Sick as a Dog

It rained a ton this week. But not super heavy most of the time. Just a fine mist that with a small breeze is freaking cold. 

It was really weird this week. It took about five seconds to go by but it was pretty slow at the same time. Having P-Day on Tuesday makes the week go by super fast. 

Wednesday, we did service again at that lady's house. We painted 3 doors. It was pretty fun. Not too much else happened. We had dinner then we went to The Zumbach's to go prepare a spiritual thought for Tatjana's friend that they invited over for dinner for the next day. She leaves for her mission in like two weeks. It is really cool that she is already doing missionary work. 

Thursday we had District meeting in Barrie cause President was coming for interviews. Elder Beddes didn't really do anything. The zone monkeys "took over" for a while and talked about accountability. Just conveniently right after me and Elder Tarter sent in our numbers late. They just tried to rake us. They are super passive aggressive about stuff and it's really annoying. Anyways. interviews were good. Not much to talk about. While Elder Tarter was talking to President, I was with Sister Shields and she had stuff for me to shine my shoes. It was pretty sweet. After that we went to a Korean BBQ place. It is the all you can eat place and they bring out a bunch of raw meat and you cook it yourself on a grill in the middle of the table. 6 missionaries were there and we definitely got our moneys worth. We drove home and went to the Zumbach's for dinner. Tatjana's friend came, and her parents came over as well. Dinner was pretty good. I didn't have any room though. So I just tried to eat as slow as I could cause Sister Zumbach is very good about making us eat the food. The daughter that sat next to me is named Cleeanne. I have no clue how to spell that. But she works at Dairy Queen and I asked about it and she just started ranting for like 20 minutes about some of the people she works with. It was pretty funny. Anyways, the message we shared with them was on eternal families. It was pretty good. Personally, that is one of my favorite parts about this Gospel. The opportunity to be with my family forever is so peaceful and just makes me happy. They liked it, I think.  The spirit was definitely there. 

Friday-Sunday Elder Tarter was sick as a dog. He had the flu or something. So very little was done.

Yep. The week lasted about five minutes and so has the transfer. I cant believe that the transfer is almost over. It is going to be pretty crazy next week. 

Elder Talbot and the grill they found in the trash and fixed up.

Elder Tarter and Elder Talbot

Hammock Happenings

Well, it was a massive roller coaster of weather this week. Wednesday, it was freaking hot. It was around 30 degrees (86 F) and super humid. I wanted to die all day. Thursday was less hot but it rained all day and then Friday and Saturday was sweater weather cold. It was weird. Humidity is really annoying. 

It was a fairly slow week. Not too much happened. We are over our kilometer limit for the month so we decided to try and bike. Well, we tried. And we biked something around 15 ks. It wasn't too bad, but it was basically uphill both ways and windy the whole time. It was also the first time I had ridden a bike my whole mission so it was one way to get it started. But the next day, I was absolutely dead.

 

We met with Samantha again and we are still trying to get them to understand the importance of church/baptism. We thought it went really well and that they understood. And the mom committed to bring them to church! We were super pumped but they didn't end up coming this week. Which was lame. She also wants to be baptized in like 3 weeks. Looks like we have our work cut out for us.

We played basketball on Saturday, which was pretty fun. Brother Morton had to leave early though, so he could go to a "gourmet hot-dog festival." We were intrigued so we texted him after asking if the local missionaries could go crash the festival.  He told us we could but he told us it was a lot smaller than he had anticipated. We got over there and it was pretty much just one hot dog stand. But it was 4 dollars so we went and got ourselves some hot dogs. They were honestly probably the best hot dog I've ever had. It had corn relish and this tomato aioli sauce and it was amazing. Heatherlys is what it is called. While we were eating our hot dogs, Brother Morton texted us saying he had some service for us. So we hopped over there and they were going to open their pool that day. They had a cover on top of it but it had collected a bunch of water over the winter. So we got all the leaves off and found a ton of frogs. So naturally we decided to catch them all and throw them in a bucket. We caught somewhere around 15 to 20 frogs. It was pretty fun. We then went with Brother Morton and dumped them in a pond thing. Brother Morton is probably one of my favorite members. He is hilarious. 

Yesterday was Victoria Day so we didn't have p-day yesterday. But The Penny's had us over for dinner so we could catch their fish. They are moving to a different house, still in the area but they aren't bringing the fish. Only two fish were caught. I caught one and Simon caught one. Simon put his on the ground while he went to grab his phone to take a picture and it got in the pond again. So I cleaned mine up and Sister Penny cooked it up for dinner. It tasted pretty good. And it was fun catching a fish. 

Tatjana the girl who got her mission call, and is leaving in like three weeks, texted us this morning and she has a friend who wants to learn about the gospel. It is pretty sweet that she is already doing missionary work. 

I put a hammock up in our apartment. Pretty pumped for that. It is nice to relax. I was reading the bible one morning while I was in there, (I fell asleep while reading Isaiah and woke up to find my scriptures open to James.) I read chapter 4 in James and verses 7-10 are the ones that stuck out to me. 

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

Being on a mission, I really have had to put myself aside and put my trust in the Lord. I know for certain that he has been there for me every step of the way and he has helped me so much more than I could ever imagine. 

Yep. I hope you all have a great week. 

Loves
Elder Talbot 

Elder Tarter, Elder Talbot, and the Morton's Dog

Elder Tarter, Brother Morton, and Elder Talbot

 Cedar and Lila Penny

Copy and Paste

So last week Elder Tarter copied my email, so I am just returning the favor this week. :)

Here's what Elder Tarter had to say:

Well, after weeks of tracting and searching we have finally found one! A BBQ!! Full working condition, and after trading in an old propane tank for a new one we have fire and so be prepared for some pictures next week of some grilling action. hahahaha this week was amazing! Orangeville is really starting to pick its head up after having sisters here for a year. hahahaha just kidding sisters are great! We had two investigators at church, met a new member referral and were able to set one girl on date for baptism! And even through all that we still had time for some service and a meeting in Toronto all day on Wednesday. Take that Elder Moon hahahaha;) just kidding again! But it really was a good week, and I did take pictures too!

Monday was really awesome! After we finished emailing we went and threw some hatchets and tomahawks at a member's arena thing. He runs a business called Far Shot which is a warehouse that he has converted into Arrow Dodgeball/ Hatchet, knive, and tomahawk throwing. Arrow dodgeball is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr7iD3pjmSU. It is really a lot of fun! I am so glad that Brother Borg trained me in hatchet throwing through all the years of scouts because when it came down to our competition, it just wasn't even close. I beat all three other missionaries and had like 50 points over them. After that I got a haircut and I will attach those pictures as well.

Tuesday we helped Phillip out again at his business. It looks really good. this week we shoveled a lot of gravel into a wheelbarrow so that he could make a parking lot level or something. Canada is being really picky with what he can have and what he can't.

Wednesday we had meetings all day in Toronto. Left our apartment at 6:30 and didn't get to the chapel until 9:30 then had zone conference where we learned a lot about how we can be better missionaries and stuff from our mission president and his wife. That was done at 6:00 so we went and got dinner (I got my first parking ticket while at dinner) from Smokes which sells poutine that is super good! then we left Toronto and went back home and didn't get back until 8:30, long day!

Thursday and Friday we did some more service and had a few appointments to teach people.

Saturday morning we played basketball with some young men then changed and found our BBQ then had dinner.

And Sunday was an amazing Mother's Day service. A lot of the mothers and grandmothers left crying which is okay, really. And then we got to call home and that was amazing too! 

It has been amazing. I know that the church is true! The Book of Mormon is a perfect book about a perfect man and will help each one of us personally. I know that from my own experience. Thanks for all the support you all give me! I would especially like to thank my mother (this is starting to sound like a Grammy acceptance speech) for everything that she has done for me in making me who I am today. Love you all and thanks! 

Elder Tarter/Talbot

Referrals, Getting Creative With the Youth, and the Pizza Incident

It rained. Every single day. All week. Super lame. I really hope it stops.

I don't have too much time this week so here we go with the highlights. 

We finally met with Jabelle, our media referral from freaking forever ago. She was on vacation or something for like a month. We finally met with her and she brought a friend. They are both 20ish and both super interested and willing to change if they get their own witness. It was super cool. We met them in Brampton cause Margerie lives past Brampton so it was in the middle and we met in a weird coffee shop with them. It was fun. 

We got fed pizza Wednesday. It was sweet. 

We had District meeting about Patriarchal Blessings and it was super awesome, especially cause I am still new to the whole thing. I didn't get mine till the Thursday before I left for my mission and so it was a sweet meeting. I have never really thought about it in certain ways and I didn't think about it then, but the blessing is literally God talking to me giving me direction in my life. It was sweet. We also went to lunch with Elder Beddes and his companion. They both really wanted to have pizza so we went to Little Caesar's and we all got a pizza. Which Elder Tarter, without consulting me, got the crazy bread pizza which basically is they dump butter and garlic all over a regular pizza. I ate like three slices and I felt like crap. BUT cause of peer pressure from Elder Beddes and Elder Tarter we all challenged each other to eat the whole thing. So I did. And I wanted to die on the way home.

We played basketball with the Morton's on the same day as the pizza incident. I played awful. I felt like I had a brick in my stomach. I also couldn't shoot. But it was fun and I got to work off some of the pizza. 

To help some of the youth, we are starting weekly sports. So we played basketball again. This time, I had the pizza out of my system and could move. There were a bunch of people there and it was a blast. There are some really good ballers in our ward, including Bishop Penny. He is like freaking Amar'e Stoudemire, it is crazy. 

We also met with Alyssa and her mom and brother. It was fun talking to them and we kind of had Alyssa and Jordan teach their mom the restoration. It was fun. The spirit was there super strong and Alyssas mom is going to start coming to church all the time. 

There was a broadcast for Northeastern area and it was super good. If you guys can watch it you should. I have no idea if it is available or not though. 

I don't have my camera but I also didn't take any pictures. 

Loves

Elder Talbot

The Two Man Wrecking Crew and the Beast from Idaho

I don't have anything to report about the weather. It was pretty tame and nice this week.

Elder Tarter is a beast. He is from Boise, Idaho. He played rugby and soccer in high school. He started his mission a transfer before me and was in downtown Toronto, then went to St Thomas. His freaking birthday is today. He is just barely turning 19. 

This week was busy again with service and other stuff. We did service again for the member's son. We are going to go do some more service this week and be fairly pushing about him investigating. He doesn't want to go to church until he is living church standards and what not, so we are hopefully going to help him realize that the process of getting to church can help him get to the standards. We painted more stuff for Sister Zumbach's friend. The Zumbach's are doing a really good job with her and trying to get her to church. 

We spent a bit of time this week trying to organize the whole area cause the missionaries before left it unorganized, which is pretty annoying. We had dinner with the Templeman's this week. They have 4 young boys that are all pretty funny. Sister Templeman loves feeding us so she made a ton of burritos. It was pretty sweet. When we got to sharing the message, their oldest boy Noah, who I think is 8, sat with us and helped us with the message. He pulled Mosiah 2:17 off the top of his head. It was pretty sick. 

So like 6 weeks ago,Tatjana, the oldest Zumbach daughter, put her papers for her mission in and it just barely came Wednesday. Last week she was freaking out that it hadn't come yet but it arrived finally. Her call was really weird cause it came in French so I didn't really know what was going on. But she got called to the Canada Edmonton Mission to speak English. Pretty Cool.

We went with Brother Lalonde to go visit Alyssa and her mom. We were a little worried about her cause Alyssa's grandma is going on a mission and she was the one that would bring Alyssa to church and do all the other church stuff. But Alyssa has really been, for a lack of better words, pressuring her mom to fill in for her grandma. Her mom came to church yesterday so I am thinking she is going to be filling in for the Grandma. That was kind of confusing I think, hopefully you guys got it though.

On Saturday there was a ward potluck and after the whole thing all lot of young men and leaders stayed to play some basketball. It was probably some of the best basketball I've played on my mission. Everybody was going hard and playing really well. Robert Morton from an email two weeks ago? I think I mentioned him. We were on the same team for a lot of it and we were a two man wrecking crew. It was pretty sick. 

Yep. Elder Beddes is my district leader now. He was probably my favorite zone leader which is sweet. He is beast.

Favorite Scripture this week is Mosiah 2:17, inspired by Noah. It says, "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." It is such a simple verse that really shows the importance of helping people. Service is one way that I've found on my mission that has made me happier. 

Ooh and last Monday we did some service for Brother McDonald who owns an archery dodgeball/knife throwing/tomahawk throwing place. Which is sweet and a ton of fun. 

Love
Elder Talbot 

Knife throwing

Tomahawk throwing

Mission call for Sister Zumbach

Elder Beddes

Elder Tarter