The Promised Land...with Snow of Course

This week was amazing. We had a nice warm welcome to the Moncton/Dieppe area by six feet of snow blocking all doors to get into the church and a broken snow blower. 

Elder Snickers and I upon arriving started calling all the members that we could to find someone with a snow blower because literally.. couldn't see the doors because of how high the snow was and our snow blower is in the shop getting fixed. Turns out nobody in our ward had one so we went to plan B, which was lets start shoveling.

After about an hour we had moved a foot our two and threw in the towel for plan B. Plan C, lets go knocking and ask for snow blowers haha.. crazy idea yes.. So we said a prayer, explaining our situation with our church not meeting fire code and having no way of getting inside and asking specifically for the miracle of someone lending two young guys dressed in black their snow blower. The third house we knocked, a lady answered and immediately said, "no no no we don't have time" but we said, we are very sorry, we come from the church right there, and pointed at it and explained the situation, she then called her husband over who then let us use his "Cadillac of all snow blowers."  That was the first miracle. It took three hours to get rid of the snow mountains. The next miracle happened the next day when we were told "you missed a door" so we searched for the missing door and found it. You could see about three inches of the top of it because the snow completely covered it. We went immediately to our previous savior who lent us his snow blower but he wasn't there.. so we repeated the steps we did earlier, praying specifically and explaining the situation, then acting and not waiting for a snow blower to appear.

The next house we knocked almost the same reaction, starting with the "no no no not interested" and ending with the guy opening his garage and us borrowing a snow blower for another three hours. We spent around six hours trying to get rid of the snow in two days! Crazy Canada. So my message for you all this week is as James says, faith with our works is dead. So pray with faith and then work for the answer! Ask and you shall receive! Dieppe is the promised LAND! My new address:

1309 mountain road #408 moncton new brunswick E1C 2T9

Love you all

Elder Argyle

More pictures from the Great White North!

Our thumbs may be frozen....

FROZEN...we are living it

Just another day in paradise

This week has been the toughest week of my mission for sure. Tracadie went nuts on us. We lost all investigators and potentials in a week. But all  things happen for a reason and our mission president is an inspired man. He called us yesterday and said, "We are closing Tracadie, it's been open for a year and has had 0 progress, how do you feel about re-opening Dieppe?" So Elder Snickers and I will be leaving for Dieppe tomorrow, which is a small city of about 25, 000 people right next to a big city of 140,000. Which will be really nice because Tracadie has about than 4000. Dieppe, is the heart of Shiak (French/English) for instance, the phrase, "Comment ca goes it" is commonly used, or "crosser la road." We are super excited to go there because there is a small ward in Moncton with tons of work for us to help with:) Elder Portellano will only be with us until Thursday, when his new companion from Qatar comes and then he will return to Bathurst. 

shovel....

shovel...shovel...shovel...

Also, we had a two day long lasting blizzard (still going on right now) Elder Colette from Kaysville and his companion got snowed into their church down in Moncton haha. We hope they slept well;) The blizzard was insane, literally covered cars and all you can see is the roof or the windshield wipers sticking out of the snow. 

Friday night we had a branch Valentine's Day party and it went awesome! Big things will be happening soon in Bathurst:) There were nine non members at the party and four less actives! And our fellow Frenchy Serge sang a lot of Johnny Cash for everyone. We did a little discussion about self confidence and showed everyone the movie Johnny Lingo and the branch went nuts, they loved it so much.   

D & C 58:4 (The Jace Harris verse) he shared this verse in his homecoming.. It's been one of my favorites ever sense that day. 

Love you all! Hope all is well:) 

LOVE

elder argyle

p.s. oh yeah a neighbor gave us 40 little fishes that we got to gut and cook. Happy V day!

Royal Heritage

Salut mes enfants,

 Tracadie is tiny, zero members, zero less actives, we hold church in our apartment building and its 99% French 1% English (me). Look it up on Google. It's beautiful even with four feet of snow everywhere. 

So This week we were locked in our apartment for three days -_- we had two blizzards and one "Extremely dangerously cold" day. It was awful. We have no area book to work with, well we do but we have already contacted the 10 people in it.. so we just studied and planned for three days. (It was -50 degrees yesterday) and blizzards are crazy! Its just insane wind with a decent snow storm. We did some genealogy as well. Guess who is a descendant of the king "Charlemagne"? and "Saint Joseph" My companions freaked out when they saw this stuff and now they make royalty jokes all the time.

So Tracadie is the place of my birth into the mission field. I was here for three weeks at the start of my mission. The people here are all nice, nicer than Mormons. Everyone wants to talk with us because we are three weird guys with accents but not too many people are interested in the whole religion thing. There has been a lot of struggles with Priests from certain religions who did some very wrong things and it shut the door for everyone, so it's difficult. Last week we found two new investigators on our first day here though:) They are a couple in their 50's. They are great and we will be meeting with them tonight and Wednesday with their daughter as well who is visiting! 

Elder Snickers,my new companion, is Belgium and he gives me chocolate every day. I dont know where he is hiding it because it seems to never end. He is like 6'2 and he was in training for private military stuff like mercenaries. I'm also with Elder Portellano as well, he will be leaving Feb 17 and returning to Bathurst to train a new missionary from Tahiti. In other words i'm almost a missionary grandpa. 

Joseph Smith rocks. 

D&C 1:20-33

Je vous aime

Terrific Tracadie!

AAH Tracadie:) 

Hi all, This week was a good one. We have only one job here in Tracadie which is to find the elect. We had one lesson this week with an older guy (I wont say his name) he started his own church here. Every point we taught him he agreed with and said that they were gospel truths but the next thing he would say contradicts what he just told us. This guy has read the BoM three times, Doctorine and Coventants and the Pearl of Great Price. He tried to Bible bash us and I'm pretty sure he invited us to be baptized haha. 

This week we have done a lot of work out on the very tip of the Acadian Peninsula, in two little towns called Shippagan and Lameque. We had a really cool experience yesterday where we were contacting and it really didn't feel at all like we were in the right place, so we went to the truck and drove for like five minutes onto a road that had an abandoned gas station parked the truck and the first house we knocked had five people who talked to us about their family members who passed away and we were able to give them a plan of salvation pamphlet because they had no time. The next house no answer, and the third house.. two investigators:)  They are both about 20ish. What was the biggest miracle about this is that Tracadie hasn't found a new investigator in literally three months. We had been praying, fasting, praying some more, fasting some more and then finishing our fasts with a prayer and bam. works:) 

Another thing that was really cool, we went and visited a young mom this week, who I met when I was in Tracadie six months ago with Elders Erickson and Waldie. We walked in and I said "Remember me?" and she said "oh my gosh I read your blog!" So if she reads this, shout out to Michelle! 

D&C 1:30 The one and only true and restored church of Jesus Christ. Look at the doctorine in the Bible, look at the fruits of the church, read the Book of Mormon, and pray to know, and you will know:) 

Love you all ! the pictures are from us at zone conference in Moncton.. lots of snow in Canada eh hahaha.. 

P.S. we are getting personal facebooks this week, so if you see me on. DO NOT MESSAGE ME. I give you an "Argylic" testimony, but I cannot respond. Love you all!

Elder Argyle

I'm Serving with Snickers

Well first things first... I'm goin goin back back to tracadie. Really cool thing about this though is Sunday morning I woke up and I had a dream that I was in tracadie in a trio with my current companion aaand I'm going to Tracadie with Elder Portellano and we will be in a trio with Elder Snickers. The only thing that is false from my dream is the third companion was an islander with a really good singing voice.

So last Wendesday we went and sang at a retirement home and we sang like champions, thanks to Brother Edwards ( he is a singer from england ). It was awesome because the owners and the nurses were all requesting songs and for us to resing something. The old people I dont think cared too much at all to be honest but everyone else loved it!

 

Tomorrow, our great leader ( elder jason) will be passing away...(he is going home because his mission is over!) We had a small (funeral) service for him in our district meeting..

Saturday we went and did service/sneeky proselyting at a hockey game. A couple people complained to cops and they got mad at us but then they found out that we were actually volunteering there so they let us off the hook, but it was awesome.. we talked to almost 100 people in an hour. AND this young mom approached us and it turned out to be one of the nurses from the old person home! She introduced us to her family and told them how we sang and stuff and it was super cool. She wants us to go back.

Now, our investigators were pretty sad that both elder P and I are being transfered.. and its a bit of a bumber too because 5 of them came to church yesterday:( We are hoping the next missionaries here keep them coming.

Two small stories. A 7 year old son of a member told his family and everyone he knew that "Elder Argyle has magic eyes." He thinks it's really cool that my eyes change colors sometimes. He said sometimes they are green, orange then brown. He reminds me of Griffin because he is obsessed with Mindcraft.

Now, something elder Portellano said because of his accent...

"Several years ago the church made a volleyball" It was supposed to be

"Several years ago the church made available..."

 

Elder Snickers on the far right is my new companion.. and Elder Portellano with his elbow on me is also still my companion:)