To which we owe all our happiness {week 12}

Hello!

Isn't life just great? It's good to hear things are well in Colorado :) I'm so blessed to have such an amazing family!

Those of you who have read the Book of Mormon are probably familiar with the fact that the Book of Mormon is full of a lot of war. In one of my favorite parts of the Book of Mormon (...ok it's all my favorite) Captain Moroni (a prophet and captain of the army) is describing the reason they have success in war. He attributes it to God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. In expressing his feelings for the gospel he says one sentence that has been echoing through my mind as of late. He says "to which we own all our happiness" (Alma 44:5)

The other day Sister Crane asked me "who would you be if you weren't a member of the church?" That thought causes me to shudder. I truly do owe ALL my happiness, everything I am, to Jesus Christ and His gospel. I cannot adequately express my gratitude for this church. The gospel is a gospel of happiness and I know that only in living by the words of Jesus Christ can we find the pure and everlasting happiness that everyone is searching for.

This has been another wonderful week in Canada! I am so grateful for my mission and the experiences I've had already! God truly does love all His children.

We were blessed with the opportunity to listen to the Woman's broadcast of General Conference the other day! It was SO GOOD! If you haven't had the opportunity to watch it go back and watch it! Even if you're a man! It was incredible and just what I needed to hear! 

The other day in the mall I ran into 3 deaf people! I can't even tell you how excited I was!!! I was so flabbergasted though that I was only able to have a quick conversation with them. But it was still cool! I love ASL!! Heavenly Father is so merciful to allow me to have such cool experiences!

Another cool thing happened the other day too. Sister Crane and I were kind of down about something and we were walking sadly home. Then we ran into this random man on the street and he just walked right up to us and was so kind! He wasn't a member of the church but he just wanted to talk to us. He had just come from the dollar store where he had purchased a couple of candy bars. He insisted that we take them. It was really random, but it was just a witness to me that Heavenly Father is in the details of the details of the details of our lives! 

General Conference is this weekend!!!!! YAY!!!! I CAN"T WAIT!!!! Everyone, go and watch it! It's an opportunity to hear form God's prophets! The people He has called to speak for Him!! Is there anything more amazing on the earth than that!? Just go and listen to it! I can promise you without a sliver of a doubt that if you go and watch General Conference, you will have your questions answered. You will feel God speak to you. So just go and do it! 

Being a missionary is so great! I am so blessed!

Have a great week everybody!

Sister Bloomfield

Lady they met that really wanted to take a picture with them :)

Vancouver Temple

Vancouver Temple

Thanksgiving, gluten-free cookies & ASL! {week 11}

Hello!

It's so great to hear about how you're all doing! Thank you so much for your emails. It means so much to me! 

I'm doing great! My new area is so amazing! The ward here is on fire! I have had such a great week, it's been amazing!

Some highlights from my week:

The annual BC thanksgiving food drive!: Here in Canada Thanksgiving is at the beginning of October, which is really weird. Now that everyone is prepping for Thanksgiving I'm getting pumped for Christmas and it's throwing me off because Christmas isn't for a while! Anyways, here in BC the church hosts a non-denominational food drive! And the Brookswood ward goes ALL OUT for it! We got to volunteer for a couple of hours unloading the food people were bringing in. It was so wonderful to be working along side members of the church and people not of our faith! Last year the Brookswood ward collected 6,000 pounds of food... this year we got 20,000! It was INCREDIBLE! Service is the absolute best! One thing that really impressed me was a massive donation of food from the Seek Temple. They donated about 7,000 pounds! I was astounded! They are such amazing people! It was just such a wonderful experience! Not to mention the ward put on a pretty stellar after party :)

Adventures with making cookies!: We have these WONDERFUL investigators that we just love SO MUCH! They just moved from Victoria so they're my type of people :) We haven't been able to meet with them for a couple of weeks because they're so busy. Randomly I had the idea that we should make them cookies. We texted them and said we were going to which made them happy. We asked them if they had any allergies and come to find out they are gluten free! At first me and my companion were like "umm how are we going to do this?" But then I randomly found a recipe for gluten free cookies in our cupboard. I made them and we gave them to our investigators. We were both a little nervous about what they would think... luckily we got to see them again and they told us that the cookies were the best they had ever had! It was a miracle! We had an amazing lesson about Jesus Christ with them too! They have so much faith! I love them so much! 

ASL!: Yesterday at church a lady came into Sunday school that I didn't recognize. I tried to introduce myself but the woman that had brought her came up and told me that she was deaf and couldn't understand me. I got really excited and asked her if she knew ASL and SHE DID! So we started talking and it was so amazing! I love her so much! It was such an incredible experience! I am so grateful I was able to learn ASL enough to be able to communicate with others! It is such a blessing! She wasn't able to communicate with anyone at church and then suddenly people were asking me to help translate. I can't even express how beautiful it was to see her open up. I also got to use some Spanish the other day which was pretty cool. I love languages! I'm trying to learn Chinese too so we'll see how that goes! 

It has been an incredible week here in Canada! Sometimes I can't even believe I'm here. It's so amazing! 

A guy in the Brookswood ward just got home from his mission and gave his homecoming talk yesterday. Guess where he served?? Colordado!!!!! It was so awesome to hear someone talk about Colorado! It made me so happy! 

One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is faith! Faith is so incredible but it can be hard to develop. Having faith is having the courage to take a step forward even though making mistakes is inevitable. Having faith is knowing that even when we do make mistakes Jesus Christ can fix any broken thing. It makes me think of the parable of the talents. Sometimes it can be scary to invest in the world, to use our "talents", for fear of losing them. But we need to have the faith to invest our talents trusting that because of Christ all things will eventually work for out for the best in the end. If we have the faith to allow Jesus Christ to work in our lives we will be able to be happy even in difficult circumstances. If we have faith in Christ losing our "talents" isn't even a possibility. I found a quote the other day that says "We know that challenges, disappointments, and sorrows will come to each of us in different ways, but we also know that in the end, because of our divine Advocate, all things can be made to work together for our good" 

Have a wonderful week!

Sister Bloomfield

This is a picture from last week that I was waiting for permission to post.  It's with her 1st Companion, the ward mission leader in Victoria, and a recent convert.

Into the woods...Brookswood {week 10}

Hello!

I hope things are going well back home! 

I am now in Brookswood! Saying goodbye to the people in Victoria was SO HARD. But I know they're in good hands! The Brookswood ward is so awesome! I'm now in the lower mainland so I actually saw some rain for the first time since I got here! It's so green and beautiful and I love it so much! The church building is right across the street from the temple and it makes me so happy so be so near the temple! 

My new companion, Sister Crane, is so awesome! We have so much fun together! Langley is very different from Victoria so doing missionary work is very different as well. It's so interesting how missionary work changes so much in different cities! I guess that must be because my mission is so big and diverse.

Yesterday I got to meet one of our investigators! She's and old Japanese lady and she is SO CUTE! She's been investigating the church for a long time. Her son became a member a few decades ago and he actually served a mission in Japan! He's been trying to get his mom to join the church for a while. She is so sweet! She's going to teach me Japanese so I'm going to be a pro by the end of this transfer ;) 

There are so many different people from different parts of the world here, it's incredible! I've met someone from Vietnam, Africa, Korea, China, and the list goes on! 

We had such a cool miracle the other day! A member of the ward took us to a super fancy Greek restaurant. Our waiter said "Are you the mormons?" so we told him we are and he got super excited! It turns out he is a member of the church who was baptized in Ecuador!!!!! I told him that I had gone to Ecuador and it was so fun to talk about it! He hasn't been to church for a while but we told him where the building was so hopefully we'll see him again! I'm so happy I found someone to talk about Ecuador with! 

In this mission we are only allowed to listen to EFY music and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I just wanted to let you all know that EFY 2017 is the bomb. If anyone wants to know what's been running through my head just go listen to the song "He believes in you" from that album. Dad, you would love all of those songs haha. 

One thing I know to be true is that Jesus Christ loves each of us so much. He would never give up on us, so don't ever give up on yourself. He knows we're going to make mistakes, don't let that stop you from coming closer to him. As the prophet Nephi said, "why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?... Awake my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul" (2 Nephi 4). Never give up! God loves you! 

Sister Bloomfield

Sea Shells by the Sea Shore {week 9}

Hello Everyone!

I'm so glad to hear things have been going well back home! So many things happened this week! It's been awesome.

I also just found out that I'm being transferred!!!!! I can't believe it!! I've only been here for 1 transfer! I'm pretty sad because I love Victoria with all my heart. Leaving is going to be so hard! I hope I can return someday. The people here are so wonderful and I love them so much and I'm sad I won't get to see their progress. Also the ward here is amazing! I feel like I'm leaving my home! Also mom, you should be getting an email from our AMAZING ward mission leader. He said he writes the mother of every missionary that comes through. He is so awesome and does so much for missionary work here! He is so committed to his calling and missionary work in general. I'm going to miss Victoria SO MUCH!

Anyways, you're probably wondering where I'm going! I'm going to Brookswood, a ward in Langley! It's really close to the temple so that should be pretty cool! Also I'm going to be companions with Sister Beckstrand's current companion!! I'm pretty excited! I was not expecting this transfer call at all though. It's so crazy! I still can't believe it. I always kind of had a feeling I would be assigned to Victoria, so coming here just felt so familiar! Victoria is so awesome. And I'm sure Langley will be totally awesome too! 

This has been a spectacular week! This week as we were park contacting (which in Victoria pretty much just means talking to people on the beach) we found a random piano! It turns out there are pianos all around Victoria! So me and my companion tried this new thing where I play the piano while she talks to people as they're walking by! We got to talk to a lot of people, but decided it wasn't the most effective so we probably won't do it again. But it was such a cool experience! While we were doing that we met these 2 really nice old ladies. One old lady told me that I had a genuine happiness about me that she could visibly see. Later that day we met 2 old men who told us they weren't interested but they could see that we were "wonderful representatives of the message printed on our name tags." The gospel is the only source of pure and lasting happiness. Once we have the gospel in our lives that happiness is visible and different from the rest of the world, and people notice it. Happiness is fleeting. But the pure joy that comes from the gospel lasts forever. 

We also met this incredibly kind old lady who let us in and talked to us for a long time. She is obsessed with sea shells and showed us her collection of all her sea shells. She even gave us one! We were invited to come back later too! She just made me so happy and I loved her instantly! I honestly love the people here SO MUCH! I love being a missionary! Sometimes it can be discouraging when you feel like you're not doing enough. But if you try your best and leave the rest to God, miracles happen. 

Lately I've been thinking a lot about something my mission president said to me. He said "your mission is going to change you even more than you can comprehend right now." I know that what he said is true and I can already feel my mission shaping me. Jeffry R. Holland once said "God is determined to make more of us than we thought we could be." Sometimes it can be scary to turn everything over to God. But I know that as we do he helps us to become who we're really supposed to be. I've been thinking about that a lot lately because of our transfer calls. I was wholeheartedly expecting to stay in Victoria. Getting transferred did not even feel like a remote possibility. So much is changing in my mission and my life that it feels a little crazy sometimes. But I know that if I just trust God, then everything will work together for good in the end. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ means so much to me. Jesus Christ means everything to me and I want to devote my life to serving Him. I know the church is true! 

Anyways, I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Sister Bloomfield