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!
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| 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. |