I just realized I forgot to tell you about Elder Kember and I being sick a couple weeks ago, so I'll just tell you now.
One morning I worked out, showered, ate breakfast and studied for 3 hours by myself while Elder Kember slept because he was way too sick to get up. We called the other missionaries over to our apartment around noon to give him a blessing.
When they came over they gave him the blessing and then we all ate lunch that I had made. After that Elder Kember still didn't feel good so he went back to bed. My stomach started hurting way bad about 30 minutes after I ate so I lied down. We both fell asleep for 2 hours straight.
I woke up covered in sweat and I felt way sick. I ran to the bathroom and threw up, then brushed my teeth and went back to my bed. I now had shivers so I got the extra blankets out of the closet and fell back asleep. I woke up 20 minutes later covered in sweat again and ran to the bathroom and ... you know. Anyway that process happened 3 or 4 times and by then we had cancelled our dinner appointment for the night. I finally said a prayer because it hurt so bad every time I threw up. I thought my head was going to explode and my lungs were going to shoot out of my eyes. seriously :) It was definitely a miserable experience.
The worst thing was is that we had 7 lessons planned that day so we had people to go teach. After I had said my prayer, I decided we just needed to tough it out and go out and teach. Elder Kember and I felt like we weren't doing anything because we hadn't left the apartment all day long and we didn't want to be slacking at all, so we toughed it up and went out to teach.
We stopped at a less-active family's home (the bishop asked us to visit them) that never allows missionaries in the door so I thought for sure that they wouldn't let us in. But right as they opened the door, I threw up all over the snow on their lawn... they felt way bad that I was sick and got me water and gum and let us in. We taught them a lesson though! :)
After that we went to the store. I bought a water because I felt so dehydrated from all the throwing up, and I also bought some medication to calm the stomach. I took it and so did Elder Kember, but after we took it we read the box and it said, "do not operate motorized vehicles." We were in Morinville and our apartment was 25 minutes away! We both just laughed and decided we would teach one of our investigators (Robin and her 2 kids) now that we had medicine in us. Lucky she lives in Morinville which is not too far from the store where we took the medicine. So we carefully drove to her house and taught her about the restoration. Everything was going really well except that right after I shared Joseph Smith's first vision, I asked them where their bathroom was and ran to it. I threw up all the water I just drank, along with the medicine...
So then after we left her house we decided that it would be best if we went back to the apartment and tried to get better. We had tried to work and we gave it our best but I was just too sick. So out of the 7 lessons we had planned that day we ended up teaching 4 :) We had to cancel 3, but hey we tried!
That night, Elder Kember started feeling a lot better. I had fevers and chills all night long and in the morning I still felt sick. So around noon that next day we called the missionaries again to give me a blessing this time. I took a 2 hour nap after that and when I woke up, I felt fine. Elder Kember and I both felt good and we went out and taught that whole day. That was a great experience to see that priesthood blessings work and especially how fast we got over this sickness! I ended up saying Elder Kember's blessing the first day, and he said mine the following day which was cool too! But yeah, that's my sick story from a couple weeks ago that I forgot to write about!
Oh and some cool facts about that less active family when I threw up on their lawn... They've came back to church the last 2 weeks in a row, and we've met with them 2 more times since that day. When they come to church next week, they'll be considered active again which is way cool! Who knows why I threw up on their lawn that first visit, but hey, the Lord works in mysterious ways and they're almost active again so I'm not complaining :)
This week was a good week but nothing too exciting happened. Since all our investigators have been getting baptized, our teaching pool (the people we teach) is getting smaller and smaller. So this week we tried to go tracting (knocking on doors) every single day for an hour or two in hopes of finding more investigators. We had about 15 door slams, 10 lame-excuses, 8 QGC's (quality gospel conversations), and 3 PI's (potential investigators)! Haha so hopefully out of those 3 PI's that we found, hopefully one of them will decide to take the discussions and be baptized. But we'll see! I think we gave away 6 copies of The Book of Mormon this week as well. So we are staying nice and busy! I love talking to people about the gospel so much now. It's kinda cool!
A couple weeks ago Robin was thinking about pushing her baptism date from April 14th to Mother's Day, but we asked her to pray about it. Some incredible and crazy things have taken place in her life the last couple weeks and we have been so blessed to be a part of these changes and trials. She told us a couple days ago she has her answer and she needs to be baptized as soon as she can. So we set it for April 7th! I wish I could explain everything, but it's really personal. Anyways, she is doing amazing and she is way strong. This gospel is already helping her in so many ways it's amazing to see the progress!
I think I have figured out the thing I love most about being on my mission. It's when I get to hear someone praying to their Heavenly Father for the first time. That and hearing little children pray. It's truly amazing and such a blessing to see. My testimony of this gospel increases more and more every day and I'm so glad I am here to share that with others.
Thank you for all the support, I love you all.
-Elder Jon Stevens
