Montréal-Est Week 5

It started pouring rain while we were walking
and we got soaked!

This has been such an amazing, miracle filled week! We've been really busy running around like crazy, and it's been so awesome. We also were so happy to talk to our families this past Sunday! Even though it feels like it's only been a couple of weeks since we talked on Christmas Day, it was a very special experience. Here are some highlights from the week!

Chocolat-Favoris with Elder Cabello

We had the opportunity to go on two exchanges this week which were super fun. For our first exchange I went with Elder Cabello to St-Jérôme, and we had a miracle filled day. We basically did everything in Spanish the entire day, which made me super happy! We taught a Columbian family that was extremely solid, and they were just eating up everything that we told them. It was so fun to teach in Spanish again! We also went "Spirit knocking" for a little bit, which is when you just walk down a street and wait until you feel you should knock on a certain building. We felt to go to one building in particular, and on the first door we knocked into a young catholic Quebec-cois woman. She seemed a little bit closed, but we just taught and testified of the Book of Mormon. She then said something that I don't think I've EVER heard before: "ça m’intéresse," which means, "that interests me." It was an amazing miracle! It was a great example that the Lord guides His work, but also how we should never assume that someone is not interested. We are here to testify, so that's what we should always do! At the end of the day, to top it off, we went to Chocolat Favoris for my first time on the mission (which was a favorite spot my family found when we came here last year)! It was a super fun day!

Exchanges with Elder Cortez

I was also able to go with Elder Cortez to Repentigny as well. We also had a really interesting day. Everything fell through, including backup plans and even some backup plans to our backup plans. We didn't get to teach any lessons, and we didn't find any solid potentials after knocking for almost the whole day. We decided to go to one last area to knock before we picked up food and went home. We were planning on being there for only 30 minutes, but we felt that we needed to keep going until we found someone. After it got pretty late and we continued to get rejected at every door, we decided that the next door would have to be the last. And, of course, at the last door there was a Haitian family that was very interested. We got to teach them on the spot and set a return appointment! It was such an awesome miracle brought upon by perseverance, faith, and diligence.

Saturday was also a great day. The Sisters in our branch had a baptism which was awesome to attend, we had a couple investigators there who loved it. The girl who was baptized is the daughter of one of the recent converts in the branch, who actually had the opportunity to baptize her! It was super awesome. We also were able to find two Haitian women on Saturday, Elda and Mcdala, who are SUPER solid. They mainly speak Creole, since they haven't been here for very long, so we brought one of our Haitian members to translate the things they didn't understand. We talked about the Restoration with them, and everything seemed to click! They also loved the Book of Mormon and were super excited to read it. They even said that next time we visit they will feed us Haitian food! We're super excited!!

Pentalingual!

Another funny/cool experience, on Sunday night as we were walking home from one of our last lesson in the day, and there were two Italian men who were not very... aware or coordinated let's say... who flagged us down and started talking to us in a mix of Italian, French, English, Spanish, and even some Creole. It was hilarious. They were super nice, and they told every single stranger that they saw to come and join us. A Haitian joined in, a Quebec-cois, a Chilean, a Mexican, and it was just a party. They told us how cool it was that we are doing what we were doing and told us to keep it up. They were super nice! We got to teach a little bit, but as they were not super attentive we decided to take a selfie with them and leave. It was extremely funny; Elder Sorensen and I were dying afterwards.

Anyway, it's been an amazing week, probably one of the best on my mission. I'm having the time of my life, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be. I love you all so much, and I hope you have a great week! Happy (late) Mother’s Day!

Elder James