Week 58 - we have no money (but we also have lots of money)
Kayven Got Baptized!
Kayven is so awesome, and he was so ready to be baptized. He's so humble, and so selfless! His first time praying, he prayed for his struggling coworker to have the strength he needed to make it to work the next day. Elder McFadden got to perform the baptism, and I did the confirmation! He was baptized on the very last day of the transfer! What a way to end the transfer with a bang. Or I guess, with a splash!
Thoughts on Morden
Guys! Morden is awesome! I was for sure meant to be here. Sure, it's the bible belt of Canada and we get bashed a lot, but it makes it so easy to tell who is actually interested in learning about the church! Most people we talk to just bash us. They try to spin the Bible in a way that "disproves" our church. It doesn't work. The church is true. But that doesn't matter to them, they're stubborn and they want to be right. So, we don't waste our time with them! We move on to the next person. 9 times out of 10 it's the same deal. They're not interested and/or they just want to bash us. But it really makes the 1 out of 10 stand out. It's so polarized, and it makes it so easy to see who we should be spending our time with.
Also, my new companion Elder Pomares is so awesome. We're having so much fun together! He's not super interested in Magic or Pokémon, but we have a lot of fun playing and writing music together! He's also really fun to talk to and just joke around with. We laugh about the stupidest things together. It's a good time!
Money Problems
Nothing too severe here, don't worry! Long story short, we don't get paid to be missionaries, but we do get a food allowance every 2 weeks. The food allowance is added to a balance on a debit card they issue us. A few weeks ago, they issued everyone new debit cards for a different bank that we're switching to. Unfortunately, around a fourth of the cards are currently broken. Including mine. While I was with Elder McFadden, his card was working, so we were surviving on half the food budget for a bit. It wasn't awful, we spent some of our personal money, and we had support from local members. Now I'm with Elder Pomares, and his card is broken too. So that's tough. They're working on unlocking the cards, but until then we'll have to get some groceries on personal funds. They did say that once the cards start working again, we can withdraw cash for however much we had to spend on personal, so that's good. For us it's mostly just annoying, but I feel bad for the missionaries that don't have personal money to spend. They're literally getting by cleaning out every scrap they can find in their cupboards and rationing it. So, pray for them and pray Salt Lake will finally fix our cards.
The part that's most annoying is that the reason they aren't fixed yet is because Salt Lake thinks we're stupid. Like I get it, I'm only 20 and my companion is 19, but it's not that hard to put our card into an ATM, put in our pin, and withdraw 20 bucks to "activate our card." For weeks, our local mission office has contacted them explaining that the cards aren't working, and they've just re-sent the same original instructions to activate them because they think we're not doing it right. No, we did it right. The card is locked. YOU GUYS in Salt Lake need to contact the bank and unlock them because WE don't have the verification code to do so. After weeks they've FINALLY started doing that, and unlocking cards one by one. So now we're just waiting for our turn for our card to get unlocked. Oh, and there's like $400 that's accumulated on each of our cards, we just can't get to it because they're locked 😑
Aaaanyway. That's enough complaining from me, the issue will be resolved soon so it's not that big a deal. Despite the money stuff, it's so easy to see I was meant to come to Morden. We're having a great time here, and it's a great day to be a missionary!
-Elder Hays