Laughter is the shortest distance between two people!🤣 Repentance...a ladder or a bike? Keep pedaling!🚲

Hi guys! :)

It was an awesome week! The Longueuil stake (where I served for over a year) had mini missions this past weekend and they had too many youth who wanted to come, so they needed some teams from the Montreal stake to help and we were one of the lucky teams who were chosen to receive a mini missionary. His name is Alex; we had a ton of fun together, and he did so awesome! He actually taught me a lot about listening and testifying. It was a great experience. (And yes, Mom, I have pictures :P)

Funny moment this week happened when we started talking to these men in a park while we were waiting for an investigator to get there. There were three guys sitting around a table and we walked up and said, "Hey guys! How are you?" To which one of them responded, "Oh no. I don't wanna hear it." He then started to go off on a rant against Christians. Now, I've discovered something on my mission. Somebody once said that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. I have figured out that people here can sometimes seem super rude, but if you can just be real with them and get them to laugh, things almost always get better, even if they're not interested. So I just try and make people laugh. And as this man was ranting, at one point he said, "You need to go home tonight and ask yourself, 'How long am I going to do this?'" So I interrupted him and said, "Until June." My companion laughed and said, "For me, until August." The look on this man's face was priceless. He had no idea what to say. Which was a perfect moment for us to start into an explanation of who we are and what we're doing here for two years. Now, he still wasn't interested, but we had a good conversation with some smiles and laughs and left on good terms. It was a good experience, and we had a good laugh the whole day thinking back on what he looked like when we answered his rhetorical question. I love laughing and I love the gospel; why not share both with as many people as possible?

I was studying repentance this morning in preparation for a lesson we will be having tonight and I had a thought. I used to think of repentance like a ladder; we climb up rung by rung, overcoming sin after sin. And when we mess up we drop back down a rung. It's honestly kind of a depressing analogy in my mind because it means that sometimes we can get kind of stuck on one rung for a while, not making any progress.

But as I was pondering this morning a thought came to me: maybe repentance is more like the pedals on a bike. We have to keep pedaling if we want to keep moving; if we stop pedaling, eventually we'll coast to a stop, especially if we're struggling to climb up a steep hill. Sometimes our progress may be fast or slow, but as long as we pedal consistently, the wheels will always keep turning, and we will always keep moving forward. Some hills are larger than others, and some sins take more effort and time to overcome. Often we are not strong enough to pedal our way up the hill on our own, and it is at these moments that our older Brother comes along side us and pushes us along as we strive to progress together with Him. Certainly, He could push us the whole way, but His goal is not just that we finish the journey; He wants us to be better and stronger for it. So we pedal on. And maybe sometimes we'll fall off the bike; maybe we'll get some cuts and bruises. Thankfully, our Brother also knows spiritual first aid, and He will help us and run along side us as we get back up, dust ourselves off and get back on the road. It is never too late to do so.

I guess my point is this: we have to keep pedaling, all the time. We have to keep up our pattern of repentance daily if we desire to keep up our spiritual momentum. And I know that as we do so, the Savior never leaves our side; He's been on this road before. He knows the bumps and holes and dangers along the route; He knows how hard it can be to get over some of those hills, and so He will stay with us, pushing us when we need it, picking us up from the dust when we fall, and always loving us and cheering us on.

Keep pedaling!

En avant!

Elder Bryan McOmber

Elder Valencia, Alex, some weird guy :P

 This photo just made me laugh. :P Left to right: Savannah (the mini missionary who went with the Hochelaga sisters), Sister Terou, Sister Roush, Elder Valencia, Alex, me.

Not being perfect. When missionaries give haircuts. Gratitude for my Savior.

Hey everybody! :)

So... for starters, I suppose I should apologize. I have taken like no photos these past few weeks. It's rather difficult since there's so many people around that there never really seems to be time to stop and take a photo, and we're always either talking to someone or rushing to an appointment. But... I will be better. Thank you for your reminders. ;)

We had an awesome meeting with Elder Bennett from the quorum of the Seventy this week. He basically spent the majority of the meeting helping us to understand that we should not beat up on ourselves for not being perfect (he might as well have hit me over the head with a hammer... talk about revelation). I guess the Lord has tried so many times to help me understand this point that He finally just sent one of His servants to our meeting to say it directly to me in hopes that I would finally understand it. I think it worked. At least, I'm getting better at not beating up on myself. :)

Hahaha. I guess our funny moment was this morning. My past companion, Elder Colunga, bought his own haircutting kit and so we cut each others' hair while we were companions. When he left for Cornwall, he took that with him, so both Elder Valencia and I (who are desperately in need of haircuts) asked around to other missionaries to see if anybody might have one. Lo and behold, a team randomly had two hair clippers and gave us one of them.

This seemed like the perfect solution. We planned to wake up today, go through our normal P-day morning studies, then take a nap for an hour or so and then give each other haircuts. Until... the hair clippers didn't work. It turned on, vibrated, and acted perfectly normal until you put it to your head, at which point, for some unknown reason, it did not cut any hair. So, what's the solution? Find the nearest barber shop. But guess what? Almost every barber shop in Quebec is closed on Monday. Was I gritting my teeth by this point? Perhaps. Anyways, so we proceeded to take apart both clippers we had in our apartment (we had another broken one) and see if we could exchange some parts and get them to work better. We even dripped some vegetable oil over the blades, but to no avail.

Thankfully, Canadian Tire (which is basically a combination of Sam's Club, an auto store, and Home Depot) had a nice haircutting set for not super expensive, so we solved our problems with that when we went shopping. Now we just have to see if Elder Valencia can cut hair when we get back to our apartment. XD

So yeah, that was our morning.

I think that today I just want to share my gratitude for the Savior.

I am grateful for Him. He has changed my world and continues to do so. As I learn more about Him, I come to recognize on a greater and greater scale just how wonderfully real He is. Jesus Christ is not a fairytale. He is not a bedtime story. He is our older Brother, and we have known Him since before this life, when we heard about Heavenly Father's plan for all of us, which revolves so much around Christ. I am grateful that He accepted voluntarily His role from the Father as our Savior. I am grateful He was willing to follow the same path as us, through the temptation and sickness and pain of mortality, so that He could show us how we should walk that path correctly. I am grateful that He was and is always exactly obedient, despite the cunning craftiness with which men and devils strove to misguide Him.

Most of all, I am grateful for His Atonement. I am grateful for His courage in Gethsemane, when He chose to submit to the Father's will and take upon Himself our pain and anguish, so often self-inflicted by sin, so that He could know perfectly how to come to our aid in those moments of error and strife. I am grateful for His selflessness at Golgotha, when the final requests from His lips were for the forgiveness of those who had crucified Him and for the support of His beloved mother. I am so eternally grateful that those moments were not the end, that His Atonement did not finish with loss of life but with victory over death as He rose from the tomb and took His place as the successful Savior and Redeemer of all mankind. He quite literally defeated the worst that the devil could throw at Him or any of us, and because of His life, death and Resurrection, if we will let Him, He will stand strong beside us as we face our own storms.

I am grateful for my older Brother. He has changed me.

En avant!

Elder Bryan McOmber

The greater the opposition, the greater the miracle. The joy of watching someone "get it". The Lord is my light...he lives!

Hey guys! :)

For those of you who know what My Plan is, it just showed up on my online missionary portal. Does that scare me to death? Absolutely. For those of you who don't know what My Plan is, it is an online course that missionaries take in the last six weeks of their mission to prevent us from getting home and having a panic attack, moving to the Himalayas and living there as hermits for the rest of our lives.

I'm not sure it's going to work for me. :P

This week was interesting. Monday was a balmy 70 degrees, and then in the evening it poured rain on us as we were walking to our next appointment. It was pretty great. I still love the rain - I guess the Arizona blood still runs in my veins. :)

I had a pretty funny day yesterday. Since our P-day was moved, we had a normal day yesterday. I went out feeling great, which is usually a precursor to some pretty harsh rejections, and yesterday was no exception. When I sat down in the metro, I began talking with the woman next to me. After giving me a few one-word answers, she interrupted me and said, "I don't know and I really do not want to talk to you right now. Thank you." Now, usually when people aren't interested, they're a little bit kinder about it than that. So this threw me off a bit. One of the very next people I talked to gave me almost exactly the same response. It was pretty interesting, almost strange how much opposition we seemed to be encountering over the next few hours. But I kept getting this feeling that the greater the opposition was that day, the greater the miracle would be if we kept talking to people. So we did. And a few hours later, on the bus, we started talking to a young man who told me, "Yeah, I lost my faith a few years ago." And I responded, "You know, I honestly don't ask this a lot. But... do you want to have faith again?" And he said, "Yeah, I do, but I don't know how." (For the record, telling a missionary that you want faith but don't know how to get it is the spiritual equivalent of telling a golden retriever that you`re taking it for a walk through a meadow of squirrels. They get REALLY excited.) This turned into a fifteen minute conversation in which we explained to this young man where we came from, why we're here on earth, and why God allows us to struggle sometimes. My favorite feeling as a missionary is watching somebody "get it." And this young man turned to us as we explained the purpose of adversity to him and said, "I've never thought about it that way before. That makes sense." We set up another appointment for later and he hopped on his bus and pulled away. This strengthened my testimony of what I call the "sunrise principle;" the sky is always at its darkest just before the sun begins to rise.

So if your skies seem pretty dark right now, remember that the Son has already risen, and He is there to be our Light. I know He lives, and I know He loves us. I have felt His love in a very intimate and personal way, many times. And while He will not deprive us of growth and agency by taking away the burden of those dark nights, He will take us by the hand and walk the path with us, because He can see the way; He is the way. We are never alone.

En avant!

Elder Bryan McOmber

70 Degrees!!!☀️ #PrinceofPeace. Remembering the true Peacegiver this Easter.

Hey ya'll! :)

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY. The sun is shining, the tank is clean....

But seriously, it`s a great day. It`s like 70 degrees Fahrenheit outside (I have started thinking more in Celsius so that conversion was difficult for me) and I have been walking outside without a coat or sweater on for the first time since like August. It`s wonderful. Canadian spring is really something.

Well, we have had a kind of crazy week. We had lots of meetings and then some exchanges, and our schedule got thrown out of wack almost every day this week. It`s been insane. I am convinced that the Lord is trying to teach me to roll with the punches that life throws; I guess that`s part of what all of us need to learn sometimes.

I had an interesting experience this past week on the métros. Elder Valencia and I were going to a meeting on the opposite side of the island, which is about a thirty minute metro ride. So we were talking to some different people as each metro station passed. When we were nearing the end of the line, with a few stations to go, I heard someone yell and looked over to see two teenagers talking to a middle-aged man. They all looked pretty angry. The situation escalated quickly, and as they got into each other`s faces, the older man shoved one of the teenagers and he fell backward against on of the seats. Everyone quickly moved away as the fight broke out. Quickly another man shoved his way between them, as they continued to scream at one another. Finally the teenagers got off the train and the older man stood back. The anger and pride on the faces of all three was so evident, and as the metro pulled away, I was struck by a thought.

As missionaries, we have been sharing the #PrinceofPeace initiative all the time recently. (For those of you who haven`t seen it yet, go to mormon.org

 right now and watch the video because it`s amazing). The basis of the initiative is that, in a world so full of pride and sin and anger and hate and war and famine and a thousand other terrible things, the promise of Jesus Christ is peace. True, lasting, heartfelt peace. 

The contrast between the message we were striving to share and the fight I had just witnessed was so evident. I realized just how much peace has been brought into my life by the Savior; how much He has changed the way I think and the way I feel. I react so differently in so many situations than I did in the past. I`m not perfect and I still have my prideful moments; but I can confidently say that I have found great peace in the Prince of Peace.

Sometimes we can get so busy and frustrated that we neglect to stop and think about what we`re busy doing, to prioritize the gospel of the great Peacegiver. My favorite definition of the gospel of Jesus Christ is this: God`s plan of happiness, applied individually to each of us. Christ`s gospel is not a series of arbitrary rules, given to inhibit man's free agency, but rather a perfect and carefully thought out set of directions, which, if we choose to follow with that gift of free agency so lovingly given by our Heavenly Father, will allow us to obtain and preserve true peace and joy, as much in this life as afterward. How foolish we are when we choose to disobey, thinking that we can navigate this life without a guide, or ignore a certain direction because, somewhere in our minds, we think "we know better." We`ve only known ourselves since birth; our Heavenly Father has known us for much longer than that. He knows what will make all of us happy; thus, through His Son, and through prophets ancient and modern, He has given us commandments.

Let us live the gospel! Let us keep the commandments; in this there is safety and peace!

En avant!

Elder Bryan McOmber