Now Comes the Snow

1/14/2013

Dear Family,

 

Our trip to Banff was amazing!! Of course my camera is in my other bag at home, so hopefully I will be able to send pictures next week.  Banff is a very mountainous area that was cover with snow and packed with pine trees. We drop past Two Jack Lake, stopped at Lake M or W something (haha) and took a few pictures and then we went to Johnston Lake.  Sister McIntyre's daughter drove us and she brought her family.  While we walked on the lake and around it the children went sledding.  Yes, I did walk on a lake. :) It was frozen over, but it was still neat.  We then headed over to the Banff Springs Hotel.  There is a little ice rink in front of the hotel, so the children continued to sled and ice stake while we checked out the hotel and took many pictures. :) Sister Little warned everyone that we were going to look like tourists while we were there.  It was so peaceful and nice not to be rushed going places.  We walked up to a castle looking restaurant that over looks the ice rink and it was so pretty! It looked like a very classy winter wonderland puzzle or post card with all of the people ice staking and giant snow covered mountains in the background.  We did drive to the main street in Banff and spent a little bit of time looking at some of the shops.  We got fudge at this famous candy store.  I've been saving mine since I am still working on the mountain of candy I got for Christmas. ;) I am looking forward to going back in the summer time.  And...we would like to go again.  We shall see what we can arrange.  There is this hike through Johnston Canyon to some waterfalls and I think it goes up to Lake Lousie.  I cannot describe how wonderful it was, but it was probably one of my most favorite p-days ever.

 

We stopped by two potential investigators and we talked about families.  They both said that we could come back on Saturday.  We did and neither one of them were home.  Yeah for people having lives and wanting to do things with their children.  No worries, we will catch them another day.

 

Okay my mind got blown TWICE this week.  We had a zone meeting and the zone leaders told us about the projected numbers for in coming missionaries for the summer.  The elders will increase by about 40, there will be two more Mandarin Elders, I think Spanish missionaries will increase by four - two of which will be SISTERS! And...are you ready for this? There are saying that there will be SIXTY sisters by the summer. I just about had an ulcer when they said that.  I could feel my blood pressure rising.  Then we had interviews with President Nicholas and he said that five sisters will be coming out next transfer and there will be FOURTEEN coming out the following transfer.  Yikes.  It's super exciting, but it most likely means that I will be training two sisters at the same times.  President asked how my Spanish was....yeah...I am going to pray that I will not train the Spanish sisters (the two come out at different transfers).

 

We had a lesson with Heather.  We went over the Restoration and we really tried to emphasize on priesthood authority and how the gospel blesses families.  It was kind of hard to concentrate because her child was watching a movie and the volume was very loud.  I will be better about asking people to turn off all distractions or at least turning the volume down. After our lesson Heather told us that she sees a lot of parallels between our religion and her culture so she does not see a need for her to change. :( I was really bummed after she told us that.  She did schedule an appointment for next week....so we shall see what will happen.

 

Thursday was Sister Little's Birthday.  Thursday is when we do our weekly planning so we thankfully spent most of the day inside.  I'm trying to remember if that was the day we had a big snow storm or it was cold.  I think it was rather cold that day. It was really funny that the weather said we would have "flurries for a few hours".  Yeah...it was near white out conditions at times and we ended up getting close to 5 inches of snow in two days.  It was great.  It is snowing again today, but we have a Chinook coming our way.  It's suppose to be in the 40s later on this week.  I'm trying to brace myself for when we get our week of -30 to -40.  I think every one's prayers are working if it hasn't been to bad yet. Thank you! :)

 

We were invited over to Binithi's house the day after her birthday.  One of the family friends were over and she asked us a lot of questions about being a missionary.  It's great when people think that we are nuns.  She many of her questions were about mission rules, so we tried to help her understand that we don't live these standards for the rest of our lives.

 

The baptism went well.  I think 1/3 of the ward showed up. :) We had the service in the chapel because there were so many people there.  We did have joint baptism with a child of record.  I am so grateful for all of the ward support we had.  It was a little crazy, but everything worked out. Hopefully it will be a day they both remember.

 

Hopefully we will be able to get in with the rest of our investigators.  Scheduling seems to be our challenge right now.

Love you lots and I hope you don't freeze down there!

-Sister Douglass

This scene looks familiar and a SURPRISE!!

1/7/2013

Dear family,

 

last week was kind of a blurr...so hopefully I will not repeat myself too much.  We did pick up another investigator last week.  Her name is Heather and her sister asked us to stop by.  Our initial contact with Heather she had just had an augment with her husband the night before so she just needed someone to talk to.  She set up an appointment for us to come back. Heather told us that she loves Mormon and they are very nice people, but implied that she does not want to be one.  She is Native so we thought it would be a good idea to listen to Elder Larry Echo Hawk's talk from Conference (he invites Natives to read the Book of Mormon). We feel that it peaked her interest, especially when we emphasized that the Book of Mormon is about her people.  We shall see how our next lesson goes with her.

 

We taught Binithi twice this week and know it is just preparing her for her baptismal interviews.  She is so sweet! Binithi is very excited to be baptized! Ah! I just love their family. (If only I could say their last name...I will work on that.) ;)

 

Then....I got sick again on Saturday.  Bleh. Thankfully it was not nearly as bad when I got sick before, but throwing up is no fun. Period.  So, we spent the day inside.  Which I feel is a blessing in disguise because Sister Little has had a bad cough all this week.  She may finally be calling Sister Nicholas today or tomorrow.  I spent most of Saturday in bed.  My stomach hurt, but I did not have a fever, which I was very grateful for.  And the McIntyre's (the family we live with) will make sure we are well taken care of.

 

Sunday was nice - great testimonies.  It was super nice to be able to attend most of both wards.  Last year our wards started at 9 and 9:30 in two separate buildings.  Now they start at 11 and 1 pm.  I am trying to remember what was said...oh one member got up and said he has a testimony of believing the unbelievable. Such as the Joseph Smith story among other things. I thought it was neat.  In RS the lesson was on Elder Christofferson's talk about William Tyndel (I feel like I spelled that very wrong) and the importance of scriptures.  I think it was from April 2010 or 2011.  I will need to go back and reread it.  It was a good lesson.

 

So the surprise that happened this morning.....Sister McIntyre asked if we wanted to go to Banff today. :) Um...yes please! So, we need to quickly run to the store and get back to the house to prepare to leave. It's going to be a fantastic day!!! (And week!)

Love you all!!

-Sister Douglass

 

PS- Shout out to members of the 8th ward and my YSA ward who sent me Christmas cards! Thank you sooo much!!!!!! You are the best!!!!

Many are cold, but few are frozen

12/27/2012

Dear family,

 

It feels that we are having a heat wave today!! We have been at -8 for the past four or five days and today we are at about +12. yeah!!! You know you've been in Canada for too long when.... :)

 

I was in such a rush and in shock with transfers last week that I forgot to wish everyone a very merry Christmas!!!! I cannot believe we are less than a week away for the new year.  2013? When did that happen?  For Sunday I was a little bummed because our wards meet at 9 and 9:30 at two separate buildings.  So, we were only able to attend one sacrament service.  Thankfully they are going to 11 and 1 next year so we will be able to go to both.  The songs and talks were great.  I always love the Sunday before Christmas, it is so nice to spend so much time focused on the true meaning of Christmas.

 

Then...the feasting began.  Oh my.  Let me back up.  First of all on Christmas eve Sister Little woke up sick.  She felt well enough to go to district meeting...after a bunch of layers and a blanket where put on her.  We read stories from missionary's experience on their missions at Christmas time and talked about Christmas traditions.  The Elders wanted to go to Chili's for lunch.  Sister Little and I didn't have anything since we had two dinners lined up for that evening. Our first dinner was with a family that lost their father/husband about a year ago...or this is their first Christmas without him.  They gathered up the children/grandchildren and acted out the nativity and sang Christmas songs.  We then headed over to the Palmer's for our second dinner, but mostly for dessert.  Again, tons of people were there, but it was nice to just sit and chat.  We then headed to our last stop by where someone gave us a whack load of tamales (pardon my Spanish spelling).  We hurried and got to bed in great anticipation for Christmas.

 

We both were startled when our phone went off at little after 6 am (our alarm is set for 6:20). It was our member calling to confirm our breakfast appointment.  The member we live with invited us to have breakfast with her.  Yes, two breakfasts within 45 minutes of each other. Not fun.  But something that is fun is how diverse Calgary is.  Our second breakfast was with Sister Simpson.  She was born in Jamaica, moved to England and then moved to Canada.  We headed off to lunch, which at this time the thought of food made both of us want to cry.  The family that invited us over is a recent convert/less active/part member family.  They are from Sri Lanka.  We thought there would be a lot of people there so we would not have to worry about eating too much.  Nope, there were two other families that were there and only one of them sat down at ate.  We hardly ate anything and we felt terrible, but we just could not eat any more.  We headed off to our dinner appointment where we were able to Skype!!! yeah!!! It was so nice to talk to everyone.  It really helped me feel at peace and more rejuvenated for the day.  We thankfully didn't eat until around 4:30 or 5 pm.  We headed to another members house who offered to feed us, but we told them no.  I was convinced that I would not be able to eat for the rest of the week.  Christmas was wonderful, especially to see the small children get so excited about everything.

 

Yesterday was Boxing Day (Canada's wanna be version of Black Friday).  We gathered up the other sisters and headed up to a mall which was about 20 minutes away.  We were getting closer to the mall when we hit a really bad traffic jam.  We thought an accident had happened....but after being in the traffic for an hour we realized no.  This indeed was Boxing Day traffic.  Oh my it was hilarious to see how the Canadians were not able to merge properly.  We had a good laugh about it.  The sales were not that great, but we had a great shopping trip.  We went to a men's work store and got some more heavy duty cold gear.  I got mittens, really thick socks and a thermal undershirt.  I may not freeze as much now.

 

Guess what we have today? Two dinners!! I'm going to die!! Thankfully next week the holidays will be over. :)

 

We have a 10 year old that we are teaching.  Her parents were baptized in October or November and she was not ready, but she is now taking the lessons (again) and will be baptized on January 13.  I get a little confused of who is our actual investigators and who are former investigators.  We have a lot of work to do in our area.  There are quite a few part member families and a ton of less actives.

 

Oh another funny thing.  I felt really bad because Sister Garner and Sister Spencer will be moving this week.  I know that Sister Garner's stress was already high enough.  I come into this area and...we are moving next week.  haha. I have been doing my best to just live out of a suit case and unpack minimally.  Also, we tend to go out of our area a lot.  We will be living outside of our area and some of our investigators live outside of our area.  I will eventually learn this area :)

 

This upcoming week looks like its going to be a good one! Pray that we won't freeze!! :) Love you lots!!!

-Sister Douglass

The transfer news...

Josie wanted me to post this information to those in Canada who are following her  blog.  First I want to say a heart felt thank you to the members who are there with my daughter.  She is such a wonderful young woman.  It is a privilege to be her mother.  

 I am in Calgary on the North West side.  I'm serving with Sister Little in the 17th and 3rd Wards.  I have told our ward mission leaders that I really really really really times a lot love Lethbridge.  Their response: we will make you love Calgary.  Challenge accepted- bring it on Calgary.  So, yes, I am now serving with Sister Little like I was suppose to back in August, but in the bordering area.  So perks of being in the North West - we are literally fifteen minutes away from the Temple and we have sisters in our zone!!! (Sister Mazzolini and Sister Batty) Yeah!

I also found out that Jacenta is getting baptized!!!!!! She's the one that Sister Hoyt and I tracted into and she said that she wanted to learn more because Glenn Beck is a member. :) Sister Little and I are hoping to get permission to go down to it.  That would be the best.

Angels From the Realms of Glory

There has been quite the mix of emotions this week.  I am being transferred to Calgary :( Yes, indeed I got the Christmas bone.  We have actually known since Thursday because....Sister Garner is training!!  There are so many members down here that are very upset and they want to revolt/send a petition to President Nicholas to let me stay. :)  Yeah...so Friday we had to drive up to Calgary and Sister Garner got her trainers training then we came back down to Lethbridge.  It was an eventful night. We did have dinner with Andrea that night and we decorated her Christmas tree.  She kept saying "This is very Christmasy for me." :) Since she has been a practicing Jew for the last twenty years...it was pretty great. 

I am praying that I shall be able to come back down South.  With the influx of new missionaries coming in we feel that Southern Alberta will absorb most of them at first because there is such a high LDS population down here.  So, "I'll Go Where you Want me to Go" will be my theme for the day AND I will need to learn not to "kick against the pricks".

On a happier note: some of our less actives are FINALLY progressing!!!! One family made it to church and the mother told us that she realizes that she has been a big disappointment to her mother and she wants to have what her parents have.  She notices how the gospel is helping her parents get through a hard time right now and how it has made them happier.

Oh- a note-so-happy-note.  Due to the influx of missionaries coming in and the time they will be spending at the MTC being reduced by 1/3 all of our transfers are going to be moved up one week.  So...I shall be coming home a week early.  Ba-humbug.

I'm trying to think about what else happened this week, but the major event of finding out Sister Garner kind of takes the cake.

I hope all is going well and we shall talk to each other soon! :)
Hugs and loves!
-Sister Douglass

Wise Men Still Seek Him

Please forgive this for being a very brief letter this week.  Due to Sister Garner and I being rather ill with the flu I feel that I cannot really put my thoughts together.  But I will leave you with a thought from last night.  Look up "Magi" and "Wise Men from the East" in the Bible Dictionary. Think about the qualities that the Wise Men had.  They were very learned men and sensitive to the spirit.  We know that we still need to seek the Savior today.  I believe that one challenge of our day is finding time to seek out the Lord.

Things have been going pretty well, windy, but well.  I am so grateful for all of the ward members who look out for us and are will to help us out at the drop of a hat.  That is what the gospel is all about.  I know that there is truly power in the priesthood and I am so grateful for the Elders in my district that were willing to come over and give Sister Garner and I a blessing so we could talk and do the musical number on Sunday. :)

Again, my apologies for making this short, but we should have a pretty fantastic upcoming week.  It is transfers next week, crazy I know, but we shall see what the Lord has in store for me.

Loves!!!
-Sister Douglass

Happiness Is...

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