A Classy Time in Canada: 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