Monday, March 28, 2016

Easter!

Hey family!



This week definitely had it's ups and downs, ha the ups were very up and the downs were very down...




Monday was crazy as usual. We met with this new investigator, Karen, and she is the sweetest! She was a referral from our Bishop (yay for member missionary work!) So that was pretty fun. That night for FHE we got to go play soccer and rugby with the YSA people. That was so much fun, yes I did play and yes I was wearing a dress. The weather here has been kinda psycho too... it was ridiculously cold on Monday night. But we endured for the sport.
Tuesday was one of those "down" days. We started the week with 3 investigators on date and for some reason they all wanted to drop us... so sad. We were cleaning our car and our really progressing investigator texted us and said that she was going to go back to her Catholic religion. Never have I ever been so sad! Then our other investigator decided that he couldn't decide between our religion and his E Free one... so he decided to take a break. Another blow... Then our other one on date we actually found out that she isn't in our area... so 3-0 real quick. That was probably one of the hardest things because they all have such strong testimonies and they were all really progressing towards baptism and I was super excited to be able to see them take that step, but I guess that's just the life of a missionary. 
But let me tell you, sometimes when you feel like God is closing doors, He is actually just opening doors that we couldn't even imagine could be opened. We went to our investigator that isn't technically in our area and she told us that she would prefer us to teach her. YAY, so we are in the process of getting that all worked out. Then when we got home we called the other 2 and they had apparently heard some things about our church that were not true whatsoever and it scared them away. Ha someone told our investigator, Kayla, that Mormons can't go to school dances.   Like what?!?  So we cleared up both of their questions and they agreed to continue working with us! So that was exciting.
Wednesday was just fantastic! We had Zone Conference out in Magrath (Sister Blake's old area) HOLY SMOKES! Zone Conferences are the bomb!  The day before we were feeling kinda crumby but we talked about the Atonement and trained on how we can simplify our teaching. IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED TO HERE! THE ATONEMENT IS SO REAL! President and Sister Miles are legitimately the best people on the face of the planet, seriously just love them. And having a testimony meeting with all the missionaries in our area was one of the best experiences of my life. Going to that definitely gave me that fire to just go out and teach everybody!



Thursday was pretty hard because me and Sister Blake have both been battling really bad colds that we're still trying to get over. But the work still goes on. We met with a bunch of less actives and did our first tracting. We tracted this whole apartment complex and that was really fun! I was surprised by how many people were willing to listen to what we have to say (this church must be true or something) but ya that was really fun!
Friday was just a really slow and long day. We had a bunch of appointments set up and they all bailed on us... that's dumb right? So that was really hard because we were both just still stoked from zone conference and we had nobody to teach. We went and just visited with some members and less actives. Later that night the STL's came over and we started our exchanges. I got to go with Sister Larsen out to Taber, it's like 35 minutes from our area.

ha the Andersons always take a "family pic" with any missionary that comes to their home

in action teaching a Mennonite family some primary songs

The sky goes on for miles!!!
Exchanges with Sister Larsen
Saturday was so much fun! We got to teach this super cute Mennonite family, and the cutest little old couple drove us there because it's kinda far from the area. Taber is just fantastic! Everyone is so friendly and it is so refreshing to look off into the distance and see nothing but fields and the sky for miles and miles! I do miss my mountains in Utah, but seeing nothing is pretty cool too. 
We knocked on some doors and met with some less actives there too. There are about 7500 people in Taber and they are all so stinking nice! I felt so welcome even though I was only there for the day. Plus later that night we got to watch Women's Conference! That was just the best thing, it was cool to have a meeting completely themed around service. HENRY B EYRING IS THE CUTEST! I just love that man, who wouldn't believe what he has to say?!? I loved to hear about love too, especially because I have learned to love the people of Lethbridge.  ha I don't know very many of them but I already just love them so much!
EASTER SUNDAY!!
Sunday was really fun! We had to go back and forth from each of our wards but we stayed mainly in our Family ward. I am so grateful for the chance that I had to be a missionary on Easter. I had a completely different mindset. I did understand the importance of the Atonement but it's just different when you're a missionary, I have such a greater appreciation for the Savior and what he did for us. I read a talk by James E Faust and he said something that was really intriguing. He just asked himself "I wonder how many drops of blood were shed for me". I have been focusing on making the Atonement and that just hit me real hard, it's so true. Christ did what he did because He loves every single one of us! 





We took our lunch break in the car and just took a nap...
We got to have Easter dinner with the Francis family. Ha they are the greatest! Sister Francis is like my mom away from my mom. She did a great job of making us feel like her own kids. It was just a fun night with them. We also got to go dye eggs with this cute little girl in our ward. Her name is Abby and she is only 10.   Ha plus I got to dye eggs for the first time in my life. Who knew that I would go clear out to Canada to dye eggs for the first time. But it was really fun!
That was a great way to end Easter Sunday.


I love you all and the church is true. I would challenge you all to read President Faust's talk on the Atonement and try to figure out what you can do to make the Atonement more personal.
Yes, we did indeed get matching pj's from walmart...


Have a fantastic week!

Sister King :)

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Easter with the Francis family


The Francis family takes such good care of our missionary!

Monday, March 21, 2016

1 Month Down!


HELLOOO!!!

Boy oh boy this week has seriously flown by!
This week has definitely been full of ups and downs... like a lot of both.
Monday was a really good day! We had this really fun Potluck dinner with our YSA ward. So much fun!
On Tuesday we had Zone training meeting (ZTM) and that was super awesome. Our zone is fantastic, just wanna be like all of them! We also went to this really good steak house for lunch to celebrate Elder Wimber's birthday. That was so much fun! That day we pretty much just went around contacting this list of less actives that our Bishop gave us. We have about 350 member in our YSA ward and about 50 of them show up on Sunday... so that list is pretty dang long. But we get to talk to a bunch of young adults which is still really fun.
This night was also super awesome because we had a great lesson with our investigator. He pretty much knows that the church is true and that it will bless him and his family but he has a hard time keeping commitments. His daughter just got her mission call though and I think that since he has seen that he is getting a little more motivated to keep his commitments. He told us that he was going to read and pray every day!  We meet with him next week so we'll see how that goes.
We also met with our other investigator (the one that bore her testimony in church) and she is progressing so fast! We put her on date for April 16! So that was probably the spiritual high for this week.  She is just so ready to hear the gospel and has so many questions!
Wednesday is always one of my favorite days because who doesn't love waffle Wednesday?!? Every Wednesday we get to make waffles for the institute students and just talk with them. We get to play them in ping pong and pool and stuff so that's way fun. It's really awesome because it's so casual so nonmembers come quite frequently. We met this super awesome guy from Kenya and he agreed to take the lessons. Our dinner on Wednesday was great. We ate with this cute family in the ward.  They have had such a hard life and they just told us like their whole story. They had a girl with special needs that passed away 6 years ago... that hit me really hard because of the special place in my heart for kids with disabilities. But we left them with a message that I hope helped them: The new Mormon message that the church came out with. If you haven't seen it go watch it right now and put it all over facebook and just share it with everyone. EVERYONE deserves to know that they can be with their family again! So just go and share it please!






Thursday was pretty great as well (CELEBRATED MY 1 MONTH MARK) so crazy, I've been out for a month, that went by so fast!!!
 We had a bunch of people to teach, some of them fell through but that's just the life of a missionary. We did get a few referrals which is always great. But we got to go to 2 Relief Society parties for the March 17th party. Lots and lots of food, but also I really liked the program. They talked about how important Relief Society is and  it really is so great! I hear so many stories from mothers that just talked about how big of an influence their Relief Society was. And it's always just these little things. So everyone just try to find someone that might need a high five as you walk by, the little things like that can change someone's day completely.
Ha Friday was not our best day... but we survived. We got to go out to lunch with a bunch of high priests in our family ward. Ha they all have such fun stories to listen to, so that was pretty fun.
Not so fun fact of the week: Canada has normal cops AND photo cops. Seriously the worst. So after our lunch we got a call from the mission office (you never want to receive a call from the mission office)... Sister Blake got a ticket. She was so sad. There are also these school zones that are the worst and they always put photocops there to zing people. Dumb right? Anyway, so I am now the designated driver. Ha I still have no idea where anything is around here so this should be pretty interesting.
Saturday was awesome! We went to church with our friends from the Seventh Day Adventist church. It was really interesting to see how things were done there. It was pretty weird, not gonna lie. They like had this karaoke moment during the service. Ha I don't even know how to describe it. The one thing that I did notice was that our churches actually teach very similar things, but the spirit was not there. It made me so grateful that we have the spirit at our church meetings, you don't understand how strong the spirit is at church until you go to a church that the spirit just isn't there. For the rest of the day we just contacted some more people from our list.  The day went by pretty fast.


SUNDAY! Oh man I was so glad to go to church. Just being able to take the sacrament every week is the biggest blessing.  Don't take that for granted! It is awesome! Our investigators came to church and that always makes my day.
All in all this week has been kinda crazy, but the church is still true!! Hope you all have a fantastic week! Please share that message, it helps us missionaries out so much because we don't have social media to put it on.
Love you all,
Sister King

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

My First Street Contact

Hey Family!
This week was absolutely awesome! Last week was pretty hard to beat, but this week was still great! 
First of all,  for FHE on Friday we were going to go and clean up all the trash everywhere (the wind here is crazy so there is trash literally everywhere) but it got too dark too fast so instead we played basketball with all our YSA people. That was really fun! There's this kid named Peter that played at the University here for 4 years and now he coaches and apparently he thinks he's all that, so the first thing that Sister Blake does is challenge me and him to a 3 point competition.  HAHA bread and butter right there.  Pleased to say that I was on fire and I destroyed him. Plus I was in a dress so that was pretty cool.


Tuesday was great as well. We had District Training meeting and went out to lunch with our district. That was really fun, I'm really starting to get along with my whole district, they're all so great! 
After lunch we met with one of our investigators (remember the girl that came to church and bore her testimony?) Well she is super solid. We taught her the first lesson and she was just eating it up! I'm really excited to teach her tomorrow. It just goes to show you that the Lord is preparing the hearts of His children to be ready to hear the gospel.  We're just the lucky people that get to deliver the message. We also met with a few less actives.  I love doing that! Our YSA ward has about 300 members in it... we get about 50 people that show up on a regular basis, so we're really starting to pick that up.
Wednesday was just the same old same old. People were canceling appointments left and right which is super frustrating, but somehow Sister Blake and I can still get through the day with a smile on our face. We really do have so much fun together which makes the work (or lack thereof) a lot easier. 

Thursday it was a little harder to go out because Wednesday was so crumby, but if you have faith the Lord will provide.  Listen to this! So we went to the hospital for our first visit with this lady. She has diabetes and she's blind and has been in the hospital for 7 weeks! We went in and started with the first point of the first lesson (God is our loving Heavenly Father) and then she talked about how she had attended a few of her niece's baptisms and how she has had 7 weeks to reflect on her life... then  Sister Blake and I felt impressed to ask her to be baptized, SHE ACCEPTED! So we put her on date for April 23. That was such a tender mercy for us!  We were really discouraged because of the day before but it was all worth it to find her. So excited!


Friday we were still on a spiritual high from the day before so that was really good. We had some really good lessons with some less actives and another good lesson about the restoration with an investigator. Also, so we have the worst car in our mission. We have this huge mini van (the swaggar wagon) that doesn't have a USB so we have had 0 music to listen to these past couple days and on Friday our investigator that is really good with technology made us some bomb CDs. So grateful! and he agreed to come to church, so even better!
Saturday was such a solid day. So our Family Ward is trying real hard to have more unity and to embrace the whole "every member a missionary" thing, so this guy in our ward owns this movie theater and we did a free movie for families in our ward and anyone they wanted to invite. We ended up getting like 30 people there that were nonmembers! Very successful! We got to mingle with everyone there and that was really fun. The rest of the day was just average, we were bummed that night because of daylight savings...
Ya, daylight savings was killer. Sister Blake accidentally set the alarm for 2 hours early. So we woke up at about 4:30. Let's just say that Sunday was really good but the longest day of my entire life! We had 2 Ward councils and ward conference. Ward conference with our family ward was actually really good. Stake President Maclennan is so awesome! He is seriously just great. The sacrament meeting was so great. Ha we sat in front of this really cute kid and like every 3 minutes he would yell "THE HOLY GHOST!" and he was right, the spirit was there hard core! 
My favorite thing about ward conference was that Sister Blake and I got to go into the Primary and talk to all the kids about missionary work. We gave them all a little pass along card and they were all so excited to hand them out. Member missionary work is real and it makes our job so much easier! So please pray for a missionary experience! It's so great! 
One other thing that was really fun was that we were driving along and there was this little black girl with hot pink hair that was dancing and singing and just looking so happy. So Sister Blake made me get out of the car and talk to her. My first street contact! It went really well and I told her all about what made me happy.. it was great!
My first street contact
The work here is great! Sister Blake is such a hard worker and it is rubbing off on me.
Fun fact of the week: Tanner Linford (from the Voice) is serving in the Canada Calgary Mission.
Anyway, love you all!!! The church is true!

Sister King :)

Monday, March 7, 2016

MTC Ya Later!

HELLO FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!!


I didn't get to email last week so I'm sorry if this email is really long and very jumbled, I just have so much to say!
First of all, the MTC was fabulous! I absolutely loved my district and my companion. That was an awful goodbye, and now we're in different countries so that's cool... 
Sister Carlson and Sister King





Anyway, so on Tuesday at about 2:45 am we woke up and said goodbye to our other sisters :( Then we got ready ourselves and headed to the front runner at about 4:00... ya that early, but we were all pumped so you would have thought it was 2 in the afternoon, or a gong show (that's Canadian for party). 
We had a layover in Seattle for a little and as we were there a few of us talked to this guy in the airport that came up to us and asked who we were and long story short he left with a Book of Mormon in his hand... MISSIONARY WORK IS REAL! So that was real exciting for all of us. We touched down in Canada in early afternoon then had to wait at immigration for like 3 hours #patienceisavirtue
 BUT right after that we got to meet President and Sister Miles!! They are so awesome. I've decided that they would be translated if it weren't for the fact that they're Ute fans... so I'm working on that.  Don't worry Dad , I told him that I am loyal, strong and true! They really are fantastic, and they're like our family! They love sports and the outdoors and hunting, pretty much everything that we like to do as a family, so we get along real well. 
We slept at the mission home with all the sisters. There were 12 of us sisters and 6 Elders. The next day we had a devotional.  I had to play the piano so thanks Mom,  for having me take piano cause that's gonna come in real handy! 
We then went to the Stake Center where we got to read off where we're going to serve and who our trainer is, and... my first area is LETHBRIDGE! I guessed it so President owes me Subway, awesome. And more importantly, I was praying real hard for a wonderful trainer and guys,  God answers prayers!!! 

The wind here is Cray Cray!

So this is Leth Bridge!
MY first companion is Sister Blake and she is the best person in the entire world! Seriously, I've only known her for not even a week and we get along so well and she's the best missionary! She has moved around a lot.  She's lived in Utah, California and now her family lives in Arizona. But she goes to BYU so I'll get to see her when I get back! YAY! This week has been packed.  They just throw you right into the work. I didn't unpack or go to the apartment.  We went straight to a lesson with an inactive, which went great! The people here are very nice! We have dinners galore! I don't think that there will be a night that we don't have a dinner lined up.  The first night we ate with the Francis' and they are fabulous! Also, the food here is awesome too. 
My trainer, Sister Blake, and me
Lots of the work here is getting less actives to come to church. However this week has been extremely awesome. Since I have been here we have picked up 3 new investigators that are super interested in the church! We also get to meet with a recent convert that got baptized last week. Whoever told me that the work here is slow is completely wrong! If you work hard you can get stuff done! And that's what we've been doing. We've taught like 10 lessons since I've been here, thrown a baby shower (details later), had church, visited less actives, sang some songs to some members in the hospital and read the book of Isaiah with an older women in our ward, we are definitely busy but I love it so much! 




Ok, so on Saturday we helped throw a baby shower (had no idea that is what I signed up for) but regardless it was so much fun. There were about 20 people that cam to the church for the shower, and they all happened to not be LDS. We're really sneaky and held it at the church so that they would ask questions... Which they did. They all belong to this religion called Seventh Day Adventists. So we got to share our testimony with them about our church and they were taking it really well. And then at the end of the night they wanted to convert us... but that ain't gonna happen! So they pretty much started bible bashing us, which is awesome because our church is awesome. And it was hilarious!
Yesterday was fantastic! We had an investigator show up and guess what... we were just sitting there listening to the testimonies when she asked us if you had to be a member to share something, so she got up and bore her testimony! Like what?!? It was awesome, she talked all about how she felt like she was missing something in her life and how the church made her feel good. Luckily the whole meeting ended up being themed around us Sister Missionaries, which was perfect for her! So we scheduled a return appointment with her, the spirit works people!
Oh ya, so we serve in 2 wards. The Chinook family ward and the London Road YSA ward, and they are both awesome. The family ward is one of those "newly wed or nearly dead" wards but we get the YSA ward too, so we get to hang with a bunch of people our age as well. 
Pretty much I'm just loving everything here so far. Sister Blake and I are really working hard and getting stuff done. One thing that we're working on is gaining the trust of the ward members again. Apparently the Sisters that were here earlier just weren't the best. Ya we'll go with that. But Sister Blake said that yesterday everyone was so nice and supportive of us, so that is great!
Ha I know this is long and you probably got bored and I feel like I left so much out, but the gist of it is that the work here is good and I am great! I love being a missionary and sharing what makes me happy. Everyone go share something about the gospel with someone, seriously anyone. Our purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ. They can be members or non members but anyone can be a missionary!


I seriously love and miss you all so much, but don't worry about me out here. I'm doing fantastic!

Sister King

Sunday, March 6, 2016

More from Canada!

Another sweet member from Lethbridge sent us a picture of Ashley and her companion.  They had them for dinner on Sunday.  We are so impressed with the thoughtfulness and the support of the wonderful members in Canada, particularly Lethbridge!
Sister Blake and our Sister King at the Oviatt's home




Then, on top of that, Sister Miles, the mission president's wife, posted some pictures from transfers!! They are kind of blurry because I took them from the mission blog.
12 sisters and 6 elders in this transfer with Ashley




Thursday, March 3, 2016

First Canada Sighting!

Ashley had dinner with the Francis family on Wed. night and they were nice enough to send us a picture, plus a little information.  Ashley is in Lethbridge working in a YSA ward there.  Her trainer is Sister Blake.  So nice of them to do this for us!!