Little Miracles

HEY! 

This was a good week this week.... we were super busy again! I guess that is a missionaries dream... to always be busy haha! This week we were able to teach one of our investigators named Joyce. We actually taught her 3 days in a row at a members house, it was great! We invited her to be baptized and she said she would pray about it so that's exciting! 

We also did quite a bit of finding this week. We were out street contacting and this lady was walking toward us. I said hi and all the sudden she was like "hey are you missionaries, can you come visit me tomorrow?" Then she just blurted out her name and address and a time. It was GREAT! haha. We went over but she was busy so were going back next week. Hopefully it works out. 

We also got to bake some Christmas cookies with Pattie, that was pretty fun! the cookies tasted great too! 

There were so many small miracles this week. I am so grateful for those small little blessings that God sends to each of us. I think that sometimes as people we always look for the big blessings and the big miracles, but really we need to realize that we are blessed each and every day. Every time  we make a good choice or do something kind, God blesses us! There are so many things to be grateful for! 

I love you all and I'm grateful for your support! Have a great week!

Love Elder Farnsworth

Christmas Devotional

What a week!!!! 

This week was kinda crazy! The first little bit was just like a normal week. We had P-day then district meeting and all that good stuff, but then the end of the week we had the Christmas devotional broadcast. Elder Ringger and I for the past two weeks have been putting together this big event for the Church's Christmas devotional broadcast. We made invitations and posters and put them up all over town and handed out tons of invitations. We made this huge display for the Christmas initiative. We were coordinating everything with the members for this thing to work. It was a ton of work. It was really just me and Elder Ringger with really no party planning experience and somehow we made this thing work haha! I now understand why we have relief society presidents, and other people in wards with callings with regards to planning events and things.  Planning takes a lot of work haha! 

So anyway Sunday rolls around and we had a great church meeting. There were 15 people there, and NO visitors. That's a record haha! We had testimony meeting and it was a little interesting but the spirit was so strong, it really was such a good meeting. After church we went over to the United Church and volunteered at an event they were doing and then we came back to our church to finish setting up for the devotional. It was crazy. We set up everything for the broadcast and it was all working great and then like 5 minutes before it started the broadcast just stopped working. It was like pausing on the computer. So anyway we both panicked haha and we switched everything over to the satellite super quick and we were praying like crazy that it was all going to work out -- and it did! I was pretty stressed haha but it turned out great. We had 30 people attend and 10 of them were non members. One was a family of 3 that we are hopefully going to start teaching. It really just goes to show that if you put work into something and try your hardest, God is going to be there to help you and it will all work out! 

Well I hope everyone has a great week! thanks for all your love and support. Love you all! 

Love Elder Farnsworth

The results of hard work putting together the Christmas Devotional presentation.

Senior Couple Arrives

Hey this week! How was everyone's Thanksgiving? 

Our week was really good... we even got Thanksgiving dinner. On Thursday we went over to some members house is the Falls and had Thanksgiving with them. It was really nice of them, but holy cow it was a pretty sketchy dinner haha. The house was real nasty and there was some weird things going on with the food, but we ate any way and we didn't get sick. The blessing of the food was answered haha! It was really nice of them to invite us over though so we appreciated that! 

This week we had the senior couple come. They are the BEST! Their names are Elder and Sister Walton, and they are from Lethbridge Alberta. They are in their mid 60's so their even pretty young. They are really great though, they are going to be a huge strength to this area. We had a board game club this week on Friday and 8 people showed up!!!! We were so excited, usually there is only three of us there so this was pretty good haha! On Sunday we also had a training on a new program were doing called the rescue initiative and it went really well. We even had 15 people at sacrament meeting. I repeat 15 it was great!!!! I think this transfer will be a good one. We have the Christmas devotional broadcast this week and were starting a new Christmas initiative also so things are really looking up! 

I love being a missionary, its such a blessing to take part in the Lords work full time, sometimes its exhausting and sometimes I don't want to go on, but I know the Lord is helping us. He is guiding us, and he is really hastening his work! This is the most important work in the world today. During the Christmas season its so easy to talk about Christ and about church. I would invite all of you to take advantage of this time of year and share the gospel. I can't even explain the feelings that you will have and the blessings that will come. 

I love you all!!! Have a great week! 

Love Elder Farnsworth

Happy Thanksgiving

 District saying good-bye to Elder Elwood who was transferred.

"Missionaries are weird." according to Eli.

Temple Re-Dedication

Hey everyone! 

This has been a great week. We got two things of good news this week. First off Fort Frances is getting a senior couple!!! It will be so nice to have a senior couple here, they are going to be a huge help and a great support to the branch here. Second, we got transfer calls and me and Elder Ringger are both staying in Fort Frances this transfer, so no big changes this time around. It will be nice to not have to change before the holidays come. 

Other than that it snowed this week so that has been fun. We shoveled some walks and things like that. This weekend we had the Montreal Quebec Temple Re-dedication. It was great! We got to go to all three sessions to be the priesthood holders that were there and it was amazing. I felt so spiritually uplifted. It also amazed me how much the church actually felt like a temple during those three sessions. I loved it! I gained a few insights from the talks that were given. 

1. They compared the temple to a mountain, they said that usually temples are built on mountains, but the temple represents a mountain because it shows how it can be a climb for us spiritually. They talked about how sometimes it is like climbing a mountain of trial to get a temple recommend but also how when we go to the temple it requires us to rise to a new sense of commitment and spirituality. It was really good! 

2. The people you stand proxy for when you are in the temple, they love you, they appreciate you, and they will always remember you and what you did for them. They talked about how those people that we do ordinances for are present when we go through the temple for them. They also talked about how because we helped them, they will help us and can teach and be with our ancestors that need to learn and need to gain these ordinances in the spirit world. I never thought about that before, but its really a neat thought. 

3. They said when you  leave the temple the one thought you should always have is when can I go back. They also said whenever you think of the temple... SMILE :) 

It was a great experience to participate in the Re-dedication.  I loved it! 

Well I hope you all have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving! Love you all!

Love Elder Farnsworth

Welcome to Atikokan

Hey everyone, another week has come and gone! Its crazy how fast the time flies bye! 

This week wasn't too exiting. On Tuesday we had a district meeting and then had exchanges.  They went pretty well. I stayed in Fort Frances and Elder Elwood from I Falls came to spend the day with me. We had a good time and were able to do some good work. We talked to an atheist guy on the street... that was interesting haha! 

On Thursday we drove out to Atikokan. It is like an hour and a half drive. We drove there to see one of our investigators and to visit some of the Atikokan branch members  there. It was a little sad... our investigator totally lunched us. But we did get to see some members and things so it was ok! 

The highlight of this week...remember the girl Ashly in Moose Jaw? She got baptized!!!! I talked to Elder Baumann and he said everything went great! She also has a temple recommend already and is going to the temple this week! I am so happy for her. She will be a great member! 

Well everyone have a great week! Love ya all! 

Love Elder Farnsworth

Oh Canada . . . How I love your weather!

HEY! 

Well this week was a pretty typical week. Nothing to exciting. We did have a big zone training meeting on Wednesday so that was pretty exciting. Me and Elder Ringger planned for and then carried out the whole meeting. It took a lot of time to get everything all ready but it went really well so that was good. It was also great to see all of the missionaries in our zone, they are really some great elders and sisters. I remember when I first came out on my mission I was so shy and I would always get nervous when we had big meetings, but now I love them! It is so good to be around other missionaries, to hear from them, to learn from them, and to have a good time with them. I love our zone :) 

Other than that this week we tried to do a lot of finding. We walked around quite a bit and even did quite a bit of tracting. Nothing has come from it yet... but soon!!! The weather this week was definitely not too good. It rained so much!!!! I was so sick of the rain by the end of the week. I wish it would just snow cause the snow isn't as wet and messy. When it rains you just get soaking wet and then your freezing cold on top of it. Oh Canada how I love your weather haha! 

Our area is doing alright, it has definitely been a struggle trying to get people to teach here. A lot of the people have not been keeping their appointments and things so that is kinda rough, but we keep trying! It is so interesting here too, cause our whole branch are recent converts and they have all been baptized within the last 3 years so they all have really new testimonies and there all trying to figure out how things run and work so we work with them a lot and try to help them out. It is good though, I do love this area! 

Well I hope you all have a great week! Love you all! 

Elder Farnsworth

Eli at ZTM

Eli with Elder Ence and Elder Ringger

Eli and his new best friend Smokey

Exchange Week

Well this was a great week! 

On Tuesday we got to drive up to Kenora and do exchanges with the missionaries up there. We had a really good time with them. Kenora is a beautiful place, it is northern Ontario so there are tons of trees and mountains and lakes and its really nice! It was kind of funny, I was on exchanges with a missionary named Elder Hirschi. He has only been out about 3 weeks. Anyways he and I went street contacting and tracting. It rained on us the whole entire time haha! It was fun though, we found some really good people and definitely had some good experiences! 

On Thursday we drove from Kenora to Winnipeg for a MLC, we drove like 2 and a half hours to get there and then we had a GREAT MLC. It was 6 hours long.... so that part kinda stunk but it was great we learned so much! We had two men there from the missionary department in Salt Lake and they taught us a lot of great things. We talked a lot about the proper way to plan and how extremely important it is as missionaries to plan and prepare for our days and weeks. But he explained how important a skill that was for our whole lives, it was really good. We also talked a lot about baptism and the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. It was great what they taught us. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the plain and precious truth that each one of us need. That is why the Book of Mormon is so important. It teaches us those plain and precious truths. We talked about how each step in the gospel of Jesus Christ is helping to prepare us for the next step, and eventually the whole gospel prepares us to live with god in a fullness of joy! 

We also talked about how throughout each of the missionary discussions our main message is centered on how the heavens are open and how we can receive personal revelation for ourselves to know that these things are true! It was a great MLC! 

After the MLC we drove 4 hours home... lots of sitting and driving the first part of this week. Then on Friday we had the assistants come and do exchanges, I was with Elder Joncas. We had a great day! We went out and walked around a ton! We talked to a lot of people and found quite a few potential investigators so that was great! 

Halloween was pretty dumb... we had to be in by 6 and then we were supposed to clean our apartments.  Ours was pretty clean haha but we also had to take KS so really nothing exciting there. 

I hope you all have a great week! I love you all.  Don't forget the gospel is true and it will bless our lives as we continue to faithfully live it! 

Love Elder Farnsworth