Week 13 - 297 Bales of Hay
This week has been very very busy! It's been a bit rough, as my body doesn't like sleeping lately for whatever reason, but I'm pushing through. Lack of sleep and a slight cold won't stop me from serving the lord 💪😤
On Wednesday we had interviews with our mission president. Basically, he talks to us individually to see how we're doing. It helps him decide where we'll be going for transfers. Speaking of, they're in 2 weeks! President basically told us up front that Elder Mendenhall would be leaving Flin Flon, and that I'd be staying a bit longer. Which I'm a-ok with. I love Flin Flon. It's not impossible for President to change his mind between now and transfers, but it's not likely. I'm definitely hoping I stay though. Christmas with Thompson will be hype as heck. They actually asked me to play some music for their Christmas program, so if I suddenly got transferred it'd be very unfortunate for them as well.
On Friday, we helped Brother Angel with various tasks, mainly shoveling snow, and we participated in the "Take Back The Night" march! A huge group of people marched down main street after dark to protest against domestic violence and other crime that happens at night. It was cool talking to some of the people there, and it was fun standing in the middle of the street lol. Don't worry, it was an organized event with police cars both in front and behind the parade. So no one was getting hit by cars or anything like that.
Saturday was where the headline of this post comes from. We have a friend who has horses. 3 of them. And she needed help hauling a one year supply of hay from where it was dropped off, to where she keeps her horses. We got to work around 8:30am, didn't finish until 7:15pm, and hauled a total of 297 bales of hay. I am sore. Hay is heavy. Unfortunately, that wasn't even all of it. She got cut short about 30 bales from her supplier. The good news is, she's probably gotten those back by the time I'm writing this. After that, we drove back to the appartment, changed as fast as possible, and went to the Flin Flon Bombers game that started at 7:30pm! We got there a little late, but it was a really good game!!
The game was super intense. The Melfort Mustangs got an early lead, scoring in the first period before we got there. For the rest of the first period, and the entire second period, no goals on either side. The Bombers took double the shots, but didn't get a goal. Finally, near the beginning of the third period, the Bombers scored tying the game at 1-1. Something funny to add, it was a suffed animal charity night. So when they scored, huge waves of stuffed animals came flying over the netting from both sides of the court, that were collected and donated to charity. After that, the game started back up, and as they were announcing the first goal, the Bombers scored again!!! We were with Brother Angell, and he was so excited. He's usually a pretty calm old man, and during most of the game he was pretty quiet just watching, but after that score he raised his fists and yelled "YES. WOOO!!!" Sadly, we had to leave before the game ended so that we could be back to our apartment before 9:30 (staying in accordance with mission rules of course). Brother Angell texted us later that night to let us know how the rest of the game went. Apparently, Melfort scored tying the game, but the Bombers won in overtime. LETS GO BOMBERS WOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Finally, Sunday was super awesome too. We had a really nice family home evening lesson with a family that hasn't been to church in awhile. The kids are usually super hyper and don't stay seated for more than a few seconds, but after we had an opening prayer and started the lesson, boom. They were perfectly behaved the entire time. It was a really nice lesson, we talked about prayer and why we should make it a habit to pray daily, and we challenged them to have family prayer together for an entire week. If they succeed, next time we go for family home evening I'll be teaching them how to play Pokémon TCG! They have a card collection already, but they don't know how to play the game. Also, completely unrelated to that, the father of the two kids we were teaching is working on starting a clothing brand! I'll share a link to his website once it's up, I think his logo is pretty cool and his son (age 10) made the slogan!
That's all the interesting events this week! We did lots of other stuff, but it's all stuff we usually do like walk the dogs, shovel snow, help at the food bank, etc. So no need to repeat it again.
It's a great day to be a missionary!
-Elder Hays