Elder Skyler Rushton at Vancouver, BC temple.
Hello friends and family! The biggest thing from this last week: Last Monday one of my companions, Elder Sanders, super sprained his ankle five minutes into our basketball game, so he’s been on crutches and really hurt all week. It isn’t broken, luckily, but it is plum colored and super big. But he’s a trooper and refuses to rest it, so we’ve been going hard all week. We were a little unfortunate this week in terms of lessons; lots of them fell through and many people just didn’t show up to their appointments. But we did have two fun exchanges–Tuesday with our district leader, Saturday with the zone leaders–that spiced up the week.
Tuesday I went with the Burnaby Elders to cover our lessons while Elder Sanders and Lunt went to get an x-ray for Elder Sanders ankle. It was a good day and I feel like we accomplished quite a bit even with the injury. It was a pretty standard week for the most part though. Our days usually go: Get up at 6:20 (so we can be exercising by 6:30), all three of us showered and dressed by 7:45, Personal study from 8-9 (rules now are that we focus primarily on the BOM and Preach my Gospel), Companionship study where we read the white handbook, “Adjusting to missionary life”, our Mission President’s weekly email, then make lesson plans for the day, do a role play for one of them, and share insights for about the last 10 minutes. Then we have to be out by 10 o’clock.
Most of our days are spent finding, talking to people on the street. We have four major areas we go to, Uptown New West, Downtown New West, Sapperton (just another part of New West) and Edmonds Street with is very southern Burnaby. There are usually people walking around, so we spend most of our time going to these places and talking to everyone–trying to set up return appointments, giving out pamphlets, BOM’s, Mormon.org cards, the works. Then we usually go home for lunch at 12ish, out by 1, go back out until 5, come back for dinner, get out by 6 and do the same until 9. Makes for some long days when you don’t have lessons, but when you do have lessons you sure appreciate them! We didn’t have many lessons this week, and some of our investigators have just disappeared, but this week should hopefully be better.
On Saturday I was with Elder Atwood in the Vancouver YSA. Definitely the best day of the week! We used to be companions too, so that helped. We taught a guy who is getting baptized today. When I was in that YSA, the very last Sunday was fast and testimony meeting and he (who has been coming for years but never got baptized) got up and basically said, “I was walking home last week from church and… I feel like it’s time to get baptized.” Miracles! So he is finally getting baptized today.
Then we taught a Chinese guy who is getting baptized on February 14th! But the craziest part of the day was that night. The day before they had found a 7th day Adventist who wanted to meet up with them “with some Elders from my church”. Elder Atwood’s companions didn’t want to go… so I got to go with him ha-ha!
We showed up for the lesson and there were four of them. Umm, well it started out good! We all started sharing how we came to know Jesus Christ. Then this Ethiopian lady out of nowhere was like, “Alright, so we can just like, ask you questions, right?” Then it turned into a bash on baptisms for the dead, the Book of Mormon’s equality with the Bible and then, of course, Sabbath day worship (which is what it ALWAYS comes back to with 7th day’s members). Elder Atwood and I were reminded of the good old days when we were companions ha-ha. Eventually we had to go to another lesson, but we did the best with what we had and in the end it wasn’t so bad.
So that’s pretty much the week for ya! I’m out of time this week, but I just want you all to know how much I love and cherish you. Without your friendships, I don’t think I could do what I have to do all day. I love you all, let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Have a great week!
–Elder Rushton The Third
Leave a Reply