Skyler’s New Area
Elder Bennett and Elder Rushton wearing the wolf shirts.
Ni Hao! Or as the white folk say, Hello! It has been another crazy transfer week, but I made it through and I’m sitting here e-mailing inside the British Columbia School of Law; so I guess that means I’m still in one piece. Elder Buchanan is a really good companion and New Westminster is the definition of an urban jungle. Seriously, I keep getting lost! #Citylife
So I am on transit again for the second time. But this time, there are actually enough people that use the public transportation to make it efficient for missionaries! We are in the Burnaby family ward and there are four sets of missionaries serving in this ward. Other than the Vancouver family ward, that is the most missionaries in one ward in the mission. There are three sets of Elders and one set of sisters. Lots of missionaries! There is also a Chinese ward and a Korean ward that meet in our building. They have their own sets of missionaries. Burnaby is a pretty hopping chapel on Sunday’s! The Coquitlam Korean Elders are our district and we saw them yesterday at church and we decided to all play tennis today! So that should be fun.
It has been raining pretty much non-stop since I got here and some of the puddles on the street are HUGE! I just know I’m going to get splashed walking around one of these days…
We gave a blessing to a less active member the other day and he came to church yesterday for the first time in a long time! That was one of our biggest successes this week. Another big success we had was a fireside with the youth from the ward last night. Their speaker they had bailed on them, so they asked all the missionaries from the ward to talk about themselves and why we came on missions and whatnot. So that went super good and then the youth asked us questions which also went great! This ward in the past has had some really apostate missionaries, so the ward’s trust level is pretty low. But now they’ve got some really good missionaries here and we are working hard to build that trust back up. Last night’s fireside was the first step towards doing that if you ask me! On Saturday we were walking home and this homeless lady that was just about to go to sleep saw us and waved us over. She then pulled out a full box of Tim Horton’s donuts and let us have two each! Somebody had just bought them for her and she said she would never be able to eat them all. It also turns out that she is a member! She said that she prefers being homeless as opposed to paying a super high rent (which is every apartment here) and not having money for food. She asked for a book of Mormon, which we gave her, and then we went on our way! #Citylife!!
We have visited a lot of less-active members that live in care homes since I got here too, and let me just say that I will NEVER go into one of those places!!! We were leaving one of them and this old lady was trying to pull her wheelchair over to us as we unlocked a door to leave and she was like, “Help me get out of here!!!”
Elder Buchanan and I looked at each other… and then just left. —It IS what all the signs and nurses said to do… but when I get old and I ask my kids to “get me out of here”, they’d better not just walk out and be like, “See you next month Dad!” Hear that future children?? You’d best not leave your old man in a care facility or I’m taking you out of the will!
Well there are some highlights from my week for ya! Life in New Westminster is pretty different from what I’m used too, but all has been pretty good since I got here! Hopefully I’ve got more crazy stories for you all next week! Love you all! Have a great week!
–Elder Rushton The Third
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