Today is Sunday, January 31, 2021.
Highlights of our last week of January 2021 included…
Office Meetings on Monday which are always delightful! Visiting with our Office team, and every missionary that happens to pop in is wonderful!! There is cheerful synergism amongst our consecrated Seniors, and our young missionaries. We are continually inspired and are so grateful to serve with them all!
Senior Missionaries that were swept away last March 2020 have invited us to join their once a month zoom call, and when we are available, we love getting caught up with those dear friends!! This past Monday Sister Little and I were delighted to hear reports from many of our returned CMMissionaries. Another miracle of our missionary service is how quickly lasting ‘golden’ friendships are forged!! ‘Because we know YOU, we have been changed for good!’ (adapted from ‘Wicked.’)
Getting reports from our Zone Leaders, and Sister Training leaders is so fun!!
They are always full of life and excited to share their Zones weeks work!
Although we definitely do not define ourselves, or our missionaries, by our
‘Key Indicators for Conversion;’ we were thrilled when we tallied our numbers and realized we have 24 friends on date to be baptized!!! That is a record high for us, and we all celebrate!! We should also report that since our challenge about a month ago, for missionary teams to set teaching goals of 20 lessons a week….many of our teams are meeting that challenge. It requires tons of planning, and is most effectively done when the Ward or Branch Mission Leader does the calendaring..he is the one that sets up the appointments. Ward and Branch Mission Leaders are key in the success of ‘finding, teaching and baptizing!’ Ward and branch missionaries are also key in moving the work forward, so if you feel like you aren’t as engaged in your ward or branch; volunteer to be a ward missionary, and then go to work!! It is MINISTERING and DISCIPLESHIP at its best!!
Monday night we welcomed Sister Paisley Wilson, to the CMM. Because her home internet (near Ponoka,) is not stable, she did much of her online MTC training at Neil and Patti(Richard’s sister) Harker’s home in Lacombe!! We loved seeing the photo of the three of them together!! Small world!!! Excited to have Sister Wilson join us!!
Yesterday at 4pm we had both our iPads set up for two of those 24 baptisms; 9 year old Kendra Shaw in Ottawa, and Patrice Ngantchia in Laval. We get so excited for these Baptisms…..BUT our missionaries are over the moon!!! We all feel so fulfilled!
Sister Driesen, from Devon, Alberta originally was serving in the Ascension, Paraguay Mission, was sent home in March, and after spending some time at home was reassigned here, so for 8 months she served so faithfully, and then we received word from Missionary Travel that she was to return to Paraguay…so last night we had to say a tearful ‘au revoir' to her. She was happy and sad….so it goes.. we get so attached to these young friends, and it is hard to let them go..
BUT..this week we are excited to welcome five new CMM missionaries:
Sister Ellissa Gibb - Edmonton
Sister Katia Van Duyse - Bohicon, Benin/ Cardston
Elder Zach Bagley - Thunder Bay
Elder Blake Gibb - Lethbridge
Elder Justin Schortinghuis - Barnwell
Friday five of our finest - (they are ALL the finest!!) return to their homes and families, and we are bracing ourselves for more teary farewells. Saying goodbye is definitely the hardest part of this service…..
Leaving us this week are:
Sister Marshalyn Moosman
Elder Justin Brown
Elder Tyler Clifford
Elder Jeremy Crofts
Elder Zach D’Eon
So the Transfer Cycle goes…and it does seem to be going faster …
We spoke in St. Laurent YSA Branch today, and tuned into Sister Lydia Hall’s homecoming in Sandy, Utah, as well as watched D’Arcey and Jan’s grandson Jaxon West’s farewell in Welling, Alberta, and tonight we have our Mission Devotional. And tomorrow we flip the calendar over…to February!! Oh my!!
Tomorrow is my last MTC French tutoring day….we get to plan my ‘going forward with French plan.’ Our time is ticking by too quickly.
Have a wonderful week! We send our love and prayers to all.
Grandpa and Grandma, Dad and Mom, Richard and Gayle
Keep Smiling!!!
Miracles abounded this week….oh how blessed we feel. Read on!!
January 31st, 2021 Missionary Miracles
Kirkland Elders:
« Charles is progressing quite a bit. We took your invitation to invite to be baptized more often and it led to a great and honest discussion on his beliefs. He didn't say what was holding him back out right, but we were able to pick up on the needs. Now we are able to send him videos and scriptures to help him out! We actually had a wonderful miracle. We wanted to send him Alma 42, which would answer his questions beautifully. But, there was so many topics he didn't know about in the chapter that we were worried it would raise more questions than it answers. We held off on sending the scripture for now, and then he texted us that he "was lead by the spirit to Alma 42, which answered his questions". What a miracle! I learned then to never be afraid to send scriptures that answer a question. If he continues this path, I know he will be baptized in February! Maintaining my goal! »
Sisters in Saint Hyacinthe:
« This week was pretty good. We were able to deliver a lot of Bibles and we were able to start teaching one of them. We got a super cool self referral. He requested for a BofM, he is Catholic but he believes that God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are 3 separate beings so when he found out that we believed in that, he wanted to learn more. We were able to meet him the other day when we delivered the BofM and he seemed really cool. We are still trying to set up a lesson with him. Our friend Francis is also doing well! He is progressing so quickly and we set a baptismal date with him for the 28th of February. We've only been teaching him for 3 weeks and he has already learned so much. He tells us that it all just makes sense to him and he feels like he knew it all along. I am so grateful that God gave me the opportunity to be a part of His journey. He is truly a miracle and I am so so excited for him.«
Sydney, Nova Scotia Elders who also cover Cornerbrook Newfoundland:
« A few weeks ago we met with Danessa a recent convert to the church in Cornerbrook (I don't know if you know her or not) over zoom. She was struggling a lot because the church is so small in Newfoundland and the missionaries are no longer there. She has been contemplating leaving the church for a little while and stopped going to church for a few weeks. In our lesson we felt inspired to ask her if she had a favourite story in the BoM. She told us she loved the story of Nephi breaking his bow. We centered our lesson around this story and she told us this was her favourite story because it was the the first part in the BofM that she really understood. She said I like this story because "Nephi isn't a quitter" he stayed hopeful and built another bow out of a stick even though everyone else murmured. At the end of the lesson she bore a beautiful testimony to us and told us that the reason it has been so hard for her to leave the church is because she knew it was true. It seemed so small just feeling prompted to ask a simple question, but it led to a very spiritual and uplifting experience. When she told us this story was her favourite I instantly knew exactly where it was and what verses it would be found in. I'm not sure if before that lesson I could have actually recalled exactly where that scripture was, but it was cool to have been able to remember with such clarity in our lesson. When she bore her testimony I could feel the spirit very strongly and I knew that she knew it was true. It seems like small things now that I say them, but at the time it felt nothing short of a miracle. Miracles can be easy to over look and miss, but as I've tried to keep my eyes open for them, I can see them everywhere.«
Sydney Elders also:
« This week has been decently busy. We had a cool experience the other day while visiting a member. Me and Elder Schmidt decided we wanted to drop off some cookies to a lady in our ward who is home living alone. When we got there she wasn't home so we decided we would come back another day. She called us that night and asked if we had been there which i thought was odd because I knew she wasn't home. Turns out that her neighbour had gone and talked to her about us because he had been watching us. which led to a full on conversation about us missionaries. it just really showed me that people are always watching us as missionaries and every chance is to be an example to someone. «
Assistants:
« Remember when i said we had some ambitious goals? Well once again, the Lord DID help us with them. We wanted to find 7 people this last week, and so just like previous weeks we put our minds to it, and did everything we could to accomplish that goal, and but then end of the night on Sunday, we had 6 of the 7 people found. Many of which are SO solid to to teach! I not that is 1 less than 7, but then we peeped into areabook and looked at the district key indicators, and the Sisters had planned to find 4 people that week, plus the other Elders had planned to find 3 people. Which is a total of 13 people as the districts finding goal. The Sisters actually ended up finding 7 people, making it a grand total of 13/13 people found! It was incredible! I know it is not all about the numbers, but these people are actually really solid potential to progress! Now this week we have raised our ‘at church goal’ and lowered the finding goal. We are striving to have 8 people attend church this Sunday, hopefully all 7 of those that were found will be among those 8. That would be a miracle because it is travel planning time. I believe in miracles though!! I tell you all of this because i wanted to thank you for teaching me the importance of goal setting and planning these last few transfers. It is such an valuable lesson, and I am hoping to apply it to my life after the mission! «
Quebec Sisters:
« We saw a fun finding miracle this week! Actually, two! We have been helping the Quebec Elders contact people who have reacted to the advertisements on the Spanish FB page. We started talking with a man who ended up being the most humble, genuine seeker of Christ. We referred him back to the Quebec Elders because he lives in a remote reservation that is included in the Chicoutimi/Alma area, and they were able to have a super spiritual lesson with him. I love that the miracles we see give us so much joy even if they don't directly impact our area. The second miracle we saw was with our friend that I mentioned last week, who we put on baptismal date after finding her through the Ottawa page. We were teaching her about the restoration, and her mom walked into the room and started talking to us! We said hi, introduced ourselves, and told her how much we loved and appreciated her daughter. Well, she was so happy that she asked us if she could participate in our next lesson, and then she sat down and listened as we finished teaching about the Book of Mormon and praying to find truth. We were able to deliver her a Book of Mormon as well as her daughter, and we are now teaching them both! «
Laval Elders:
« Our social media efforts have been doing really well this last little bit, we have seen success with the content that we have made and has been blessing the page with more traffic, with the intention of finding others to teach. It brings me joy to hear the stories of members watching our videos and them telling us that it brought a smile to their face. The facebook pages have blessed us with opportunities that I never thought would happen on my mission. We were able to get in contact with someone from Bukina Faso, he said he found the gospel through our page. He is now in contact with Sisters near him, and when we talked to him, he asked how he could prepare to serve a mission. Not only that, but in his area there is no church. So this last Sunday he drove 2 hours by motorbike to find a group of members. «
Halifax Elders:
« Wow! I have a cool experience that you can share with Sister Low if you would like. I was on exchanges with Sister Pedersen and we were teaching our friend Erin. I told Sister Pedersen that I had a strong feeling to extend a soft baptismal invitation but we were only going to have 10 minutes. I didn't know how it was going to work but I just couldn't ignore the prompting. I wanted to be able to say that I gave her an opportunity to be on date. We ended up having more than 10 minutes which was great and she had mentioned that something she wanted was to have her future family be raised in the faith. I knew that was my chance to ask her if she could see herself raising her family in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said that she had thought about it and still wanted to know more about what we believe. It wasn't a yes but it was an answer and I was just overflowed with the spirit. I wasn't sad or disappointed or anything because I just went in with no expectations. I was saying to myself "Just Send it!" I was so at peace and honestly so happy because I did it and it wasn't this big scary thing that you needed to set up so perfectly. It was natural and we now know where she is at. It was amazing. Also another miracle you can share is that on our way to pick up Sister Wilson the snow was really bad. There were about 4 cars within 100ft of each other that had been driven into a ditch. The car would slide a few times but I was insanely calm. I don't understand it because I didn't know what I was doing but I just knew that Heavenly Father was guiding my hands and that He was going to protect us. I wasn't worried or scared, I was completely at peace. Wow! I love the spirit! Wait I thought of another miracle you can share! I was on marketplace and I saw that I needed to renew my ads. So I did and then I went to bed and in the morning I woke up and I saw that I got 10 responses! Wild! I've still been getting more responses. People are being prepared for us I swear! I love Halifax! «
Have a WONDERFUL WEEK!! “Let your light so shine..”
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