01-04-2016

Hello and again I have no time to write. 

Know that all is well and it is now white in the Great White North and cold! 

Today it's -17 C (0-1 F). It was a very busy week and went by fast. 

Thise week is looking to be crazy too! 

Have a wonderful week! 

Sister Gardner

So we had time to come back and finish emails and so I am going to copy what I sent to the President that sums up my week a little better. :) 

Hello! I hope that you have had a great week. Our week was very busy! We have a new investigator named Addy. She speaks broken French and lots of Lingala (not sure how to spell that). She had called us to wish us a Merry Christmas but we didn't know who she was. It was an unknown number and we had missed the call. So we called her back and set up a time to meet with her. 

So we went to her apartment building and parked 2 buildings away and when we got out of the car we heard this bell going off. It reminded me of a recess bell. It was coming from an apartment next to hers.  We thought it was a little strange but went to our lesson. We told her our purpose was to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to help people accept baptism. She didn't understand, but said we could come back because she liked the spirit she felt with us. 

We left her building to find the entire street covered in flashing red and blue lights. There were fireman, paramedics, and policeman. There were all focused the apartment building that had the ringing bell. Our car wasn't in the middle of it exactly, but it was very close to it. People just kept looking at our car and had that look of who does this belong to. We tried to talk to a policeman about what had happened and if we could leave. He only spoke French and my knowledge of non-Gospel related terms is very limited. Eventually we found a fireman who spoke English. He told us that we could go. So we got in our car and left, and we still don't have any idea what happened. 

We returned to Addy's apartment a few days later and all was calm. We invited her to baptism and she said yes, although I'm not sure she fully understood we were asking her to be baptized not if she was baptized. We also learned a member in our ward speaks Lingala so we can bring him next time. 

Our other investigators are doing well. The only thing they are not doing well on is coming to church. They do all their other assignments, just not coming to church. It's so frustrating. Free Agency what a blessing, but sometimes I want to kind of take it away from people and make them do all their assignments (church, prayer, read), because I know it will help them in their lives. Alas I do not have control over that. I think we will have to have a lesson on why we come to church and such. 

We were able to meet with 2 of our recent converts of 2 years and talk about doing their genealogy so they can take names to the temple. One of them is also taking a temple prep class. They told me they would try to go as fast as they could so that they could go to the temple with me before I went home. I thought that was the sweetest thing. We shall see how that goes. 

Have a great week!

Sister Gardner