Holidays and Skype Fun

This week has been great, we had a great time and we've really been able to help Hugh get ready for Baptism.  He is still getting ready for the 3rd, which is this Saturday. This week he has his interview, and I'm going to go through the questions with him, in English so he has a chance to say and kind of practice his English with it.  So that is pretty exciting. 

This week Elder Liu and I were really excited to Skype.  And then we found out on Wednesday that Elder Liu had made a miscalculation on the time zone differences for when he would Skype home.  So there was a period of time we spent stressing about a few different skype tasks.  1. Getting Elder Liu onto skype.  He had forgot something about the account and couldn't get into it. 2. Telling his parents about the new plan.  3. Getting his new Skype account connected to his parents.  So it was a lot of fun that night, as I sat trying to help Elder Liu create his new account and calling members to try and help us find a way to get a hold of his parents.

But it all worked out really well.  We had Christmas Eve dinner with the Oviatts, who have been super great about feeding us, and Sister Oviatt had already planned on Elder Liu needing to skype, so he was able to get that done, and overall it all just kind of fell into place.  The tender mercies of the Lord.

Christmas and Christmas Eve were so great.  I was amazed at how much love was shown by all the people we saw that day.  We spent Christmas Eve with the Oviatts, who had a great tradition of make your own sub for dinner.  It was delicious.  And then we had a Christmas program, and they sent us away with a stocking of goodies.  Christmas morning the Doreys had us over for breakfast and games, and they were so nice.  All of their kids were there, and it was really fun.  That evening we went to dinner with the Stewarts, where I was able to skype, and where we had a Turkey dinner and talked with Brother and Sister Stewart, who were so awesome, and so very nice to us.  It was just a great day to see how nice people could be. 

The rest of the week has felt slow.  A lot of the people we were talking to have gone home to China for Christmas, so we are feeling a little pressed for appointments.  Lots of finding, but even then, most people were gone, or at home with family.  But we keep on trying.  We also went caroling, and we caroled to Hugh, Helen, Christine, and the lady that doesn't speak English.  We sang an English song, but she still seemed really grateful.  So that was pretty great.

This week I also finished reading the Book of Mormon.  It was actually Christmas Eve that I finished, in the morning.  So that was actually pretty great for me, this time, as I finished, it was more than just a feeling of "Oh great, I am glad that's over with," and more of a feeling of peace, and being ready to start reading it again.  So that's something that has really been new for me.  I would invite anyone who hasn't read, or read earnestly and prayerfully, to do so, and to really seek for help from that book, and to see it for what it is, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

I'll See you all next week!  and hopefully I can attach pictures....  Anyway, Happy New Year!  And Merry Christmas!

Elder Ethington

PS  Also, thank you so much to those who sent me Christmas packages.  I loved having things from home and they have made it much more comfortable and warm in the Northern Tundra.  Thank you so much!

Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  I hope everyone is doing awesome!  This week has been good, we didn't have as many lessons as we wished, but we did have good lessons with Hugh, so that was good.  He is still getting ready for baptism on the 3rd, and we are super excited for that.

This week was Christmas conference, which was cool.  I finally got to watch Meet the Mormons, which I loved!  It was a great movie, and very well done.

Hugh was able to make it to church this week, even though the Kingsway ward didn't meet.  There was a combined YSA meeting that he went to, and he said he enjoyed, which was great.  Elder Liu and I took the chance to visit some of the other wards in the Stake.

I'm looking forward this week to introducing Elder Liu to some of the Ethington family traditions.  I did find tamales here.  I have no idea how or why, but we live on a street with a bunch of ethnic food shops, one being a place with tamales.  I'm not sure how good they are, but I will at least give them a try.

Speaking of Elder Liu, yesterday was his birthday, and I asked a few other Elders to help me surprise him with a cake and dinner.  And it was not hard to surprise him.  He really didn't see anything coming, and he was really happy. Although, he was also tired and fell asleep on the floor as we were all eating cake...  But that's ok.

Anyway, we are really excited for Christmas and to be able to Skype home.  I hope everyone is doing well!

Christmas Draws Near

Elder Liu and the paper Christmas tree. Also, the maps of their area and the Chinese members that T.J. charted out while Elder Liu was ill a few weeks ago.

First Apartment with T.J.'s desk. It is neater than his desk was at home-progress!

So this week, while a little warmer, made things a little more dangerous.  As the snow melts, and ice forms, more and more missionaries are slipping.  As long as I don't slip I'm ok. There is a tradition here that if you slip, you have to buy doughnuts for your district, which is pretty good.  No one in my district has slipped, so no doughnuts, at least not yet.  But the melting snow did help me to find a name tag I had dropped in the snow near another missionaries apartment.  So that was good at least. 

This week we have also been starting another system for getting fed.  Each ward has 1 day each week to feed us.  Seven wards for Seven days of the week.  But this week it was difficult because we had previous appointments, and it is messy to try to combine to sets of missionaries schedules (Us and Tagolog North, because we share a car).  But it did end up getting us a lot of dinners, which was great.

We did do some phonebook finding this week, which actually went well.  We are refining the process, finding better times to do everything and what not, so that is good.  We did have a great chance to actually go into someone's home this week.  We were out doing finding, and we knocked on the door, I really didn't think it was a Chinese home, but it was, and an old lady, who Elder Liu now calls Yang nai nai, or Grandmother Yang, and she let us in to see her Buddah statue.  It was kind of massive.  She told us she didn't believe in any form of deity, but her daughter had put the whole Buddah shrine thing together for her.  It was massive.  The house was large and neat, the front room only had a couch, loveseat, chair, and a coffee table, and then the shrine, but the shrine took up like half the space.  So it was pretty good.  But Grandmother Yang invited us back to come visit her, so we are actually pretty excited about that.  She was really interesting, and spoke no English, but she had learned Russian... not that that helps us any to communicate, but it was interesting.

This week I've continued to read from the Book of Mormon, which just has had such a great power for me this past little while.  I have really loved reading it, and I am looking forward to finish.  I am currently at 3 Nephi chapter 9, when the Nephites start hearing the voice of Christ.  But I did read this week in Alma 24:19, which is talking about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis.  I won't quote it, but I read that and I thought about all the times I went to text, and I put the wrong word in earlier than it should be, and then I can just backspace and fix it.  But Mormon, writing on plates didn't have that opportunity, so he had to do what he did there. 

Anyway, this has been a great week.  I have had a great time, I got some Christmas packages on Monday, which was great, and now Elder Liu and I have a paper Christmas tree in the apartment.  And we are really excited for the next week days as we get closer to Christmas. 

Talk to you all next week!  Miss you!

First Transfer is Almost Up!

How to do service in Edmonton in December

So this week has been pretty fun, although it didn't start off too exciting.  It was nice to receive money again, and be able to stock up our fridge. I do enjoy seeing food in there.  But Elder Liu and I did a lot of finding this week, and without any new investigators. So that's a little discouraging, but we are still planting those seeds, so that people know our Church just a little bit better for having seen us.  When we have the car, we like to do Phonebook Finding.  Elder Liu's previous companion took a phone book, a bit of an old one which is sad, and got all the Asian names out of it.  It was hard to plan effectively because the addresses went all over the place, so I took it and organized it by streets, so that we can mark out an area pretty easily.  This is really helpful, and we mostly find Asians, some have moved.  Hopefully it yields some success soon though.  We really do like having the car, it is a lot more comfortable.  But finding without it can be fun too.  We basically just ride the LRT trains for a while, and try to talk to anyone.  We've meet some cool people.  On YSA memeber's grandparents were there once, and they talked to us, which was really cool. Apparently, they called their granddaughter right after they got off the train and told her they had seen us.  While we were out phonebook finding this week we found one house that wasn't Asian, but it was a less active that we haven't found on the ward list (yet).  It was kinda funny, when we came up, the doorbell was broken I guess.  But we didn't know so we just tried it and waited.  I could see this lady up the stairs in front of her door.  She must have just gotten home, and was putting her jacket away.  But we just stood there.  Eventually she saw us, we must have been creepy because it looked like we were just standing there.  So she came down and didn't open the door and asked who we were.

"We're Missionaries for our Church."

"Which Church?"

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints."  The door opens, "In that case, I will open up and wish you a Merry Christmas."  Apparently this lady had been raised LDS, married LDS, and divorced, and hadn't been to a meeting since.  She was very nice, told us she respected missionaries, and totally believed. We invited her to the stake Christmas activity, and she is acting like she will actually come to that.  Although we won't really be working with her from now on, it was a really cool experience, and one where I felt like the Lord was guiding us to find her.

This week I have been reading a lot out of the Book of Mormon.  I started over.  When I got here, President Manion asked us to read it through by the time we got done being trained, and to underline all of the references/names of Christ.  I started doing that, but it felt like I was just searching for his names, so I started again.  And I've tried reading before.  But never has the Book of Mormon just come alive like it has this time.  It is really awesome to be reading through and be understanding so much more of what's happening, and the lessons being taught, its been really awesome for me this week to have such a great experience and a testimony builder with the Book of Mormon.

Anyway, this transfer is almost up, not that this means a lot to Elder Liu and myself, we'll end up staying where we are for sure.  But it means I'm almost halfway through my training.  So that's exciting!   Talk to you all next week!

The Snow Finally Sets In

This week has been great.  We started with Zone conference, which was fun, and a good chance to learn as always.  There was a big push for driving safety with the crazy snows we've had.  We had a "storm" here, a "blizzard" for Utah, and the flippin' apocalypse for Chandler here over Thursday and Friday.  It gives us a good opportunity to do snow shoveling, which I have decided is not the worst thing I could be doing.  On Saturday we shoveled the Londonderry chapel, and I feel like as long as its not snowing and blowing, I could do that all day.  It was cold enough that I wasn't really sweating, and I just never got tired.  Hopefully I have a few pictures to send you all as well, they are on my companion's camera.

We didn't get a lesson with Hugh this week, and he didn't make it to church, which was sad, but he's still recovering from traveling with his parents.  We did meet with Helen, the less active who is teaching us to play bridge.  Its surprisingly similar to Rook and Wizard, so I picked it up quickly.  Elder Liu, not so much.  Hopefully we get to play with her and her non-member husband on Tuesday, although he isn't really anxious to meet us....  We also shoveled Christine's driveway after meeting with Helen this week, and she wanted to buy us coffee.  We told her we couldn't drink that, and then she said next time we came she would make us Hot Chocolate instead.  So I look forward to that.  Looking back, it feels like things are kind of starting to pick up this last week, which is pretty exciting.

Hopefully things continue to pick up here. We are going to try to organize some kind of Mandarin group to watch the First Presidency devotional all together this Sunday, so hopefully that works out for us.  I'm not sure, but I am really hopeful it will end up being helpful.

Anyway, I'm missing you all.  The cold is definitely that.  Cold, but I love it here.

Shoveling snow at the church