October 3-9, 2022

We spoke in Sacrament meeting this morning.  Our mission medical director serves on the Stake High Counsel and is the Stake Young Men's President.   He was visiting our ward this morning to meet with the Young Men during the second hour.  He sat on the second row and had the grumpiest face all during my talk.  After the meeting he was so complimentary and said the kindest things.  I guess he wasn't really grumpy; maybe he was just concentrating!  I used Elder Joseph Sitati's talk The Patterns of Discipleship and Elder Steven J Lund's talk Lasting Discipleship for my remarks.  John spoke about Elder Renlund's A Framework for Personal Revelation.

We were sad to see Elder Sitati released.  He was a counselor in the Africa West Area Presidency when we first arrived in Ghana in 2012.  We grew to love him and his wife Gladys.  I don't want to sound like we became best friends, but we do consider them our friends and have had contact over the years.

We were invited out to dinner Friday evening by a non-member friend, Ren.  Ren is from China and has been in Montréal for 17 years.  She was first street contacted by some Elders, who began teaching her but soon dropped her as she wasn't keeping her commitments or reading The Book of Mormon.  Sister Corbett (office Sister) befriended her and brought her to our ward to help improve her English.  Ren comes to church each week and attends ward activities.  She has become friends with some of the ward members as well.  She loves the church community but still isn't very interested in the doctrine.  Anyway, she invited us, Sister Corbett and Elder and Sister Piepgrass (housing senior couple) to a Chinese buffet.

Ena Parsaram and Ren are on this end

Ena and Ren have become good friends.  Ena and her husband are from Guyana (South America).  She has quite a story and loves to share it!  John gave her a priesthood blessing a few weeks ago and she felt very pleased with the outcome.  Now if anyone in the ward wants a blessing, she tells them to ask Elder Cooper because he gives the best blessings!

We had a lovely dinner but think that John must have eaten something that didn't agree with him - food poisoning, I think.  He got sick during the night, was sick all day Saturday and still doesn't feel great.  He didn't go far from the bathroom all day.  The worst is over but he is still very tired.

At the food bank, we sometimes give food items that many of the patrons don't recognize.  And it's difficult to explain to someone who speaks very little English or French.  If the items are canned, we may have a picture to show them.  We did that with canned beets last week.

Huge rutabagas

How do you explain rutabagas?  They were at John's station and he hasn't had much luck handing them out.  He says they are "très bon" and that he likes them (which he does) but he doesn't have many takers.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving tomorrow.

"Humility inclines the heart of the disciple toward repentance and obedience.  The Spirit of God is then able to bring truth to the heart, and it will find entry."  (Elder Sitati)

Comments

  1. del.ockeyOctober 10, 2022 at 5:29 AM

    We had a Chinese man in Debrecen, Hungary, whose name was Ren. He came to our Single Young Adults activites, was taught the gospel and joined the church, completed his university degree and went back to Beijing. May you be successful in bringing this sister Ren into the fold.

    ReplyDelete

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