Mission Office/Montreal- Week 17

The big news of this week is that I am getting transfered  I am staying in the office but I am getting a new companion and I going to be assigned to the Mount Royal Branch (Mandarin) instead of the English Montreal Ward. My current companion, Elder Brown, is going to stay in the Montreal Ward, but he will no longer be in the office. I am excited to be speaking Mandarin again. My new companion will be Elder Baird. The Mandarin Branch is a wonderful place; there was a baptism two weeks ago and another one today! I am excited to be able to see people I met from a year ago again. 

Next, I know I have mentioned bed bugs before, but I don't think I have fully explained it. Back on June 2, some Sisters called the office saying they had bed bugs. Now, bed bugs bites look like any other old bite, so you can't be sure you have them unless you find some and catch them. So, the sisters did that. We then had them clean their apartment and heat all their clothes, towels, sheets, etc (this kills bed bugs and their eggs). We then moved them to another apartment and we had the landlord get an exterminator for our apartment. When that was done, we sent the sisters back and everything was supposed to be fine, but they got bit again and found more, so they had to repeat the same thing..... The grand total has been their apartment being treated for bed bugs four times now. We can't keep paying for an apartment we can't use because its infested, so we're going to get out the lease and the way that works is that I sent a notice to the landlord that we are abandoning the apartment because its unfit for habitation. Since I did that, we are allowed to stop paying for the apartment until the landlord can prove that it is habitable, and if we drag it out a few months, the landlord can just let us out of the lease and get a new tenant and we can just pay the difference of the few months we didn't pay instead of finishing the lease. 

All of that is to say, I was very disappointed that the treatments didnt work and made it glum for a few days this week. I dont like having to get in a fight with the landlord, but it's what Pres Low told me to do. To make things worse, those wonderful dear sisters managed to carry bed bugs with them to another apartment :/ By a stroke of something miraculous, I happened to order bed bug traps the day before and they arrived ten minutes before those sisters walked into the office. 

Elder Brown and I also volunteered at a food bank this past week with some other Elders including Elder Broadhead and Elder Forsyth who do "Food for Thought" on the Facebook page. It was a great time and nice to be out doing something. We went to my favorite sushi place afterward.