Twinkle Winkle Little Star

Salutations my wonderful friends and family! I don't have to much time, so this weeks email will be pretty short. 

It was transfer week, so we went around for Elder Stringam to say goodbye to a lot of the families in the ward. At one of the families houses we got attacked by water balloons. Luckily Elder Stringam was the only one to get hit haha

We did a little bit of tracting

Found a Canadian Flag

And Said our goodbyes to the members of the zone that were leaving

And then said goodbye to the gang

Then Elder Stringam was off to Airdrie :'(

But now Elder Winkle has been adopted into the tripanionship!

He's an English chap raised in Scotland, so he has a very confusing accent haha. Nevertheless, we're excited to have him with us!

This week we got to help with another move. Thankfully President transferred Elder Manarii into the zone to do all of the heavy lifting now that Elder Stringam is gone

We also got to help out at our ward Pioneer Picnic activity! We were in charge of the candy table. I believe that that was an inspired job.

And on Sunday, Ben got confirmed! We're so excited for him, and know that he's on the right path!

Spiritual thought of the week!

"The gospel of the Savior is not simply about avoiding bad in our lives; it also is essentially about doing and becoming good" -David A. Bednar

I love this statement. Our Heavenly Father doesn't give us commandments just so we don't do bad things, but so we can do good things, and become better people. The gospel is not there to stunt our growth, but to shape us as we grow so that our Heavenly Father can make of us the best that we can be!

I love you all and hope that everyone is doing well!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

Ben's Baptism and Pete the Comedian

Hey everyone!

I hope ya'll are doing well! We had a wonderful week here in the Fish Creek Stake! I'm going to try a little bit different way of emailing today, so we'll see how it goes!

On Monday we had an awesome dinner at the Torrie's! They're such a great family, and they make some great food. Below is a picture of brother Torrie making said great food. The cool thing about this dinner was that they invited their friend Adam over. Adam's a nonmember, but has listened to some discussions before. The Torrie's son, John, is going on a mission to Perth Australia soon, so we had him teach the first discussion with Elder Stringam. It went really well! Hopefully it sparked some interest in Adam and he'll want to learn more in the future.

On Tuesday it was really stormy. Actually all weeks been really stormy. We've had hail a few times too. We think it's because the Calgary Stampede is going on downtown (AKA the great and abominable Stampede) and so the Lord sent some fierce tempests. Seriously though, the storm cleared up as soon as stampede ended. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!!!

We went on exchanges that night with the Spanish Elders. Elder Tate came with us. We got to hold some bunnies at dinner!

We had some good times in studies the next morning,

and then got to help out at a move later that day. 

This was actually a really cool move. We tracted into a lady a couple weeks ago, and when we offered to give some service, she said that her son and his family could actually use some help moving because they couldn't afford movers. So we rounded up the zone, and moved them! They were really appreciative, and couldn't believe that a group of 19 and 20 year old boys were willing to come and help them, expecting nothing in return. We told them that if anything, we would ask that they just come to church once and see what we're all about. They said they'd definitely come and see! They came to a ward stampede breakfast on Saturday and loved it! We are excited for them, they seem like an awesome family!

During the move though it started raining

So we had a little jam session in the garage

Then the hulk showed up and we finished up that move real fast!

Then we went to work the rest of the day

 had some delicious Italian dessert

and met a celebrity!

Well she was in the Ensign, so close enough!

On Saturday we met this interesting man named Pete. We were talking to this guy for like 30 minutes. He told us that he knew Elvis and grew up with Bruce Lee, and was a multi-millionaire, and used to ride with Hell's Angels, and is buddies with a bunch of police officers. He also told us that he was just a comedian, and could go for 46 hours straight with jokes haha. Thing was, none of his jokes were actually funny. But he was an interesting man, and we're pretty sure that he was high, so there's that.

On Sunday, we cooked dinner for the Vance's, and Chen was running all around their kitchen getting things ready haha.

It turned out pretty good!

Then we headed off to Ben's baptism!

It was an awesome experience! Ben was really excited. Everyone did great job's on their talks and everything, and the spirit was so strong. My heart was just burning the whole time with the spirit. It was so good! We're excited for Ben, and know that he's going to be a great member! It's been such a joy getting to teach him, and seeing him take this step in his life was so exciting!

Okay now for a spiritual thought!

This is from a talk by Lawrence E. Corbridge.

"There are two ways of evolving: deliberately and accidentally. You can either decide who you want to become and deliberately work toward that end, or you can just go with the flow and become whatever life makes of you. In that event, you will become whatever the fickle circumstances and forces of life and society will make of you; whatever is currently considered to be popular or in; whatever is easiest. But, whatever you become accidentally it will not be nearly the full measure of our potential. You will become just someone, somewhere in the middle."

"Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every sadness, tragedy, every disappointment and heartache, every temptation and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him."

I love those quotes. If we don't plan to become better, then we wont. If we don't plan to become more like Christ, then we won't. We have to decide who we want to be, and then make it happen. Everything that we face in life is either an opportunity to turn towards Christ, or turn away from him. It's up to us to decide what we do.

Love you all, and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

HAPPY 7-11 DAY!!!

Morning everyone! I hope that everyone remembered that today is free Slurpee day at 7-11! We sure did! We stopped by 7-11 before emails, but apparently it doesn't start until 11. And you only get a free small Slurpee, so we'll have to hit up a few 7-11s today to get our fill. Don't worry, we know where they all are.

Well this week was fun! We had a few lessons with Ben to help get him ready for his baptism. That kid is so ready. He knows all of the answers, and has a solid testimony. He's been talking like he wants to go on a mission too, so hopefully he'll follow through with that! I mean he's already been tracting with us, so he's basically ready! The baptism is set for this Sunday, and then he'll be confirmed on the following Sunday.

This week we also had an awesome fourth of July with the Mandins! We made American Flag shirts, and lit sparklers and stuff. We also sang the National Anthem together. It was glorious. Seriously though we had a ton of fun!

On Wednesday we had dinner with this awesome family in the Chaparral ward. After the dinner, the dad interviewed us haha. He's a lawyer, so he's pretty good at asking questions. It was a ton of fun!

On Saturday we had dinner with the Lawlors. This is the family with all of the animals. It was a great dinner! They had their friends over too. One of them is a less active member, and her husband isn't a member. One of them was from Jamaica, so after we got to see all of the animals again, we learned how to play Jamaican Uno! It was a great dinner! Pictures to come!

So the spiritual thought for this week comes from the book of Ether Chapter 6 Verses 5-6 and Verse 8. I won't quote it this time, but I encourage all of you to go and read it! It talks about how the Brother of Jared and his people built barges to cross the sea, and the Lord drove them forth across the sea by sending "furious winds" and "great tempests" to push them towards the promised land. If we compare this to our lives, the "furious winds" and "great tempests" represent trials that the Lord allows us to go through because ultimately they push us towards the promised land, or to eternal life with our Heavenly Father. We just have to view each trial as an opportunity to grow and to learn!

Love you guys!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!! #GodBlessAmerica

Also Happy Canada Day. . .

So this week was a little rough, but we still had some great experiences, and a lot of service.

Tuesday was quite the day. We had a lot of service planned for the morning/afternoon time in the Chaparral ward, which is a bit of a drive from Queensland boundaries, and it just so happened that we were kind of out of kilometers for the month. Luckily we had some bikes! So we took the shortcut through Fish Creek Park (which is really pretty) and made it to our service! We mowed the lawn of a less active lady in the ward, and of our ward mission leader who just got in a bad car accident. On our way back to Queensland, it started to really dump buckets on us. I haven't seen a good thunder storm for a while, so I was loving it! We got pretty soaked, but made it back before the really bad part of the storm hit. Then we got cleaned up, and headed over to dinner at the Chrismas'! We had a cook off, so Elder Chen whipped up some nice twice cooked pork for us, and Jace (Sister Chrismas' boyfriend) made some apple sausage stuff. It was a great meal! We also had a pretty good discussion with them after.

On Wednesday we had our Zone Training meeting, and then helped out with a move after that. That evening we went over to the Boyd's house, some members in our ward, and shared a message with them. When we were asking them for referrals, Brother Boyd told us this awesome experience that he had just remembered as we were sharing our message. He has a goal of sharing the gospel with someone every day (basically the best member missionary ever) and he definitely achieves it. He was doing the plumbing for this lady, and notices all of her pictures of Christ around the house, he complimented her on them, and told her how grateful he was that she was proud of her beliefs. She asked if he was religious and he told her he was LDS. When she heard that she got really excited and said, "Wait here, I'll be right back!" She ran into another room, and then came back holding a ton of Ensigns in her arms. She told him that she loved reading the Ensign, and knew that the things she read were true. She talked about how she found our doctrine to make so much sense, and how it agreed with her personal beliefs, even though she was taught differently growing up. It was such a cool experience that he had, and he said that he would get us her information so that we could refer the missionaries in her area over to her.

On Thursday we actually helped Brother Boyd's daughter and son-in-law move a bunch of stuff out of their storage space. They were really grateful that we were able to help last minute.

Friday was probably our toughest day. Everyone was away doing something for Canada day, so there wasn't much to do. It didn't help that basically all of our plans for the whole day fell through. We still managed to have some cool things happen though. We were out tracting that evening, and ran into these two guys sitting outside their house. We started talking to them about the gospel, and one of the guys kept stating things that he believed that were exactly what we believed. Things like how he believed that we lived with God before this life, and how everyone needs the chance to learn about and accept Jesus Christ. So we shared our testimonies with them, and gave them a Book of Mormon and a Plan of Salvation pamphlet.

Saturday we helped some members rip a tree stump out of their front yard. That was a lot of fun! Then we had some member lessons planned for the rest of the day. We were sharing a message with one member, and he told us about how his next door neighbor just had his wife pass away, and he felt that he needed to share the gospel with him. So he's setting up a meal with us that he can invite his friend to! We're excited for that!

So all in all it wasn't too bad of a week! We got a lot of potential things going on that will hopefully pan out.

For the spiritual thought today is a quote by President Henry B. Eyring:
If the foundation of faith is not embedded in our hearts, the power to endure will crumble.
We need to build our testimonies on the rock that is Jesus Christ. Heleman 5:12 also says some good stuff about this. If Christ is where our faith is centered, then we will be able to make it through any trail or struggle in our lives. We must let Christ into our hearts and into our lives for him to help us. He's always there, just waiting for us to invite Him in.

Love you guys! Hope everyone has a great Fourth of July! Celebrate accordingly

Love,

Elder Moffitt

Oh and one more thing that deserves it's own email because it's so awesome and important. . .BEN HAS DECIDED TO BE BAPTIZED!!!! He feels like he's really ready now, so he want's to be baptized on July 17th! I love Ben, and he's so prepared. He's even talked about maybe going on a mission! We're so excited for him! Please keep him in your prayers!!!