Missionary Work, Temple Work, Food and My Covenant Path

We went to our first Ward Council on Sunday. We were both very impressed with the bishopric and those ward leaders who were there. They are all desirous to help the new members and friends in every way they can. The meeting was all about missionary work and retention. We are so blessed to be working with this ward and these missionaries at this time. The love, energy and spirit in the meeting was wonderful.

There were quite a number of “friends” (we used to call them investigators) at church today. It was great to see ward members invite them to sit with them. Friendships are important in helping these new members feel like they are part of the ward.

We met with the full-time missionaries assigned to our ward in the afternoon. After we met together, the sisters had a video lesson scheduled with Jay, so they just took care of it here in our living room. We enjoy participating in their lessons, especially when they ask us to testify of Christ and His atonement.

We had some video chats with our children and grandchildren in the afternoon. We know that they will be blessed along with us as we serve here. We love hearing about their school, their talks in church, their mission preparation (yay Ellie! France bound in September), and everything else.

We’re trying to figure out good ways to keep track of the new members. We were put on the ward list as “out of area members”, which makes us visible in LDS Tools to the members. We can see their contact information, as well. We also figured out that new members have access to their own “My Covenant Path” information, and can keep it updated, which helps the ward leadership. We’ll teach new members how to use these apps, like Gospel Library and Tools to study and learn, and to become integrated into the ward as they progress.

On Tuesdays, we have mission-wide devotionals over Zoom. There are so many good ways that the missionaries leverage technology to stay connected. This was presented by a senior missionary couple who told us of some amazing miracles that have happened to them. In the mission here, we see and hear of many miracles each week. It’s important to both believe that miracles can occur, and recognize the hand of the Lord in our lives when they happen.

We also received more training about Welfare Services and Self-Reliance resources that are available for us and ward leaders to help meet members’ needs. There really are so many programs and resources that can help us teach self-reliance. Brother Erickson, one of our instructors, emphasized the importance of being “Savior Reliant” in order to become more self-reliant.

One of the ways that we get to feel more at home here is to find places to get good produce, groceries, and other supplies. Some things are available on Amazon.ca – the Canadian site for Amazon, but not all things we need are there. So, we might need to drive down to Buffalo to get some things like blood glucose test strips. I’m surprised that I can’t find them on Amazon.ca, but it might be that you have to have a prescription here and get them at a pharmacy. We’ll be checking into that soon to avoid the trip to Buffalo, if possible.

On Wednesday we had our first shift as Temple Ordinance workers at the Toronto temple. There were only 26 workers (brothers and sisters) on the shift, so it was quite different than the previous Utah temples we’ve served in. It was more like the Cochabamba Bolivia temple. The temple President, President Wong, and his wife, the temple Matron, were presiding, so we got to know them a little bit. They are gentle, kind, humble, loving, faith-filled people. It is a joy to serve with them. We have so many opportunities to see how the Lord blesses the members who come here to worship Him.

We’ve found a number of very good restaurants that are so culturally diverse. We had dinner between the Stake Conference Leadership meeting and the evening meeting at an Indian restaurant across the street from the Stake Center. Last Friday, we had dinner at a Mexican Restaurant that some members had recommended. The food was wonderful, and they had a singer – dressed in traditional Mexican attire – singing traditional Mexican songs in a beautiful tenor voice. It was fun. A week ago, we ate at a Turkish restaurant. There are so many interesting options – we’ll enjoy many more, I’m sure.

El Chorro at La Unica Panaderia

Chicken Fajitas

We also enjoy going to the District Councils with the young missionaries. They’ve distributed the senior missionaries, so we won’t gang up (or so it appears). It really is wonderful to see them teach and learn and interact. They are still so young (compared to us!), but so mature in their energy and desire to serve. We met a new missionary with a last name of Gunther from American Fork. On inquiry we found that, sure enough, he’s one of the Gunther clan that we knew when we lived there. He’s related to so many dear friends there in American Fork.

Thursday evening, we met with the Ward Mission Correlation group. The counselor in the Elders’ Quorum, Hermano Meraz, led the meeting and was completely on point. We talked about how we could work together better between the missionaries and the members to be more successful in retaining new members. We discussed inviting an Aaronic Priesthood young man, and a young woman to represent the youth, especially since one of our new “friends” is 16 years old. It was great to be able to interact with Hermano Meraz and see his ideas.

Our Stake Conference visiting authority this weekend was Elder James E. Evenson. He focused on the Covenant Path and encouraged ward members to get engaged in helping the missionary work, especially with the newly baptized members. There have been over 300 baptisms just in our Stake over the last year, so there is lot of work being done and work to be done. That’s part of our purpose here - to work specifically with the new members, and we find new and exciting ways to help all the time. We feel like we are exactly where we need to be right now, and enjoy being engaged in missionary work with both the members and the young missionaries.