Traumatized According to Western Culture

Hey Everybody!!

Sorry I didn't send a email last week, I ran out of time. I MADE IT TO CANADA! 🇨🇦 My first area is in Vancouver so I've been in the city. My first two weeks have been... interesting. But a good interesting:)

My companion (and trainer) is Sister Daku! She's actually from BC and served in an area where her family lives for a while. She's super sweet and very patient and I've learned lots from her already!

We had our first Zone Conference last week and it was AMAZING! For those of you who don't know, Zone Conference is where we meet together with our zone and the mission president comes and basically tells us what we're doing wrong and what we need to be doing to be better and more effective missionaries. Hahaha it sounds awful but it's actually the best. My mission president is President Wong. Out of over 400 mission presidents in the world, he is one of two that are currently General Authorities. Pretty awesome. He's from Hong Kong and likes to throw water bottles at elders that ask stupid questions. My favorite quote of his from Zone Conference was "You have been traumatized according to western culture." Apparently the Chinese don't have a word for "traumatized" so he likes to use it all the time. Something he taught me was that I'm in the growing stages of my mission and I need to be patient because it takes time. You wouldn't pull on a plant to try and make it grow faster, if you did you'd just end up pulling it out and killing it. The same goes for serving a mission. As much as missionaries want to be perfect and amazing immediately, it takes time and trying to force ourselves to grow faster will just do damage. We need to enjoy the growing process and be okay being a little plant for now! This really applies to all aspects of life.

Vancouver is so diverse! I've met people from all around the world. Just the other day I was sitting at a table with people from Canada, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Peru! And at Zone Conference I was part of a musical number and we had sisters from Hong Kong and Korea and elders from Brazil and Peru. No matter where we are from or what our culture is like, the gospel has a way of bringing us all

together! We're all children of God!

I've had a lot of cool experiences so far and plenty of rejections to last me a lifetime, but my favorite experience so far happened yesterday. Sister Daku and I had gone out to teach a woman but she left a note on the door saying she was sorry she wasn't home but to call her to set up another time. We decided to go visit some members in the area so we pulled up our area book and found two names nearby. The first woman wasn't home so we went to the next person who lives in a rest home. We got there and found out he had recently suffered from a stroke and was stuck in bed. All of his family lives in Utah so he's alone most of the time. About 8 months ago some elders would visit him but stopped coming after they were transferred. We asked him if we could sing him a hymn and he said yes and told us that his favorite was We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet. As soon as we sang the first word, he burst into tears. We had to leave after that to get to another appointment and as we left he said "It just gets so lonely here." It broke my heart! We promised him that we would come back and visit him as often as we possibly could and make sure that somebody would bring him the sacrament every week. He was extremely grateful. It was no coincidence that we found him that day! If the first woman hadn't cancelled and the second woman was home, we never would have met this man! Heavenly Father was aware of his needs and sent us to him at a time when he needed us the most.

I love you all! Remember that Heavenly Father is aware of you and He knows exactly what you need when you need it. Trust Him!

Love, Sister Rigby

1. First night in the mission home with President and Sister Wong
2. Our hike today in North Vancouver
3. The city!
4. Sister Daku and I