This week we did a lot of driving. We got our car back yesterday(the mission gave us a car to use while it got fixed) and it's all shiny and new now. Brother Hogue, the Elders Quorum President, drove us all the way down to Barrie and we rode with the zone leaders down to Brampton. That was Tuesday, which was when all of those that were transferred got moved around. There were very few transfers at all; the only movement was due to missionaries that were going back home. I ran into Elder Bennett in the parking lot of the Brampton stake center. We said our last goodbyes and remembered all of the joy we had in Walkerton together. I wonder what it would have been like if I had been companions with him when I was a year out as opposed to when I was brand new. Anyway, we grabbed our substitute car and drove all the way back to Wasaga beach, which is why I was so late emailing last week. After that we helped Brother Hogue move their washer and dryer. The day before, we mowed the lawn of one of the senior members of the branch.
Wednesday, Brother Hogue offered to drive us out to Collingwood for our appointment with Sister Orr. It's going very very slow with her; I doubt she will be baptized in 2011, just because of how slow we have to go. We got back to Brother Hogue, who had some service for us to do. Service is great, and we are in a small branch so there aren't too many people that can help with work, but at that point we had already done a ton of service. We spent that entire day driving to Creemore to pick up a truck, then back to Wasaga Beach. We dumped a load of junk into the back of the truck(the Kelseys moved and had stuff left over). We drove that all the way to the dump(I don't even know where that is--let's just say it was a long drive). Then we dumped all of the junk we had there, waited in line to leave, which took forever, drove back to Creemore, then back to Wasaga beach. By then it was pretty much dinner time and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. Service is great, but our time is valuable, and nothing we did during that time period helped us to fulfill our purpose as missionaries.
It was Canada day weekend, so most of the people we talked to were visitors. Some were nice, some not so nice. For some reason, it's been tough finding new people to teach. Very tough, for the whole zone even. But not for Elder Eatchel and his long-time trainee. They had 7 investigator lessons and 1 member lesson in one day! That's such a drastic difference from the rest of us, it just boggles my mind. He must be doing something right. Our two zone leaders celebrated their first 4th of July in the mission field this week. The missionary that replaced Elder Coats was Elder Olmstead, who, if you can remember, was in our district back in February. Our district hasn't changed for like 6 months. Both of our zone leaders are brand new and hadn't even been district leaders yet. It's kind of weird.
Anyway, that was my week.
--Elder Wade
