Letters from Canada: C'est la vie.

I honestly don't even know what happened this week! Sister Sandberg and I can't remember anything. So this will be a great e-mail.

Isn't it weird that it's been more than a year since the age-change announcement that changed my life?! And now I'm 6 months into my mission in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Life is good.

Ready for an embarrassing story?

Last week after we e-mailed, Sister Sandberg and I walked home to grab some lunch. She was in the kitchen and I sat down on the couch and we were talking about how are families were doing. Then I saw an ab wheel sitting on the floor, so I thought I'd give it a shot since the last time I tried it was several months ago. I was rolling back on forth on it and realized that I was way better at it than last time I tried it! So I got really excited and started acting like an idiot on it, rolling back and forth as fast as I could, and then BAM face-planted it right into the ab wheel. I immediately jumped up and didn't say anything because Sister Sandberg was in the other room and didn't see me biff it. So I ran to the bathroom because I could taste the blood and saw that my tooth went through my lip! Not all the way through, but it was bad. So I was just going to wipe it off because dang it was embarrassing that I fell on an ab wheel because I was being a loser on it! So I felt with the blood, and it was still bleeding a little bit, but it was fine. And Sister Sandberg still didn't know. And then it started swelling and I had a fat lip all through Thanksgiving and had to tell everyone what happened. So I'll send a picture of it, although it is after the swelling went down a ton haha. I embarrass myself.

Recently Sister Sandberg and I have been asking ourselves why we're companions. We've been wondering why God wants the two of us serving in Fredericton together at this specific time--what it is He expects of us. I read this scripture in Helaman 10. In the scriptures, the prophet/missionary Nephi has just been falsely accused of murder, and has shown the people signs that he is a true prophet of God. He's walking home after he's been thrown into prison, after all the people in his city just tried to arrest him. And God tells him this:

"Blessed art thou, [Sister Lewis], for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments.

"And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will."

After this, he stops walking home and immediately returns to teach some more. I love the word "unwearyingness" here. The most fulfilling days on my mission are the ones that I work unwearyingly, when I work when my feet hurt, my body's tired, I'm hungry, and people won't even listen. Those days are the most important, because they're the ones that determine my faith. Either I move closer to God and work through the discouragement, or I choose to wrap up the day early and go give my body a break, because hey, I worked hard anyway, right?

We had one of those days this last week. Here, the hour between 8 and 9 PM is the hardest. It's already dark out, and the city shuts down. You can't knock because people are either asleep, won't answer the door because it feels later than it is, or will answer and be really grouchy that we're "knocking on the door at near midnight!" So Sister Sandberg and I found ourselves at the church at 8PM on aSunday night. The city was completely shut down, our plans and back-up plans had all fallen through, and we had absolutely no more ideas. It was at the point where if we just went home, we would only get there half an hour before curfew, so we wouldn't really be wasting time. It would've been so easy to go home and call it a night and get in bed a little earlier. And anyway, it would be good to get in bed a little earlier because we're always so exhausted from riding our bikes anyway.

But instead, we dropped to our knees and prayed. We told our Heavenly Father that we couldn't do our plans anymore, and that we still had an hour to work and had no idea what to do for it. We told Him that we weren't going to go home early, that we were going to work until the end. We asked Him for help knowing what could be effective at that time of day. Then we got up and got going, not knowing beforehand the things that we should do.

It would be nice to say we went out and happened to find someone who really needed the gospel who we would never have found if we hadn't been out working. It would be nice to say it was in that last hour that we were able to pull out a lot of numbers. But actually, we went out, and we did the most effective things we could, and we talked to about two people in that entire hour. That was the best we could do. We got to our apartment at 9 and prayed again to start planning.

But we worked with unwearyingness. And I know that we were blessed because of it. I went to sleep that night feeling "mighty in word and in deed".

I love you all. Have a great week.

Sister L