Hey family!

So transfer week is always a little crazy...I don't know why. I'm still so grateful I wasn't transferred. Ha its so funny to think how much I missed my first area when I first came to Lethbridge and then Heavenly Father humbled me and now I love my area of Chinook. Its the best. I don't ever remember what I tell you so I'm sorry if I repeat myself. We got another set of sisters in our zone and they're spanish sisters! That means me ans Sister Doty have another companionship to go on exchanges with. We're now over 16 sisters and it makes me think this next transfer is going to be crazy with exhanges..MLC....Christmas....and hopefully some baptisms! I'm excited! We picked up our new investigator this week and she wants to be baptized before Christmas...I honestly don't know why all these miracles are happening right now. Sadly one of our investigators who was on date to be baptized dropped us this week.....sometimes bad things happen. Its ok though, I'm learning to rely on the Lord and when I say He's humbled me lately I mean it. I can't do this work without Him. Our other investigator Jessica is progressing really well and I feel very blessed every time I enter her home to teach her.

Recently an inactive lady just had a baby in our ward who was 3 months early. She reached out to the ward when she was in the hospital so we decided to stop by and see her. What a blessing that was. We started visiting with her and getting to know her a little better and then we decided to sing her a song, we sang Abide with Me; Tis Eventide  a very special spirit entered that sweet room. She was very grateful at the end and told us that was exactly what she needed. Her heart was very softened and I hoping this experience will help her on the road back to the gospel.

On Wednesday it was -29 with the wind chill hahahaha oh boy I felt bad for all the new missionaries that just flew in. This winter is going to be cold!!!

Me and Sister Doty this past week wrapped a bunch of Book of Mormons in Christmas wrapping paper and decided that every dinner appointment we go to we'll give a special lesson on Christ and then invite them to prayerfully select someone to give the Book of Mormon to this Christmas season. We had a couple of lessons with it this past weekend and the members loved it....who knew all you needed to do was wrap the book in wrapping paper and it will make them excited to do missionary work? Yay!

We had a great lesson with Jessica yesterday...she's the one preparing to be baptized on the 7th and it was awesome. She's always bearing her testimony of the the gospel and doesn't even realize it. She loves asking us questions and loves sharing her experiences with the Book of Mormon. I'm excited for her!

Well have an awesome Thanksgiving! I will be thinking of you eating yummy food! I'm so grateful for all of you.

Sam-thanks for being the best brother in the world. Keep being awesome.

Kate-thanks for being my best friend. Thanks for always emailing me :) 

Dad-I love you!! Thanks for always supporting me with everything.

Mom-Thanks for being such a great example to me.

I love you all!!

Love 

Sister Martin

What a week, what a week!! Being on a mission is seriously the best thing in the world. This week was awesome. Really hard but lots of blessings. On Tuesday it was just go go go. We had our last exchange of the transfer, I went over to the west side of Lethbridge and went on exchanges with Sister Hassan. The sisters over there are over a YSA ward and it was so fun to see the difference in missionary work with a YSA ward compared to a family ward. It was a lot of fun to do missionary work with people my age. We exchanged back late Wednesday afternoon and immediately got our stuff together and headed to Calgary!

I was honestly so excited to get up to Calgary and go back to my old area to see Andy and Kenora! They're doing really well and it was so nice to just visit and have a lesson with them. They're such a huge blessing in my life and they probably don't even realize it. Hopefully I see them again soon. Thursday we got up early and headed over to have our Mission Leadership Council with Elder Schwitzer. He gave a lot of great training on leadership and talked a lot about how as members of the church we need to stick the the basic doctrines of the gospel. Faith & Repentance. There is a reason both of them are the first two principles of the gospel. Study them and apply them to your life, it will bless you tremendously. The whole MLC was awesome and it was so fun to spend time with a General Authority. After me and Sister Doty went to Peters for lunch its a famous milkshake place in North Calgary and it was so yummy!! For the first time though me and Sister Doty wanted to get back to Lethbridge.....usually I just want to stay in Calgary forever but I just wanted to get back to Lethbridge and work hard. I finally love Lethbridge :) That night we had dinner with the sweetest lady she was baptized last January and is preparing to go to the temple in a couple of months! I love seeing people continuing to progress after baptism.

On Friday we had our mission tour and got to hear from Elder Schwitzer again. We had all the zones in the South come together... Med Hat... British Columbia.... Lethbridge... Cardston...etc it was so fun to see all the missionaries! We have a ton of them! We had a neat experience where Elder Schwitzer wanted to sit in and listen to me and Sister Doty teach. I thought I would be nervous at first but the spirit came over and we taught a really great lesson on the importance of church attendance. It was such a neat experience have Elder Schwitzer sit side by side with us listening to us teach. I loved it! He also said it was an amazing lesson and he was very grateful for the opportunity to sit in! It made me so happy.

On Saturday we got a crazy crazy storm. It was so icy and freezing outside! President made all missionaries in Lethbridge stay off the roads. Luckily me and Sister Doty had already left that morning to go to the church for a Relief Society activity so we were just stranded at the church for awhile. We had fun at the Relief Society activity and had fun spending time with the ladies in the ward then we just hung out and made a lot of phone calls and made appointments. It literally was so cold outside....and all the Canadians were telling us that it wasn't even bad and its just going to get worse! Hahaha oh my!

Sunday we got a bunch of referrals from the ward! This hasn't really happened yet so I was very happy. Missionary work is really starting to pick up here and I love it!! Later that night we got a chance to go to the Young Women in Excellence night Sunday night and it was so nice because we're developing such a great relationship with the young women in our ward. They're all amazing young girls. We also got a phone call from a lady saying her mother-in-law is ready to be baptized and wants to be taught! Oh my goodness! hahaha miracles are happening everyday. 

Also I'm not getting transferred! I'm staying here in Lethbridge another transfer. I get to have Christmas with Sister Doty and I'm so happy! I still feel like I have a lot of work to do here so I'm excited for this upcoming transfer! 

I love you family you're the best!!

Love

Sister Martin

Sister Martin and Sister Doty

Sister Doty, Sister Schwitzer, Elder Schwitzer and myself!

FAMILY. FRIENDS. PEOPLE.

Hello!!!! I love you all so much! Oh my goodness, there were so many times this week that I just wanted to call you not because I was home sick but because I wanted to just fill you in on all these amazing experiences I'm having. Emails don't even do justice. So I was still pretty sick at the beginning of the week but we were working hard finding more less-active members to teach in the ward. I don't know if I told you this before but there are over 600 people on our ward list and only around 150 come each week! Crazy! So much work to be done!!

On Tuesday a different zone invited Sister Doty and myself to come and do a training in their zone meeting so we drove over to the west side of Lethbridge and got to do some training and it was pretty fun. My fears of talking in front of people are slowly going away and its probably because I'm forced to do it every week! haha oh my goodness. We then by some miracle got in with a inactive lady who never lets people in and we had an amazing lesson on the Atonement. The atonement really is the center of everything, when we start to study and understand the atonement our desire to share the gospel will increase. Also we had a man call us and he wanted to meet with us, he's from Medicine Hat and he was actually good friends with Kel (the investigator that passed away) he's actually a recent convert and wanted to know how Kel was doing. We had an amazing lesson with him on the Plan of Salvation. Also the man got a hold of Kels family and will be able to do his work in the temple in a year from now. How amazing is this gospel? So wonderful.

We had 2 lessons with our investigators on Wednesday and both of them are progressing so well. Its interesting to see what draws both of them to the gospel. One is families and the other is repentance. Each person is different but the gospel is for everyone, I love it! Both of our investigators want to be baptized we just need to help them overcome some concerns and they'll be ready to go. Heavenly Father has blessed this area so much. Its so different than when I first got here and I feel so blessed to see the ward grow stronger and be a part of it. I was still feeling sick by Thursday and my Zone Leaders called and said they would lock me in my house if I didn't stay in and get rest....hahaha I just feel like the worst missionary ever if we're not out working. But they were right I needed some sleep. They also came over and gave me a blessing and lets just say the priesthood is awesome! I'm doing much better. We went on 2 exchanges this past weekend. One in Medicine Hat and one in West Lethbridge. I stayed in my area both times but the exchanges went really well. I went on one exchange with Sister Cornillez who is the sweetest nicest girl I've ever met. She's been out for 5 weeks now and she's from the Philippians. Sweetest person ever. I got to help her with her English and it was great :)

This week will be so much fun! We're headed to Calgary tomorrow....YAY! Elder Schwitzer of the 70 wants to have another mission leadership council so we'll be meeting with him Thursday morning and then we'll head back down to Lethbridge after that and on Friday we have another meeting with him and he might join me and Sister Doty for a lesson! I'm hoping it happens it would be such a wonderful experience. And then next week is transfers.....HOW DID THAT HAPPEN SO FAST! Oh my goodness. The mission is flying by. I'm coming up on my half way mark....oh my it makes me want to cry.

I love the gospel. I love my Savior and I love teaching people about those two things. I hope you all have a great week! Remember that I love you dearly and that I"m praying for you often!

Love 

Sister M.

Small villages in Canada 

Sister Cornillez and Sister Martin

Sarah and one of her investigators

Miracles do happen.

What an amazing week. I've seen so many tender mercies and miracles this past week which has strengthened my testimony of this amazing gospel. We've seen so many amazing things. I love it! On Monday night we taught a cute older couple, the husband struggles with his testimony of Jesus Christ so we've decided to teach him like an investigator so we taught the Restoration and the spirit was so strong in that little room. There truly is a power that comes with Joseph Smith and the first vision. We then went and taught our investigator Jessica and we read from the Book of Mormon from her and she loved it we committed her to read the next chapter and when we saw her the next time she had read 3 more chapters, she's just loving the Book of Mormon! We had a church tour with her so she could become more comfortable with the church building and she kept saying how much she was feeling the spirit!

On Tuesday night we went on exchanges and I went over to the East side of Lethbridge where the sisters are in a walking area. Hahahaha I just bundled as much clothing on as possible as we went out walking around to teach. We went over to a inactive members home and taught a lesson on prayer. I asked the lady when was the last time she prayed and got an answer to her prayer and she sat there and thought and then opened up about an experience she had with prayer when she was little. She got pretty emotional and then said "I guess God really does hear my prayers, I just need to keep on praying." It was great, we committed her to pray to her Father in Heaven and sit and listen. This is why I love going on exchanges so often, I may never see this lady again but she taught me something and hopefully the spirit we brought into her home taught her something as well. The next day was filled with lots of walking and with lots of cold wind but I was filled with joy because missionary work really is the best!

Thursday was kind of a crazy day we had to teach our investigator Dan in the morning and the lesson went really well. He's thinking about baptism he just hasn't received his answer yet. We keep praying he'll recognize the Holy Ghost. We then had a zone meeting we had to go to and then we had to quickly pack and head up to Calgary. All missionaries need to be in by 6 on Halloween so we needed to be in Calgary by that time. We got up to Calgary and me and Sister Doty hung out with President and Sister Nicholas for the evening it was honestly so much fun. We just ate pizza and relaxed and hung out with other missionaries. It felt like a little break hahaha. Friday was our leadership council and everything we heard was so great. There's so many great changes happening in missionary work. We also have our mission tour coming up on November 14th-15th Elder Swizter is coming from the 70 and he wants to do another Mission Leadership Council with us so yay for us! We get to go back to Calgary in 2 weeks! Hahaha I just love Calgary so much. Elder Swizter will also be coming down to Lethbridge and going out with the missionaries to some of their lessons. It would be so cool if he could come out with us! Sad thing is I started getting really sick when I was in Calgary with horrible flu like symptoms....I don't know what it is but I think Satan wants me sick always....stupid Satan. I had a fever, sick to my stomach...sore throat....etc.....etc.... lame. Anyways even with me being sick we saw so many miracles on Saturday.

Our investigator Jessica came to a baptism and loved it. She let us know that she wants to be baptized and she's preparing herself for December 7th. We also had another great lesson with our other investigator and she accepted the invitation of baptism as well! We honestly couldn't believe it. On Sunday Jessica and her husband came to church! They loved it. We also got a random phone call from a man we met on the streets and he wanted us to come teach him and his friends.

So many things are happening! Sister Doty and myself feel overwhelmed with Gods love. He truly is in control of this great work. The work is hastening!

This week will be extremely busy for us. We have 2 more exchanges and one of them is in Med Hat. We also are going up to Calgary the next week and then we get to look forward to Zone Conference! I love it! Being a missionary is the best thing in the world.

I love you all so much and hope you're doing good!

Love 

Sister Martin

 "This is a space ship in the town of Vulcan. We went on a little detour up to Calgary. Probably the strangest town I've ever been to."

 Can you spot Sarah?? Welcome to Vulcan!

Canadian prairie. 

Lethbridge at its best :)