Ben's Mission to Toronto

From Ben - Calm Suggestions It's always unexpected.  I shouldn't be surprised, but I always am, what new lessons and experiences the mission life can offer.  You'd think that all of a sudden I'd know it all, that there wouldn't be any need to grow or learn anymore! :) It is fortunately the case, that there is more to learn. It's like in a video game. It's really fun and rewarding to "level up" To get our next ability.  But it still hurts sometimes  We don't always win the boss fight, but we sure improve and learn after we have respawned and choose to challenge him again.  There were two key moments of growth this week. Both involved a bit of courage and some hard conversations.  The first time was spirit led.  You know that feeling you get in Fast and Testimony meeting? The pulpit is empty, and you wonder if you should go up.  Then the gitters begin, and a calm warmth kindly suggests you should go for it.  Same gig.  I'd been thinking ab...

From Ben - Spic and Span Last Zone Conference, I swore in my wrath that it would never happen again.  Us Elders in Timmins were going to strike fear into every companionship in Ontario, our name was going to be known.  In the clean vehicle competition. We were never going to lose again.  Every Zone Conference the Vehicle coordinator gives out gift cards to the cleanest vehicles in the mission.  I've never won.  Because we're in Timmins, it's also way harder to win because we drive 7 hours and have to bring all of our sleepover belongings.  But this time it was different, the day before we drove down, I looked at Elder Heggie, he looked at me, then we both looked at Elder Hartman and he looked at us, and we decided that we were gonna take the cake this time.  We cleaned the car spik and span the day before we left; I washed the car mats in the tub while E. Hartman and Heggie cleaned the car and got the garbage out.  We left our belongings in a Barr...

From Ben: Tears That Never Fell  Christmas is a wild time as a missionary.  It becomes more challenging to meet with members and a bit more difficult to find people to teach. Everyone's busy with Christmas shopping, family plans, and a multitude of festivities.  But I guess it also provides a cool opportunity to get creative in the ways we usually try to find people, meet with members, and contribute to the season instead of being nagging missionaries.  Tis' the season, eh?  We had a lesson with one of our recent converts in our ward. She's a young woman in Grade 9 (I think). So it's been an interesting time to try to figure out ways to connect with her in a way that's not awkward, cringy, or ineffective (I've never been a 14 year old girl in Junior high, so while it's been fun to try to empathize with some of her struggles, I straight up don't know what it's like)  We taught the 10 commandments and got to the 9th. Not bearing false witness.  Or, for...

From Ben - Three Missionaries Walk Into a Bar... I can't say I've seen this much snow in the entirety of my 20 years of existence. I've seen it come down for sure, but Timmins is quite the remarkable situation.I even saw a post that said something like 80 cm of snow had accumulated over the past couple weeks, so we just have these MASSIVE snow banks lining all the streets. 80% of all trucks in Timmins have their own plows on the front because the city can't keep up with the amount of snow removal that needs to be done. We even had to help shovel out an older member couple that were completely snowed in and couldn't leave. Kind of a fun arctic adventure though.  On Friday, we got to help our friend Robin and her dad move some things into their new house. I played the pivotal moral support role and cheered on Elder Heggie as he lifted the giant wooden desk with Robin's dad. That thing was big. But, luckily for us, so was Elder Heggie.  We finished the off task wit...