It's getting warmer! Oh man what a relief! It was plus twelve the other day! That was so nice. Although the ice and snow is melting and that's probably got people freaked out. There are huge puddles all over here. Elder Stewart always hits them hard haha. There is still so much snow on the ground though. I get why this place floods a lot. Some people have piles of snow in their yards that are taller than they are. They just shovel it off their drive into their yard and it just piles up. A lady from our ward told us her snow pile always lasts through June because it's so thick. That's insane.
Well we have basically turned into a moving company. Everyone that calls us for service needs help moving. We have been exhausted! Some people are pretty good at being organized for the move. Most people aren't prepared at all though. It is so much more work when we have to move all of their belongings one by one instead of having them in boxes. We also move lots of furniture into basements. Most people have small stairwells too. That is always a challenge. We had a move where the man wanted a couch in his basement. We got it to the bottom of the stairs and it wouldn't go through the doorway. We had to pull it back up and out. He had a different couch he wanted down there then. We got it to the bottom and it wouldn't go through the doorway either. We pulled it up and out. We then took a treadmill down the stairs. It got stuck at the doorway too. We had to disassemble it at the bottom because it got stuck and we couldn't move it. Unfortunately problems like that occur all too often.
But we have made up a survey that we ask people to take after we help them. We ask them if they were affected by the flood, if they received help from the Mormon Helping Hands, if they got help from anyone else. We really don't care about any of the answers to those kind of questions. The only question we care about is if they would be interested in hearing a message from us. We have done the survey twice and one of the families said yes. So we picked up a new investigator this past week with that. We have a lesson set up for Thursday night. Right now we have about five investigators. It is pretty cool. We have been working like crazy and we are seeing the blessings from it. Even this morning our Bishop told us about one of his workers who picked up a hitch hiker on the side of the road and found out that he loves the Mormon church, believes in it, but isn't a member. We are going stop by his place and see if we can teach him. The work is moving forward.
Oh yeah! Elder Nelson is coming to our mission and is going to speak to us! He wants us all there early so he can shake our hands! How cool is that? I'm so stoked. That's Saturday. It's going to be awesome. I got to hear from Elder Bednar in the MTC and now I get to hear from Elder Nelson. That's pretty awesome.
Well other than that, nothing new is really happening. There is a chance we are getting iPads in May. That would be awesome. We've heard about other missions getting it. Like Edmonton is getting them in April. I've even heard that the missionaries that do get them are told to use them for everything. They are told to use them for their scriptures even. They don't want them using paper scriptures. It's crazy. I think it's because they are still testing them out so they want the missionaries using them for everything so they can figure out how useful they are for certain things. Regardless, I want one. It would be so nice to be able to have the Mormon Chanel and LDS.org and that kind of stuff for teaching. Using resources like that is so much more productive.
Well one cool story before I go. A few weeks ago we helped this lady Jane. She is in her 70's probably. We moved her from the place she was in to her new place. She was super grateful for our help. Really nice. Well the other day we were talking to a lady in our ward, Sister Parker. She said she was at her swimming class and she was talking to a lady there. She was talking about how the flood only killed four people but a lot of people ended up committing suicide afterwards because of depression. That wasn't advertised as much for obvious reasons. The flood was really hard for a lot of people. It forced over 100,000 people out of their homes. Well the lady she was talking to said that she could have been one of those people. Sister Parker asked her what she meant. She said she could have been one of those people who committed suicide. She said that when the Mormon Helping hands helped her move, she felt so much better. She said it was so much fun having us help her and it made her so happy, she completely changed. She wasn't depressed anymore. Come to find out that that lady is Jane. She was talking about when we helped her move. I never would have guessed that she was depressed. She was so nice and happy when we saw her. That truly made me realize just how important the work we are doing is. We truly are changing lives.
Without even sharing a message about Jesus Christ or hope or love or anything, we are still making a difference. It is incredible to see the power of a helping hand. I now realize how important it is for us to be there for someone when they need us. I would hope that you all will look at service differently now. I know I will. You never know what will happen. Jane called us to serve her, the Lord called us to save her. I absolutely know that to be true. Take every opportunity you get to serve the people around you. Be uplifting. Serve with a smile. Go into it expecting to have them walk away feeling over joyed because someone cared enough to lend a hand. If you do this, you will bring peace and joy to people like you never thought you could. The Lord will not only bless those you serve but you as well.
Take care of yourselves and each other. I love you all.
Elder Anderson
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