People are wack, it's great 😁

Hello beautiful people,

I hope you all are well, because I am doing pretty good. This week has flown by and it has been pretty awesome. The unfortunate part though is that about half of the people we are teaching have just stopped responding, so that makes it kind of difficult to have lessons with them, but nonetheless we will press on.

Me and Elder Wright have been having a little too much fun sometimes, but that's not always a bad thing. During our dinner break one day this week we went into the gym of our church building and played basketball. And trust me when I tell you this it is not easy to play basketball in a shirt and tie, I know I was shocked too. 

But our area recently has been struggling with finding new people to teach, so me and Elder Wright have been trying just about everything. Since COVID and everything we aren't allowed to knock on doors or talk to people on the street, so we have had to get creative. We have done everything from dropping off notes, to calling just about everyone we can, to making cookies and dropping them off at people's houses. And one question I gotta ask, if someone dropped cookies at your house would you at least text them saying thank you? Because for some reason in Arizona that's not a thing, but we love them anyways right.

So, this week we did a bunch of service, and it was pretty awesome. We like completely transformed this one lady's backyard. We filled up 12 garbage bags worth of bush trimmings, and tree branches. It took us a while but we got it looking nice. We also found some peculiar things in her backyard. One of them being about 10 or 11 vape pens just lying around, so of course I took one as a souvenir. Now I can say that I got a vape pen on my mission, now that's pretty cool.

On to a better topic, me and Elder Wright this week went through our entire member list and found which ones we have gotten into contact with and lemme tell you this list was long. It took us 5 hours of just going through names, not the most exciting but it was pretty fun. Let's just say now I am a professional list goer througher, if that is even a real thing. 

That's about it for me this week, I hope you all have been well. It has been great hearing from you all. I hope you all stay safe out there.

Elder Normandin

P.S.

Peep the socks😏

Pictures:

1. Some pretty 🔥 socks.

2. Me and the homie Elder Wright 

3. Another homie Brother Mills, who is about to get the priesthood!!!!!

4. Elder Wilson looking like a dork

I've reached the age of accountability

What is poppin y'all?

Hope you all are doing well. I am doing pretty good not gonna lie, thanks for asking 😉 I've got a new companion and life is pretty great. I am still serving in the Peoria Ward, and it has been awesome. This ward is full of so many awesome families and they helped remind me of all the amazing friends I had back home. 

This week was really slow missionary work wise, but it was good adjusting to life with a new companion. My new companion Elder Wright is awesome, that man is one of the funniest people I know and it has been a great change of pace for me. 

We have been doing a lot of service this week, which has been really fun. It keeps us busy which is good for us, keeps us out of trouble. But one thing is I have become a professional gardener with all this service we are doing. I learned gardening skills and techniques I have never even heard of. We used tools I didn't even know existed. So when I get backing y'all ever need help with that stuff, I'm your guy😜

Yesterday was kind of a rough one for us. As missionaries with COVID-19 going around we aren't going out and about much, so basically all we do is call and text people which is really boring. But we called people for about 8 hours yesterday after church because all of our lessons fell through and only about 5 people answered their phones, and all 5 of them were not interested in hearing from us. So let's just say the Lord is testing us. 

We had what's called CDC, or combined district council this week. And it was really fun, we meet up with all the missionaries in our zone, which is about 30 missionaries, and we talk about our goals for the transfer. It was really cool to see all the other missionaries, and what is really strange is that almost half of our zone is in training and I just got out of training, so I'm one of the more "experienced" missionaries. Which is both cool and really scary all at the same time.

But I hope you are all doing well. I love hearing from you all. I hope you all stay safe out there. And I hope you all have a great week. Peace out ✌

Elder Normandin

P.S.

Peep the socks 😜

Pictures:

1. Some sick socks

2. New Homie Elder Wright

3. Our pretty cool zone

4. Your boy chiiiiiiiiiilin' out here

Finally out of training!!!

What is going on y'all,

How are you all doing? I am doing pretty awesome not gonna lie. This week was pretty uneventful missionary work wise, but this week we had combined dinners with our roommates and lemme tell you they were awesome.

To start off, this was my companion's last week in the area, which made all of our members sad because he has been here for the last 7 months, but it made a lot of our visits fun because they went lik all out for some of our dinners, and believe me I wasn't complaining. We had everything from fancy steaks, to weird looking pasta, to awesome desserts.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to Elder Lunt, and will be getting a new companion named Elder Wright. Haven't met him yet but he seems like a homie, we will pick him up tomorrow, and what's really cool is that he speaks french and was in Africa for some of his mission so 🤷‍♂️.I will be serving in the same area in Peoria for the next 6 weeks, and am excited to see where things go.

Every week we have a district council meeting where a few missionaries meet up and this was the first time that we had every member of our district in person. It was a momentous occasion, because with all the crazy COVID stuff going on we have had some people in quarantine, so it was really cool to see a bunch of sick missionaries.

We had combined dinners with our roommates this week, which was awesome. Because I'm sure as you could assume when you get 4,18-20 year old boys together, some fun stuff happens. We have a bunch of inside jokes in our apartment, and our roommates would bring them up in dinners and we would just try so hard not to laugh, often failed, but it was still good.

We went on a hike this morning, and lemme tell you Arizona is so flat compared to Oregon, so when we were on top of the few mountains there you could see forever. It was crazy cool, I would definitely recommend doing that. 

Well I hope you all have been doing well, I have loved hearing from you all. As always stay safe out there.

Elder Normandin

P.S.

Peep the socks😉

Pictures

1. Some fruity socks...I think

2. Our awesome district

3. The bois on top of the mountain

4. The awesome view from the mountain

5. This cactus we saw growing out of a house

6. Elder Watson doing whatever the heck that is😅

Amazing Ward Members In Peoria

 From a very thankful Mom,

This week is a transfer week and Elder Normandin's P-Day is pushed off until tomorrow. I thought I would take the chance to share some of the pictures we have received from the Ward members as well as a couple screen shots from our talks. Elder Normandin's Trainer is Elder Lunt and he is in all of the photos with him. We are so thankful to the members who send us photo's during the week, it makes our time away from him so much easier knowing all of these special people are looking out for him.  Today we received this email from a member.......

Good morning.  I thought I'd just take a quick second to send you a note to tell you how amazing your son is doing.  Elder Normandin has been over to our house a few times for dinner.  He and his companion, Elder Lunt are fantastic missionaries.  It's a fun discussion around the dinner table and then they always share a very well, thought out spiritual message.  Your son is doing great and conveys himself very well in all interactions. 

Anyway, yesterday the thought occurred to me that I needed to ask for a home email address as I wanted to make sure you knew he's doing a great job.

Thanks for allowing him to come serve in Arizona.

Michael Perkins

  

Thank you to all of the amazing people who take the time to think of the mom's at home missing their child. We are so happy to have an amazing son who willingly wanted to serve the Lord. 

The rain followed me 😥

What is happening y'all?

Hope you are all staying healthy, I am most certainly trying to. This week has been a pretty wack week not gonna lie but I am still pressing forward.

Good news though my roommate did not die, so that was a plus. The doctor said that it might be pneumonia, but they are not certain of that, so he's on some basic painkillers and antibiotics. So we'll see how this turns out.

This week we had a ton of lessons, which was really awesome. We stayed busy and I had a lot of fun. Me and my companion went walking around this neighborhood to drop off notes to random houses to see if we could find some people to teach. It was the funniest thing ever though when people would see us walking down the street and then quickly run inside and shut the door as we were approaching, made me laugh every time. 

Almost every single day this week it rained, which I thought was stupid. I came to Arizona to escape the rain, at least that's what I thought I did. We were biking from appointments one day this week, and at this one intersection it was flooded like crazy. I rode through the puddle and I kid you not the water went half way up my tire, it was crazy.

We had a new rule instated by our Mission President this week, and he wanted us to get rid of all of our couches and arm chair's in our apartment. Which I don't know about you but that is a dumb rule. But nonetheless we had to say goodbye to our couch which was really sad. This week we overused our arm chairs and stuff though, we got to the point where our roommate's moved them into their rooms, which was pretty funny. But now we just have office chairs which is really annoying, but hopefully I'll get over it soon.

Did lots of service this week though which was fun, we made a little shrine in the corner of someone's yard because they didn't care what we did. So of course as you normally do, you make a shrine in the corner of their yard so they can remember you, duh😜. 

This week was pretty fun with my roommates and everything. This transfer is almost over and I have been having some fun with the people in my apartment. But I still really miss all of you, and hope you are all doing well. Love hearing from you, and please let me know if there is anything I can do here to help. Stay safe out there everyone.

Elder Normandin 

P.S.

Peep the socks 😏

Pictures:

1. Some rather ironic socks ngl

2. Saying goodbye to the good old couch

3. The last ride with the armchairs

4. Our little shrine we made 😁

5. This awesome hat I found at CVS