Week 5 - Ramen
I feel like I've been doing pretty good at keeping these to a reasonable length. Today however, that might all go out the window. Even today was super busy, with so much to talk about.
Earlier last week, we met a member named Ron. I love Ron. He's a sweet elderly man who reminds me a lot of Grandpa Hays. He's super friendly and has the best sense of humor. He has a picture of when he was baptized up on his wall, and it doesn't look like it was very long ago. Maybe a year or two. I'm sure I'll talk to Ron lots more in the coming months. We also met another member, brother Angel, who apparently really likes watching magic tricks. Unfortunately, he's never impressed by any that the missionaries have to offer. At least, that is until he saw what I had to offer. I'm not the best magician, but he liked my tricks. So, I might learn a couple more to show him at some point :)
Clear Water Lake
Wednesday was road trip day! We had to drive for 8 hours from Flin Flon back down to Winnipeg for Zone Conference. We carpooled with the area that neighbors Flin Flon, which was 4 hours away. Something that the mission president, President Carr, likes to say is that the mission is really big, but also really small. The mission area is massive, 2nd biggest in the world in fact, but there's only around 150 missionaries. We're really spread out, but we stay super connected and it's like a big family :D
On the way to Winnipeg, we visited one of the clearest lakes in the world! It's called Clear Water Lake (so creative) and as expected, the water was SO CLEAR. Absolutely loved visiting it and will definitely visit it again at some point. I'm hoping to see what it's like during the winter when it's frozen over. The "hike" was super super pretty, and also super short. Not even a mile. Lots of awesome pictures!!
Risk
Here in Winnipeg, we're staying with Elder Patterson and Elder Godard, who are both so awesome. We all like Pokémon Cards, so we play lots of that at night. Also, Elder Godard taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering (another trading card game) and its super fun too. I told myself I'd stick to Pokémon cards, and wouldn't buy any Magic cards, but I caved today and bought a blue and white deck. The Magic cards are going in the same box as the Pokémon cards though. So, the rule will still apply to them, if I fill the box I stop. We also played a game of Risk! It took a couple nights, but it was fun. I also hate Risk now. Terrible game, never playing it again. 🤣
Here's the board after the first turn, comment who you think will win! I'm going to schedule another post to publish automatically in a couple days for the reveal.
- Green: Me. (The greatest Risk player of all time)
- Blue: Elder Godard (biggest rice fan)
- Yellow: Elder Mendenhall (the fool who ruins everything (still love him of course))
- Red: Elder Patterson (he's cool too I guess)
Ramen
You probably saw the title of this email and thought, oh ha-ha, running low on money and resorting to ramen as every missionary does. But no! Me and Elder Mendenhall have been doing a good job at budgeting and meal planning! We've only had ramen a couple times, more out of desire than necessity. This is about real ramen. The best ramen even. As some friends may know, there's a ramen spot in San Diego that I quite enjoy. It is good Ramen. But, on October 1st, the end of the mission's 1-month fast food fast, we decided to try a ramen place that Sister Dilling recommended to us called "Gol's Lanzhou Noodle." This ramen is the best ramen ever. They have a window that shows into the kitchen, and you can watch them hand-pull the noodles. I took a video, but I don't have access to it as I broke my phone, and it is currently being repaired. My only disappointment was that the added egg was hard boiled instead of soft-boiled. Other than that, the noodles were perfect. The meat was so full of flavor. The broth was so good I would have been happy eating just that and calling it a soup. And the serving size… I got a "regular" and the bowl was huge. I hardly ate half of it, and the other half I had for lunch the next day. A few of the other elders with us got "large" servings, and they were MASSIVE. the bowl was double the size of my head! I'm definitely going back to Gol's more than once while on my mission, and I'll probably come back to visit Winnipeg after my mission, purely to go to Gol's again. Gol's ramen is too good for this world. I'll never find Mexican food here in Canada that compares to San Diego, but this ramen far surpasses any I've had anywhere else.
Zone P Day
Today was Zone P Day! We got to play games and hang out with all the missionaries in my zone! It was so fun. We played Pokémon, Flin Flonopoly, talked, did a big group Book of Mormon read, and carved pumpkins! We did a pumpkin carving competition, and Elder Mendenhall and I won! Elder Mendenhall has never carved a pumpkin before, so I did most of the work, but it turned out pretty well! Especially since we only had one hour to plan and carve the pumpkin. We did ours of Angel Moroni! It's definitely the best pumpkin I've carved without using any sort of template. Unfortunately, we never got a picture of it in the dark, as Elder Mendenhall accidentally dropped it before we had the chance. The only picture I have at the moment is one that isn't at a very good angle. I'll try and see if anyone else got better pictures to share in the next email though :)
(The 6 is how we voted. Each pumpkin had a number on it, and we all voted in our group chat.)
General Conference
Last but not least, we had General Conference this weekend. I loved Conference so much this time around. It really hits different as a missionary lol. All the talks were so amazing. My personal favorites were Tracy W. Browning, and of course, President Russel M. Nelson. Sister browning had an amazing analogy about how each morning she has to start her day by putting on her glasses for focus, and clarity. In a sense, we should all strive to put on our spiritual glasses for the same reason. President Nelson talked a lot about how the gospel can help us find rest in this exhausting world, and at the end of his talk he gave us all a really powerful blessing. It was super touching and will definitely stick with me. Definitely give them a watch if you get a chance! I can't find the links to them right now, but you can probably find them somewhere on churchofjesuschrist.org
That's all from me for now! Hopefully this super long one wasn't too boring. I'll try to make sure next week isn't so bad, but no promises. 😉
I love you all so much!
As always, it's a great day to be a missionary!
Love,
Elder Hays