Sunday, July 31, 2016

We got to meet the Francis family!!!

Todd and Jan Francis were in Utah and we got to meet them!  (don't mind us- we just came in from all day at the soccer field and a torrential downpout!!)


Monday, July 25, 2016

Urimm and Thummim....

How in the world is it already monday?!? Seriously, this past week was packed but flew by! 



Ha so last week our Monday dinner appointment canceled on us... so Sister Francis was kind enough to let us over and feed us. Love that lady! She also fed the Elders. When we were getting ready to leave we saw a cute picture frame that had all her family in it but there happened to be a blank space for another picture... ha so pretty much since we are her kids we took a family picture and she's going to put our picture in the frame with all her other family. So ya we're pretty cool cause we made the Francis family pictures. Also, a wonderful lady in our ward gave me a haircut on Monday-- so that was super fun and different! Yay for awesome members!

Our family picture at the Francis', featuring Suki (AKA Meow Mix... the cat)






Connie Start- the ward hugger :)




We had transfers this week-- luckily me and Sister Burnside weren't too nervous about everything considering we get 1 more transfer together. This past transfer just flew by! I feel like it was just yesterday that we were driving up to Calgary to pick up Sister Burnside, but now we've been together for an entire transfer! We were able to have some really good and quick meetings with a couple of members in our ward. We're trying to get to know the members more because we need some more referrals! But that's been going super well because we've got a few solid potential investigators from it. 

 We were able to help at a bridal shower for one of the girls in our YSA ward-- so that was super fun! Ha we had this super interesting lesson with one of our investigators. She asked us about the Urimm and Thummim... I've got to say that was the first lesson on that I've ever taught but thank goodness for the spirit because there's no way we could have gotten through that without the help of the spirit!


Transfers were super sad. We lost 3 people in our district... but hey such is missionary life! Sometimes it's crazy to think about the other places in this mission because I've been out for nearly 6 months and all I've seen is Lethbridge... but I love it!
District picture before transfers


district selfie

Ha so we went to teach this girl named Elaine, her boyfriend is a convert of 4 years and she wants to take the lessons from us. So we went in to teach the restoration and once we got in there we ended up teaching the Law of Chastity... funny how that works. But the lesson went good and we're teaching her next week too :) 


The weather this week was literally crazy!!! So much wind-- the craziest and strongest wind I have ever seen, and huge and I mean HUGE hail! And it was a complete down pour!! To be honest I love it! It spices things up quite a bit! 


On Saturday we went to our Zone Leader's baptism. It was a baptism of 3 cute little girls-- their dad got baptized about a month ago and was able to baptize his girls. So that was adorable. We also went to a baptism of a little girl in our ward. Ha, that was the most interesting baptism I have ever been to! Let's just say that the little girl reminded me of Junie B. Jones-- it was great!


Yesterday we had the opportunity to sing in our family ward. A couple weeks ago when I was with Sister Blake (who happens to have THE most beautiful voice) she talked to our ward chorister about singing in church... she just barely got back to us and said that we would be singing on Sunday. Ha so we threw something together and just went for it.
Anyway, sorry if this email is super jumbled but it was a fantastic week! We had some really good lessons with some less actives and even some potential investigators. It was just a solid week! Lethbridge is the best! I love all my members here! 

We were able to do some service for the Parkinson's (our housing inspectors) this week. All of us sisters in the zone stained their son's deck-- so much fun!Add caption

Sister Caldwell (fresh our of the MTC), Sister Shaffer, Sister Black, Sister Allard, Sister Burnside, Me, Elder and Sister Parkinson.



Scripture of the week: Alma 29:9 "I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance, and this is my joy." 
Dinner with the Thompsons-- the Canadian flag to top everything off 


Quote of the week: "The great thing about the gospel is we get credit for trying, even if we don't always succeed"

Love you all and have a wonderful week!

Sister King

Monday, July 18, 2016

5 monthssss!!

Well hey there!
I feel like this week has absolutely flown by! Where do I even begin?!


We have had some really fun and spiritual lessons this week. We had a lesson with Carol-- the old lady who crocheted us the hats, and she is just the best person ever. She has the strongest testimony and she does not have a problem with sharing it with us. She thinks that she is going to die soon so every time that we go to see her she just bears the strongest testimonies. The thing that gets me crying is when she says "you guys don't even know the impact that you have had on my life, you're the best thing that has happened to me since I've got here." That just makes you feel so good as a missionary, to hear that those little meetings actually do make a difference. 

This is Carol, the lady that crocheted the hats for us.
Ken and Linda are doing fabulous! Ken is just beaming and he is so excited to work towards getting the priesthood. Linda is getting there... because she has a concussion she can't read... so that's super difficult because we were thinking that the Book of Mormon was going to be the key to her conversion. So we have been going pretty regularly to meet with  and read to her. She is just loving it!


We also were able to take Alex to the family history center to get some names because HE IS GOING TO THE TEMPLE ON SATURDAY!! I'm seriously so so pumped for him. Because that really is what we aim for as missionaries, not just to get them baptized but to get them to the temple. So I'm just super proud! And he blessed the sacrament on Sunday. He's just the best. 


Ha we had a couple of really fun street contacts this week. We were out contacting some referrals and as we were walking around this pretty big bald guy, not wearing a shirt with the biggest beer belly came out of his house to smoke.... ha so I ask Sister Burnside what the odds are that she goes and contacts him. She wasn't too keen on that but me being the person that I am-- Challenge accepted. So we went and talked to him and he ended up being like the nicest person in the world. We asked him what his dream job would be and he said "doing what you guys do, serving people." It was so awesome. He remakes motorcycles and then just gave them away so he showed them to us and they were pretty sick! Long story short-- do not judge anyone by their appearance! Like he really was the sweetest guy. We went and got in the car and called a few people and then we saw him walking to our car so we rolled down the window and he tried to give us $50... he said that he "just wanted to make sure that we were safe and taken care of." Isn't that the sweetest thing ever... obviously we didn't take it but it's the thought that counts right?
This is Vic! The super awesome motorcycle guy


So we were walking around and everyone that we wanted to see just was not home... super bummer. But in that time that we were trying to find people we came across this guy, Daniel. We grabbed a BOM out of the car then went and talked to him. He said that he was super open to religion and that he would love to hear more from us. SCORE! So so awesome how sometimes we feel awful cause nobody is home and all our plans and back up plans fall through but we knew that happened so that we could meet this guy. The Lord works in mysterious ways that's for sure!

Dinner with a nonmember lady, her son who served in Mexico and the Spanish Elders. We gave service to her a couple weeks ago and she wanted us over for supper. 

We had a ward picnic with our family ward and that was a huge success! We even picked up a new investigator. This week has just been super awesome. We picked up a bunch of potential investigators as well. Pretty much the work is just awesome and the families in our ward are awesome and I just love being a missionary. Nuff said. 

Sister Burnside having her first poutine

I may have forgot to mention that the weather was crazy this week... we had tornado warning and flash floods. but that just makes stuff more exciting! And we are safe, so that's good :)



scripture of the week: Isaiah 41:13
quote of the week: "Keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow and forever." -Holland

I love you all so much and I can't believe that I have been away from you guys for 5 whole months, man is time flying by!!

Love ya!
Sister King :)

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

#dunkofsalvation

Well hey there fam!


This past week was literally so much fun! It flew by!


First of all... WE HAD A BAPTISM ON SATURDAY!! Ken is now a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His baptism was just great! I wish that you all could have seen how happy he was (mainly because in the pictures he isn't too good at smiling... but I promise you he was ecstatic!) It was so fun because Brother Lander (their neighbor and best friend) was able to baptize him. This was just a case of super awesome member missionary work. Ken and Linda have been taught off and on by the missionaries for a while but the Landers have continued to teach them while they weren't meeting with the missionaries, so we were just lucky enough to be here at the time that he was prepared enough to take that step, and boy oh boy was he prepared! He was so ready to be baptized! Linda isn't quite there yet but she said that soon enough she will be ready to take that step as well. So we're just praying that she will be able to realize this church is true for herself. Me and Sister Burnside were able to sing a song at the baptism. Whenever we would go over to teach them Ken would want us to sing them a song because he just absolutely loves hymns and music, so we thought that we would sing to him on his big day. We sang How Great Thou Art... and it went great. Everyone told us it was really good except for this old lady who said that we would have sounded better if she sang with us... but still it was great! Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention-- Ken is about 70, as is Brother Lander so we had to have Brother James from our ward be the font lifeguard. But everything went well! So the baptism was great but my favorite part I think was the confirmation yesterday. Everyone was just so emotional which means that the spirit was there. Ken was just so happy and crying and brother Lander was crying and it was the sweetest thing that I have ever heard. 





Ken (I promise he's happy!)

Us with Ken, Linda and the Landers (their neighbors)

After the baptism with Ken and Linda :)

Anyway, the rest of our week was great! We had a good lesson with Alex. He is doing so well. This week we are going to take him to the family history center and get him some names so that when he goes to the temple soon he'll have some people to do baptisms for. 


One other fun thing that happened this week. We had supper with the James family (one of our favorite families in the ward) and they have adorable kids. So we gave them our tags and then they disappeared and came back like 5 minutes later and they were all dressed up as cute little sister missionaries. So we taught the dinner message to them then they gave it to the family. It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen. They were teaching and testifying-- wonderful! 


Fun moment of the week. J and J came with us to institute!! We read Alma 32-- J's favorite thing to talk about is faith. So it was perfect! We're hoping to meet with them this week and see where that's gonna go.


Pretty much this week was bomb and I love being a missionary! We've been focusing a lot on service and trying to find people that way and it is so fun! I love the fact that I literally get to just go out and serve people for 18 months. It's kind of selfish if you think about it because serving people makes you happy... but anyway. I love you all and have a wonderful week. This gospel is true and it makes me so so happy!!

Dinner with the Sisters... Monet and Adeline James

Saying goodbye to Sister Larsen, she's now home :(



Our dinner with the Burtons-- learning the uke for Ukie-yokie. 


Quote of the week: "with each step of faith on the path of discipleship we grow into the being of Eternal glory and infinite joy we were destined to become." -Uchtdorf

Love you!

Sister King

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

4th of July eh

Okay so this week has been absolutely nuts! So awesome! 


First of all-- the most exciting news of the week. Yesterday we had a bomb lesson with Ken and Linda. We were teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and we got to the part about baptism and I was just like "Ken ,what are your thoughts about baptism?" and he said "Well I'd like to be baptized as soon as possible" ha so before we went into the lesson we had decided to invite on July 23 but as I was inviting him the words "how does this Saturday sound?" came out!  ha... don't know how but that's what came out. But he accepted!! So we will be having a baptism this Saturday :) Linda said that she is going to take a little longer to accept it but that she will most likely get baptized later on. So so stoked for this!!! It was so awesome and now we're planning a baptism for this Saturday. I'm telling ya, miracles happen!

Ken and Linda!


So we've had this less active who has been hard core struggling. She can testify that other people are children of God and that God loves them but she can't say it about herself. She has been struggling with this her whole life and is striving to go to the temple but is just wanting that answer before she gets there. We had a lesson with her and the Spirit was so strong then we asked her if she wanted a priesthood blessing (we'd asked her that multiple multiple times but for some reason this time she said yes) So the next day we came back with our Zone Leaders and they gave her one of the coolest blessings that I have ever heard. We had been meeting with her since I got to Lethbridge and she has told us all these stories and throughout the blessing it like referred to some of them.   While I was listening I was thinking to myself "there is no way that this is coming from anyone but God." It was seriously so cool. She bawled throughout the entire thing and after the blessing she got up and she said that she had been waiting to feel that and get that answer for 30 years... it was crazy! The priesthood is literally so cool!


This has been a super fun week! The weekend consisted of a LOT of service. On Canada day we spent most of our day with some missionaries from the zone painting this garage for a member. It was so fun but took so long. Also, apparently people get drunk on Canada day so we were told by President that we weren't allowed to go out after supper. Luckily we had supper with the Francis's. Yay! It was a fun celebration! Don't worry I destroyed in lasso golf-- it's from all that practice at home :) My first Canada day was a success!!

Canada Day with the Francis Family!!!

 Lasso golf and supper

When you get dared to eat the lime....


3's all day e'ryday-- Elder Elliott 

It was our Canadian mom and dad's anniversary on Canada Day

Painting the garage with some of the zone 

CANADA DAY!!! we had more fun than most of the
Canadians... they don't take it as seriously as we thought.




Also, today is the 4th!! Happy Independence Day!! This morning we go together with the zone and had a big breakfast. It was fantastic! Never have I ever been so proud to be an American.   I love Canada but America is my home! Hope that you all have such an amazing holiday. I love you all. God bless America!!

Sister King

More from the 4th!

The few, the proud, the missionaries.


Hello!!! Thanks so much for all the pictures and everything! I loved them! I guess this can be a email to the whole fam bam if ya want! 

Ha so awkward moment of the day when we were in church yesterday and the opening hymn is O, Canada... which is not in the hymn book and there are 2 verses. Who knew? So we are getting ready to sing then all of a sudden everyone stands up and sing so loud and people are tearing up and singing with their whole soul and me and Sister Burnside are just there trying to mouth the words. Don't worry when we were singing the part that says O Canada we belted it cause those were the only words that we knew...

 Are you guys just having so much fun? Not gonna lie it was really weird to see a picture of you all without me in it... but it's all good-- the Lord's work is pretty important. This week seriously just flew by. The weekend was pretty much just full of service. We helped this lady move than we did this thing called zone service finding, which was a huge success. We pretty much just went around and did service for people. It was a good way to start a conversation and just show people that we love them. I loved it. Plus I went ham with the clippers. It reminded me of home and I was just going to hard clipping this guys bushes, loved it. I randomly really miss doing yard work so I call dibs on it when I'm home. 

Isn't Sister Blake the cutest?? As hard as it was to be her comp she is really just so cute and I love her to death! Sister Burnside is doing wonderful as well. Her boyfriend has been doing chemo this week which has been stressing her out but luckily the Lord has been blessing us with so many miracles!! Like we have a baptism on Saturday?!? Ken and Linda have met with so many missionaries over the past couple years and I'm so excited that Ken is finally taking that step. So pumped!! Pretty much this week just reassured me how awesome it is to be a missionary. The time really is flying by. I hope that its going just as fast for you guys :) I hope that you guys are having such a fun trip! Send me as many pictures as you can, it helps me feel like I am there with you :) Love you all and everyone go and take a good swim in the ocean for me.