Nah I'm from Philadelphia

Hello Everyone General conference was this week and that was pretty awesome. We went to a white members house after dinner and they made probably the best meal I've eaten on my mission. They had chicken, ribs, steak, this funky potato thing, and it was honestly the greatest thing ever. He has a kid in 10th grade, so I decided I'd mess with him and ask him an unanswerable question: "Can you name one speaker from general conference and what they talked about?" I remember when father Tony Horsley used to ask me that one. It always stumped me cause he knew darn well I didn't listen to a single one and I wouldn't be able to answer. As I got older I came up with a wonderful strategy to listen for like 3 minutes to just get the jist of one talk, and that went pretty well. But this time through on my mission, it actually was really awesome. It was by far the most I have ever listened to general conference and the most I've gotten from it as well. I did eat myself sick with werther's caramels though. I've started telling people I'm from Philadelphia and it's been hastening the work like none other. I was born there but realistically only lived there for like less than a year, but I'm still going to count it. Almost everyone here knows who the missionaries are, and they don't want to talk to a missionary from Utah so I switched it up and we are genuinely getting more conversations now. So now I'm Elder Horsley from Philadelphia. This week we had an FHE activity where we played badminton, pickleball, and ping-pong. I got into a pickleball game with Samantha (a 48 year old woman who has played pickleball once before), so I decided I would go easy on her, and hit the pickleball directly to her every time, as any reasonable person would have done. Little did I know that she would hit the ball in pretty much any direction that wasn't mine, even off the court, and when I couldn't get it count it as her point. This was fine for about 15 minutes, but I couldn't rock with that any longer. I decided the only sane thing to do was go full PPA (professional pickleball association) on this woman, as any charitable missionary would do, and needless to say she did not score a single point after that. We started proselyting at the college around us this week, it was a total miracle. We were at our weekly basketball finding activity, and some random YSA kids came in. This isn't what happens most of the time because the Chinese people here don't want to play with anyone who is white outside of the missionaries. So they waited outside until we were done and then came in, and I started talking to one who just got off his mission from Toronto. We started talking about the Mandarin missionaries there, and he said they got baptisms weekly. I was losing it cause I'm trying to have Calgary like that too. We were talking about how they usually found people to teach and he said they just grind college campuses. We have done absolutely none of that, so I told our companions we should do that, and elder Spencer was not rocking with it, but I didn't really care so we did it anyway. It was legit the most successful finding activity we have ever had. So, hopefully we get some more friends this coming week and hopefully can baptise some people here. Anyways our friend Maggie is awesome and should be on date soon, and we also have our friends Helen, Nina, and Gloria. They are awesome too. Please pray for them. My favorite thing from Conference this week was President Nelson's challenge to think more Celestial. When making decisions, he asks us to keep the end goal in mind. I just want to challenge you all to think more celestial in your everyday choices, and also wanted to add my own testimony that I'm so happy to be out here on a mission. I'm so thankful for how much closer I have been able to grow towards Jesus Christ, and for this opportunity to share this wonderful message with the people here in Calgary. Love you all!