The Crib 5/15/17

Quick One Before Toronto 5/23/17

Hey! Sorry, this might be a short one this week, we have to catch a train in an hour for Toronto so we can make it for our plans there. We have lunch with one of the members Elder Martin knows so we have to get there by 11:30. We are hitting up some other places such as Kensington Market, the CN tower, the ROM and Downtown. I'm sure I'll have a lot more updates on details next week!

This week was quite crazy, a couple funny stories, first off I had exchanges with Elder Martin. He's the one I went to Jr. High with, I went on exchanges with him last month as well. We had an awesome exchange, it was really influential to me and helped me out with improving some of the things I've been focused on recently. We met with our investigator Merrill and he brought his friend Derek along. Well, turns out they are Pentecostal and wanted to "Save us from Hell". Really good guys, but it was a cool experience where we were able to really bear strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and Christ's restored Church. They kept slandering the Book of Mormon, and when we asked them what the Book of Mormon taught, they couldn't even tell us, we invited them to read and boldly told them they did not know, they had no experience with it. We aren't meeting again, but I'm really hoping they take the challenge to sincerely ask of God, for they will receive an answer.

Next interesting story, we've been trying to save on our car kilometers, so we decided to take our bikes out after dinner the other night for a few hours. While biking downtown Hamilton at night and we were going through a park when we found a huge group of kids from Africa. Turned out is was one of the local high school gangs, haha, good group of kids. At one point there was us standing in the center of a huge group of like 20 kids. They were asking all sorts of questions,turns out they were all from Northern Africa and were all Muslims. They started asking all sorts of questions about Christianity. When we found a commonality they would all start going wild and yelling and high fiving and stuff. It's funny the situations you find yourself in as a missionary.

We stopped buy a former investigator named Penny this week, and there was this big Pakistani man outside, whe started giving us a hard time about pretending she wasn't there. Anyhow, he started to go on about the end of the world and all sorts of stuff, he might have been slightly inebriated. Right before we were going I told him Thank you in Urdu (Native tongue of Pakistan) He grabbed me picked me up holding me about his head and started to spin me around saying all sorts of words in Urdu. His family was laughing and he gave me a hug. He seemed pretty excited I knew something in Urdu. Funny guy, we probably won't go back, not interested in the Gospel at this time, but hopefully in the future!

Yesterday we had a YSA Bonfire. If you've ever been to Canada you'll know about black flies, these small terrible creatures. Well, we got the the fire and they came in the millions swarming us. Luckily once the fire started, the smoke dispersed some of them.

Sunday we got to go to Churchville YSA in Brampton for a special meeting! It was a combined YSA conference from Brampton, Hamilton, Toronto, Barrie, and Oshawa! Such an amazing meeting, it was so busy that they made all the missionaries sit on the stand to make more room for others. It was probably one of the best meetings I've been too on my mission. We had the Brampton Stake President, Churchville Bishop (Former 70), and Temple president speak. Powerhouse meeting to say the least! They spoke on topics from forgiveness to how to know how you are doing in the Lord's sight, so building faith. Such a stellar meeting, two of my favorite quotes from the meeting were "Heaven is full of those who have been forgiven and forgive" and the other was "We are not called to tend the sheep, but to move the flock forward".

We started working with one of the Member's fiance this week, her name is Katie. She grew up baptist, but is very very very open to the Gospel. I was so surprised by her willingness and excitement to read and pray and discover if it is true. We had a lesson in the parking lot of her apartment complex, and she said such a powerful closing prayer.

The Downtown Elders had some baptisms this week so we got to do the interviews for the kids, and I was asked to Confirm one of the little girls, it was surprising to me but I was ecstatic. It was my first time confirming somebody, what a sweet spirit filled the room and she was confirmed and received one of the greatest gifts from God, the Holy Ghost.

Jaspreet is doing well, we talked about Baptism yesterday with her and she committed to Baptism in June! We're really excited for her, she's really grown a lot in her Testimony!

I gotta get running! Have a great week! Love you all!

--
Elder Adam Taylor

(Check out these Canadian Popo)

Sunshine In The Hammer 5/15/17

Quote of the week "How do I defeat the Cherubim and the Flaming Sword"

What a great week! We had an amazing week, in YSA work we don't usually get to do much planned service, but this week we had tons of it. First service opportunity was Tuesday when we went and helped this random guy named Dan. Dan contacted the Burlington elders and they passed his number to us, he has a huge cement waterfall in his backyard that we helped to break up and haul out to his truck and take to a cement dump. 2 Hours of carrying concrete sure was quite the workout. He was a pretty interesting guy, awesome guy, but not too interested in the Gospel right now. Something that I love about doing service is we can help people who aren't interested in our message. We can still serve the way the Savior did, even if they don't want to hear about the Savior.Tuesday night we got a call from the downtown Elders in a panic because they were moving a lady into her apartment and they needed help bad, we showed up to help. We had an hour and a half to move this lady in, and 3 companionship's of Elders. We were working like crazy to get it done, the last thing was this massive couch up 3 flights of stairs and then disassemble part of it to get it through the door. On Thursday morning, the Agnews (Member of the Branch Presidency) asked us to help them move. They're moving to Alberta to be with their kids. They literally had a Semi truck outside their house, and we filled it to the brim. Every minute was ticking because they had to pay for the truck by the hour so we had to rush, pack, and pound our way through. Some of the Elders were caught riding a tandem bike during the move though... :) Friday we went out to the Hobbs to help Sister Hobbs with some gardening to thank her for all she's done for us. I forgot how peaceful and relaxing gardening can be.

Jaspreet is doing awesome, she came out to church yesterday and really enjoyed it. It was hard for her because all of her family is back in India and she's here alone. She sent us a nice text later on yesterday to tell our Mothers happy mothers day for her. Last week she basically looked up everything about the church, we haven't been able to teach her the restoration yet, because we've been so focused on helping her understand who Christ is and the very basics. She texted us later last week telling us she knew everything about Joseph Smith, explained his story to us, and at church she asked why we don't drink coffee or tea, she then pulled up a funny song to the tune of Adele's "Hello". It's about missionaries, if you haven't heard it, listen to it. She said that the song really did describe what it's like as missionaries asking people to meet.

Brett is doing awesome as well, he's been really diligent in studying the scriptures and he even went and researched the entire next lesson. So we went over all of that, and he wants to start coming to church now. What is up with all these people looking up everything before we can even teach them??

We had a guy named Merrell text us last week wanting to meet up, he's baptist and knows everything about the church. He had a bunch of Questions about scriptures in Isaiah which he said contradicted our Church doctrine. Sometimes it's hard to not immediately start bashing, so I told him I'd take the scriptures and look into them. I read them this morning and got all the answers to them, sometimes you have to look at the context in which the scriptures are given to find the answers. 

I had an Exchange this week with Elder Cruz, he's from California! He was in Niagara with me. We met this sweet guy named Sam who just moved to Hamilton we are going to teach today again, and we also met a guy named Weishi who met the missionaries in Welland got a Book of Mormon and moved. When we started talking he got excited and said he wanted to meet up with us!

The Work here is seriously exploding right now, it's been so much fun, so many memories and great times are being made here!

Yesterday, after skyping, we had dinner with the Julians. Well, Brother Julian is a movie paraphernalia fanatic. He owns the original Nacho Libre Blouse, and guess who got a picture in it... 

I'm so grateful for the Gospel today and how it blesses our families and makes it possible for us to be together forever. I'm so grateful for Mothers and the example they are to all of us. I love them, and am especially grateful for my mom!

Love you all! Elder Taylor