Elder Cameron Bolinder's Excellent Adventures: Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: Week 62

Elder Montierth and Elder Bolinder

Milagros en el frío!

¿Qué tal mis amigos? Hope you're all enjoying the wonderful winter season. We are having the time of our lives out here in the white winter wonderland of Minnesota! Let's jump into this week.

We started out the week with another bomb Family Home Evening we had with a couple of families in the ward on Tuesday. And some of the kids even invited a friend! Vamooosss!

Wednesday we had our Christmas Zone Conference combined with 2 other zones. We received some inspiring training from President Barney, had a fatty ham-n-potato lunch, and to top it all off we all got to watch the movie Polar Express!! We talked a lot about the condescension of God. President Barney gave an amazing training about the birth of Christ and how he was born in such humble circumstances - came into the world as a baby just like everyone else, born in a stable, sleeping in a manger with swaddling clothes. It really makes me appreciate the humility of our Savior. He never thought of himself, but was always turning outward to lift others and always sought of His father. And I'm so pumped for Christmas when we get to celebrate his humble birth!!

Thursday we had our weekly coordination meeting at our ward mission leaders home and, in keeping with Faribault tradition, he welcomed my new companion Elder Montierth to the area with his famous PB+J Omlets!! Sounds bizarre but they are the best lol. One of his former students, James, came over to hang out with his son or something, and he ended up sitting down and talking with us at the table. He had some great questions about us as missionaries and the gospel, and basically our coordination meeting turned into a member-present lesson! Haha it was sweet.

We met with the Post family again on Friday. Had a great lesson with them and afterwards decorated stockings with them, haha it was a blast. MaryJane is still progressing well towards her goal to go to the temple, and also Chase towards baptism!

We'll finish this week off with a milagro (Spanish for “miracle”). After church on Sunday we set out to go tracting in a nearby trailer park to share a Christmas message and find new people to teach. We punched in an address in the GPS, but unfortunately missed a turn and found ourselves entering the freeway! The closest exit to turn around wasn't for another 7 miles, ..great! Well we decided we would change our route and stop by some Hispanic investigators in a small town where we were headed. We didn't have much luck there, so we headed back up to where we originally wanted to go. Literally the first door we knocked, this older lady named Kay answered and opened up to us. She said she lost her husband just 2 weeks ago. She was in tears as we testified of the reality of life after death and the Plan of Salvation that God has laid out for us through his son Jesus Christ. It was so powerful. We invited her to be baptized if she knew our message was true and she said yes! We gave her a date to work towards - Feb. 3rd. We are so excited! The best part was she told us she just got home 10 minutes earlier, so it was definitely inspired timing on God's part that we met her!

I love the gospel and the chance I have to share it. I love and appreciate all of you, and all your wonderful examples. Keep on lighting the world! 😊

-Elder Bolinder

(For P-day we went to the nature center and made some new animals friends, then took a hike to the sick frozen waterfall we found)