Be a LIGHT☀️

Hello my wonderful family and friends!

About a week ago, we were tracting and we met a man named Gabriel. He told us it wasn't a great time but he gave us his number. We tried texting and calling him but we didn't have any luck. We decided to stop by him because we had planned to go FINDing around his house. He was home and let us in! He is from Ghana and I was able to talk to him about my trip there and He thought it was so cool! He told us he was meeting with missionaries about a year ago and was almost baptized! We did the Book of Mormon map and he really seemed to understand it. At the end he prayed and thanked God for sending us to him. He said it was so unexpected but he was thankful for it. It was so amazing!

El MunDo eS LOCO

I don't speak Spanish, but as far as I know that means "the world is CRAZY". This is what my companions and I came to realize this week...one of my companions had to go to the doctor this week so while we were waiting we texted a bunch of formers in the phone. By doing this we got 6 appointments set up! MIRACLE. One of them is named Susan and she is an old lady who calls us every night to tell us about her day for at least 20 minutes. She is quite a joy.

👻GHOSTBUSTERS👻

Happy Chinese New Year🏮🏯🎎

This week our stake put on a Chinese New Year party and we were able to go with our investigator, Wen Chen! Teaching Wen has been so amazing and so different than anyone that I have taught before. Because Wen and his family came from China he has no religious background. We have had to teach him from square one who God is. This week, we were able to read the Book of Mormon with him and teach him about repentance. As we were teaching him the spirit was so strong! He told us he really liked meeting with us and he was going to go home and repent of the things that he had been thinking about during the lesson. 

Just around the Riverbend!

What a week :) I got 2 wonderful new companions and an amazing area this week! I am with Sister Baloo, who goes home to sunny Arizona next transfer. And Stister Howe, from California, who we get to finish training! I am serving in a different part of Edmonton in the Whitemud Creek YSA which is in the RIVERBEND stake wahoo! I am sure sad to have such a short time in Gateway but Whitemud is amazing and I'm so excited to be here!

It's a sign!

What a miraculous week! James (one of our awesome investigators) came to church, which is 2 weeks in a row! He walked 20 minutes in the freezing cold to get to church. He stayed for all 3 hours of church and even participated in class! Goodness he is amazing.

"^_Brightly^_ ^_Beams^_ ^_Our^_ ^_Fathers^_ ^_Mercy^_!"

My companion loves this song and sings it on the daily and I thought it fit our week just perfectly!

Because we opened up the area, we had a completely blank area book to start with. We have been trying so hard to find people to teach in every way possible. I sure love tracting, don't get me wrong, but I also love teaching! Me and my wonderful companion were tracting and we were trying to follow the spirit with every door that we knocked on. One sir told us that we shouldn't be knocking on these houses because they were recovery homes. We got nervous because we had felt prompted to go here! We went and asked someone who was out walking and he laughed and said, "These are regular homes, with regular people!" We laughed and kept tracting, glad to know that normal people were living in these houses. We then came to one door and this guy answered! He had a heavy metal band on his shirt so I told him I thought his shirt was cool and then started talking about how we are able to grow closer to God through prayer and then the spirit took over! He told us he had been in prison and found God there and would love to have us come teach him more! We have to pass him over to the Elders because he wasn't YSA, but I know we were led to him!

Dare To Be A Mormon -Thomas S. Monson

We had Zone Conference this week whoot whoot. Every zone conference we are asked to write 2 talks, then at zone conference President chooses an Elder and a Sister to speak. I thought that since I was asked to give the closing prayer I wouldn't get called on for a talk but unfortunately I was wrong. It was also the biggest zone conference they have had in the mission because a bunch of zones were combined and more than half the missionaries were there! Luckily, I got to talk about the Book of Mormon, one of my favorite things to talk about so it was alright:)

Homeless, Phoneless, & Carless - Welcome to the City!

When we drove in for transfers and I met my companion, we were given the news that we didn't have a home, a phone, or a car whoot whoot! It was a rough start to the week but we now have a cute house, a truck, and a flip phone. It doesn't get better than that:)

Opening an area has been quite the experience but let me tell you, we have seen SO many miracles! Some of the miracles:

Going to Grandma's 🏡

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sooo transfer calls this week! I am leaving my lovely (freaking cold) home in Fort McMurray and going to Grandma's:) my new companion will be one of my trainers trainer so it will be super duper fun!

Chopped💇‍♀️

To explain the caption...last week, my comp asked me to cut her hair and being the good comp I am I said I would! Her hair is super curly (pro tip: if curly hair is wet, cut it way longer than what you expect) and it was wet so it was straight and pretty long. She asked me to cut it to about her shoulders so I put a towel over her shoulder and made the first cut. It was quite a bit shorter than she wanted it so I told her not to worry I would just cut the rest longer and she could pin that piece back. I kept cutting with the help of my other comp confirming it was the right length that she wanted it. In the end all of it was the same length as the first piece and I'm honestly not sure how that happened. Luckily she thought it was super cute and didn't want to kill me! This is why you don't want to live with your hairdresser:)

The world is my ice rink⛸

HELLO!

We had quite the week and sooo much happened so I decided I would just make a list of some things that were the highlights!