Week 45 - The Life of Elder McFall

Well life is definitely going great up here for me. Yes, some times the work is slow, okay yes the work is kinda slow right now in our area. It has been a bit of a trial of our patience. We have been thinking,  you know we have both been out for a little while, we have seen success on our missions, but why can't we do that here?! Now with that said, I can put it in new perspective after the conversation we had with President Manion this week with our interviews. He pretty much said, we are doing exactly what we need to be doing and should be doing. Just because we aren't seeing the fruits of success, doesn't mean we are no longer good missionaries! He said he went through the same thing on his mission, which was in Germany, and said that is just the nature of the work. I knew all of this, but when you hear it from your Mission President it seems to pack a little extra punch! So all is well! Nothing to complain about at all! In fact, we may even be seeing something pretty good happening soon... We were talking to our Mission President and we have a new idea that we are currently trying out and will continue to do so.. Here is how it all happened...

Sooo... Since Elder Laceste is originally from the Philippines, and speaks fluent Tagalog, why don't we use our resources? When he called me in he asked, "So Elder McFall, how do you feel about learning Tagalog?" I was just like well let's go for it! He wasn't originally aware of the number of Filipinos in the area. He has had some Stake Presidents asking for a set but hasn't been too sure... He is thinking, since there is such a high number of Filipinos here in the Edmonton area, we will become Filipino missionaries and test it out. So like I said, right now we are in the testing phase of everything, we aren't for sure doing it, but we will know by this week. We have started it a little bit so far, and while we haven't found anyone to teach yet, it has definitely brought such a new dynamic to the work here. I am pretty excited to see what will happen. So what does this mean for me? Well I am now learning Tagalog! Not sure how to really start learning a language, I am 10 months out and didn't go to the MTC for that, but I am sure it will all work out! Exciting times I say!

I will go to our investigator lesson now! Well since we only have one, okay they are a family, we spend most the time doing finding--so it is nice to have this family! They are named Lisa & Allen! They are super nice! Well we went into the lesson and it went really well. Lisa has family members that are members of the church, so she has the background with the church. We taught her the first lesson, and really explained to her the restoration, how the church we have now is the restored church of Jesus Christ, that part went well! We talked a lot on Baptism, and that is something that she does believe she needs to do. The only thing is, she thinks right now she just has too many questions to be answered before she could commit to that. It went well though! She really wants her whole family to learn what we have to share, and they are excited to be a part of it. The only hard part of all this…well she is pregnant so sometimes she doesn't feel the greatest! We will keep working at it though! We will see her again this week, hopefully we can make a lot of progress and get things going.

One other thing that happened this week was while we have been doing all of this finding, we have been focused on trying to be creative. So we went to this basketball court and started talking to all these probably 16-24 year olds.. It was pretty epic. Most of them(there were I think 8) were Muslim, and well studied at that. So they first tried to come at me to disprove what we believe, and try to prove the faults of our religion. Well there is nothin' so sweet as confounding someone with some good true doctrine! It was one of those things you see where I was sittin' on this bench, surrounded by like 5 guys, basically preaching what we believe! It was a pretty neat scene in my mind! At the end of the conversation we had really come to a much better understanding of one another... I fixed a lot of their misconceptions of our religion. Most of which were taken terribly out of context. Now while they may not have said come teach me more, we were able to help someone understand what we do believe, and allow them to understand for themselves, it was a pretty memorable thing!

Well, we will see what this week holds! We will keep on with the Bearspaw work, get that going even more, and hopefully see a rise in the Filipino work also! I will letcha know what happens! I love you all!

Love, Elder McFall