Stormy Week

Hello everybody!

At the beginning of the week we were dealing with some high temperatures and humidity which is never fun to do missionary work in, but on Thursday and Friday a cold front came in, which meant storms, which are also not fun to do missionary work in, but despite all that, we had fun doing missionary work this week! The storms got pretty scary. On Thursday we were talking to a guy on his porch when we heard a very loud bang as a tree a couple hundred feet away got struck by lightning, and I saw a big chunk of wood shatter. It was probably the coolest thing I've seen. Friday the storm was even worse. There were just sheets of rain smashing down on us as we drove around. Luckily we were indoors until it stopped. The aftermath was the craziest part though. Tons of trees lost limbs, snapped in half, and some even got ripped right out of the ground. There were leaves plastered to everything around town and some places were without power for over 48 hours. It was pretty crazy.

Saturday was transfer calls and Elder Wright and I will be staying again in Petawawa. I was pretty happy with it since I feel like there are a lot of good things startin to happen. The mission is receiving 21 new missionaries this transfer. That's a lot haha. Not too many in our zone though. My trainer is going home on Wednesday! That's pretty weird. He hadn't even been out for a year when we became companions. Time flies. Sunday was a pretty good day (church was almost cancelled due to the loss of power). After church a member came with us to pass by some investigators and less actives. When we finished that, he decided he wanted to come tracting with us. He suggested the area and we headed over. After knocking just a few doors, we came to a house where 3 girls (about the age of 11) were out playing in the sprinkler, so we asked if their parents were home. One of the girls went to fetch her dad. After talking to her dad, the girls as well as a younger boy nearby took an interest in the fact that we were going around knocking on all the doors on the street and they started to follow us. For about a block and a half we were knocking doors and having to explain to everyone we talked to why 4 little kids in swimming suits, as well as 3 guys in shirts and ties were standing in front of their door haha. It made for some interesting contacts. Despite all this madness, we found an awesome lady who told us to come back in twenty minutes. When we went back, she let us in to talk with her. Turns out she met some members in Jerusalem while she was living there, but since it's illegal over there, they weren't able to discuss religion. Basically, she was prepared to hear our message. We taught her about the restoration and left a Book of Mormon. We'll be returning on Thursday. It was an awesome end of week miracle. Hope you enjoyed the river trip! Enjoy your last year of not getting pulled into the water by your son, dad!

Love you all!

Elder Oxborrow