Great week in Newfoundland!!

Hey everybody! It was a good week! We got a visit from our Mission President and his wife for Newfoundland conference! I finally got to teach a lesson this week! 

Tuesday- last Tuesday we decided to take a week off from hiking after the adventure the p day before. We went to the thrift store to see if we could find anything but the selection was not great. It looks like the DI will stay #1 in the thrift store rankings. We also went to the grocery store and got some things we needed. On the way home we stopped by the dollar store and I bought a velcro dartboard. We got to have dinner with the new senior couple, the shenfields. Sister Shenfield is a really good cook and even has her own cookbook! 

Our young men couldn't come to young men's because they had to stack wood in their basement for winter. We went over and helped them. It was so much wood! Their entire basement is filled with cut and stacked wood it's crazy! After we did that they gave us timbits. Timbits are really popular here they're pretty much just donut holes.

Wednesday- another district meeting on Wednesday. We left at 9 and rode to the meeting with the senior couple. We got to Grand Falls, had our meeting and drove back. On the way back we stopped at A&W and the Shenfields bought us lunch. By the time we got back it was time for dinner so we ate and then went over to the church and did an assignment on the computer. Just as we were leaving, Brother Dewling showed up. He talked to us for a little over an hour. He is so funny! You give him one word and he can go on and on about it. Anything he says is funny. I held back tears trying not to laugh as he told us how annoyed he gets when other people try and fix light bulbs or other things in the church without telling him. "I'm the facilities manager, just give me a buzz and I'll fix it" He made it a good day.

Thursday- we visited a guy that is supposed to be in our branch. He is about 4 foot 6 and loves sports. We talked for awhile about sports and invited him to come to church. He told us he'd think about it and we gave him our phone number. For dinner I saw a little ceasers and wanted to go so that's what we had. I was shocked to find out that their pizza was not $5 and even more shocked when we got it and it was the size of a personal pizza. Elder Hatch told me that's the size they always are in Canada. What an absolute tragedy! God bless America, land of the free home of the good sized pizza. After we ate we had a good meeting with the branch president and the senior couple. We pretty much planned Newfoundland conference which is stake conference except there's no stake here so it's just the whole island conference.

Friday- Today we had to do weekly planning. It was really boring. Later in the day we went over to the church and cleaned everything and tried to fix everything so the Skype would work. One of the members was also there and we talked with her for awhile, she's a really cool person! Then we had the new missionary zoom call. All the new missionaries and their trainers got on the computer and got trained my President and Sister Low and the APs and STLTs. Later we were calling some less active people in the branch to see how they are and if we could meet and got to one and they were like "we are at church every week!" Turns out they are in Gander which is technically in the branch but 4 hours away so they Skype in. We ended the night trying to fix the Skype microphone for the conference. 

Saturday- Saturday was a good day! In the morning we went and picked up Pres and Sister Low from the airport. We drove back to the church and had our interviews. Then we had our friend Hayley come to the church and we talked and taught her a little bit with the Lows. My first Lesson! We invited her to come to Newfoundland conference and she came to our dinner and adult session! After the lesson we had priesthood session of Newfoundland conference and then had a dinner before adult session. Elder Hatch and I sat by President Sansome, the Branch President. He's a funny guy! We talked about this guy we keep seeing asking for money and apparently he's well known here. President Sansome told us his name so we can say hi next time we see him. Adult session of conference was good. Hayley came and brought her daughter. Her daughter wanted to play so we sat in the foyer and listened with them and kept her daughter happy. 

Sunday- Sunday was also good! We picked up the Lows in the morning and went to the church for conference. After the meeting we had another potluck with the branch. There was tons of food so we stuffed ourselves and took home 2 big boxes of pizza. We talked with the Lows and Shenfields for awhile and then drove the Lows to the airport. After dinner we drove across the bay to say happy birthday to Jerome. They weren't home so we stopped by President Sansome's house. His house is all built by him. We talked to him for awhile and he taught me how to play the ugly stick. It's a Newfoundland instrument that's pretty much a stick and bells and anything else you want on it. Pretty fun to play. 

Monday- we got up in the morning and the power was out so it was a rough morning to get out of bed. We studied and then went and had our weekly call in with the district leader. After lunch we went back to the church and did a district comp study over zoom. It was pretty fun! After that we drove across the bay again and were trying to visit someone but she actually doesn't live there anymore so it was a bit of a let down. We drove back and got to talk to our friend Briana. She didn't have much time so we didn't get to teach but it was good to finally meet in person. Next we went to FHE. Nobody showed up except for us and the senior couple so we just had a meeting. 

It was super cool to have President and Sister Low visit this week! I'm also thankful that I was able to teach my first lesson! Hopefully I'll be able to do some more soon! Love you all have a great week! 

Weekend With The Bys

One funny thing is that here they don't say boys they say bys with no O. This week went by fast! We were gone from Thursday to Sunday for exchanges and zone conference. It was fun to be gone for the weekend with other missionaries.

Tuesday- last P-Day we wanted to go on a hike. We were driving and then we saw this waterfall that seemed really cool so we parked on the side of the road. There was a trail that looked like it led up there so we followed it for awhile. After hiking on the trail for around 30 minutes the trail started to turn and go the wrong way. It was pretty clear that the trail wouldn't take us to the waterfall. We weren't gonna let that stop us though. The waterfall looked closer now, so we went off the trail and kept going towards the waterfall. It wasn't too bad at first, we just had to step over some bushes. The farther we went, the bigger and the more bushes there were. Pretty soon we got to the edge of a cliff. It was pretty steep but not straight down and we were getting close now so we went down the cliff. We would slide down from tree to tree so that we didn't just tumble all the way down. Eventually we made it down the hill, walked through more trees and got to the river that came from the waterfall! We hiked up the river so we could get some pictures closer up and then we sat and rested from the journey. To go back we hiked down the river so we didn't have to go through more trees and eventually we got to the highway. Once we got there we ran about a mile to the car. Definitely the worst hike I've ever done and it sucked but looking back it was pretty funny. We're probably some of the only people that have ever been up to that waterfall though cause I'm sure there's not many other people dumb enough to hike 2 hours through pine trees. We got back and played volleyball at the church with our 2 young men.

Wednesday- we got up and had a normal morning. After that we went to the church and made a sign up sheet for an activity dinner our branch is going to do. For the rest of the day we just studied and did some finding. Nothing very excited happened. We had to use our dinner time to get haircuts because it was almost zone conference and we were a little shaggy. When we got in for the night we got packed for our weekend getaway.

Thursday- we got up and finished up packing and left around 10:00. We drove to Grand Falls which is the zone/ district leaders' area. Fun fact their apartment is an upper level and the main level is the church. Their group has 7 members and they Skype into our sacrament meeting. We got to Grand Falls around 1:00 and did a 4 person comp study, then we started our exchange. First I went with Elder Jones and we taught a member lesson. It went really well. We got back from that and I went with Elder Pitcher to another lesson with a lady. She forgot we were coming and was busy selling berries when we got there, so we just talked in the driveway for a little bit. Her brother who is homeless was there and started talking to me. The conversation went like this - at least this is what I translated (he had no teeth and a Newfie accent so he was hard to understand- 

Bruce "you gotta wife yet? 

Me "no I don't"

Bruce "that's good you're young no need for that" 

me "I'm actually a missionary" 

Bruce "you teach about Jesus? Nuttin wrong with dat" he then went on and showed me his world series ring. When I asked where he got it he told me he got it from a beer box but he still thought it was 100% real. He then tried to sell me his leather jacket for $699. He said he got it for $599 but with tax him selling it to me for $699 was a good deal. Haha I'm not sure about how that works. He's going to try and hitchhike to Toronto! After that we knocked on a couple doors and met a really cool lady and gave her a Book of Mormon. When we got back to the apartment it was Elder Pitcher and I. The other two were still out doing something. They had the keys to the apartment but the door on the deck was unlocked. So Elder Pitcher boosted me up the side of the building. I pulled myself up and got on the roof and hopped onto the deck. I tried to open the door but it was locked! So I had to get back down and we just sat in the car and waited. We were supposed to have a video chat lesson with a guy in Labrador but our Facebook crashed so we had to cancel, sad ending to a good day.

Friday- on Friday we got up, worked out and did some study and exchange review. For lunch we had pulled pork wraps. I have to say the zone leaders' cooking is on a whole other level than my pb sandwich and cereal making. After lunch we drove 4 and a half hours to St John's. We jammed out to some missionary music. It was pretty fun. We gave Josh Groban a run for his money! There's a ton of different terrains across the island that change fast. They are cool to see. When we got to St Johns I met everyone in the zone which is every missionary in Newfoundland. Theres 12 of us. We had dinner together at a senior couple's house and then we went contacting for the night. At the end of the night we went back to the St John Elder's house. It's so nice, they have an actual house with a basement and backyard. Some elders and I played phase 10 and then went to bed. It was pretty fun to be with a bunch of other Elders and talk with them! One of the elders is a crazy sleepwalker so that was pretty funny to. 

Saturday- zone conference! We got to the church around 8 and studied until it started at 9. We had elder Hanie and his wife from the Seventy there. President Low and Sister Low gave trainings and so did Elder Hanie and his wife. The conference and lunch lasted until 4:00. We went to Wendys and then drove back to Grand Falls. We stopped at a gas station and I bought some maple flavored airheads cause this is Canada. They were so weird! I didn't like them but I just kept eating them and ate 4. Would not recommend. Once we got to Grand Falls we had a small wrestling match and went to bed.

Sunday- Elder Hatch and I had to get up and go so we could make it to church. While driving we realized we needed gas (🤦‍♂️). There's not really anything between Grand Falls and Corner Brook and we were running out of gas. The gas stations here make you pay inside and nobody was working yet so we went from place to place trying to find one with a worker. We barely had any gas when we finally found one. That set us back a few minutes so we were late for church which meant nobody was there to start the Skype for the other to groups to watch the beginning. We finally made it and got everything going and church was good. We also taught Sunday School and priesthood. That night we had a dinner appointment which was really nice. It was with the Sheppards (We live in their basement) they are awesome. 

Monday- Monday we had weekly call ins with the district leader. After we did that we stayed at the church and studied. We also made a list of all the members in the branch. There's actually way more than people who come. Later we did weekly planning and then we met with the new senior couple we just got here. It's gonna be nice to have them now. To end the night we had FHE. Our friend that we teach. She came and brought a friend. We played a board game and it was pretty fun.

It was a really fun week! It was good to change things up this week and do something different. Love and miss you all!! 

Love Elder Tait! 

Another Week on the Rock

3 Nephi 12:10 "And blessed are all they who are persecuted for my name's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." We are gonna be blessed after this week if being persecuted = doors shut in our faces! There's a stereotype that all Canadians are nice and that's mostly true...somebody needs to tell a few people in Newfoundland that though haha! It was a fun week! 

Tuesday night - being the young men's leaders is pretty fun! Being the good leaders we are we wanted to do something fun, so for our activity that night we watched a movie - Lego Batman. That movie is hilarious, especially after a month of missionary work! We tied it into a spiritual message so it was a wholesome activity ;) 

Wednesday - tons of driving today! We had district meeting in Grand Falls, which is about a 3 hour drive from our apartment. We had to deliver a new car to the sisters in our district so Elder Hatch and I each drove a car to the meeting. It was weird to be driving for the first time since being a missionary. It was also pretty crazy to drive halfway across the island by myself after living here for 5 days. I wasn't really sure where to go but we both made it. We got there, had our meeting for an hour and a half then us and the district leaders had lunch. After lunch we drove back to Corner Brook. When we got back we went knocking for a little bit and then went to bed. Not very much happened other than driving.

Thursday - we had to go to the other missionary apartment that's empty right now and look for a phone. Once we found it we had to get all the information on it and sent it to the mission office. That night we went knocking and met one lady that was interested, so we set up a lesson the next day at Tim Hortons. She never actually showed up so that was a bummer. We got let into this one guys house and somehow went from The Plan of Salvation to 80's NBA basketball. It was nice to talk about basketball for awhile! 

Friday - Friday was rough! It was weekly planning which is really long and boring. We plan and make goals for the week. It's good but really boring. For lunch we were having hot dogs and fries but after we cooked the hot dogs we realized our buns were already moldy so we just cut up the hotdogs and ate them on the fries. Later that day we had the new missionary zoom call. It was a Skype call with all of the missionaries I came here with and their companions and also the APs and STLTs. It was really fun to see all them again! After that we went and waited at Tim's for our lesson with Shantel. We waited 30 minutes for her and then we gave up and went knocking for the rest of the night.

Saturday - To start the day we did some service and "helped" a lady move. We weren't really helping her and working together. We did it all; she watched and told us what to do and we loaded the boxes and furniture into the branch president's truck and took it to the new house, there were tons of boxes and 75% of them were full of stuffed animals and dolls. I thought it was super weird but decided I didn't want to know. She also had 4 cats who I think ran the house. Their was hair everywhere! Everywhere! The house her and her daughter are moving to gave me the creeps. It reminded me of every horror movie house ever. It literally had 3 or 4 graves in the backyard! Sketchy! After the move we showered and went to the church and did digital finding and studied. When we went knocking that night I decided I was gonna have a good attitude even though we had been rejected all week and it worked! We ended up talking to a few people and set up 3 lessons! Finally some success. Our night ended with a call to the police after a little situation with talk about us and a shotgun. We stayed safe though, don't worry! It was fun to have some action while knocking! 

Sunday - this Sunday was great we had double the attendance as last week! 24 members in our sacrament meeting plus the other 2 branches skyping in. We had the Halifax temple President Veinot and his wife here to speak. They were great. They talked about how important family history is. I got to lead the music again this week hahaha! I had no idea what I was doing once again. Every time I lead I'm in a pickle I have to make a choice - do I want to turn to the page with the words so I can sing the right song or do I want to stay on the page that explains how to lead? The first song I went with the lyrics. I sang along and told myself nobody watches the choirister anyway, so I just kinda swung my hand in a loose + sign left right up down. I looked up from the hymn book and saw a couple wise ladies snickering a little bit. I saw them chuckle which made me realize how stupid I must looked so I started laughing too. So for the closing hymn instead of the lyrics I stayed on the how to lead page. My leading seemed a little better but then I didn't know the words so all I could do was open and close my mouth like I was singing. For my personal study this week I'll be studying how to lead music. Elder Hatch and I sit on the stand so we can work the Skype. During one of the talks I heard this clipping noise every few seconds. It sounded like somebody clipping their nails. From our spot we can see everyone so I curiously looked around, and when I saw it I took a double take. On the back row one of the members was doing the comfy cross which is normal but that's also where the clicking noise was coming from. She was clipping her nails! I was like there's no way she's really doing that she's probably just got a hangnail. I kept subtly watching and then she switched feet! She really was clipping her nails! I thought that was really unusual and super funny so I started laughing. The temple President was sitting right behind me so I quickly turned it into a fake cough. It was pretty funny though. You never know what you'll see here in Newfoundland! Later we had a dinner appointment and had hamburgers, but instead of regular burgers in a patty they were loose meat. They were different but still good. When we got home for the night I wanted ice cream but it's really expensive here and we're on a budget, so instead of ice cream I got a spoon of peanut butter and put it in the freezer for a couple minutes. I ate it with my eyes closed and pretended it was Reeses ice cream. 

Monday - Today was supposed to be really busy. In the morning we Skyped with the district leaders for weekly call ins. After that we ate lunch, did comp study and did some digital finding. We had lessons set up at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00. The first one fell through cause he went shopping with his cat and his mom was visiting. Then when we got to the second lesson with our friend, she was sitting on the porch with a couple empty cans around her and said it wasn't a good time because she was drunk. We talked for a minute and gave her our phone number and Facebook's. We decided not to go to our last lesson cause it was at the house of the guy we called the cops on. Later we had a dinner and then had a lesson with Gillian one of the members in our branch. The lesson was really good! After our lesson we had FHE at the church. We were expecting to have 4 of our friends come but none of them showed up so it was just us and 2 members. We played scategories so it was still a good time. 

This week was great! I'm getting settled in and comfortable doing missionary work for real not just practicing. Love and miss you all! Have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Tait

Big dog!! 

Moving stuff...

Skype call

Just jazzing up the apartment a bit...

Canada Eh!!

It's been a crazy time since my last email! I'll go through the last 10 days! Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

I'm doing well, but struggling a bit with the language haha! They speak English here but they talk super weird and say random phrases that I don't know. Canadians do say eh! 
My comp is Elder Hatch and is from Calgary, Canada.

Sunday- It was our last Sunday in the MTC and also our last day as a district. We went through all the normal Sunday meetings and for the devotional it was the MTC President and Sister Martino. They talked about how missionaries had been a big impact on each of their lives. After that for our last Sunday film we watched a talk by Elder Holland called Missions are Forever. It was really good and had a ton of good points. One thing I liked was - "missions are not easy, because salvation is not a cheap experience." After the film we said bye to Sister Wheeler and Sister Peterson. Shout out to them for writing us all letters. That was super nice! They left on Monday. along with the Elders going to California and Zimbabwe so we said bye to all of our district Sunday night. We got really close as a district so it was sad to see them leave. 

Monday- On Monday it was just the Canadian Elders. We got up and did service and then we had class. Both classes on Monday were mostly just messing around and hearing mission stories from our teachers. It was like the last day of school. We were all excited to be leaving. That night we played spikeball and then packed everything up and got ready to leave and said some more goodbyes.

Tuesday- Tuesday was a long day. We got up a 4:15, got dressed and went to the travel office. From there we got on a bus which took us to the frontrunner station. We rode that to SLC and then got on Trax to the airport. When we got to the airport we got through security and then a nice lady bought breakfast for me and Elder Atkins! While we were waiting for our plane we got to call and talk with our families! It was really good to talk to everyone but it brought back some homesickness. We took off around 10:00 and landed in Toronto at 4:00 Toronto time. From there we had to go through customs and all that fun stuff and hop on our next flight all in an hour. The homesickness hit me hard for home and especially the MTC. I was tempted to only get my visa for 2 weeks instead of 2 years but I ended up going with 2 years and I'm happy with that choice haha! Waiting for all the immigration stuff was the absolute worst. The room was hot, smelled bad and had bad vibes. I swear there must've been a no smiling sign in there, because everyone in there looked unhappy. When we finally made it through all that and got our bags our flight was long gone. We got tickets for the next flight to Halifax which wasn't til a couple hours later. We ate some subway and waited til we eventually took off around 10:00 p.m. When we finally landed in Halifax we got our luggage and President and Sister Low were waiting for us with the APs. We went back to the mission home and had some food and got to sleep around 3:00 a.m. It was a really long day

Wednesday- we got to sleep in til 8:00 and it was needed. When we woke up we went for a walk around a lake and had breakfast. After that we went to the mission office and had an orientation meeting. For lunch we had sandwiches and poutine. The poutine was actually good! After lunch, Elder Scott, an elder from my travel group, Elder Sawa Sawa the AP and I went to the mall and bought phones and then went and got our drivers licenses. A little later we went to downtown Halifax and did street contacting. I was not excited for it at all. In my head I was thinking "this is ridiculous I've been here for like 12 hours let me go sleep" but we said a prayer and it ended up being fun. We met all kinds of people! We talked to a guy named Rick and his wife Debbie for a while. He told us about his life, drug dealing and his 16 years in jail. He had some crazy stories from his time in "the hole" and told us "never steal from where you live" When we got back to the mission home  we found out where we were going. I found out I was going to Corner Brook Newfoundland! 

Thursday- Thursday was transfer day so everybody met at the mission office early in the morning. Since I was going to Newfoundland I had to fly there, so I hung out with the Cole Harbour Elders until they took me to the airport. Later, they took me to the airport and I took an hour and a half flight to Gander, Newfoundland. It was a smaller plane and the flight reminded me of a roller coaster. The whole thing was a little sketchy! When I landed I went and met my comp Elder Hatch. He's from Calgary Canada and is super cool. We drove to Corner Brook which was a 4 hour drive from the airport. Our area is huge! It's the biggest in the world, we have half of Newfoundland and all of Labrador! The nearest missionaries are in Grand Falls - 3 hours away. When we got to our apartment I unpacked and went to sleep.

Friday- first full day in Corner Brook! We did studies and regular mission stuff all day. We went on a trail walk and contacted people. There were some sweet views there! Then we went to the church for awhile and I made a Facebook account and got going on that. For dinner the Sheppards who live upstairs (our apartment is their basement) invited us over for dinner. It was really good and so nice to have a home cooked meal. We also had fresh blueberry and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. We spent the rest of the night looking for the person that we were going to help move but never found them.

Saturday- it was a pretty fun day. We went over to the church and worked on some things. Elder Hatch made a Google doc with our goals on it so we'll know what were trying to do. I worked on a training that I'm doing at district meeting. After that we did some study and then some digital finding. We are one of like 3 missions testing out Instagram and I love It! That night we went to captain James Cook lookout and took some pictures. 

Sunday- I was excited to come on a mission because I knew it would be different and exciting. Church was exactly that! We have church in a building that used to be for some other church. Supposedly our twig has 30 people that come, but I think there were 11 including us on Sunday. We also have Grand Falls and Gander branches Skype into our sacrament which brought us to about 25 members in the sacrament meeting. I gave the opening prayer, led the music (pretty much sang a solo) and passed the sacrament and then introduced myself and bore my testimony. After sacrament we had Sunday School and Priesthood. We all had Sunday School in the chapel. It turns out we are the Young Men leaders, so we had class with our 2 young men and planned activities. Later I had a nice birthday dinner of a pb sandwich and chips. After dinner we went out knocking. Not much success here, most people don't answer the door for us.

Monday- yesterday was good! In the morning we had call ins with the district leader so we went to the church and Skyped them. For lunch we went to a park where they had free burgers and hot dogs for Labor Day, then we went and did some knocking with very little success. After we did that and studied we went to a members house for a bbq. They have a Great Dane and it is the biggest dog I have ever seen! We also got some leftovers which is a huge blessing when you are on a budget like us. After that we had FHE where we played volleyball with our 2 friends that we're teaching. Briana is awesome, she gave me a birthday card and cake! She is probably going to get baptized soon! We also had Brandon there and he seemed to have a ton of fun! 

It was a long crazy week, but lots of great times! I'll be posting on social media so watch for that! Talk to you all next week!

Elder Tait 

Happy Birthday Elder Tait

Just a special request...tomorrow, September 2 is Elder Tait's 19th birthday!! I'm sure he would love to hear from you if you'd like to give him a birthday shoutout or send him an email. His email is conner.tait@myldsmail. net
Here are a few pictures I found on the new Facebook and Instagram for Elder Conner Tait. He is serving in Corner Brook Newfoundland and it looks so beautiful! His pday is Tuesday or Wednesday - we will find out next week. So excited to hear from him and hear all about his experiences of the past few days.
Have a great day!!! ❤️