Hello!!!

How is everyone? I hope everything is going well back home! I think of you often and I'm constantly praying for all of you!! This week was good. We taught a couple of less active members and a couple of them even came to church! I love when people keep commitments. On Wednesday we tried to contact a couple of referrals all of them said they're not interested right now but that's ok, they just don't know what they're missing out on! We were also walking down the street and saw an elderly couple walking.....like they were old ok and so we went up and talked to them about the weather and asked them how they were doing and they were super friendly and then we said that we're missionaries and they started running down the street. I don't think I've ever seen old people start running. It was pretty funny.

Its still cold up here but the last few days have felt wonderful its 1 degrees Celsius so around 32 degrees back home and I'm running around with no coat and loving every second! We had another lesson with our investigator but for some reason she was super closed off and not as enthusiastic about things. She's usually super happy and excited but maybe she was just having a rough day, she wouldn't really open up to us. We do have a return appointment for this Friday so hopefully things go better. Oh!! I just remember we were getting our oil checked in our car on Wednesday and I started talking to guy, he's from India and he was asking us about our name tags and what we were doing in Canada. So I proudly told him that we were missionaries for the church and talked to him about the Book of Mormon. We ended up giving him the Book of Mormon and read a couple of verses to him. He said that it sounded interesting and he was really grateful we gave it to him. He's out of our area and I don't know if he'll even call but it just made my day knowing I brought him a little bit closer to Jesus Christ.

We also had this amazing lesson with a less active family and the father talked about how he was feeling the spirit and how he forgot what that felt like. I love moments like that. Where they're reminded about the gospel.

Also I'm getting to know Sis. Sagers so much better. I'm learning from her and learning to love her. When you truly try to get to know someone and figure out why they act the way they do you learn to love them. I know she's supposed to be my trainer for a reason. Even though some days are really hard she's teaching me patience and humility...the 2 things I need to work on the most....strange how that happens.

I'm starting to really get to know the ward better and I absolutely love the members. Me and Sister Sagers met with the bishop yesterday and he really wants to get all the members on board with missionary work, which is so great! We just have so much to do!

So funny story, we had to steal a vacuum from the church the other day and we forgot we needed to get it back by Saturday. So I got out of the shower early Saturday morning and my companion said that we were going over to the church to drop off the vacuum. Its 6:45 in the morning and its freezing out. So we go and drop off the vacuum and then I feel my head and its frozen. Every hair turned into an icicle!! I thought all my hair would break off. Luckily it thawed out and didn't break off.

Also my mission president came down on Tuesday to our district meeting. And met with me afterwords and told me not to stress and that everything would be ok. He talked to me for awhile but I really appreciated him doing that for me. He just barely changed how we do things out here and so nobody really knows whats going on. But we're all trying and I know that if we listen to our mission president then everything will work out.

I love all of you so much! I see so many different family situations out here and it makes me super grateful for all of you. Thanks for everything!!

Love,

Sister M.

HELLO FROM CANADA!!

Wow what a week! My flight was goood. I sat by one of my favorite Sisters. Sister Mcdade so we just got to talk for 2 hours which was great. And then we arrived in Calgary where the "field is white already to harvest". But literally it is with all the pretty snow. Lets just say I'm so grateful for my snow boots and coat. I've worn my boots everyday so far. Anyways all of us arrived and we went straight to a church for orientation and to find out where we will be serving! I was starting to get really nervous because I grew so close to the sisters in my district. I was getting upset I had to leave them ha I'm such an emotional girl. Oh well. So I found out that I would be serving..... in CHESTERMERE!! How cute is that name?! The cutest. I also live in an apartment, most missionaries do live with members but we don't. Our area is on the east side of Calgary. We live in Calgary and cover a small bit of Calgary, Chestermere and the small town of Langdon. Chestermere is a lake town and I'm betting its really pretty in the summer but right now everything is frozen. I get to see people ice fishing everyday though!

So back to the first night we arrived all the sisters actually stayed with a member of the mission presidency because of how many missionaries arrived we all couldn't fit in the Presidents home. But we were spoiled at the Palmers they had 14 sisters over that night, it was just a giant slumber party!.....kinda ha since we all had to be in bed by 10:30 but we were all so tired it didn't even matter. The next day my trainer picked me up, her name is Sister Sagers and we're nothing alike. She is 24 and from Orem. She's 6.5" and played basketball for SUU and is the quietest person I've ever met. Its been an adjustment for me that's for sure. But I'm trying to make it work. I've been blessed to be able to try and understand her. Its not like we don't get along but its hard to become best friends when we don't really talk. BUT it does give me the chance to talk to my Heavenly Father a lot. I thought I had a really strong relationship with my Heavenly Father but its getting stronger every day with how much I turn to him in prayer. I've gotten frustrated the last few days because I have no idea what I'm doing but then I have to realize I'm a brand new missionary no one expects me to know everything yet.

The members here are awesome though I can't stress that enough they are AWESOME! My favorite so far are the Maunds they are converts and they make me feel like I'm at home. They have a talking parrot and as of now we're trying to have it say "I'm a mormon." He hasn't caught on yet but he will. We have members feed us every night and the food has been great so far.

As for me and missionary work its good its just a little difficult right now because I guess our President just changed things up so my trainer doesn't even really know whats going on. I feel a little lost. We have a ton of inactive members like over 70 members in the ward are inactive. I really want to focus on them and try to help them. Its just difficult when you have this great message to share and you knock on their door in the freezing cold and you can clearly see them trying to hide and they won't open the door. I want to yell I CAN SEE YOU. Maybe someday I'll try to teach them how to hide from the missionaries better if they ever open the door. We have 1 progressing investigator right now but she cancelled our appointment with her last week. So that was sad because I haven't really had the opportunity to teach yet but we invited her to a missionary themed musical fireside last night and she came!! And she loved it! She said she loved hearing others conversion stories. So hopefully she won't cancel on us this week so we can meet with her again. We did teach a recent convert who is from Sudan. Her family is awesome and so far she's come to church every week. We're working with her to be able to go to the temple someday! We also came into contact with a guy from Nepal and he will be out of town for the next week but he gave us his number and wants us to contact him in a week or so. There is a lot of work to be done. We just need to figure out how to do it. My mission President does not want us tracting so we're just trying to figure out what to do when people cancel on us last minute or when our backup plan fails as well.

People really do have accents up here and really do say eh all the time. They call the bathroom the "washroom" and call tennis shoes "runners" they say some other funny things that I'll tell you if I remember.

I got the chance to rip out gross carpet the other day. Can you picture me ripping out moldy carpet? Well be proud of me because I did. We had a less active girl call us needing help because her basement flooded. We got our zone leaders over there and moved all her furniture and started ripping out the carpet. She was super grateful for our help and I loved knowing she knew she could call us for help.

One of my favorite moments of the week was a small one but it made me happy. We went to go visit with a less-active member that our Stake President asked us to visit. Her name is Sis. Plett and she lives out in Langdon which is in the middle of no where. We stopped by and she answered and let us in. We started sharing her a small message about faith and she started getting pretty emotional, She opened up about how the last few weeks have been pretty hard for her and how she turned to Heavenly Father in prayer asking to help increase her faith, and then we showed up. She said it was an answer to prayer and she then knew her Heavenly Father was listening to her. For the first time I felt like I was in the right place at the right time to help her out. We made another appointment to meet with her this week. 

Family I miss you so much and love you even more! I'm so grateful for our little family and the love we have for each other. I'm so grateful for dad and Sam for being righteous priesthood holders, you boys mean everything to me. Thank you mom and Kate for being my best friends. I love you all SO SO much!

This week has been difficult but the work is so rewarding. I wouldn't be out here if I didn't love this gospel so much. I should have realized more that it was going to be hard and its going to get harder but better! I love bundling up each day in tons of layers and going out to do our Lords work. Something that's helped me a lot this week is D&C 11 mainly verse 21 [I need to work on obtaining His work first then declaring it] That's why I'm going to be getting trained the next 12 weeks so I can obtain His word. I'M EXCITED!

Love, Sister Martin

Sarah's zone at the MTC

Sarah and her old roommate, Sister Priddis at the MTC

The "Canada Calgary" sign

All the Elders are in West Virginia and all the Sisters in Calgary!

Sarah with her trainer to her right

Sarah in Canada by her apartment

HI FAMILY & FRIENDS!

I've survived my first week and I'm loving it! To be honest its hard really hard but I know I'm supposed to be here and that makes everything ok. I love my district and we've become super close in the last week, its weird how close we've become. All the Elders are heading to West Virginia and all the Sisters are going to Calgary! I learn so much everyday and me and my companion are doing so well with our investigator!! His name is Troy and he's awesome. He first didn't believe that God answers prayers so we taught him about his loving Heavenly Father and had him pray for us! THE SPIRIT WAS ON FIRE! He is now praying daily and we have him now reading the BoM. He's awesome and we love him so much. And guess what!?? We have a baptismal date for him at the end of the month!! I couldn't stop smiling that day! We also taught a lady that really is inactive and we prayed with her and taught her about going back to church and to start reading the BoM again. It was awesome. We've had some trials as a district with one of our Elders going home a couple of days ago, it was sad to see such an awesome Elder not feeling like he should be out here. It was so sad to see him go. Also a Sister in my district has MS and struggles every day, her determination amazes me. She had a bunch of pain in her leg yesterday and it started to go numb. We had to have her go to the emergency room last night but right before she left we had the Elders give her a blessing. Lets just say I LOVE the priesthood. So awesome. I love being a coordinating sister. All the new sisters in the zone came yesterday and I just adore them. They're all going to Reno. We'll continue checking on them each day to see how they're doing. My teachers told me that they've never had any missionaries to get Troy to pray so soon or commit to baptism so that made me happy. I just love talking to people and trying to help them out. I'm blessed to be here and the spirit is so strong. We literally say 100 prayers a day and I can feel your prayers for me.

These Sisters are in my district!