BEST BIRTHDAY GIFT EVER

May 28, 2018

This week was another really great week!!! 

So Monday we received a call from Brother Burgess, a member in our ward. Him and his wife feed us once a month and they are the ones who let us use their computers to skype on christmas and mothers day. He is also in the temple presidency here. They are great. Anyways, both of their mothers are living with them and both of them are nonmembers. They are the sweetest ladies. Most of the time when we go they leave the table right before we share our message so they havent been too interested in the gospel. Anyway, so he called us and said that his mom wants us to teach her!!! I was in shock. I just kept telling sister jackson "I can't believe this is happening, It's too good to be true." But a few days later we went over and it is totally true!!! She wants to get baptized so that she can be sealed to her family. Her and her son are the only ones left! It was the most powerful lesson and she is the sweetest lady. She is 88 almost 89! It's never too late to accept the gospel. She is set to be baptized on the 15 of June. Right after transfers so I am praying that I will get to be here for it. Pray for her too!! Lil is her name! I love her so much!! It was all I could've asked for my birthday so it was the greatest gift ever!! 

We also started teaching a girl going to the university who is dating a member. She has been to church a few times and is really opening to learning. So pray for karen too:) 

And last but not least pray for Joyce. She is pretty accepting of the book of mormon and we were able to have a couple more good lessons with her! 

A couple other interesting facts that we have discovered this week.. The days are getting to be super long!! It doesnt get dark until like 9:30 and it's bright outside by 4:30. It is crazy! When we go outside to exercise in the morning it feels like its in the middle of the day and by the time we go home it still feels like 6. Super weird! 

Someone told us this week that Regina has the highest crime rates in Canada.. So that's exciting!

We were walking down the street one day and there was a girl walking towards us. I told sister jackson we were going to talk to her and when I started approaching her you could tell she was trying to avoid us.. all of the sudden sister jackson tripped and that caught her attention. She asked if she was okay and then we were able to talk to her. So that is our knew street contacting tactic. We are just going to trip so people will talk to us hahah. 

There was a church sign we saw that said "7 days without prayer makes one weak." I thought that was clever... 

On saturday there was a Relief Society activity/devotional that we were able to go to. It was on the talk from october conference caled "Turn on Your light" by sister eubanks. There was a speaker for each of the points. It was really good! Sister Burgess talked about the last one of Being happy. She talked about the hymn "there is sunshine in my soul today" and how you could said "sonshine" to represent the light of christ that is in all of us. That is truly what makes us and other the happiest. I loved that! So this week I hope you will all have Sonshine in your heart and let that light shine for others!! Be an example to all those around you and you can change lives:) Love you all!! 

Happy Birthday to me.. thanks to the family for the banner and sign!! 

Ultimate frisbee with all the city missionaries!

This is how light it is at 9:00..

I love regina sign again.. It was by the city hall where we had to pay our parking ticket so we took another picture!

The Lord is in the details

May 21, 2018

his week was so wonderful!! I hope I can remember everything that happened! 

First we had our last zone conference with President and Sister Craig this week. It was pretty sad to think it was the last one. They are so amazing. The whole zone conference was just them training us since it was there last one. It was so great!! We talked a lot about exercising and developing the faith to see miracles. I learned so much! I hope President Hitchcock is just as amazing as President Craig. I am sure he will be! 

We started off the week with a lot of appointments cancelling on us so that was a bummer. Mostly supper appointments:( But because of it God was able to guide us other places and we were able to find! So there was definitely a reason for them to be cancelled! 

On tuesday after zone conference we were walking down a street that we had just started tracting. We saw this guy walking towards us and the spirit told me to talk to him. So we walked towards him and he turned the other way towards a house. I wasn't about to give up though. I knew we needed to talk to him! We walked over to him and he was a little hesistant to talk to us at first but then he opened up and told us that he had met with missionaries about a year ago! Things started clicking in my mind and I had actually remembered hearing about him from some other missionaries. It was crazy we were able to find him! He is YSA aged so we passed him off to the elders but it was so cool we were able to find him. God definitely led us there. We were also able to find a couple from the Philippines. We were in the area because of a cancelled appointment so god led us to them too! And they know our ward mission leader so that was cool!! 

We also did quite a bit of service this week. We helped a member move and she gave us the address to her son who recently went inactive. Hopefully we can help him come back. We also helped the ward clean the church. And finally we helped the Philipino association put raw pork on wooden sticks for a festival happening in a couple weeks. I stabbed myself several times but we were able to talk to lots of nonmembers so that was great! And they even taught me some tagalog. Our chinese investigator taught me chinese too. And we had supper with the family from Mexico so I was able to brush up on some spanish too. Who's to say this is an english speaking mission?? 

We had another appointment fall through with a less active and part member family. But we decided to take the opportunity to stop by another less active in the area. She is really hard to catch because she is always working but by some miracle she was home! SO she let us in and it turned out that she was having a rough day so we were an answer to her prayers!! 

One more miracle for the week.. We got a media referral this week. Her name is Joyce and she is from Nigeria. We were able to meet with her last night and I believe that she is super prepared. She requested a  bible but was also very open to the Book of Mormon. I am excited to see what happens with her! I hope that God will continue to work miracles.

At zone conference we learned and studied about Drawing on the Powers of Heaven...
1. Select Righteous Desires

2. Plead your case before the lord

3. Exert yourself mentally

4. Sustained effort

We were able to apply this process after zone conference and definitely saw many miracles because of it!! It was a wonderful week as a missionary for the Lord's church!! I am looking forward to another one! 

Humility

May 14, 2018

Hello fam!! This email probably wont be very long because I got to see you yesterday! That was so great!

This guy from New Zealand (shout out to Sister Anhder) came and spoke to all the missionaries in Regina about working with First Nations people.. It was super neat and I learned so much! An answer to a lot of prayers!

So a few weeks ago on sunday morning we were praying a lot that we would find a new investigator. It was our first time in several weeks that we hadnt so we didnt want to break our streak! We went out tracting before church but no one was letting us in:( We tracted into a lady from India who spoke zero english. She let us in but couldnt talk to us or understand us at all. Then her son came into the room and started talking to us. He told us that they were Hindu but he had some christian roommates who he said would be interested! So he gave us their names and contact info! Anyway, so we didnt end up finding someone that day but we did call his roommates the next day. One of them was named Akash! He wanted to meet with us at the church! So we set up a time.. But then the day came around and we accidentally forgot and set up another appointment at the same time:( luckily, we remembered before and sent the elders to meet him there! They told us that it went really well and the YSA elders are going to start teaching him now! So long story short, our prayer was answered in a round about way! It's so amazing how god works in every detail of our lives! He truly does answer our prayers according to HIS time table! That is so hard to accept sometimes especially when you want His will to be the same as your will. Something I have learned over the past few weeks is the importance of humbling ourselves before Him and accepting His will! He truly knows what we need!! I love this gospel and I love being a missionary!!!! 

New car, african food, lots of other good stuff!

May 7, 2018

Hello everyone!! It was another beautiful week in Regina. Spring is FINALLY Here!! Which means so are the allergies:( That's okay though, I would much rather deal with those rather than -40:)

This week was a bit of a trying week for us. But it was still pretty good! 

On Monday night we had a lesson scheduled for 7:00.. We got there and they werent home. We texted them and they said they would be there at 7:30. So we decided to do some tracting while we waited. At 7:30 we got another text and said they had to push it to 8. So we continued tracting. I was a little frustrated but it was okay. Well during that half hour we knocked on the door and a 16 year old girl answered. At first she couldnt hear us becuase her music was so loud but once she turned the music off she answered and let us in! We shared a little bit with her and asked if we could come back. She said that she would talk to her mom! We were pretty excited. It was a miracle that the lesson we had scheduled had to reschedule on us. It's pretty amazing to see how the Lord works. The only bummer is that she texted us a few days later and said her and her mom didnt want us to come back. They had done some research online and said "mormonism" wasnt for them.. That's okay though, I think that we were led there for a reason to prepare her for future missionaries!!

We also got a new car this week!!! So that was super exciting. They closed one of the out lying areas that is around the city so we got the car that those elders had. When we got it though it was SOOO dirty. It had been on a reservation for 2 or 3 transfers and I dont think they cleaned it once. We may have to wash it a few times before it's clean again! 

On Thursday we got to be in a tripan with Sister Blaine. She was companions with sister peacock. She is now done training so she got a new companion this week. I love her!! It was fun to have her spend the day with us while she was waiting for her new companion. 

So the past couple weeks we have had quite a few people to work with and teach. Not a lot that are progressing quickly but they have been interested in meeting with us so it has been good... This week we got 3 texts from 3 different people telling us that they didnt want to meet with us:( That was pretty sad. So now we don't have a lot of people we are working with but I know that it will pick up again soon! It always does:) 

Saturday night we had supper with Ishmael.. He is the guy who sister gatten and I found and he got baptized a couple months ago! He is from West Africa. He made us African food... SO MUCH FOOD!! He just kept piling it on our plates telling us to eat. It was very filling food too. Rice, soup with some sort of meat in it and then what they call "Fufu".. It looks kinda like mashed potatoes but it is basically water and wheat mixed together. I was a little nervous to eat it but it was actually pretty good. Just very filling! We could hardly walk out we were so full! He is so awesome though! 

I loved this scripture in my studies this week.. I thought it was very fitting for the past few days SIster Jackson and I have had.. 

Alma 26:27 

"Now when our hearts were depressed and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success. 

The Lord is looking for you

April 30, 2018

Happy Monday!! I can't believe it is the last day of April. I am not sure where the whole month went! This week was pretty good. It was a bit of a slower week but that's okay. Hopefully we were able to do some good and plant some seeds! 

We had interviews with President Craig so that was great! We only have one more full transfer with him so that is pretty sad. 

We met a girl named Ceinwen at the University of Regina a few weeks ago and we got to teach her again this week. We also met a guy named Chris on a street we were tracting a few weeks ago. He was outside walking so we stopped to talk to him. At first he seemed a bit stand offish to us but we kept talking to him and he opened up and seemed a bit interested. We stopped by his house a few days later and he was surprised that we actually came. We have been able to teach him a few times over the phone. He doesnt want to meet with us in person... I think because he is worried what his family will say. Hopefully that doesnt cause us problems in the future. Anyway, we invited him to be baptized over the phone. That was a little weird but we made it work. He accepted the date and seemed pretty excited about it. But he still needs to talk to his family about it. So we are praying everything goes well with that.. Also funny side note. He said that he actually tried to baptize himself a few years ago. I had never heard of that before so I thought it was pretty comical! 

We did some service for a less active in our ward. She wanted to take down this wall in her house so we went over and hammered at it. It was a little scary but we got it down! 

Another funny story.. So yesterday we were doing some stop bys of former investigators and we were by the university. A few weeks ago we tracted into a guy who wanted a book of mormon so we decided to stop by. We knocked on the door and his roommate answered. We told him who we were and that we were looking for Sam. He said, "Oh you're looking for Sam let me go get him" and ran up the stairs. Then all of the sudden we hear him yelling. "SAM, THE LORD IS LOOKING FOR YOU. GET UP". And he does this like 10 times. It was pretty funny. Finally when the guy came down I could barely control my laughter enough to talk to him. I don't think he thought it was very funny. Hopefully he will read the Book of Mormon! 

We got our transfer calls today. I will be staying here in Regina for another 6 weeks with Sister Jackson. By the time I leave I will have seen all the season here! 

This week I was reading the magazine that the church put out on President Monson's life. At the end were quotes of his. I loved this one! 

"As the world moves further and further away from the principles and guidelines given to us by a loving Heavenly Father, we will stand out from the crowd because we are different. .. Those things which make us different from most of the world also provide us with that light and that spirit which will shine in an increasingly dark world." I know this to be true! Especially as a missionary. You definitely stand out from everyone else. But I know that it's not only the missionaries that stand out. As members of the church we are all disciples of Jesus Christ! We are ALL examples to the world!! Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Spring is Here

April 23, 2018

HELLO!!! This week was another great week!

It is finally starting to warm up here. I didn't wear leggings and boots for the very first time yesterday! It is still pretty windy and definitely not summer weather yet but it has been great! Hopefully it stays like this and doesnt snow again:) 

We also got to go the temple again this week. It was AMAZING!! I love the temple so much! Especially as a missionary. It is a very cool experience. It will probably be the last time I will get to go on my mission so that is sad but we will see! Maybe I will serve in regina again before I go home. 

I hit my 10 month mark this week. THat is also super crazy. Everyone always says time goes by fast on a mission but you don't actually realize or believe it until you are experiencing it. Super crazy!! 

We were also able to find some new people to work with this past week. We have been going through our area book and transferring all the records into our phones. It has been quite the process but it's good to see the former investigators. Then we can go stop by there house or call them and sometimes they want to meet with us again. Super neat! Also we have found people around where the formers live so that is cool too! The Lord works in wonderful ways sometimes! This week in my studies I found a scripture that I loved! It's in John 13:15

"For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done unto you." 

Also I read a talk by President Uchtdorf.. "Discipleship requires our willingness to swim upstream when needed." 

I though they went hand in hand. As disciples of Jesus Christ we are to follow His example. It is not always easy when we live in a world with many temptations around us.. But we can remember that it was not easy for Jesus Christ either. He set the perfect example for us so that we could have someone to follow and turn to when we are having a hard time. I love this gospel so much and I am so happy to be sharing it with the people of Canada!!! Love and miss you all!