Transfers!!!

Hey all,

Thanks for the pics. I’m excited for when I can be back in the pool, it’s been a long time, haha. Although I totally agree, being 100% focused on one thing is super super nice. I love that I just don’t have to worry about anything going on except other people. Also, hope the movie was nice. We'll definitely have to watch a bunch when I get back. 

Sorry if this one's a little shorter, today was a district p-day, every so often, President can approve the mission to spend a p-day together with their districts, so we got together and played ball hockey. So much fun. I’m not too bad either, it helps to have long arms, haha. Hopefully I’ll get another chance to play in the future. President Low came and played with us, which was super awesome. He’s a pro at ball hockey, so it was lots of fun together. 

My week's been pretty good. I have to recap a bit though. Remember when I wrote and told you about the booth that we had done? Well one of the people I met there was a guy named Nelson. He’s from Brazil, and he came to Canada to learn English, so at the booth I had invited him to come to EnglishConnect, and he had said he’d come. So I emailed him the details, and I got a response from him saying he was coming and he was bringing his friend Christian, who’s also here from Brazil learning English. They loved the class, and they said it’s super cool how we believe God can help us learn English, they said they never get that at any other English class. So we set up an appointment with them to do some one on one tutoring, and so they started asking how I learned French, and I talked about how I’ve learned, and it led to a really great gospel conversation. We taught the restoration, and Nelson came to church on Sunday! He’s reading the Book of Mormon now, and praying. Super cool to see how God led him to us. We won’t keep teaching him, he belongs in the family ward, so we passed him off to one of the sets of family ward elders. (We just work with the YSA.)

Alexa is from Toronto, so since the semester just ended, she’s back there. No idea on how she’s doing, or if she has an Amazon thingy. I agree it would be a bad move though, although I think they have other names you can use to activate it. So it might not be a problem, idk.

President Low and Sister Low are probably the best at just being compassionate. They are so kind and loving to people. They truly love the missionaries. I’ve seen his concern for missionaries all the time, he’ll talk about how someone’s doing all the time with us, to see if they are alright, what more we can do to help, it’s so cool. He’s also super obedient to his leaders. He sustains our area president in all that he does. 

So my role will change a little bit, but not too much. Basically what we were doing is every other zone conference we were going too and training, and we train at MLC (mission leadership conference) which is also held transferly. From now on, we’re not going to all the zone conferences, it’s just MLC that we’re training at. We’ll still go on exchanges with the zone leaders, but that just always happens in our area (they both come and we book stuff that we can take them along) instead of one set in one place and the other in the others' area. The assistants are going to have 9 exchanges once we merge! We’re going to be spending more time with the zone leaders than our comps! (Although I don’t think that will really effect me, cause I’ll be going home before there’s only one set of assistants again. 

A spiritual insight I’ve really come to see is about helping other people change, or repent. Before we can change into what we want, we have to know what we’re currently changing into. People need to know what to become. So part of it means we need to teach correct doctrine, so people can govern themselves, but another part of that means we need to help people see where they’re lacking. True doctrine isn’t really all that meaningful till it applies to you. The plan of Salvation becomes so much more important in light of the loss of a loved one. I’ve seen as a leader, sometimes I need to help people understand that they are not doing good enough before they will actually change. Of course, you need to do it with love, but if they don’t know where they’re failing, they won’t understand why we’re teaching what we are. I think a great example of this is President Nelson. He’s taught plenty of times the need to keep our bodies healthy and to treat women better, but by calling the brethren to repentance, I think it helps us understand that it is personally meaningful to us because we’re not doing good enough. President Pratt was really good at that, it’s made me understand what “calling people to repentance” means a little bit better, help people see where they need to change, and teach the correct doctrine to help them get there.

You could pray that we find some more people. That would be super nice of you. 

Love you all. Have fun on your trip dad! And I’m sure you’ll do great mom, you always do! 

Elder Marsh