this week that I am excited to get to work with. I have enjoyed working in the mission office so far. Being in my new role as housing coordinator for the mission has been a fun challenge. Things are rather slow with so much closed with the virus and so many missionaries gone and thus vacant apartments. However, things will likely get crazy in the office when everything opens back up and we get a large new wave of missionaries. I work in the office from 10 to 6ish every weekday, so it is definitely pretty different from what I was doing before. It is nice to have somewhere to go everyday instead of staying in for the whole day. I got some cool pens from being in the office! Elder Boyle is really into collecting pens, so he gave us some and I'm now convinced that having good handwriting is solely dependent on the quality of the pen. There is a company the sends the office sample pens in the mail each month so I am hoping to get some of those when they come. 

We had zone conference this week combined Ottawa , Montreal, and Mount Royal zone conference. They launched a new Facebook initiative were the missionaries make posts and then the church will pick some to make into ads that the church will pay Facebook to promote online. It is pretty exciting and the talk is that it'll do away with the whole door to door or out on the street method altogether. Which is nice, who wants to deal with people who aren't interested anyway? I haven't done anything with it yet, but I have some ideas for posts I want to make. Elder Tung and Elder Wu (who are now companions!) were given a special assignment as the Facebook coordinators for the mission.  I saw them the day of transfers which was really nice to see two of my past companions. 

Zone conference also included the departing testimonies of the Stewarts who were the housing coordinators before us and the Boyles who were over finance and administration. It was pretty cool to hear their powerful witnesses of Jesus Christ and his role as our Savior and Redeemer. Elder Hsu also gave his departing testimony and it was the most emotional I had ever seen him.

The bishop in the Montreal Ward tasked us with calling everyone on a 29 page ministering list and said it was urgent. So, that has been fun... I have found it to be a nice way to meet some people in the ward and set up a time to like share a message, but it's also just a really long list. 

Part of being in the office now over housing, we figured out and organized apartment inspections this week. We are just going to have missionaries inspect each others apartments over video call. It was kinda the only option with the quarantine. It is interesting, but I think you know that I dislike a lot of the tasks associated with being in the office like talking on the phone, writing stuff, etc. Probably the worst is talking on the phone. 

Working in the office has meant we do not have time to study as much. We read the Book of Mormon in the morning and then that's usually it for the day. I have also been memorizing scriptures on the Doctrinal Mastery App and it has been pretty good. I think you would be impressed. 

Hope everyone who reads this is doing well with the virus and all, I am grateful the work of the Lord is still going forward despite the challenges. 

I also have some pictures of when I left Elder Hsu and Ottawa.