Canada, Eh?: Food & Finding (12/15/2014)

This week was so great!!! On Monday we had a lesson scheduled with Diane, our awesome investigator. Turns out she messed up her back, so we wont be able to teach her for a while! We didn't teach her all last week, so hopefully this week we'll be able to teach her more and she'll feel better. We had FHE with an awesome family. Funny story: we were going to watch Joy to the World, but then when we put the DVD into the DVD player, it got stuck. So they had to use pliers to get it out or something. We talked to them about the first Christmas in America in 3 Nephi 1 instead, so that was really great :)

Tuesday we had lunch with this awesome lady in our ward! She is dying of cancer, which is really sad, but she's hanging in there! We had a wonderful time together :) I feel like on the mission we pick up a lot of moms & dads, grandmas & grandpas. We did a lot of finding which was great. We have a lot of people scheduled for this week, so hopefully we can actually teach them!! We also had dinner with a member and that was interesting. Sister Bernard and I were SO STUFFED that we didn't feel good. Sister Bernard actually threw up after dinner. So sad. We realized that we need to stop eating so much food. ugh! Why are the members so awesome? One day we accidentally had 3 dinner appts, so we had to reschedule 2 of them.

Wednesday we had a CHRISTMAS zone meeting. We read this AMAZING talk https://www.lds.org/ensign/1977/12/maybe-christmas-doesnt-come-from-a-store?lang=eng and all talked about it. I challenge you all to read it and tell me what you think. It really opened my eyes to the role that Mary and Joseph played for Jesus Christ. We also had a Christmas dinner and they even got a YSA band together to play Christmas songs for us while we ate. It was so fun!!! Then I finally got to teach Alfonso!!! He is this awesome man from El Salvador who just got baptized in October. He's been struggling a lot lately with the word of wisdom and doesn't know if he can repent. We finally got him to understand repentance, and he came to the Christmas party and to church on Sunday! MIRACLES!

Thursday we did weekly planning. I only have 3 more left! I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We found lots more as well. We found this super awesome guy right before we were about to go inside. We were out street contacting in creepy downtown and we walked up to this man named Bruce. He said that he talked to Elders before, but they never called him. We got his number and are going to teach him on Wednesday! Pray for him for us!!!!

Friday we got to volunteer for the Salvation Army again. We rang the bell for the kettle drive at the mall! We're going to the mall today by the way - I'm so pumped!!! I just love it. It get's me in the Christmas spirit volunteering and helping people out! Then, we had the CHRISTMAS PARTY! Even Santa made an appearance. Lots of less active members and investigators made appearances. That was so awesome!! CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS!!! 10 more days!!!!! Saturday we walked...and walked...and walked...and walkedddddddd!!! It's park your car day on Saturdays, so yeah. We did get to help someone decorate her tree! And had an awesome dinner appt. :)

SUNDAY!! Church!!! We went to church and had a great time. After church, we stopped by this family that we met on Saturday who told us to come back the next day. Turns out he was just trying to be nice and thought that he made it clear that we shouldn't come back. Say what? People are so weird. Then we went and visited this AWESOME family! The wife is from Germany and she was there when the Berlin wall came down! She's a convert too. So basically the best thing ever. And the husband was a convert too and had the BEST conversion story. Then, we went and visited the less active that had the wolf and all the dogs. That was so fun! But stinky!! Afterwards we went finding and then went to visit a newly married couple in our ward and sang christmas songs with them. It was great! Love you all!

Send me letters!!

Love,
Sister Struempler

Here are some pictures from the week: