Week 42: Mission Tour

So I don't have a ton of time to write on account of too many people on trains and being here in York.... but I do want to share some highlights this week! We delivered and received Christmas cards, helped with the primary nativity, helped at the ward Christmas party, shared #lighttheworld with some people, spent time with the STLs, sang Christmas songs, visited less active members, knocked lots of doors.... That is about it. The real highlight is from the mission tour with President Kearon. Amazing! So good.... so, outside of the fact that my back and shoulders hurt way bad from sleeping on the wood floor that night, I had an amazing day! Talk about prayers and questions answered. It was a pretty inspirational day. Plus, if nothing else, I love taking coach rides with my zone. We have started doing this thing where we always sing on the coach which is awesome. We have quite a few very talented singers with quite the range, it's awesome. Also, when we I was having an elder help me sort out some music on my iPad, the elder sitting next to him saw the photo of me with a fake moustache on and said that I looked like what he looked like before the mission lol. Same curly hair and everything. But yeah, President Kearon is so amazing. He is such a genuine, warm, friendly, funny person. We all got to shake hands with him at the start of the meeting and he asked us each our names and where we are from. He knew Vancouver Washington! That was cool. Goodness, that man is so inspired. I loved every time he listened to one of us speaking, he would nod, sometimes closing his eyes, pause and then respond. He listened like he was listening to his favourite song or something. Listening to missionaries testify is his jam! It was so cool. He spoke a lot about how we are the message, even by just how we appear and how we present ourselves to those we meet. We spoke about how we as a church, while we may not like it, we thrive on adversity and make the most of it. We talked about being happy. We talked again about stretching and not stressing and that we are good enough and that everyday we have a new beginning and God gives us billions of chances to start again and do better and just start where we are and even the smallest improvements are good. We talked about hastening the hastening. We talked about the Spirit in conversion and the role that each of us play at different stages. Some really touching experiences and stories were told, it was so lovely. We of course had a lunch of Subway at this meeting, (it's all we ever have!) and we had sat at a table marked for the sisters and the next thing we knew we were being joined by President Turvey and President Kearon! That was a surprise, but a lovely one at that. It was just such a good experience that left me feeling invigorated and excited. Love missionary meetings! Even President Kearon said he prefers missionary meetings over other kinds. That was funny.... So yeah, amazing meeting full of laughter and the spirit.