What a week! Transfer weeks are ALWAYS so crazy! It was also a little nuts with Sister LaCrue going home. Sad to see her go. She really had a hard time leaving her mission and it definitely made me realize to make every moment on my mission count because its going wayyyy to fast. Wednesday morning we were at the church for transfers and Sister Doty walked in and I was so surprised to see her since she was serving in Calgary.......and then they announce that she's my new comp! OH MY GOODNESS! I couldn't believe it, I just love her and its so fun since we've already established a friendship in the MTC. I was just way too happy about that one. We had 35 missionaries come out last week. The biggest transfer this mission has ever had. Its amazing. We're now at our max for sisters in the mission. Sister Doty and I are over 14 sisters still and two of the sisters are not native english speakers. One is from France and the other is from the Philippians. Crazy!! But awesome. Sister Doty and I have some great goals for this are this next transfer so I'm excited! We've already seen so many miracles the past week. We got 2 new investigators! That hasn't happened in a looooooonnnnngggg time. It so hard finding new investigators here but we found 2! Yay! One is in her 30's and is single and the other is from the part member family that I've been writing about. Her husband is less-active but we invited her to take the discussions and she said yes! MIracles. And we'll hopefully be getting a new one tomorrow! So happy. I loved going to Ward Council this past week because it seemed like everyone got more excited about missionary work because of conference. Hopefully we'll see good things come from it. Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in Canada. We didn't have a dinner and neither did 6 other missionaries so we all went to I-Hop....keepin it classy. It was way fun though and I wouldn't of had it any other way. We had our Zone Training Meeting this morning and me and Sister Doty trained our zone on Chapter 5 from PMG which is all about the Book of Mormon. I think it went pretty well, our zone is pretty awesome. 

I just want to let everyone know how much I love the Book of Mormon. It is true. There is no doubt in my mind. It will bring us closer to Christ and help us develop a relationship with Him. It will teach us the true and basic doctrines of the gospel. It will change you for the better if you sincerely read it, study it, pray about it and apply it to your life. 

I'm sorry this email is short! But I love you all so much!! Thank you for everything! 

Love 

Sister M.

Oh also in the Spirit of Thanksgiving her are 5 things I'm grateful for.....

1. My family...obviously.....you're all the best.

2. The gospel. Its awesome.

3. The prophet. WE HAVE A PROPHET ON THE EARTH TODAY. How great is that?

4. Warm clothes.....its starting to get cold here!

5. My Savior and the Atonement. Without Him nothing else matters. 

One of their investigators.

 Welcome to Lethbridge!

Sister Doty and Sister Martin at a little coffee house in Lethbridge......drinking hot chocolate of course :)

Hey family!!! What an amazing week. Sooo hard....but worth it. We retaught our investigator the plan of salvation on Tuesday because the last time we taught it he was on drugs and didn't get anything out of the lesson, but this time he was clear minded and loved the lesson. He even said he wanted to watch general conference with us over the weekend. Tuesday night we had exchanges with the sisters in West Lethbridge and I had Sister Hansen come to my area with me. She is wonderful. I love her! After the exchange she really opened up and told me how grateful she was to be able to learn so much from me.....I was like WHAT?! I learned so much from you! I seriously love getting to know all the sisters better and being able to help them and teach them, its great! We had some really great lessons on Tuesday as well that were all so spirit driven. That's when I know I'm doing things right, when the spirit can just speak through me. Honestly the Holy Ghost is the best tool a missionary can have. We're so blessed to have the gift of the Holy Ghost. On Thursday we drove to Calgary for Mission Leadership Council. I don't know what it is lately but I've been so emotional....probably because Sister LaCrue is so emotional about going home. But during MLC's President Nicholas started talking about how someday we'll be meeting with our Stake Presidents and our name tags will be coming off.....I just started crying thinking that I'm not ready to leave. I'm so grateful I have a year left because I still have so much to learn and do. They're calling one more set of Sister Training Leaders this transfer for up in Calgary because we'll hit our max amount of sisters this transfer having a little over 60. Its hard to believe this mission used to only have 6 sisters! Now there are so many more missionaries...its amazing! 

So how good was general conference??! SO GOOD. Oh my goodness, I was just soaking up every talk. So many things were repeated but everything had a different twist and it was all so spiritual. Also our investigator came and loved President Monson, he also said he learned a lot and loved everything he heard so that was great to hear as well.  Yesterday was super busy for us but it was amazing we had a lot of lessons yesterday and none of them fell through....its so rare when that happens. We also met with our investigator and after we said the prayer we were about to start teaching him and then he said "Wait. Stop right there!...you haven't sang yet." Hahaha we sang a hymn and tears filled his eyes and he said....every time I hear you sing I feel like there are angels around. Remember how I don't sing!? He loves it though so thats good. He then went on to tell us that he hasn't smoked in 6 days!! He's been a smoker for 40+ years and he also threw all his pornography away. I was so proud of him. He also closed our lesson with such a powerful prayer. I love seeing how the gospel changes people its amazing. He's such a better person now and he's not even baptized yet! We also taught a part member/ less-active family last night and they asked us a  bunch of questions about temples. They seemed so interested in being sealed together so hopefully we'll start teaching them soon! Things are happening, they're just happening super slowly but thats ok. So I'll be getting a new companion tomorrow! Crazy how fast this transfer went. Honestly this transfer has been super hard...way harder than my last two but I've grown so much and have learned so much so its been great.

I love you all so much!

Love 

Sister M.

Sister La Crue, Sister Martin, Sister McDade, Sister Estrada 

"My zone after watching conference....don't mind me not wearing shoes. I just love wool socks way to much! " 

Helloooooo!! Family! I love you! So sorry I only got to email for an hour last week....we have to make up the time we're in the temple on our p-day so we cut out some email time but it was worth it. I just love the temple so much. On Tuesday we met a lot more less-active members in the ward which was really good....we're still struggling to find people to teach but I just can't worry about it anymore. Heavenly Father knows we're working hard and thats all that matters. No effort is ever wasted. We had dinner with a really great part-member family and we're hoping that we can continue to get in and hopefully start teaching her kids. On Wednesday morning we were on exchanges and I was with Sister Butler for the day in my area and we went to go and do service for a lady in our ward....so we were helping her around her home and then her husband came downstairs and he was covered in this awful awful disgusting rash.....no offense to him but it was gross!! He said he had the shingles but seriously this looked bad.....like way worse than shingles and I started freaking out trying to be nice but I just couldn't concentrate on helping anymore and Sister Butler was freaking out as well. Sister Butler was funny about it though saying that since we're missionaries doing service that we would be protected from the disgusting rash. Later we were talking to a member and they mentioned how there is a measles outbreak in Lethbridge...OH MY GOODNESS. Crazy. He probably just had the measles. Then we had a lesson with a less-active family and they mentioned that they had new neighbors move in and we asked them to invite them over so we could meet them and they got way nervous and said that they weren't ready for that yet. Funny story though.....3 days later we got a phone call from some other missionaries saying that their investigator moved into our area and guess what? Its the exact same neighbors by that family! So we get to teach them anyways and yes we have a new investigator and I'm super happy about it! We had a couple of other lessons that went well that day so I was happy. We then we tried to contact a referral at a homeless shelter which seemed fine but we went kind of later at night and it was kind of sketch....bad idea...we'll have to go back during the day when its bright and sunny outside :) The next day was just our typical planning day and then that night we drove out to Medicine Hat to go on exchanges again and I stayed in Med Hat again. I was with Sister Koller who I actually met like 3 years ago...small world!! But we had a lot of fun in Med Hat, we got an investigator to pray out loud for the first time and it was amazing! I love hearing investigators pray....their prayers are so real and they just bring the spirit in. On Saturday we went around trying to invite less-active and non-members to the Relief Society Broadcast and we got some people to come which I was happy about! The broadcast was way good! I loved how all of it was about covenants. It was great! So things are good and crazy. And also funny moment of the week.....we have atone of natives around here and they all have really cool crazy names....so we were trying to find a lady with the last name of Crying Head and so we stopped at the house we thought they lived at and this lady came to the door and I said "Hi are you Sister Crying Head?" She looked at me like was crazy! And said WHAT? I then asked her if her last name was Crying Head and she just  started shutting the door in my  face....so I'm guessing thats a no. Hahaha there are way too many awkward moments on the mission.

 cats of canada :)

Exchanges with the Legacy Sisters. 

Medicine Hat exchanges

Windmill country. Windy Windy Windy. I love southern Alberta. How is everyone doing?? It sounds like everything is good. So this week was a lot better than last week. Tuesday was good but sooooo slow. Literally everyone and their dog is getting sick so no one wanted us in their homes because they didn't want us to get sick....which is fine I guess but I just want to teach people! Anyways Tuesday night I ended up going over to the west side of Lethbridge to go on exchanges. On Wednesday we woke up and it was RAINY. Kind of like Utah I guess. I heard your getting lots of rain. Well on Wednesday it rained alllllll dayyyyy looooongggg. I pulled out the winter boots I was getting so cold. Ha. I'm going to die when it snows. But with the rain it made everyone stay home and we taught a bunch of lessons. I loved it. And I felt like I really connected to a lot of the people. On Thursday we were running around trying to help some of the sisters out so we went to Stirling again and then went over to another set of sisters in Lethbridge. Then we had a couple of lessons that went really well. We're still trying to meet people in the ward because its so big and I'm awful at remembering names so its going to take awhile. That night I stayed in my area and had another sister come on exchanges. Her name is Sister Bogaert and she's from Austraila and is sooo sweet. I loved spending the day with her and learning from her. We were having a super awesome day, meeting a lot of new people and then we went to contact a referral. We were teaching this lady and we started teaching her the restoration. The spirit was so strong and the whole time I was thinking that she was going to be a new investigator. We described the first vision and she said she felt like a light entered the room when we described it to her. We then were teaching her about the Book of Mormon and she said she really wanted to find out if it was true. We asked her to pray about it and she said she would. We then asked her if we could come another time and she said no.......OH MY GOODNESS. I was shocked. We tried to have her explain why she didn't want us to come back and she said that she didn't deserve Gods love and that this happiness wasn't for her. My heart sank. It was so sad. We tried to keep talking to her but she said she would just call us when she's ready. I'm praying she does.

Saturday we went to the temple. It was so needed. The Cardston temple is SO pretty. Oh my goodness I loved it. Sister LaCrue taught a lady who got baptized last year and she went through the temple for the first time! We were so happy for her! I wish I could just stay in the temple forever. That night we taught our investigator Kel and he still wants to be baptized we just need to help him quit smoking. He's making a lot of progress though and I'm super happy. Also our investigator came to church on Sunday which made me really happy. There's definitely been some ups and downs but its all been good. I just love the gospel so much. Its amazing. 

I hope you're week is good!

Love

Sister M.

HELLO! I never thought this day would come. This past week was CRAZY. Oh my goodness. So lets see.....me and Sister LaCrue are still going around the ward trying to meet the members and build relationships with them. We've met a lot more less-active members and found a couple part-member families that have a lot of potential. So I was really happy about that. On monday night we were actually teaching a part-member family and we started teaching the wife about the Book of Mormon and she turned to her husband and she said "why have you never taught this to me before?" He never thought she wanted to know. So hopefully we can start teaching her:) I would love that. We also got a referral for a lady and we have an appointment with her this week so I'm super excited about that as well. On Tuesday we had zone training and it was really good we talked about our zone goals and what we can do to improve our areas. I'm just getting impatient because I want things to start happening in this area but I know that Heavenly Father is teaching me right now. On Wednesday Sister LaCrue and I drove to Taber for a specialized training with President Nicholas it was really good and we talked a lot about leadership and our callings in our mission. We then had a lesson with our investigator that night and I've just come to the conclusion that I need to be really patient with this investigator, its going to take a lot of time with him but I'm excited about his potential. On Thursday we helped some sisters with their weekly planning......nothing too exciting. And then we drove to Medicine Hat which is a 2 hour drive east. I stayed in Medicine Hat with Sister Wray and it was so fun! I love Sister Wray she came out with me. So on Friday I was in Med Hat for the day and we did some service and taught a lesson to a recent convert. The spirit was so strong when we were teaching her. I love feeling the spirit, I love having it testify to me and the people we're teaching. We then met up with the other sisters and drove back to Lethbridge. He're the thing though....President called us and wanted us to drive back to Med Hat on Saturday and do some things for him. I felt like I was driving all week. We drove out to Med Hat on Saturday did what we had to do and then got back in the car and drove back. 5 hours in the car.....awful! Luckily me and Sister LaCrue got a big Dr. Pepper and put on some good music (mission appropriate obviously) and had a fun time road tripping through all the tiny towns in Canada. When we got back I was so tired. Sunday we had another Sister missionary with me and Sister Lacrue. It made me grateful that I'm normally not with 2 sisters. It makes it harder to teach when there's 3 of us instead of 2 luckily it was only for a day. 

So I'm sorry that I don't have too many fun or exciting stories this week. I was pretty much trapped in a car driving to Medicine Hat 4 billion times. But life is good. I'm excited for this week! I have a feeling we'll find a new investigator :) I love you all and hope you're having a great week!

Love 

Sister M.

 Road Tripping

Tracting 

 The famous Medicine Hat teepee

Exchanges with Med Hat sisters