Joshua's Mission Blog: June 18, 2017 - Happy Future Fathers Day

From Dad:

Hey Josh,

Hope you had a great week! It has been a good week for me this week. My main Father's day gift was that we got a good start on our garage! Yesterday we had a crew out from our ward and we were able to get the walls and a couple of trusses up! It is very exciting to see it emerge and take shape.

I think we are happiest when we are creating and building, whether it is building a garage, or building a relationship with an investigator, or building a talent etc. Going on a mission is a great place both to build your self and more importantly and key to building yourself anyways, is building others or helping them build a testimony of the Gospel. Building a garage has a lot of preliminary steps and even now with the walls up, there is still lots to do to make it solid, weatherproof, safe and finally useful. Similarly, someone building their testimony of the Gospel and the church has lots of preliminary steps, which you are very much involved with, but then it requires more time, effort and building to make that testimony solid, fiery dart proof, safe and ultimately useful in the Kingdom as temple covenants are made to serve and build others.

It looks like we will finally be getting our driveway in this week. The machinery started to arrive and the bull dozer promptly got stuck digging our dugout, but it means they are here and it’s going to happen. No more getting stuck in the yard!

Wednesday night was a fun night for Same and Ben. Teachers Q did archery and Ben remembered some of his old skills from shooting at the bail in the back yard in Leduc. He was hitting bull’s eyes like crazy!

Sam and the Priests went on splits with the missionaries and really enjoyed it. They went tracting, but for Sam that is new and novel whereas after a while in the mission field it may not be so much. This week Sam is working on a job for Bro. Ripley doing cement work. I think he’s been able to check another profession off his list of things he’d rather not do for a living 😊

A few seed questions for you next email:

Is there an investigator we can pray for that your working with towards baptism? If appropriate, share names and descriptions.

How often do you have zone conferences? Which general authorities have visited your mission?

Tell us about your companion. How many in his family? Where is he from? What do you admire about him? What good advice does he have for you as he closes out his mission?

How often do you have member meals in your new ward? What do you do to pro-actively inspire the ward missionaries to share the gospel?

Did they do anything for the Dad’s in your ward today? (E.g. we got root beer and “Dad’s Cookies” in Devon today)

We sure love you Josh. We finally got your license in the mail and will be sending that off for real this week. Hope you have a fantastic week and remember that we pray for you daily.

Love,

Dad.

From Mom:

Dear Josh,

Dad and I both feel pretty bad we missed sending an email last week. It's not that we forgot, it's that we procrastinated until it was too late. I think there might be a Gospel principle in there somewhere. 🤔

Anyway ... to make up for it, you get TWO emails this week. Lol! And lots of pictures.

Abby and I went on a date this week and shopped at Farmer's Markets, which are just starting up again. Here, Abby is teasing Coco with a fidget spinner she bought. I don't get the fidget spinner craze. These trends come and go, I guess.

Dad, of course, is pretty excited about the garage. From the left: Ron Patrick, Dad, Kevin Daniels, Paul McKenney, Sam, and George Pomerleau. All the walls are up and we just keep moving forward. When the weather is nice, we work hard.

Here are the before and after pictures of the parging...

Sam built the pink styrofoam forms and Auntie Wendy put on the cement.

Kloe Daniels, Abby and Mia helped me weed while the men did the garage.

The weeds are choking our little seedlings and we spend time every day trying to get ahead of our garden. I had to laugh at Mia with her toque. Apparently, she was a little chilly but it also protects her head from the mosquitoes.

And on the one hot day, we went down to the lake ...

.... but a muskrat swam right up to the girls with no fear. They screamed loudly and refuse to go in the water now. 😂 Hm. We'll have to remedy that.

We absolutely love living out here. Just love. The animals and wildlife are so fun! The girls have rabbits now. Dad and the boys built a hutch that is located under the treehouse and they're pretty cute. We'll probably get some kittens in the near future to help us keep the mouse population down, too. Then, yesterday we saw a newborn fawn wander into our back field and lay down. It was still there a few hours later.

Life is pretty amazing. I'm so very grateful to your Dad, who loves the Lord and who is such a steady influence for all of us. I love my kids (including you), who are growing before my eyes into good looking, capable, hardworking adults. I see the beauty of the earth and know that God created this beautiful environment that we may learn. With all the uncertainty and questions we have in our day, I'm still really glad to be alive during this time and especially glad of the knowledge of a Savior.

I love kneeling in prayer knowing there is a listener and I love how the Lord leads and guides us as we strive to ever improve and be better.

I love you, my boy. Keep going. Keep striving. Keep learning. Keep serving. It matters.

Love you forever,

Mom

From Josh - Wow!:

From all the pictures I see from home it is amazing to me how grown up everyone is and how much has changed, its going to be interesting coming off the plane and being in a whole new world.

I just want to say how wonderful this church is, the other day we got invited in to this man's home and he gave us water and told us he truly respected us for what we did as missionaries, but then said something that really caused some righteous indignation in my heart. He said "I am sorry but I have to say from the bottom of my heart, and I don't wish to make offence, but Joseph Smith was not called of God, he was not a true prophet, he may have thought he was but he was a false prophet." my companion seemed to take it in stride and said that it was something we got a lot... but the spirit pushed within me and I knew that I could not be passive, I told him that he didn't know what he was talking about that I knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet that he truly was called by God and had restored the church of Jesus Christ on the earth once more, and the evidence of that is the Book of Mormon, I told him that I knew that the Book of Mormon was truly scripture and that if he would read it he would know from God that it was true, that Joseph Smith was given the power of God to translate it... The spirit was really strong and the man was quiet for a little bit in which we invited him to read the Book of Mormon for himself and politely excused ourselves.

I can't stress enough how important it is that we bear testimony, we cannot convince others by earthly knowledge that our message is true. and if we don't have a testimony and don't have the spirit then we will not be able to convince anyone of this truth because it has to come from God.

The other day we were asked by someone what our proudest moment on our mission has been. And I thought and I thought, and there hasn't been an achievement on my mission that I am proud of myself, because most every moment that I could be proud over has not come of me but of the Lord, by his Holy Spirit. but as I thought about it the thing that I am most grateful for is what I have learned and how humble the Lord has seen fit to make me.

All in all it was a good week. We are currently teaching the Soucy family and will be having a dinner with them on wednesday, we are trying to lead them to baptism and will hopefully be setting a date for July 15 but we will see, Don the husband has a smoking problem that he has to deal with and he works so much that we hardly are able to meet with him.

Zone Conferences happen every transfer or two, and occasionally we get a general authority, so far I have met Elder Ardurn and Elder Zebeillos I don't know if that is how you spell their names but I have also met Elder Baxter and the second counselor in the young womans general presidency because they visited Tarzana when I was there.

My companion, Elder Long:

He is from Texas, the oldest of 4 kids, he is super into Star Wars, Marvel superheroes, and is a nerd over deep doctrine in the Gospel so we have many conversations. He has told me many times that it isn't about the numbers, it is about the effect you have on people.

We have been recently trying to get into as many homes as possible to inspire many of the members to feel excited about missionary opportunities, because every member in this church is a missionary, we can all do our part.

I love you all and hope all is well in your lives.

Love,

Josh

Me with my Zone leader Elder Hale