Loving and Lifting

This week was a great week! It was amazing to Skype to family and talk with everyone! I hope you all had a great week! For Christmas we had to cancel one of our dinner appointments with a member due to some events that we could not control but that wasn't too bad. We spend Christmas dinner helping a less fortunate family prepare a Christmas meal and have a nice night. Even though it was't a traditional Christmas it was very memorable and easily my favorite one yet! The family we spent time with is a less active family that has their struggles but they are trying to change for the better. I have never had a more enjoyable Christmas than this one spent serving the Lord and doing his work. I have also come to personally find out that serving him is one of the best ways to remember him as long as it is done in the proper manner. This past eight months have been some of the most rewarding and challenging time I have had. 

The thing that made this Christmas most memorable was mostly spending it helping others. Though most of the time was spent attempting to talk to who were people quickly walking to their Christmas destination and having no luck with it or helping other people it brought more joy to our lives and the lives of others (maybe more annoyance than joy right now for the random people we talked to on the street :) In he awkward situations in all this an interesting paradox is found which our Mission president talked about during the all mission Christmas conference we had on the 22nd. He talked about the paradoxes of discipleship. One of them (they are all seen int he life of Jesus Christ) is the famous paradox of finding oneself while losing oneself.  This is something that I have come to love in my life. Service is something that we can all do. My personal thoughts on this is that The Savior is telling us that unless we lose ourselves in helping other we will not be ale to reach our full potential. Men are that they might have joy and helping others is one of the few things that gives joy to both parties and helps out both parties. 

Though it can be hard to find time to do this. With all the things that we have to do in life it's hard to carve out some time to help someone! Though our Savior was the prime example of this. While we might not go about healing the sick in the same ways as he did we can still help the sick, the comfortless or the needy even if it means just giving them a call. 

While we can't help everyone the church was provided a means to help people that you can't see! Fast offerings are an amazing way to feed people in need. 

Though as you might notice this doesn't answer the question of how will we find time to give service. As the parable of the good Samaritan shows service is not necessarily something that comes when we want it too, at times when it's easy or when we have free time. I imagine the life of Jesus Christ. His life was very important and he new that he could not waste time. He had many important things to do! Set up his church, teach this hard headed people, and deal with the pharisees! Despite the fact that he probably had the worlds largest TO DO list he lived a life of service. (though this is not to say that he neglected things just to look at it from a different point of view) It's the calling of every member of the church to give service in some way. Don't neglect it! Always keep him in mind and look out for times to serve! I know you will find life in more abundance! It's a promise from the Lord!

“Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” the Savior taught, “but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:24).

No one was beneath the Savior’s notice or too low for Him to reach out to. Just as the Savior did we love and lift others.

Heavenly Father knows our unique abilities, circumstances, and desires, and He knows how we can use them to bless others. As we draw closer to Him and seek His direction, He will help us know whom, where, and how to serve.

Thanks for everything!!!!!

-Elder Sorensen

- I couldn't fit all 15 bags of chips so two had to do! Thanks for all the love from everyone!

-Things we made for some of our amis.

A Canadian Christmas

Sadly this week I was sick for most of the week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with lots of goodbyes because Elder Pryor was going home and Thursday to now I have been sick. So it's been a slow week. Going 100 miles per hour then to 0 miles per hour leaves you rather board when you are sitting at your desk studying for the 6th hour in a row... thankfully we were able to get some missionary work done and get some lessons in. That's why 'it'snowfun' (it's-no-fun) HA! anyway cheesy puns aside.

So the missionaries in this area have been working with a family for a long time. It's a family that has had a hard time but they are great. In this past transfer I have seen a fair amount of growth and it has been such an amazing experience. They are not your typical LDS family but I look forward to our lessons twice a week not because of the smell of smoke (They are making some good efforts to stop and are starting the 12 steps to addiction recovery), the random topics that come up due to ADD or the family fights in the middle of the lessons. It's how much they are will to change and work on everything despite all the hard times that they are going though. i'ts amazing to help people along the their path! Loving the mission life!!

Borscht and roofs!

Bonjour,

Things are still going along just fine here in the small town Quebec. Things are still rolling along. Despite that this town is twice the size of Talent it has less things to do (Don't ask me how...) but the member here are great. So the work is still going along. 

Still a quiet week but last Saturday we had a fun time doing some service. A member found out that his roof had a leak so with a slight break in the weather we spend a day and re-did his roof. The work wasn't too bad over all. No one got hurt. We had some lessons planned but they all randomly canceled last minute... So we ended up helping take down and re shingle up the roof. They had only a couple people helping so if we were not there the roof would not have been finished for the next batch of rain. 

We had a Russian meal called Borscht. It's basically Russian stew. It has a whole cabbage, beets, turnips, onions, carrots, beef and a little bit of sour cream.. It's basically beet soup. Though the Russian family said they would eat it all the time back in Russia but now they put more beef in it because they have more money now. It was surprisingly good. At first it was rather scary looking. I'll put a picture of it at the end

Also we have a new Christmas initiative and I hope that you have heard of it!  

https://www.mormon.org/christmas 

If the missionaries in your area have not given you any then ask for a couple pass-along cards I'm sure that they will be more than happy to give you some! In our little branch we talked about it in the 3rd hour and put out around 60 cards and everyone took them to handout! So my challenge is to ask for a couple and pass them out! You don't really have to talk about anything awkward just say here is a cool video I found about Christmas I think you would enjoy it! I have already seen some amazing work done here from just that!

 

Don't have a lot of time! Thank you!

Don't forget to look at the site yourself! It really cool and the videos are amazing!

-Elder Sorensen.

Bur, Thanksgiving!

Things are starting to get rather cold here. It has snowed some more though not a lot yet. Thankfully. The days are getting shorter but that's all expected. Nothing major to talk about. It was a rather slow week. How was Thanksgiving?! We were going to make our own little thanksgiving meal but a none member investigator randomly invited us over for dinner that night! They are Quebecois of (course) so they did not know about American thanksgiving BUT they randomly decided to have a full chicken (Not quite a turkey but what ever), mashed potatoes, gravy, and some other vegetables. Very random but super cool! So the next day we had are own little thanksgiving dinner (but we had chicken again because a whole turkey was too much money) Aside from that everything was built up for a rather regular week. 

I sent off something last week. Though our P-day was changed because we had Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday. It's a little odd here because the Quebecois have a lot of pride in Not being a Canadian because they are very much Quebecois. So basically no one does anything during that holiday. Some Canadians that are just living in Quebec will group together, shoot off some fire works and have a big meal. Though one American family that wanted to embrace Canada had thanksgiving during the Canadian time and invited us. It was rather strange having it this early but it was very nice. No one here puts up thanksgiving decorations though and that was a bit of a bummer. They do have Halloween here so those decorations make up for that.

Our teaching pool of amis (investigators in French. It's shorter in French) has dropped a little due to some baptisms, people moving and some churches preaching that Mormons are of the devil but we had a really cool experience! With our extra time we have been doing service at the Amrée du Salut  (Don't remember the English version but they have them in the US). Every Wednesday, Jeudi, and Friday we go to serve food to people in need and last Sunday we served them a special meal for Canada's Thanksgiving. We have been giving service there for a while now and it is an amazing opportunity to contact! It's about the only way to effectively talk to people here because they do not like to talk about religion except when we render service. Then they will open up a little . When we were cleaning up last Sunday after the meal a random person came up to us and said that he had talked with the missionaries on the street before and wasn't interested at the time but he was so impressed at how we were giving service so often he decided that he would talk to us now. He even said that he wanted to start meeting with us! That's unheard of here! We did not have a lot of time to talk with him before we were sweped away do continue working so we ended up not getting his contact info! We were bummed but we knew we would see him the following Wednesday so we could get it then. The next day we were in the middle of companionship studies and a formerly less active family that we had been working with a lot called us up and said that she had a friend that was currently at her house asking a lot of questions about the church. We jumped in the car and whipped on over as fast as we could without going over the overly cautious speed limit that these narrow street have and when we got into the apartment here was this guy that we had talked to before! He said he was just over because the members son (I'll call him Léo for now) invited him over after school. After we talked with him for a while he said that he had been praying for the Lord to help him and he had been looking for a church. He thought that we were not interested in him because we did not ask to meet with him so when he found out that Léo went to church he started asking questions not knowing that he was LDS also. When we came in he was very exited! It just goes to show how following the commandments of our heavenly father, even when they are not the basic 10 commandments can really help! So I ask you, when was the last time you gave service?! It's something that Elder Utchdorf (of which I'll talk on next time) talked a little about during the first talk of general conference. It's a basic that we can't ignore. Even though we had some extra time on our hands we still had to make room for service. I challenge you to find some more time to give service even if it is only a little bit. Even though we had a little extra time the mission life is still busy and it was hard at first to make room to do it. We had to sacrifice some time that we could have set up some more member missionary mission plans or done a whole host of other things but we knew that charity is important and that we needed to carve out more time to serve other just as our example in life, the very person that we have promised to be like, Jesus Christ did. I know that through that you can really open the windows of Heaven even more and find more of that Christ like love for everyone that we must have! We all live busy lives but just as it says in the ever famous 1 Nephi 3:7 we can do it because our heavenly Father will make it possible. 

Transfer, From late September

We has another funeral last Saturday for a newly baptized (Baptized in March) women who passed away from cancer. I along with my companion were asked to be the Paul Bearer for the service (even though she was cremated but that was a neat experience) . It was a very well done service.   Also last Saturday we had transfer calls  I'm staying here in Sherbrooke still which is awesome. It should start looking very pretty here soon due to fall approaching. I'm starting to pick up on some Spanish already which is awesome! It should not be too long till I'm able to contact in Spanish. French is still coming along. That's about it for me everything is still going well!

The Sherbrooke city hall, an image of the county side, and my view out our window.

-Elder Sorensen

I will get him help, I promise

Well Erik went off into the world and gave in to temptation! Here is a picture of him drinking maple syrup - like an Oregon sailor - straight from the tree. Who wants to see how straight of a line he can walk in?

Temple!

Well, continuing my trend as most behind big sister EVER, here are some pictures from Erik from the end of August. He and his companions had the opportunity to get a peak at the Montreal Temple while it was under construction. Cheers!