No Other Place On Earth Like Hamilton 3/20/17

There is no other place on Earth like Hamilton, Ontario. It's been a blast here so far! Being in YSA work so far has been a blast, it's so different than serving in a family ward. You have to really change things up in YSA work. There are fewer members, they are crazy busy with school and work, our area is huge. It's pretty crazy, it's a riot though! I'll tell you about those who I've been able to meet this week! I'm with Elder Spencer, he's great. I don't know him super well, but we've had a good time together so far. He's from Springville, and a huge tennis player. We also live with 2 other Elders, Elder Stone from Orem, and Elder Kaku from Ghana! We have tons of fun all together.

Keevin is our Branch Mission Leader, he was baptized last fall. He's solid as a rock, he has so much excitement about missionary work, and loves to serve us and help us out. He's an artist, when we went over to meet up with him, we went into his apartment and he has like 6 guitars laying around, camera's and a bunch of other things!

Eric is one of the Branch Missionaries, he's so sweet! He loves to serve, and even though he's crazy busy, he finds time to come out with us and help us out. He does renovations for work, and he's been a member since May!

Jordyn is also a Branch Missionary, she was baptized a few months ago as well, she was actually asked to speak in Stake Conference this last weekend and she did awesome! She spoke on Being a light to the world.

As you can probably tell, we have some sweet New Converts, and our Branch missionary force is stellar! We're excited to all work together to find those who are ready to learn.

Rachael is our investigator, she's actually getting baptized on Saturday! Wahoo! We're super excited for her, she's super funny. She has been investigating the church for like 4ish months I think.

Besides Rachael, we didn't have any other investigators when I got here, so none the less we had lots of time to find some new investigators. We took some time to get things organized, previously, the Elders were spending almost all their time at the universities street contacting. We went through the area book and organized it so that we could use our time more effectively, it was an awesome use of time. We now have a list of where people all live, and what areas have student housing. It's going to be awesome. Most of last week we went around and met the members, Tuesday when I got here I texted everybody and got a bunch of appointments set up to meet. It's been sweet meeting with all of them. 

First cool experience we had this week, first door I ever knocked on in my new area. We were down in St. Catherines, and we were going by a less-active member. We had been getting pounded with snow all morning so there was like 8 inches of snow on the ground and it was freezing cold out. A guy named Paul comes to the door and invites us right in, sits us down and gets us some delicious soup. Paul had gone on vacation to Utah last year where he did a tour of Temple Square. We were able to talk to him and his girlfriend Liat, who is from Jerusalem. She is Jewish and speaks Hebrew, but isn't practicing Judaism. We talked with them a lot about Prayer and the Book of Mormon and said we could come by anytime. 

Every Saturday, Elder Stone and Kaku have our car and we take the Bus passes, so we had to venture all the way to the far end of Hamilton to meet with one of the members. It took us a very very long time! We were able to meet Jaspreet on the way! She is from India, and currently working at Costco (Shoutout to Costco). She was with her friend from the Philipeans and her friend met with missionaries there! Her friend wasn't interested in meeting, but Jaspreet is meeting up with us tomorrow morning!

Saturday and Sunday was Stake Conference here, which was awesome! I got to see all the Burlington members! It was so cool to see them. Alonso and Mercedes were there!!! Oh man, they are doing so good and they have this amazing light in their eyes now, they have grown so much. Oh man, and their Niece is getting baptized in the next few weeks, she is 25, so YSA age, hopefully she'll start coming out to YSA. We're going to have dinner with them this week or next!

 

In Stake Conference, one of the speakers told a story about when he was on a mission he was in charge of teaching all the missionaries at Zone Conferences (it was obvious he was an Assistant) but he was talking about Obedience to all the missionaries about how sometimes we don't understand rules or commandments, but we out to keep them still. He was a big swimmer in High School so not swimming was very difficult for him, well 4 days before he went home we has playing tennis with his Mission President, and after they finished playing they were walking back to the cars where they passed a pool and his mission president pushed him in and kept walking. He jumped right out of the pool and kept going with his President. In his departing interview his mission president told him he was testing him to see what his reaction would be, if he would swim or if he would get right out after spending the last week teaching about the topic. His mission president told him to keep up the way of obedience he was living. It really stood out to me, mostly because I'm a missionary, but it shows a very important way of life.

Love you all!

-- 

Elder Adam Taylor

Check out this talk by the One and Only Elder (President) Clayton

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/weatherford-t-clayton_rock-of-our-redeemer/