Riverside/ Dows Lake- Week 24

This week was for sure exciting. There was conference and also just many changes for missionaries here. We have kept teaching people just online and teaching English to a recent convert. For conference, we actually just stayed in our apartment and I think the sisters used the church the whole time, idk. It is not clear whether we have unlimited data or not. Hopefully, it's all fine.

The mission likely has more money because no one is driving (although gas is very cheap right now) and many missionaries have left. We went from 8 zones to 5 zones and we are not getting new missionaries until everything is cleared up. 

One thing that happened this week was that a Chinese investigator over in Halifax wanted to talk to my companion, Elder Hsu. My past companion, Elder Wai was over in Halifax. He goes home this transfer and there is going to no longer be a Mandarin missionary in Halifax, so they had to figure something out. So, Elder Wai over in Halifax called us and also Elder Wu in Montreal to figure something out about who should teach this investigator. Anyways, my point is that call was really fun because it was almost all my companions on the same call. And, just thinking how all of us are going to be at BYU later and that's going to be so fun. 

We got snacks for conference and had to wait in a line outside of Walmart. It was cold. 

We have kept indexing and I am well over 1000 now. The mission leadership wants us to do our own family history though but despite all the training that have given, it still doesn't seem very clear to me of what is useful. They just point out fun features like the take a picture of your face thing. It looks like our tree doesn't have too many holes but I want to contribute stuff if I can. 

So, the big news is that I am getting transferred. I am going back to Montreal to work in the office over Housing and Apartments for at least six months. My pday will become Saturday. I am really excited and happy about it!!! I go tomorrow and I actually get to drive a car there that belongs to an area that is no longer going to have missionaries for the time being so no bus and no worrying about luggage and packing to only two bags and all that. I could bring a couch if I wanted. 

I actually watched both of the other side of heaven movies I think last week. Apparently, we are allowed, but I do not think I will keep watching movies after tomorrow. But yeah, we have watched Cokesville Miracle, Ephraim's Rescue, Return with Honor, Best 2 Years, Prophets and Presidents, The RM, the Fighting Preacher, Other Side of Heaven 1 and 2 and God's Army. They are all so good, and really motivational for missionary work. I have been touched as I watched these movies where the characters have so much faith even if they are not true or if the show of their faith is exaggerated because it's a movie. Anyway, for sure got me motivated to keep trying to find people on Facebook, even though it seems unlikely anything will come from it. One person we had scheduled for a video call this week completely did not pick up and has not written back in two days. He had seemed really promising, he had said he would read Saints and wanted to hear about Joseph Smith.  He is just into history, but it was sad to have him just ignore us. 

Anyways, really cool is that the guy from Peru sent us a text message out of nowhere to tell us that he found the church building in Huaval Peru and that he intends to go there when he can. He is someone I talked to on the street back with Elder Wu and then taught with Elder Wai. We would all go running together.

Here is a photo from our Zone Conference on Zoom.