We had home-made turkey dinner on Saturday with the senior missionaries here in Dryden and then
Sunday we got invited over to some of our investigators dad's house and had
another home-made Turkey dinner with their entire family, and today we have
another home-made turkey dinner at one of our Part-member families house out in
the bush and got invited to another house
today for another Turkey dinner but we already have the other one to go to so
we had to turn down a turkey dinner. So yeah, I guess needless to say we have
had and will continue to have our fair share of turkey dinners this
Thanksgiving and thank goodness we didn't have to cook a turkey, if we did I
would have probably just thrown it in a pot of water and boiled it or
something!
This past week was pretty good. We had lots of
people come out to all of the weekly activities that we put on throughout the
week, including on Monday we had some members come out to our FHE which was
great, and that night when we were planning they decided to give us a call and
told us to come downstairs from our apartment and so we did and found President
and Sister Haessler with probably over $100 of groceries for us because they decided that
we were starving and that "the lord's servants need to be fed so that the
work in Dryden can continue to move forward." It was such a great blessing
and such a great example of true Christlike love and charity, especially
because we know that they don't have a ton of money in the first place!
Definitely made my week and helped me see how much a little bit of charity for
others can make someone feel loved. It was great to be on the receiving end
this time around!
Tuesday we visited members homes following up on
things from conference and helped out at the Dryden mission for a bit, had
dinner and went and visited some more of our investigators and went looking and
trying to find new ones as well! And then we went to the church and worked on
some family history training.
Wednesday we had our district meeting and went
back to sister T's house and helped her brother finish filling in the hole
and other landscaping, then we had dinner at the Haesslers and had our first
bible study (people actually came!) and
it was a great night and a great study!
Thursday we went out and helped at Aaron
park by splitting and bagging more wood and then we went to the DNFC and helped
clean up there and invited them to Yoga and had some [pretty good conversations. We went over to fill out some volunteer forms at a place and were able to have a
lesson with X. She just got back from a trip and told us how she had tons
of prayers answered and how things have been going better for her lately. Then
the X had us over for Dinner and then we had Yoga night and brought the
same less-active member out there and we had a pretty good turnout again.
Friday we did our weekly planning and stopped by
some of our investigators and mowed one of their lawns and then we went over to X with the Tambres and had another good lesson and talk with her and then
we came home and the Kenora Elders came over for exchanges the next day.
Saturday we helped out the Haesslers and fed
their cats (all four of them) and their fish while they are out of town, did a
bit of tracting with the new elder Gardner that I went on exchanges with then
all four of us went to the Dryden mission and helped out X and he was so
excited and happy to have all of us there to help. After that we split up again
and went and had some visits with some people I had never met but finally got
to meet and contacted some of our other investigators. Then we came home, had a
turkey dinner with the Tambres, and then the Kenora Elders went home. We went to
President Vahovicks and helped him put up some more fluorescent lights in his
shop and had a good correlation meeting with him.
Sunday we had a record of 20 people at church it
was great, had two separate investigators come along with another former
investigator and also a new member who moved to Sioux lookout came and others
from far out of Dryden also came. We had good gospel principles classes and good
priesthood classes. Later we did some more training and bible study preparation, went and had another turkey dinner with one of our investigator families and
her extended family and had some really good conversations about the church and
what we do and what we believe. It was super effective and the dinner was great.
Later we went back to the church and cleaned out the baptismal font and then we
tried to unclog the drain and raw sewage started to back up which was pretty
gross!
-Love Elder Shane Dola
