Dear Family,
happiness is....the spirit of Christmas, miracles, a new toothbrush, candy, LOVE! Oh the list can go on!
This
week has been packed full of goodness and joy! One of the bishops told
us about a less active part member family that just moved into the
ward. I guess they are a young married couple that just had a baby.
The husband wants to work towards getting the Melchizedek Priesthood so
that he give the baby a blessing. We have an appointment with them
tonight - cross your fingers that it goes well. I did manage to get
some Canadian winter appropriate boots- which has quite the story
attached to it. I'm so grateful that we were semi-lost in Lethbridge
and not Calgary. haha. Good times. So we had directions to get to a
mall coming from the west side, but Sister Garner and I wanted to go eat
lunch with the other sisters. We got directions to find one of the
main streets that was suppose to connect us to the mall. We got on the
main street and we were looking for a 2A Ave. I got really confused
because it went from 1st Ave to 2nd Ave...no 2A. Then there was a sign
to leave the City so I pulled off and we tried to find the street.
Yeah...no go. We even pulled out a map and we couldn't find it. I
really didn't know where to go so I voted that we gassed up the car go
to the Stake Center and then we would leave early to go find the mall.
While we were gassing up the car I figured out that the City of
Lethbridge has two different maps and I found where the mall was on the
other page. But as you know, sometimes it is harder to find things in
the dark. We managed to get on the right street and that main street we
were on previously...yeah we were suppose to stay on it :) We drove
around and we may have missed the street we were suppose to turn off and
we ended up at the main mall. I was getting a little frustrated by
this point. We pulled out the map again and we were very close to the
mall we were suppose to be going to. It was 5 pm by this time and we
only had about 40 minutes to find the mall and get me some shoes.
Thankfully we did end up finding the correct mall and we found the shoe
store. Right when we walked into the store it looked like they were
getting ready to close. The mall in Lethbridge closes at 5:30 - 5:30!!
I could not believe it - ah! Well one tender mercy was every shoe in
the store was on sale for 25% off and I bet these boots will last. It
was a kind of a rushed purchase, but it is all good. It was great...a
little stressful in the moment, but now I can laugh about it.
We had dinner with a senior couple that just returned from their
mission at Martin's Cove. Ah! I just think working at a church
historical site would be the BOMB! They told us so many neat stories and
how they saw miracles every single day. The spirit was so strong as
they were telling us about their experience. It was so great!!
We had another lesson with Jenn. We feel that she is preparing
herself to be baptized in January. We just need to set a date with
her. She loved the Primary Program and she wants to bring her oldest
daughter to church. In fact, her daughter got invited to go to Activity
Days! (In another ward) I think she loved it. Jenn really has been
feeling the spirit and we are going to have to help her stay strong as
she is leaving for Surprise, Arizona. (According to Sister Garner and
my district leader, Elder Atkinson, who is also from Mesa, Surprise in
out in the middle of nowhere...but hey, it will be warmer than up here)
;)
We had an amazing experience with a former investigator. We dropped
off some cookies and invited her to the ward Christmas party. She told
us that she had stopped smoking. I was so happy!!!! I guess she has
set a date for her baptism at least five times, but she has never been
able to quit smoking. Sadly, she did not come to the ward Christmas
party (even though she told us that she wanted to). But we are going to
start teaching her again and help her to prepare for baptism! Yeah!!!
The highlight of the week was probably our mission tour with Elder
David Evans of the Seventy. I was asked to conduct mission scriptures,
which I was a little nervous about. But, I would rather do that than
have to give a talk like I did with our last mission tour. Guess what?
Last week when we had Zone Conference we asked President Nicholas when
the surge of sisters would be coming in. He told us one in December,
one in February and they had two coming out in March. I was very
surprised to hear how few sisters were coming out in March. (We have
five sisters going home in March and seven in May.) Then Elder Evans
told us that they now have SEVEN sisters coming out in March. Yikes,
guess I better pull my boots up and get ready to train in March. Sister
Garner and I have been going crazy with transfer predictions. :) Back
to Elder Evans. He did tell us with the mission age announcement that we
have be ready to accept changes. When the Lord says go, go. He said
that it was no coincidence that the announcement was made in the October
conference when students were in school had probably already had plans
laid out. We have to be the generation that is willing to change at a
moments notice. Elder Evans then gave a fantastic training on finding.
He asked me to come up and go through "Our Purpose as Missionaries"
again. I was really nervous. He then asked me some questions regarding
our purpose statement. Yeah...I had a one on one conversation with
Elder Evans. We talked about how our purpose is to help people build
their faith in Christ. Elder Evans taught us that if we want to be
successful we need to see if what we are doing is in harmony with what
is taught in Preach My Gospel. It was an incredible training. Sister
Garner and I are excited to see how things will go as we apply what we
learned.
Saturday was a little rough. Since it was December 1 we decided to
use caroling as a finding tool and see if we could share a Christmas
message. We had a few hiccups when we first started, but we got things
put together and just started singing on the door steps. We stopped by a
former investigator and while we were waiting for him to answer the
door his neighbor came out with a ladder and started to put up Christmas
lights. I approached him and asked if we could favor him with a
Christmas song. He flat out told us no. We went to our next area where
we were able to sing to them, but they were not interested in a
Christmas message. We tried another house and we had barely started to
sing when the lady told us she wasn't religious and shut the door in our
face. We were trying to keep our spirits high since we had an
appointment set up with a potential investigator, Lulu. And..she totally
dogged our appointment. We continued to be shot down with our
invitation to sing/share a Christmas message. One lady told us we
couldn't sing because she was already Christian. Thankfully we had a
ward Christmas party we went to that evening.
Blessings come to those who are persistent, diligent and obedient.
As part of my fast on Sunday I was praying for help to have more charity
towards people. I get frustrated when people don't keep appointments
or commitments we leave them. I always seem to start off by having
great faith and then when the person doesn't follow through I find
myself sometimes not having Christ-like love towards them. It's
something I still need to work on. I didn't realize how exhausting
constant rejection can be (I'm very grateful that I am in Canada and not
some other countries in the world). We went to our second sacrament
meeting where a member told us that she had invited our former
investigator, Nola to church. We have not taught Nola since August and
we have not been able to get in with her. We did stop by and deliver
cookies and invite her to the ward Christmas party last week or so.
Nola told us that she was going out of town for a few days, so we didn't
think she would be in town for church. We talked to Sister McLeod, she
had invited Nola to church, and she said Nola's car still was all iced
up. We did not have much hope or faith that she would show up, but lo
and behold Nola did!! I totally didn't even see her walk in. Sister
McLeod got up and bore her testimony and she said she was excited to
have her nonmember friend at church today. That's when I noticed that
Nola had come! Nola told us that she felt the spirit very strong and
said she was going to go home and think about her experience at church!
Good things are going to happen! I just feel it. Hopefully we will get
in this week and teach her.
The First Presidency Christmas Devotional was just the cherry on top
of a spirit filled day. I just love the Christmas spirit that the
messages always bring.
This is going to be another fantastic week! :)
Love you all bunches and bunches!
-Sister Douglass
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