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