Week 87

January 30, 2017

I would always say there's nothing I'd rather be doing than being a missionary, but that's especially easy to say during weeks like this!! 

For one, yesterday our friend H. who the other elders found on the bus and gave to us came to church with her son M. and her daughter B.! Feel free to ask my parents for their names, they are hilarious and awesome. I feel like in most places in the world, it's kind of rare that the missionaries bring a family to church on their own, and the members should be (and were, in our case) smart enough to just dive on them. It was great, we went up to relief society (which is the first meeting) where sister S. practically hugged H. into her seat. Meanwhile sister K. was rocking it in the rapidly expanding primary that now includes three Nigerians, a South African, Filipino, American, and Russian-Maltese who are the most energy packed kids on the island of Malta. They will be a good way for the older members to learn patience ;) 

H. is coming to FHE tonight and we will teach her on Wednesday when the zone leaders are here for a scambio!  (We hope) O. is going to be baptized on February 25th! Woohoo. 

Some of you may have heard about some changes in the missionary schedule. Basically, my companion and I aren't changing anything at all. The simplified key indicators are genius though, I love it. 

  

This week we went to zone conference. It was great! Last transfer at zone conference we were sort of homeless, but this transfer I had the idea to call up the GANS [youth] center elders - cioè [that is to say] my cousin Anziano Spencer! So, we went on our first scambio [exchange] ever, it only lasted like an hour but it was good anyway ha-ha. 

That night we stayed in the apartment with the Thompsons. I did my best to fake being healthy to not annoy them too much! Poor people, they were so nice to us! 

I went on another mini scambio with Anziano Pineau while the other elders attended branch council. I started out by calling several people who I didn't expect to answer and they ALL DID. We were on fire so then I called one other person, an investigator who self-referred to the church but has been offline for a couple weeks, and he answered too! We met him on Friday and taught a good lesson. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it to church because he worked till 6 am on Sunday morning, but we'll work on that. After the lesson, we joined the other members for... haggis night. If you have the stomach for it, you can look up what haggis is.

[I’ll save you the bother.  Haggis, the national dish of Scotland, a type of pudding composed of the liver, heart, and lungs of a sheep (or other animal), minced and mixed with beef or mutton suet and oatmeal and seasoned with onion, cayenne pepper, and other spices. The mixture is packed into a sheep’s stomach and boiled.] 

It's a Scottish dish and I'm not even sure I spelled it right. But it wasn't bad. I was given the last-second task of giving a back-handed speech of "complimenting" the "lassies" in the room as a toast. They didn't give me words or anything, I had like five minutes to think about what to say! Yikes. 

  

Yesterday in church every single lesson and talk discussed missionary work in some way or another. I love it! This branch is awesome, I wrote on the whiteboard calendar that next Monday is "(Not being) transferred calls" :) 

bl-imħabba, 

Presbiteru Cannon

Transfer 14! 

Good-by to Malta

Haggis

Exchange with  cousin Tristan Spencer!

The following are pictures from the Pickerd's blog.

The Malta missionaries 

 President Pickerd on the right.  I'm guess the branch president with his family to President Pickerd's left.  I don't know who the men on the far left are.  But I think that the young man third from the left is the branch president's son who is the first missionary ever from Malta.

President Pickerd, the branch president and the three men 

who were just made elders (I'm guessing)