Elder McKay Horsley

A while back there I said I would try to write an email every week for the rest of my mission. That went pretty bu hao but I can assure you the last transfer of my mission was wonderful. I love it here and I love the work that we have been called to do. Yesterday was my last talk in church in the mandarin ward and it was such a meaningful way to end these 2 years here. I'm a Mandarin Elder here in Calgary, and we only have 1 Mandarin ward and 6 elders who are serving in the mandarin ward at one time. Because of that, we stay in the same ward for a large part of our mission and usually only leave to serve in an English speaking ward for a couple of transfers. I've been in this ward for 11 transfers (15+ months) and so I pretty much know every single member and friend who has been taught here for the last 2 years. We were able to pack church for sunday with elder Tang and I going home, so it was great to see so many friends there and reflect on everything that has happened with ...

In the words of another missionary fella: Ha lou, dajia zao an. I couldn't have said it better myself. To be honest as I'm starting to write this email I'm getting quite sentimental. I was just reading some other missionaries' emails before typing this out, and a lot of them talk about their individual missions coming to an end. One of them included the line "there is too much to be grateful for." I can't think of anything more appropriate to describe my feelings at the start of my final transfer in Calgary Canada. Elder Lim and I were downtown today street contacting when I met a woman who had distanced herself from the church earlier in her life. She didn't harbor bad feelings towards the church, but for a multitude of reasons decided it wasn't for her. Towards the end of our conversation she said something along the lines of: "Well, I know what you're doing out here is pretty rough, so keep on pushing through. Talking to all these pe...

It was a wonderful two weeks, with some stressful moments here and there but overall good. First things first is I said I would write emails every week for the rest of my mission 2 weeks ago, I have repented for last week and will be trying again. The adversary is exhorting all of his tactics to stop me from writing these emails (don't want to) but it's a good thing that the strongest warriors (me) get the hardest challenges (writing emails). I consider this my Job arch. This week I got the blessed opportunity to go outside and not freeze my toes off. There is quite literally no greater degree of gratitude one can feel when going outside for a 2 hour finding block without 3 pairs of pants on and 5 layers of coats. The utter joy from wearing a short sleeve shirt is unimaginable. We had the blessed opportunity to use our Chinese to teach the Law of Chastity twice this week to some fellas who had a LOT of specific in depth technical term questions. I will concede I have not yet ...

Hello everyone, I'm going to try and write one of these every week now for the rest of my mission, so we're going to hit a solid email 180 to finish my mission off. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse everytime I bring up the weather up here because I talk about it all the time, but it really has a huge effect on everything we do. It also has to be nearly the least exciting topic to talk about, but this week was pretty consistently -15 or -20 celsius. Although, other than this week, it's been a light winter. On the other hand, the upside to the weather is that the police are finally getting off our tails because they don't want to be outside. I was informed by President and Sister Barth this week that I have about 50% of all reported "getting kicked off the train station" moments in the mission in the last little while. They told me I needed to stop cooking so hard directly in front of the city officials. The church is getting lawyers involved now becaus...

Merry Christmas, happy new year, feliz yom kippur. I think I've missed a couple other holidays but I'll leave the list brief. It feels like its probably time for me to get on writing another email. I've been procrastinating telling this update with my life, and I dont know exactly how to phrase it, so I'll just quote my brother Henry who put it best in his past email: "Prayers up for my brother Mckay he has fallen ill and my bet is that he gets sent home sadly, what a shame." It was looking bad there for a moment, but I'm happy to say I've recovered from a mild cold and moderately stuffy nose. I will be able to finish my mission here in the CCM so blessings up🙏 I'm training a new little guy out here named Elder Lim. Hes from Hawaii and he is such a hard worker who is stoked to be out here. He's about the least frugal man I've ever met though. Love him for it though. It gives some good laughs. The first week he was here he bought a Silve...

Hello hello everyone. Im back with an update. Over the last little bit: - Our friend Hongran was baptized. He is super cool little 11 year old chess addict. Im talking a wild trash talk with him knowing full well this mini hikaru would cook me. We found them going to an english speaking ward with one of our friends who lived too far from the mandarin ward to get there for church. As we went to church we saw some chinese folk there and went to talk to them. They had just recently come back from China and got back in contact with the church once they had got back. They only knew about this English ward and so they started coming once the came back. We asked if we could start teaching them again and out of the blue the next week his Dad called us to ask how soon his son could be baptized. They are such an awesome family and the father Leiwong should be baptized in December🙏 - We have some awesome friends Bob and Oliver progressing towards baptism. Bob is on date for this next week, but...