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

Stars were gleaming....‏

I am still loving chinooks.  It will snow a few inches and be cold for a few days and then BOOM chinook and it is warm and the snow is pretty much gone.  I have heard that is how most of the winter is like, so it should be nice to have the winter broken up into smaller segments than it being cold from October to May. :)

This week we stopped by a part member family.  We watched a Mormon Message and invited the husband to take the lessons.  The wife mentioned that her husband has taken the lessons several times, so maybe going a different route would be better. For example we do more of a scripture study/discussion together.  Sister Garner and I were a little loss for words, but thankfully they invited their home teacher over.  Brother Stafford has some difficulty with priesthood authority and not having physical evidence about the Book of Mormon.  Brother Low (the home teacher) told Brother Stafford that when we start something new it usually is challenge, maybe awkward and we do not understand everything at once - understanding comes over time.  Brother Stafford admitted to us that he's never had real intent when he has investigated into the church before.  We gave him the three chapters on the Doctrine of Christ to read and then we would follow up with our next appointment with him.  I pray that as he reads he will feel the spirit and he will be enlightened and some of his questions will be answered.  He does work on the oil rigs so scheduling appointments will be difficult, but nothing is impossible with God.

We had Zone Conference this week, which was great.  Lethbridge is it's own zone and 90% of the missionaries decided to do a musical number.  I think there were only two companionships that did not sing with us.  Hehe, so it was almost all of the missionaries singing for President and Sister Nicholas and the assistance.  We sang "O Holy Night" which I love.  We had to go over to the South side for practices, which took about a half an hour traveling time, but it was worth it.  Yeah for zone unity! It was a really good Zone Conference.  We talked a lot about leaving commitments, which is something that I have been feeling I need to be better with.  I told Sister Garner I felt slightly rebuked, but it a good way.  A good reminder of what I should be doing, now the challenge will be to apply it.  We had so many good things brought up during the conference that I felt a little overwhelmed with what I need to improve.  Thankfully Sister Garner reminded me that we have companions for a reason.  We will help each other out and all we can do is focus on one thing at a time.

There wasn't really anything spectacular for Thanksgiving.  We did not have a Thanksgiving dinner with the family that fed us, which is totally fine.  We will be having a turkey dinner at the ward Christmas party we are going to on Saturday.  Thankfully I didn't get too homesick we had a few appointments, so that kept us busy.

Something that was super neat is we went to a baptism on that the Sisters were having with an investigator that Sister Garner started teaching a year ago! I just love baptisms and the spirit they bring.  It was really cool to see her now active husband baptize her. :) Ah! Good times!!

We were not able to teach Jen this week because of Parent Teacher Conference, but she did come to church on Sunday! It was the Primary Program and I think she loved it.  She had to leave after Sacrament Meeting, but hey, she at least came and she wants to meet with us this week.  I really hope that she will set a date for her baptism....we know that she will be gone for half of December, which will be a little trippy, but we will do what we can.

We have been asking members to invite their friends to the Ward Christmas Party and the First Presidency Christmas Devotional (which I am uber excited for!!!!!!!!!!!) so hopefully we will be able to pick up a new investigator this week because of it! :)

Oh really cool story about Andrea.  She told us that her mom, who lives back in Ontario, ordered a Book of Mormon!!!!! And Andrea has twelve family names to take to the temple!! Ah, this is what missionary work is all about!!!!!! It totally made my day!

We had a lesson with a man on Saturday that we tracted into....come to find out he had been meeting with the Elders over the summer, so we passed him on.  He said that he's open to learning about different religions, but whenever we taught him a principle he told us that it didn't make sense and that we were wrong.  Once again, he told us that the Book of Mormon could not be true because there is no physical evidences of it.  We just left him with 3 Nephi 11 to read.  Yeah, good times.  Maybe the Elders will be able to help him understand priesthood authority....or something...the man has concerns with almost every point we talk about in the first lesson.  :) Oh well, all we can do is invite.

Ugh, I cannot believe that it is almost December! Where have the last three months gone?!? It just boggles my mind.

Well, we shall see what this fantastic week has in store! I believe we have mission tour this week, so it should be spectacular. And the Christmas Devotional is on Sunday. What more could I ask for? :)
Love you all so much!!!!!
-Sister Douglass

Spirit of Thanksgiving

I cannot believe it's Thanksgiving this week!! We have Zone Conference on Thursday and members have signed up to feed us, so I have a feeling that we may be getting at least one Thanksgiving dinner. :) Transfers were pretty great.  Guess what? Sister Garner and I got a new car! 2013 Subaru! I guess the mission has lost 5 cars in the past two weeks. Yikes.  So they give the Sisters new cars ;) It's pretty great.  Sister Rice headed back up to South Calgary with Sister Marchant, which she is ecstatic about.  They will probably be together until Sister Marchant goes home in February and then Sister Rice will probably train. I actually had a dream last night that I found out that Sister Rice was training, haha, so it must be happening.  Sister Garner and I feel that we will be together for two transfers as well.  This transfer is only five weeks due to Christmas. I will cry if I get transferred a week before Christmas. I will not dwell on that right now.

This week we had another lesson with Jen.  We watched Finding Faith in Christ.  Jen felt the spirit very strong and she said that the movie helped Christ become more real to her.  We think that her husband is still a concern and she's going down to Arizona for about three weeks in December...so hopefully we will be able to meet a few more times before she leaves.  I pray that we are teaching towards her needs and that she will have the courage to act and talk to her husband about meeting with us or possibly setting a baptismal date.  I guess all we can do on our part is pray and seek for inspiration for how we can help her.  Everyone has their own agency, we just have to help them use their agency correctly.

We have gotten two referrals from mormon.org.  Both of them said that they never went online to request missionaries. :( But we may have the YSA elders accidentally tract into them. :) Yeah, sometimes you feel like a complete stalker as a missionary, but it's okay.  We are out here to save souls! Sister Garner told me about a shirt that she say its says, "Fishing is my mission". Hahaha, I think every missionary should have that shirt.

Sister Garner is so great! She's super sweet and she has such a big heart! Believe it or not, I am the tall one in the companionship. ;) She is 4' 11 1/2" from Mesa, Arizona.  She has eleven siblings, all are adopted.  Her father passed away...five or so years ago.  So, her mom has been rising twelve children plus she does foster care.  I told Sister Garner that her mom is a saint.  Sister Garner loves musicals :) yeah! She plays the violin and has played in the orchestra pit for several shows and has been in a few.  She is trying to get into a nursing program.  I told her she should come to Utah. :) She has actually been thinking about it.  Hmmm...have we had any grand adventures since she has been here? I think things have been relatively quiet, for now.

It was the primary program on Sunday. I realized that I haven't seen a primary program in about five years.  The children were adorable.  There was one little girl who was a little firecracker.  She just zoned in on her parents and sister and was going to town singing and doing hand gestures with the songs.  How they did the program is they asked all of the children questions about what they have been learning about this year and then they gave their answers.  It was really neat to hear about how one family is going to be sealed in the temple soon.  It's always a good reminder to see children and how pure their testimonies are.  Yeah! We have another Primary Program next Sunday.  I really hope that Jen will come to church and that she will bring her 8 year old daughter. :) I bet they will love it!

The longer I have been out the more I have come to realize how essential the gospel is in our lives.  Just by doing the small things every day we have such safety and protection.  We may not be prefect at somethings, but just as long as we keep trying God will help us.  Doing simple things as having Family Home Evening, family prayer and scripture study will build a foundation for our children.

I just love being a missionary! And I love the gospel! Life is pretty great! Love you!!!!
-Sister Douglass

Lucky Number 7 and half way‏

It's my seventh transfer (weird) I am staying in Lethbridge!!!! We were able to figure things out and I know that I am getting Sister Garner.  Out of all of the Sister Missionaries we were able to work with at the temple open house, Sister Garner and Sister Simpson are the only companionship we did not work around.  But I have heard that she is great and super sweet. :) I'm excited (but nervous) to take on this next step in the mission.  Oh yeah....I will reach my half way mark tomorrow. Yikes. I don't know how I feel about that....one foot in the grave. Ahem, moving on...

Things have been pretty great and windy.  We had a good lesson with Jen.  We are really trying to help her understand how the gospel will bless her family.  We read The Family Proclamation to the World with her and she really liked it.  We talked about how God's standards do not change.  Jen agreed to come to church! And she did!!! We know that she was pretty nervous about coming, but we think she had a good experience.  Pretty much all of the lessons and talks were on families. :) God's timing is perfect and He KNOWS us.  Hopefully this week we were be able to be more bold and help her resolve concerns that she has about setting a baptismal date.

In the hustle and bustle of the temple open house I think that I may have forgotten to mention: Chris from Okotoks got baptized!!! President gave Sister Rice and I permission to go down to Okotoks with Sister Hoyt and Sister Newby.  It was such a great experience.  Working at the temple open house in the morning and then going to a baptism that evening, what more could you ask for as a missionary? :) The spirit was very strong and Chris was just glowing.  I know that this will help him tremendously in his life.  Ah! It's so humbling to be able to see some fruits of your labors.

Our wards are really gearing up to help us out with missionary work, which is so exciting!!!! I know that as we do our part we will be able to continue to see miracles in this area.

The only sad thing that happened this week was no temple trip.  Ah I was slightly devastated, but I got over it.  A huge winter storm came in and the roads were pretty bad. (I think it dumped about 4-6 inches of snow). The ward temple trip was canceled and we called around to see if anyone could take us, but it was a no go.  Sister Rice and I agreed that there must be a reason for it and Heavenly Father was probably protecting us from something.  Hopefully Sister Garner and I will be able to set up and time to go down to the temple.  I miss it bunches.

Sorry this is kind of short-ish and pretty vague.  I'm a little distracted with transfers....but I know that Heavenly Father loves us and He has given us families so that we can learn and grow from each other.  I know that as we do the small things of reading from the scriptures, praying sincerely every day and attending church that we will receive revelation.  We may not know everything, but doing the basic things we will be able to know enough.

Love you!!!!
-Sister Douglass