April e-mails

April 9: My area is a lot of fun. LOTS of interesting people. All of the Rasta people from jamaica and the west indies and africa are here. A lot of them are pretty open to hearing about the gospel, some of them just arent to good at acting upon it, so we are trying to find those that will act.

As for mountains??? NONE!!! it is so sad! I miss them a lot. it's very flat here with apartment buildings everywhere. one of those pictures i sent you i think was of downtown toronto, and i am not in that area, but that's about all that goes into the skyline.. I was sad that It was stormy in utah over conference and I couldnt see the mountains, but when they showed a picture of logan, i was very happy. haha.

I have a new companion, her name is sister Urquijo. She is from columbia but is now living in Alberta and she is brand new! I get to train a new missionary again and I am so excited! She is so amazing and just what I needed. :) You learn so much from new missionaries because of all their faith in every aspect of the work, You get to start fresh. And I can tell already that she really wont need much training.. she is also fluent in spanish and she said she would help me polish up on mine. yay! I really feel that this is going to be a great transfer!

April 15: news of the week...

top story! my new companion is amazing! She is so bold with people, and just tells them like it is. She is also so nice and full of love, and is so good at serving. She always beats me to it!

This just in!.. we taught a whole house (3 guys) from Burma this week and they are all open to the gospel!!!sadly though, there is no literature in their language so hopefully they can understand english..

The weather report: Nice and sunny.. at the moment it is blue skies with a temp. of 12 degrees.. (celsius of course) and staying pretty consistant.. I think mother nature has finally and hopefully put away her desire for snow... at least for a season.. :)

and over to the sports.. i finally got to play sports today with the rest of the zone and we played volleyball and it was so fun! i missed it a lot! maybe that's why i wasn't allowed to play for a whole transfer, so I could realize how much i loved to play volleyball?? who knows.

well that's the news for today, short and sweet but all greet.. ?? haha now rhyme for that.. but i am starting to have fun again and not worry that i'm pushing buttons that could blow up in my face.. it's great!


April 22: We had a very cool thing happen this week with one of our investigators. We have started meeting with Micheal Case, which was one of the elders investigators then he moved into our area, At first he didn't want to meet with us because he doesn't agree with women discipling men, but we had a lesson with the elders to introduce us and i think we are warming up to him. He had an amazing experience though! He came up to us on Sunday and told us he had to tell us something, so after church we sat down with him and the first thing he said was that he couldn't put down the Book of Mormon on Saturday!! He read it for two hours straight trying to compare it to the bible and while he was also praying about it he said the lord told him not to worry about it. The gospel is the same in both books. But yet, he still couldn't decide whether he wanted to study his books for school or dive back into the Book of Mormon. Then he went on a walk after a while and started praying for God to take down all of his barriers, all of his walls so that he could just find some peace. He told us he has never before felt this good in all his life. He wouldn't quite yet admit that the feeling came from the holy ghost, but he liked it. When he went to bed that night he wanted to continue reading the Book of Mormon, but finally decided he had to get some sleep. Later at 2:00 am he woke up and the t.v. was on so he started watching it and wrote down some notes. Turns out, it was a documentary about the church! It was talking about Joseph Smith, the Golden Plates, and UTah with the Salt Lake Temple, and the Tabernacle. After he was done watching it he got the feeling that he should read Moroni 10:3-5.. We then asked him if he had ever heard of that before and he said no, he was looking for it in the bible and couldn't find it! Finally he found it and read it over and over again, and got that If he wanted God's understanding, he needed to ask him..

The spirit was so strong there! We told him that we give that scripture to people to know if these things are true, and that we want to help him feel that good feeling everyday! He really wanted to. He told us he doesn't want to make any sudden moves yet, because when he gets stressed he has seizures, but he knows this is the place for him to be. I didn't know what to say. I was so blown away! I have never heard a story like that before! It was really neat. We are seeing him more now which will be very good for him!

Sister U and I also had gale force winds attack us the other day.. it was pretty funny actually i'll send pictures of our umbrellas not being very nice to us. They actually broke.. haha that is umbrella nubmer two, but no worries.. because #2 was from the dollar store. haha That'll teach me! we are having fun here, working hard and never going home which I love..

OH!! i've been meaning to tell you about my land lady.. Her name is Mrs. Galucci and she is so funny! She is like our mother which you might appreciate, sometimes she leaves us some food down stairs for us because she is Italian and cooks amazing italian food! She also came down once and scolded me for leaving the rice out because I guess it can get poisonous? i don't know, but she was also telling us that she waits up for us because she knows that we are supposed to be home by 9;00 or 9:30, so she waits up for us. She is so funny. Anyways, just thought i'd let you know. :)

April 29: In preach my gospel it says that our purpose as missionaries is to: Invite others to come unto Christ.. just invite them and they have the agency to accept or reject... trust me i have to repeat that to my self about 20 times a day! haha But keep praying for the chances to share and it will come.

I'm also so happy you signed up to go out with the sisters, because really a HUGE thing that we focus on (in our mission at least) is lessons with a member present. I might have told you already, but that is one of the standards we try to get each week because the spirit is a lot stronger with members, and sometimes, sisters can't get into lessons if there is only one man and two sisters, so they need three girls present. The rule is that three persons of one gender has to be there in order for us to be able to go in the house. so if there is two sister missionaries and one man for example, they can't go inside the house to teach him. But going out with the missionaries is a fun experience anyway. You should get a Preach my Gospel and start having FHE lessons from it so you can practice and be able to teach with them when they call you. :)

We are teaching another man named Toyin, He is from Nigeria and he is really good. The three 'big commitments' we give people are usually Chastitiy, Tithing, and Word of wisdom, and our second lesson in He actually brought it up so we were able to talk to him about it and then after the third time seeing him he asked us about modesty, which we talk about with chastity, because he noticed that with us, so we talked to him about that too. haha, we usually kind of stress about those because sometimes people fall off after those, but that might also be caused by their lack of testimony in the book of mormon and joseph smith, but anyway, he is really good.

I can't believe that I have almost been out for half my mission.. Time has gone by so fast! I think it's going by a little too fast for my liking, because there is so much that I want to work on and become better at and learn about, but my time is very limited.

Last night we had a parenting fireside for people here by Richard and Linda Eyre, who is pres. Eyre's brother and it was so good! Before everyone got there he talked to just us missionaries about why we need to focus on families with everyone here and how we can help them see that this church is for families whether you have one or not!