Ben's Mission to Toronto

From Ben - Locked and Pinned Happy Monday! It's still cold as a fresh mint and a drink of water, but hey, it's an adventure. My goal this winter is to not complain about the cold. I've already failed on multiple occasions, but we're steadily improving. (Commenting on the cold to connect with others doesn't count as complaining either...) Either way, I'm going to need a couple dozen more layers as it slowly gets chillier and chillier.  (That is if I stay in Timmins , we find out tonight if one of us is staying or going)  From Thursday to Friday we had an exchange with some of the Elders in the district. I went with Elder Myers to Sudbury, and Elder Baines came up here to Timmins. Now, Elder Myers is a legend.  He is an ultimate challenger in the sense that he calls it as he sees it and he doesn't avoid conflict when he feels it's needed. He is adept at being himself and is confident in what he knows. So. In a nutshell, there was a lot I could learn from h...

From Ben - The Deep End Winter has finally made its way to Timmins. And boy oh boy is it chilly.  It hasn't sunk below -5° Celsius but because of the humidity in the air, when a gentle wind sets in, the chill comes and never leaves. It's so bizarre! Give me a -30° dry winter over a -10° humid one.  On the first snowfall me and Elder Hartman awoke to the sound of Gisele (our old French Grandma) shoveling snow in the front. We sprung out of bed, shocked that she was shoveling snow that we should have been, ran outside, gracefully borrowed her shovel straight from her hands, and started heave hoeing the snow off the sidewalk in front of our units.  We felt pretty good about ourselves after completing our initial task, so we decided to shovel the sidewalk of the entire Westmount unit complex. It took about an hour to complete the job. And while our backs were bent our spirits felt alive. Come to find out somebody was hired to blow the snow off the sidewalk with a high powered...

From Ben - In 3 seconds or Less It was a stellar week!  A couple of the defining moments are...  We had a lesson with this couple. They had requested a Bible a while back but became interested in the Book of Mormon during our brief exchange while talking about the Bible. So, we set up a time to meet them, asked if they could write down any questions they had, then to let us know.  After driving the hour in their direction, getting lost, and missing the address multiple times, we found their cute little house. When sat down and began to talk, the boyfriend started asking these deep doctrine questions, right outside of the gate; and we came to find out that they had done some research, had found, and were referencing a web page called   '9 Things You Should Know About Mormons Before They Knock On Your Door"  Which I thought was actually a pretty creative page name. :) However, I guess it kind of gave a distorted view because we had to answer a resounding NO t...

From Ben - "To Reach the Unreachable Star" Zone Conference is always special. However, for all the missionaries serving in Northern Ontario, it's a special kind of special.  It's a eight hour drive to Brampton total, but they don't want us to drive it in a single go.  So me and Elder Hartman instead drove six and a half hours on Wednesday to Barrie, slept the night, then drove the next one and a half to Brampton in the morning to get there on time.  Oh Nelly. It was a wild drive.  We listened to our gospel music, heard the crisp and articulate David A. Bednar deliver his Character of Christ address, snuck a few apostate naps in, and ate too much Tim Hortons.  The climax of the drive was when we decided to try to freestyle rap the first three lessons, tapping out every point, and beat-boxing for one another as we went along.  Abby and Mia, I'm rusty. You guys still have the best lyrics and beat-boxing in the family, unchallenged.  Me and Elder Hartman a...