******* God Save the Queen but mostly God Bless America ******

Yes.

Hermana Curtis.

Canada Day was a good time, we had perogies with the branch and I learned the words to "Oh Canada" <3

Also just for the record literally everyone throws down on me always because living in the True North for the past year or so has not diminished how patriotic I am whatsoever, though I do totally love it here. I've been driving around with baby American flags out my windows all morning. Bless.

OKAY REALLY REALLY GOOD THINGS HAPPENED THIS WEEKEND!!!!!!!

Fridayyyyy Ellen SE BAUTIZO!!!!!!!!!!! Okay watching my cute little Brazilian best friend get in the water was the most spiritual baptismal service I've ever attended. Her mom was actually murdered when she was 12, and really and truly you could feel her so close to us and her daughter. It was incredible and something I will always remember. The best part about watching those you teach get baptized is knowing their back stories, understanding just bits and pieces of everything they're leaving behind with that promise. She already got her temple recommend and is just kinda blowing my mind everytime I talk to her.

Also I think my best friend in all of Kelowna is quite possible the elders' investigator John... I really hope AJ is reading this because he is literally YOU AJ. But just cause he dropped out of university to start his business and is absolutely killing it. He's the polar opposite from everyone else in the branch but so down to turn his life around. Long story short, John took us to Cactus Club, this super yummy restaurant on the water attached to the yacht club, for dinner on Canada Day. Which is not something you generally experience in YSA work hahaha. 

Anyways, there we are in quite honestly probably the most worldly place I'm allowed to go to as a missionary, and he is absolutely firing questions off at us about how in heaven's name we lived the commandments back home, and then in some roundabout way we end up just testifying to him of Christ, and the clarity that comes from trusting Heavenly Father. I watched John change in the space of an hour. We walked back through downtown with him, and he stopped us and said "Sisters I really wanna tell you something." Sweet John starts telling me about the day he found himself homeless as a 16 year old on the beach and asked God to give him an opportunity. And promised that he would take it. The conversation that followed was one of the most important moments of my mission because all of our eyes were opened and I just felt this crazy love for him because I knew so strongly that Heavenly Father was pulling soooo hard for him. He's in a world right now where success is purely money and sex and he's cutting it away bit by bit.  

The next morning he showed up to church 30 minutes early, even though we knew he'd been at the club all night for Canada Day. He pulled us aside and said he had a story to tell us.  Long story short, he had driven home a girl who was far too drunk to take care of herself. When she asked why he wasn't drunk, he told her it was part of his religion. She said, "Wait, you believe in God???" And then entirely broke down in tears about how close she had been to ending her life this past week and John said he just testified soooooo hard about how real Heavenly Father is and His love for us and I ALMOST DROPPED TO THE FLOOR AS HE WAS TELLING ME THIS. I ACTUALLY ALMOST FELL OVER. And then he's like "Yeah so instead of sleeping with her I just testified to her about God and I think we both cried. And then I dropped her off and went home." 

FOR THE WIN JOHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The grand finale of this story (for this weekend at least) is that John apparently leaned over to the elders during SundaySchool and was like "Hey, can we do August 5th for my baptism?" hahahah YEAH OKAY SURE THAT SHOULD WORK. Elder Norton comes up to me afterwards and is like "John is different today" and I'm like "Yeah I watched that happen in the middle of Cactus Club last night."

Missions. are. so. good.

Oh yeah, the other highlight was that John decided to come contacting with us downtown before dinner. Except he calls it "selling". And told everyone that we talked to he had been a member for two months and I was like "lol no John you're not even a member you just met the missionaries two months ago" but that's okay, we're not even mad.

OKAY I LOVE YOU ALL. 

I ALSO LOVE AMERICA. 

I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THE UNITED STATES AND THE CONSTITUTION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN GENERAL BUT NOT VERY MANY MINUTES SO SORRY.

xxx Hermana Curtisssss

PS Still love you Octavia, though it would have been quite hard for us to be friends this time of year in 1776.