BABIES EVERYWHERE

Dear relations and friends.... (I get bored of how I start off my emails, I need some new material.)

Mom I loved your email, I completely agree. I see that same pattern over and over again on my mission, with other people sometimes but mostly with myself. I go through days where my study time and prayers are less focused or productive, and suddenly the work is so much harder. Even if things are going just the same, everything affects you worse than normal because you don't have a nearly strong of a tie to the Savior and the Spirit. This last week has been one of the least productive weeks on my mission number wise, but it coincided with a time I was making a concious effort to study better and write my impressions and thoughts and ponder them, and it was a perfectly fine, happy week. It's like the verse in 1 Nephi 8, when Lehi's describing his dream and about how he sees himself in a wilderness so he cries to the Lord in prayer. Suddenly he notices the tree of life- where he was didn't actually change, but his perspective and vision shifted to bring into veiw what was most important.

Thanks for all the updates on people- sadly Erin, Mom beat you to the punch, but you were the second person to tell me about all that. I can NOT believe Megan is engaged, CONGRATS TO HER! And thank you for sending me madi's address, I've been pestering people to no avail for that. And real quick, before all the amazing news about our great week, it's Canada day July 1 so I'll probably be emailing next Tuesday because the country will be shut down Monday.

So, craziest part first....

"Ugh, fine, be just like all my other friends-go have a baby and leave me in YSA!" -Sister Casner about our transfer call

So we were in the clear, we got in bed and turned out the lights, and then at 10:35 we got a transfer call! Only time I was NOT thrilled to hear President's Scott's voice. And since it was President, that meant leadership call...

So Sister Casner is going to the kitchener YSA ward, and I'm staying in Bowmanville training. Crazy! SO today is going to be a madhouse getting ready for that.

Josh's baptism was AMAZING yesterday, he was confirmed as well and recieved one of the most powerful blessings I've ever heard. You could just feel the joy of everyone for his chance to finally be baptized, especially of Heavenly Father. The Spirit was so strong! Sister Casner said that she kept waiting for something to go wrong, because there's always a crisis right before a baptism, and then she realized that he had to wait for 2 years already so something had already gone wrong and been overcome. That baptism rocked!

So now we don't have much going on because all of our people have either been baptized or dropped, BUT since I'm being sent a brand new, faith filled, rocking sister I'm stoked to see miracles happen in this area.

I have a billion pictures I want to send, but the computers in this library don't let me send pictures half the time, so you may or may not get some soon. Maybe I'll just send a picture cd home, I know I seriously owe yall a package.

Sister Casner just reminded me I'm forgetting a very important highlight of the week- she broke her thumb! Not really, but we seriously thought she did for a few hours because it swoll up so much she couldn't bend it. At least she got a cool story from it though.....false. She slammed it in the car door. She couldn't use it really for like 3 days. I took her home and made her ice it, and it was the most ridiculously hard thing I've ever done. Every time I turned around she'd take the ice off because it hurt, and then when I made her put it back on she would give me a big lecture about why she didn't really need ice because blah blah blah, it was like trying to get a 5 year old to eat veggies (or like getting me to eat a salad.) Even when I just had her put her thumb in cold water she was trying to cheat! But it was okay once it stopped being in extreme pain, because then she got to carry ice around for it and get lots of extra attention from members- just how she likes it.

That's all the fun updates I can think about for the week. Thanks for more France pictures! Hope everyone has a great week at work, I expect updates from each sibling about their week. Love you all!

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill (my favorite quote from President's weekly email)

On the verge of some serious spiritual growth

Hey all! Okay to get started, here's my mail update....

-Mom, i got the package from the distribution center, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I never ever thought I would get so excited about general conference cds lol and I love the primary book, muchos gracias

-Megan Hurst, I am so so sorry It's taken me so very very long to respond to you, I feel so bad! But thank you for forgiving me and writing again anyways. And Shannon- about time you wrote me. HAHAHA just kidding, thank you two so much for the cd letter, I freaked out when I heard yalls voices, I love it. It will probably take a while to respond because I have so much to say, but I promise to answer and PLEASE keep sending them occasionally!

So this week was way too spiritual, I told Sister Casner I must be on the verge of some serious spiritual growth because I feel like I'm at one extreme or the other all the time. She told me it fit right along with something our mission president's wife told us about Jacob 5 at zone conference-sometimes we're being "dug about" by the Lord, and we feel that, but it's just part of how the Lord nourishes and grows his vineyard.

Sister exchange was super successful, we had an appointment every hour, it rocked. And I learned in Jui Jitsu how to throw grown men on the ground using 2 fingers, so what more can I ask for? Sister Williams wanted to move here, like everyone that ever comes through here she now feels jui jitsu is her life calling. Unfortunately, none of the people we taught are investigating, but it was a really good day and set an awesome note to go to zone conference on.

Speaking of zone conference- AMAZING!!!! So fantastic. Favorite quote from President Scott: he was talking about how ever since we set the goal for 65 baptisms in June missionaries have been writing him about all the opposition their investigators are suddenly facing and he told us "Elders and sisters, the adversary is here- Thank goodness! If he was messing around in Connecticut, I'd be insulted. As our efforts increase, so will his, until eventually he'll have to give up and move on to Connecticut, and then we'll see the work surge forward." So true! We had a Brother Fuller speak to us, a former area 70 member, and at the end he left a blessing on us and the mission, it was super powerful. You could feel the spirit fill the room as a special witness of Christ blessed us with success! Another favorite quote from one of the Assistants, Elder Henderson: "If you want more faith, be obedient. There is no substitute. Sitting around reading scriptures all day will never get you as close to God as going out and obediently working." President Scott has us take notes during meetings by making 3 columns labeled "Start," "Stop," and "Learned" to help us organize our thoughts about what we get out of it, and my start column was SO long! So I've got lots to think about and do the upcoming weeks.

So Sister Casner and I are on a roll now, we love it! We just gotta find the people Heavenly Father has gotten us all pumped up for!

We're excited for Josh to get baptized on Sunday, it'll be so weird since we won't have seen him for 2 weeks. But we're so glad to be a part of getting our 65 baptisms in June!

Last cool story, I dunno if I told you about or if you heard about Elder Johnson...He was hit by a car in January I believe, in Toronto. So he's been in the hospital recovering ever since, it's been an incredible miracle because doctors keep telling his family things he'll never recover and then he does, like vision in one eye and hearing in one ear. And pretty much everything they were worried he'd have to relearn came back remarkably fast! So as part of his rehab, the doctors wanted him to do as much as possible in his usual routine before the accident, so he practiced teaching the gospel to his therapists. In our email today President told us one of them has started going to church with their family now and is investigating- how amazing are the ways Heavenly Father is able to spread his gospel? He was in a coma a few months ago, and he's still doing more missionary work than me lol! Amazing story, I don't know if there's anything online about him but you should look it up.

Love you! Have a great week! Thanks for the France pictures!

It's p-day, p-day!

Hello all!

Letters this week were pretty hilarious, I quite enjoyed them. For some reason it made me picture mom another planet, trying to send little messages through space to me :) Anyways, thanks to all my emailers!

Also, before i forget, HAPPY EARLY FATHER'S DAY DAD!

This was an exciting week for Bowmanville. They love "fests" here, there was a maple fest last month and this month's was a rib fest! It was on all weekend, Sister Casner and I debated going but decided a crowd of hungry people lookin for some ribs was not the best spot to try to talk to people. Sister Casner took it especially hard though, she said she never thought she'd miss a rib fest and I had to concur. At first we thought it was a rodeo, especially because they were flying Texas and American flags.

So one night this week we dropped by a member's home and talked with the wife for a long time. (Found out she served a mission in Denmark Dad!) She was telling us about some things her family had been going through the past few years, and then started telling us how she was starting a nursing program and it actually worked out really well because of all the hard things she had just been telling us about, it was really cool. She said "I was just telling my husband the other night it was a total Jacob moment!" Then she talked about how Jacob in the Bible went and worked for 7 years as a goat herder so he could marry Rachel, and ended up marrying Leah instead. So he could have been angry and refused to work anymore and left feeling bitter because he was supposed to be this chosen man of God, but instead her spends another 7 years working with goats to marry Rachel. During these 14 years he learns all about how to breed goats and cattle- with Rachel's father knows nothing about, because he never works with the animals. So When Jacob ready to leave he makes a deal that he can take all the brown spotted goats and cattle. He then breeds them so the majority of the herd is spotted, and so all the strongest are spotted. So he leaves to go back to his home with 2 wives and their handmaidens, a huge herd of strong cattle and goats, totally wealthy and successful-prepared to become Israel. So she said she'd gone through all these things, an active family with 2 return missionaries who are supposed to be taken care of by the Lord but instead they were really struggling. But what she thought was just a 14 year sentence to work was actually an opportunity to learn to breed spotted goats. I loved it, you see that all the time in missionary work! You struggle or have hard times, and you can get caught up thinking about how the Lord is supposed to be helping you and instead you're being abandoned....OR you can look at what you're learning and what the Lord is preparing, and eventually you look back and see that if it wasn't for those times you wouldn't be the missionary you are or teaching the people you're teaching. The Lord is always in control, we just need to be open to His lesson.

This is going to be a pretty rocking week! We're having another Sister's exchange, this time I'm staying in Bowmanville and Sister Casner is going to Peterborough. I told her it's way more terrifying staying because I feel like I have to know what to do the whole day, whereas last time when I went to Peterborough I just followed Sister Sutton around and had fun. But it'll be really fun, I'll work with Sister Williams who I don't know at all, so it'll be an adventure! We also have zone conference, and I'm finally out long enough that when i go to zone conference I'm expecting to see alot of missionaries I know so that's a fun feeling.

Josh, the 11 year old we're teaching, is in another city for the next 2 months because they're in the process of moving. So our zone leaders are actually going to teach him the next 2 weeks, but then he'll be baptized in Bowmanville on the 24th. So it's pretty weird not actually seeing him until then but still having him progress. Kathleen has put lessons on hold for a few weeks too because her family is going through some stuff, but she's still interested and studying on her own so it'll work out. We're finally going to meet with Lana again this week, so we're really excited about her!

Other than that, all's quite on the Canadian front. Glad your French vacation was awesome and hope you all missed me TONS :) have a fun week! Love you!

This was an INTERESTING week

Dear Fam,

Congrats to Erin for living the dream of hitch hiking across the country! (Or the city, whatever.) Hope you made some new best friends :) I guess you're all in France now? Hope you're having so much fun! I expect hundreds of pictures soon, between graduation and vacation.

Don't you love running into random members of the church that you have vague connections with? Every time I meet someone from the Owen Sound area or Texas, or who has any connection at all with either place, or with USU, I get way more excited than I should.

This was an INTERESTING week, haha. We taught alot of on the spot lessons, which was really cool, but we aren't teaching any of those people yet. One man we dropped by at 8:30 and accidentally woke up, so he said we had to help him wash dishes to make up for it (that was a first!). Afterwards we sat down and he asked what our message was to people like him who were already firm Christians, so we had an awesome discussion about the priesthood and how we need to be baptized with Christ's authority. Unfortunately, in the end he said he wasn't interested enough to make time to learn more right now, but he's so close to being prepared! Hopefully in the future missionaries will be able to teach him. Another woman, Lana, said she has some doctors appointments for tests this week so next week we can come over and teach her husband and her, so we're excited about that. She's started reading the Book of Mormon and really likes it. Her only concern is she's been baptized before and isn't sure if it would be right for her to be baptized again so she said she wanted to study what the bible says about it and pray about it. Sounds good to us!

I should actually tell you the full story with Lana- Sister Casner and I dropped by a less active member who wasn't home, so walking back to our car we saw one of her neighbors (Lana) and talked to her. Sister Casner asked if she was interested and she said no, so I got ready to give her a card to mormon.org and leave. Then Sister Casner asked if she wanted a Book of Mormon, and Lana said no. So Sister Casner asked if she was sure, and she said yes no thank you. THEN Sister Casner said "Well you could just take one and have it in case you ever want it." I wanted to die a little bit, I was about to grab her arm and drag her away so she'd stop harassing this poor woman, when finally Lana caved and took it. She immediately opened it, read a few verses, and said she liked it. So she flipped to another page and read some more and said she liked that too and it sounded like Psalms. So the Sister Casner and I started showing her some verses and chapters to read, and got her information to drop by and visit her sometime. We left and I asked Sister Casner why she kept offering it to her when she kept saying no, and Sister Casner looked surprised and said "Was she saying no? Oh, I guess technically she did....I really just kept hearing that she wanted one." I laughed, told her she was crazy, and figured maaayyyybe we'd drop by Lana once, but I knew she wasn't interested. But every day Sister Casner would asked when I wanted to visit Lana, so after like a week I told her I didn't want to but if she wanted to we could. So we tried a few times, and she was never home, though we finally were told when to come back and she'd be there. Then we dropped by the less active again that we were originally visiting when we met her, and Lana was outside. So she waved us over, said she had just been thinking how she wasn't going to be there tonight so she'd miss us and she wished she knew our number to let us know, and then we walked by. So we talked her about the restoration through Joseph Smith and we're going to see her again in 2 weeks.

So basically, this is the pattern with Sister Casner and I- if I feel good about someone and really want to see them, they're going to drop us. If she feels really good about someone, they're going to be interested. It's really rude. I told her one day "Your faith runs this companionship! I'm just grunt power, I decided if we're going to work, and you decide what's going to work." She said "I don't think that's true, I think that's God...BUT I am also here." It was so funny.

But despite our amazing lessons not leading to return appointments, our week was great! We are teaching 2 new people, a couple that was a member referral. Funny though, the member that referred them and brought us to meet and teach them is NOT their son, who is also a member of the ward. So that will be interesting. They said they "don't know if they'll do the whole baptism thing", but they invited us to come back and share more after we taught them the plan of salvation. They really liked what we taught about how there isn't just heaven and hell and you're stuck their for eternity. He especially liked that we teach that in the spirit world before we're resurrected people have the chance to progress from prison to paradise. It made me really grateful for the understanding I have of the Atonement, and how far reaching it really is.

Kathy was finally confirmed this week! We were really worried she wouldn't make it because of some family things, but she was and she was absolutely glowing when she was given the Holy Ghost. Kathleen and Josh are still working towards their baptismal dates, though Josh pushed his back because his uncle that is baptizing him will be out of town. But he's still doing great, and he's so fun to teach that the selfish part of me is glad we'll teach him for 2 weeks longer. (I may be a terrible person....)

I think my emails get longer every week here, whoops. But I will go now, love you all! Have a fantastic French vacation! Be safe, stay healthy, love you all!

Sister Casner's astute observations for the week:

"You know why you want to go to an art museum right now? Because we're supposed to be concentrating right now and we're laughing, and whenever you go to art museum you end up cracking up. There's always that one painting...." (When I told her during weekly planning I had a weird urge to be in the Houston Fine Arts Museum)

"You know why I laugh at everything you say? Because in our heart of hearts, I'm a little girl and you're a little boy." (When I told her I feel like 65% of things I say she laughs at when 90% of the population would tell me not to say that in public.)