And Winter Came

Greetings from Canada! We have received a hearty portion of snow, especially on Friday but it's starting to go away thankfully. It has been pretty chilly! Kind of weird walking around seeing all of these Halloween decorations up and they're covered with snow haha. Also, It's harder to street contact because most people have retreated from off the streets and the ones who are left, well, they aren't quite as happy as they used to be. It's all good though! That's just part of the work! 

Unfortunately, our car was taken in for repair yesterday, so we've been trying to figure out how to use the Edmonton Transit System. I never really enjoyed Bussing, it limits the work we can get done by a lot, but it will only be until Thursday or Friday. The companion and I are having fun though! It's quite the ride trying to get from one place to the next. We missed one of our stops coming home last night and had to run a kilometer through the mud and snow to catch a bus that would get us home. We arrived at our pad at 15 seconds to 9:00. Crazy awesome miracle! So we'll do our best for the next couple days. Not easy covering the whole stake and we have no car. Good memories though. 

Oh, I haven't told you much about my companion. Elder Randeep Singh Ranu is from Quezon City Philippines. His father came from India to start a business over there and married a Filipino. He is a convert to the church and was baptized just 3 weeks after starting the missionary discussions. He's a really sensitive guy, but he has a big heart and I like him. 

I was able to go on exchanges this week over in Stony Plain with Elder Odicta. He was a Tagalog missionary before but was a assigned to English temporarily. We spent a couple hours tracting, meeting with very limited success. We then went to stop by a couple Filipinos and got in with an older couple and their grand-daughter. They seemed to be interesting in meeting with us and accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. After that we went to check out the Filipino Store to contact people and purchase some Balut for district meeting haha. Unfortunately, they were out of Balut, but we did find a lost sheep! We started talking with some of the employee's and I was talking to this guy in Tagalog and getting no response. Turns out he was Hispanic! Not only him, but the 4 other guys too! everyone but the Main lady who was running the operation hahaha. Mexicans working in a Filipino store, go figure. But we started talking with this guy and it turns out he was a convert to the church back in Mexico! He hadn't been attending for years but he said to us "Some day I'll come back. I know that the church is true." He was such a nice man, We got his info, so well get his records the the ward. Tender mercies for sure.

On Tuesday we were able to meet with one of our more solid investigators, Randy, out in Stony Plain. He's really a great guy and he cooks for us every time we go out to see him! We just did a bit of Book of Mormon follow up and encouraged him to get going on it, because he hasn't read yet. Seems to be a problem with most of the people we teach, but especially in Tagalog. Try as we may to get it across that ang taning paraan - the only way for anyone to really know and gain a testimony of what we teach is through reading, pondering and praying about The Book of Mormon. And if you really don't have 5 minutes in the day to read, you need to wake up 5 minutes earlier! We really do love the investigators we have though and we're glad that a few of them are up to meet at least once a week. Randy agreed to come take a tour of the church today, so we are looking forward to that. Teaching opportunities are a sacred privilege, So I'm going to try to treat them as such for the rest of my mission. Really think about the people we are meeting with in the morning and prepare myself to teach according to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Never let anything keep you from being happy! 

Love,

Elder Higginson 

Snowfall

Greetings from the Wicked North! We got our first Snowfall this week on Friday and it didn't end until Monday! We got a decent bit, it was nasty. Super cold and windy. Not Ideal for doing missionary work but that didn't stop us from getting 5 new investigators and putting one of them on date for Baptism on the 26th of November! Hopefully we'll get this area to produce some fruit.

Last Saturday on the 8th, We were able to attend the first ever Tagalog Endowment Session! It was a pretty cool experience and I was able to go through without needing the head set. There is a bit of deep Tagalog in there, but I was able to understand most of the stuff from context clues and memory. Filipino members came from all over the city to attend and I got to see some old friends.

unfortunately just before getting to the temple We got rear-ended on the overpass. Not a great thing, because two days prior I hit a curb and caused some damage to the vehicle. So all the paperwork for that will now have to be done all over again. Lot's of things have been causing me anguish this week. Reminded me of when dad was serving in South Carolina and experienced the buffetings of Satan after being in a car accident that was not his fault. It is no surprise that when I'm becoming the best missionary I can be, I face great opposition. I spent the weekend with a little black rain cloud hanging over me,  but I was able to have a change of perspective that is helping me get back on my feet. For a lesson we were sharing with some members at our Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday, Elder Ranu found a Talk from Elder Uchtdorf entitled "Grateful in any Circumstances" I would encourage all of you to read it if you have forgotten what it's about. I'll just share a little. 

"My dear brothers and sisters, the choice is ours. We can choose to limit our gratitude, based on the blessings we feel we lack. Or we can choose to be like Nephi, whose grateful heart never faltered. When his brothers tied him up on the ship—which he had built to take them to the promised land—his ankles and wrists were so sore “they had swollen exceedingly,” and a violent storm threatened to swallow him up in the depths of the sea. “Nevertheless,” Nephi said, “I did look unto my God, and I did praise him all the day long; and I did not murmur against the Lord because of mine afflictions.”

"This type of gratitude transcends whatever is happening around us. It surpasses disappointment, discouragement, and despair. It blooms just as beautifully in the icy landscape of winter as it does in the pleasant warmth of summer."

"We sometimes think that being grateful is what we do after our problems are solved, but how terribly shortsighted that is. How much of life do we miss by waiting to see the rainbow before thanking God that there is rain?"

"Being grateful in times of distress does not mean that we are pleased with our circumstances. It does mean that through the eyes of faith we look beyond our present-day challenges."

"This is not a gratitude of the lips but of the soul. It is a gratitude that heals the heart and expands the mind."

I have only 7 weeks left to prove my mettle and serve to the best of my ability. So I'll work through this and make it count. We've got a good week lined up and it should go by fast. Thank you all for the continued Emailing and praying for me! Have a good week!

Elder Higginson

This was after the Tagalog Temple session. So many wonderful Filipino friends from past area's! 

Baptism

Here are the pictures of Denise's baptism! And the skype afterwards.
No, I really wasn't paying attention to the look on my own face when I
look the screen shot. All so wonderful though really.

Open your mouths and they shall be filled

Hello from Edmonton. 

So here is the run down on this week. We basically street contacted. That's pretty much it. Kind of exhausting. But doing the hard things brings miracles so that's nice.

So here are the miracles from our street contacting. The first one is a nice fellow named Dmitri. We were looking for Filipinos in some apartment housing complexes and stumbled across the fellow. He told us that he had been involved in a lot of bad stuff from a tender age. He began doing rather hard drugs at age 12. But he decided to get away from it a couple years back and is trying to move on. We expressed to him that our message could help him find complete healing from wounds of his past life and he agreed to hear the message and gave us a return appointment. So we referred him over to the Coronation Park Elders. Two days later we were driving to an appointment when we saw Dmitri walking down the road. We stopped and asked him how the lesson went with the other Elders. He told us he had read the whole pamphlet after they left and loved it. Seemed genuinely touched and shook our hands before bidding farewell. What cool experiences this work provides.

Another Miracle from this week was we found a Filipino who is not working and doesn't have a church that he attends frequently! That's two miracles! Certainly is uncommon. We had a good lesson and a return appointment and he also agreed to come to church. 

Another miracle from Yesterday was one of the potentials we found the other week actually texted us to set up an appointment like he said he would. THAT NEVER HAPPENS. So we have an appointment with him for this Friday. 

We had a good experience with some Member help this week. One of our favorite Filipino Priest-age young men, R.J. came out with us to do some teaching. None of the Filipinos kept their appointments, but we ended up in the neighborhood of one of R.J.'s friends. So he sent them a text and asked if he stop by with some of his church friends haha. They were like "Sure, come over!" so we rang the door bell and got to meet R.J.'s friends. Very nice young people who are strong in there faith and not worried about talking about religion. R.J. actually attended their church once and talked about the gospel with them. He said it was a good experience so hopefully he'll be able to invite them to our church to check it out. And they were pretty excited that I knew any Tagalog. Good member missionary work, I'd say! Introduce your friends to the missionaries in a non-threatening way! 

Well, I will let you know how things are going next week, but it looks like I'll have some fun stuff before the end of the mission. General conference next week, then in November we are having Elder C. Scott Grow come up for mission tour, and Christmas conference will be my last day in the mission. Just like it was my first day when I came to the mission two years ago.
Hey one last thing:

So I don't know if you remember one of our super cool investigators in Rocky Mountain House named Denise?? Well anyway, I called Rocky this week to get some info and follow up and found out some news!

Denise was found and taught by a pair of Sister Missionaries when she lived in Alaska like 16 years ago. They helped her overcome some of hesitations she had because of some false things she'd heard about the Mormon church. She certainly spoke very highly of those missionaries.

Denise was found by the missionaries about 20 months ago and taught her only a couple lessons. She had for many years had a crisis of faith and only believed in Science and all that kind of thing. Anyway, about 6 months later, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast Cancer and as she was going in to have a serious operation she said she heard God Speaking to her. She said it brought peace into her heart and she felt joy under the difficult circumstances. I found Denise in the Former investigators in the Area book Last January and for some reason decided to go by. It took us a while to find her address, but with the help of a couple other missionaries who had served in Rocky the year before, we were able to locate it. We met her and found out about her coming back to the  faith She told us right off the bat that she believed the Book of Mormon and thought that Joseph Smith could very possibly be a prophet. We taught her as circumstances permitted with her poor heath for the next two months, in which time she came to accept Pre -Earth-Life as a true doctrine. I was transferred shortly after but she seemed committed and told us that she could see where the path was taking her, hinting that she intended to join the church. 

There was some fallout however, as the missionary who replaced me in Rocky was not that great. Denise Stopped meeting with the missionaries for a few months, most likely because she wasn't feeling the spirit when meeting with them. But a good Elder picked her back up a couple months later and she was ready! They set a baptismal date and taught her twice a week. This last Saturday she was baptized a member of the church. I was fortunate enough to get permission to Skype in and congratulate her.

I thought my time down in Rocky was futile and sort of a waste. We worked so hard to have success and saw none. But turns out we were sowing seeds, and one actually brought forth fruit! You will have to meet this wonderful woman when we come up to tour the mission.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Higginson

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine

Greetings from the West End! I hope that you are all doing fantastic back home in the US of A! We are up to our elbows right now in the work of the ministry. And the work of Cleaning apartments and getting this place into some form of decent proselyting shape. We'll make the most of it!

So here is the most exciting news: I'm a Grandfather! That's right! Elder Jenson is training a new missionary up in High Level. Elder Nield is his name and he's from Pocatello Idaho! Woohhoo! We are all Idaho boys! This brings me great joy. 

This week has gone by in a flash! We drove down to Edmonton on Wednesday and transferred luggage. Elder Miller is getting Elder Levitt, who seems to be a real top notch Elder. I am now with Elder Ranu, from Quezon City, Philippines. Here is the interesting part: his father is from India and his mother is from the Philippines. So he looks super Indian. He speaks some good Tagalog though! We have been out everyday talking to people in the streets and knocking doors. Unfortunately, the only investigators we had when I got here were the ones that I was working with in Slave Lake... So I'm not totally sure what they've been doing with their time here, but we got 4 new investigators last week and talked to a lot of people. 

Edmonton is a beautiful place this time of year. The leaves are all turning colors and it is just rather nice in some areas. We were walking down a park trail along the North Saskatchewan river and talking to people last week. Mostly rich snobs and other people who didn't really want to listen. But we found a few good folks and as we were moving back up the trail to our car a man approached us and asked us, "Why does God allow the devil to have so much power over us sometimes!?" We were able to talk with this man for probably 20 minutes and he shared with us his story and about how he had a really bad alcohol addiction, and he had been sober for 5 months but he was struggling really bad that day. He was certainly humble and sought us for advice and help. We told him about the Addiction Recovery Program and taught a brief Restoration lesson. He was willing to try it out and took a copy of the Book of Mormon. He told us that when he started down the path he felt awful and not sure what to do. He said he felt much better after talking with us and counted it the hand of God that was guiding him and us. 

Not much else to report, except that we'll be doing some serious deep cleaning in the apartment shortly. It needs it badly. I hope you all have a wonderful week! 

Love,

Elder Higginson

Here's the new companion! Cleaning out the car and eating some KFC for the first time in a long time.

Marunong Ka pa rin mag-Tagalog?

Greeting from Slave Lake. 

First off, congrats to Mason for taking off to the MTC! Gonna be a wonderful missionary and a sharp sword in the master's hand. This week has been really good for us and we've seen the work hasten!

We got 3 people on date for baptism this week! The first one, George agreed to be baptized on the 16th of October and we also got in with a former investigator couple. The husband prayed about the Book of Mormon and felt it was true. He agreed to be baptised on the 2nd of Novemberand his wife said she would follow on that date if she was ready. Getting people on date in the first lesson is my favorite thing. The week treated us really well, success wise. 

Lens Baptism was great. It was stinking stressful for me, but it was great. We basically spent the whole day at the church, finishing my talk early and church and the baptism and a sweet potluck and then a fireside with Elder Cook and a lesson with a recent convert in the evening. Long day. I was unable to do the violin deal, because my accompanist was sick and I got to practice for an hour in the whole week anyway. It is ok though. My talk went 19 minutes surprisingly. Well executed if I do say so myself. We filled the font up during church, after mopping all the dead bugs out of it beforehand of course. The talks were wonderful, and the service spiritual. Minus talkative members and rowdy children. You all know how I used to get when children are being unruly at family gatherings. I kind of felt that way during the first half, but I was doing my best to pray and calm myself down so I could enjoy things. Old habits die hard. Len had to go under twice do to a leg popping up. But we got him all under the second time! His wife Leslie came and was very pleasant and talked openly with us. She was wonderful and we hope she felt something. I was able to confirm Len a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After the blessing he shook everyone's hand after which he turned to me and said "we did it" and gave me a hug. I've never felt so blessed to be part of someone's conversion. I don't often shed tears of joy, but I certainly did in my prayers that night. The branch put on a wonderful Potluck with tons of food and a lot of people attended the baptism. A successful end to a successful ministry here in Slave Lake.

We received our transfer call this morning. President doesn't tell too many people where they are going or who they're getting but he told me. Riverbend Stake with Elder Ranue. TAGALOG. It's interesting that he'll be keeping me in the same stake. perhaps near the end of my time, I will come back up to Slave Lake to teach our Filipino friends up here. It is still my area I suppose. President said he was granting my Tagalog wishes on account of my diligence and contribution in the mission. So I guess I deserve this hahaha. 

This really has been a wonderful mission. I've gained a lot of experience for life and overcome many difficult obstacles. I look forward to the last 3 months and hope the Lord will give me the strength to perform to the best of my ability. 

Love,

Elder Higginson

Thou wilt surely wear away- Jethro

Hello everyone! This is my last full week in Slave Lake and we've got a lot to do and probably another 900 Kilometers to drive. We have an appointment in Red Earth, 2 hours North West on Friday. Then we have to make it to Wabasca. Probably 6 hours of driving ahead of us just on that day. We'll make the most of it. 

Len is squared away for Baptism on the 11th of September, and we got permission from the Stake President, President Wong to do the confirmation immediately following. And then a sweet Luncheon in the cultural hall! The stressful part is A) We have to make most all the baptism preparations plus B) I have to give a talk in Sacrament meeting plus C) I'm doing a violin musical piece for the baptism on top of it D) We have to make sure the area is tip-top for transfers next week. And we have very little time to accomplish any of that because we have appointments. Please pray for me haha!

This week has been great, We had exchanges and I got to go with my old time buddy, Elder Brown! We came out at the same time and he's a really good fellow. We got to teach Carla and Andrew again, since they live in Elder Browns area! It was good to meet with them, they seem to be doing better now that they've left Slave Lake. Elder Miller took over the area for the first time on his own! He's not a greenie anymore! seasoned, trained and tested. I will be leaving the area in good hands.

Blake came back from Whitecourt for the weekend and we had some good visits with him. He has found the church down there and he has Sundays off so he'll be going there while he's away. He is certainly committed to joining the church, It will happen sooner or later. 

We were Knocking Doors on Wednesday and a lady opened up and let us right in without any explanation. It's nice when that happens every now and again. She said that she had been feeling despondent about not attending a church since she moved to Slave Lake not long before. She told us it had been on her mind when we knocked on her door. She was receptive to the quick restoration we taught there in the entrance of the house and she invited us back. There are people who are ready to receive the message, we just gotta find them. 

On Wednesday night we were invited to attend a Pentecostal sort of church on a spur of the moment basis. Actually they called it a 'Bible Study". I had forgotten how loosely people apply that term to any sort of religious gathering. Should have know better haha. But we had about 45 minutes until our next appointment so we opted to check it out and be cultured. The people were really nice and happy to see us. They had us sit in the second row. Then they had everyone stand and a couple Jamaicans starting singing some strange modern christian songs. Evidently the small congregation knew the songs too, but we felt slightly awkward. You all remember what happens when I have to sing songs in a choir that I don't really care for. Stephanie Burnett has the recordings if you care to find out. 😱 Anywho, everyone is singing and using the saviors name an awful lot - not necessarily in a vain way, but way too much, and shaking and praising God. We got out just as the sermon was about to start. Interesting stuff for sure. I wonder If people think that's the kind of stuff we do in our churches? Regardless, I'm sure people have fears about coming to our church because of the unexpected. We'll keep trying to break down barriers and help people get there. I think I've had my fill of culture for now.

That sums up what's going on here! Thank you for all your emails and support. 

as always, Love

Elder Higginson