Hermana Messer

The sister i went on exchanges with is Hermana Carroll. She's from Downtown SLC (she lives in the avenues!) She has an uncle who's a scarf designer in SF. cool...

Hey Everyone!

  Well i'm quite jealous to hear about your wonderful weather. It's started to snow...nothing too serious but the ground has been white for the last couple of days...and it's been pretty chilly!

   This week we went on exchanges with the spanish sisters in our area. So guess what I got to do? Speak spanish! haha it was classic. We wrote "hermana" on a piece of paper and taped it on my nametag over "sister". it was the true sign of really becoming a spanish sister. I hope you can see it from the picture i attached! haha Besides the fact that I really stood there or sat there and was really confused the entire time, it was a really cool experience. My desire to be a language missionary came true for a short 24 hours. The spanish people are sooooo kind and loving! I secretly hope I get switched languages the last 6 months of my mission :) that would be holla worthy, and i'd probably cry a lot too. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, eh?

  Our American Thanksgiving was lame. We did our weekly planning and car fasted so we walked everywhere that day. We had 2 good appts that night though. no turkey for us! haha but it's all good- Not many americans in our branch. Sounds like your Tgiving was great though! Maybe next year for me, eh?

   Our investigators are doing pretty well. No one came to church yesterday but that's ok, we're still working with them and have been in contact with them daily.

  About Cmas packages- YES, we do have the zone conferences in Dec and so to be 100% safe sending them to the mission office would guarantee that i get them before cmas...as long as our zone leaders make a trip down. I did get gma's pre-cmas package! Thanks gramma! We've been enjoying the goodies :) and Annie- we've been sooo impressed with our pickle elevator! No lies, we use it daily.

   That's really awesome that Jenn Neil got her mission call! She'll love it. Does she leave soon? 

   Well, not much to tell around here! Transfers are yet again right around the corner! Things may get switched up around here...ya never know! Somos misionaras de la iglesia de Jesucristo..... ;) Have a great week!

Love Sister Messer

Blasted miracles?

                                                                                       

Hey Everyone!                                                                                                              Nov. 19, 2012

This week was full of blasted miracles.We had a leadership training meeting on Tuesday with the District & zone leaders and trainers/trainees in the Kitchener and Brampton areas. SOOOO yes! I got to see Sister Tuia! It was the closest i've been to crying in a long time. It was so good to see her again and talk about how everyone back in Brampton is doing :) It's weird it's been 2 months already since I left that wonderful place. But Kitchener YSA is bomb so it's all good. We learned a lot about street contacting and how to ask thought searching questions. That night we had 1/2 hour until our curfew and so we decided to put it to test. We've been really blessed for implementing everything we've been learning! We had 3 new investigators this week and committed 2 of them to baptism in December! The only reason we couldn't commit the 3rd is because we got escorted off Waterloo campus by police for "recruiting" on campus....gosh dang it. Luckily it didn't freak the poor guy out too bad. He followed us out and told us he wants to meet this week. haha so things are going pretty well! Minus the fact that we are trying really hard to find new locations to teach at. You can't really meet with YSA in their apartments and restaurants we have to buy something and it's loud. Soooo ya. One of our new investigators we met street contacting is from Toronto and his friend is serving a mission in Utah right now. He had gone to activities with him before he left on his mission and he's really cool. Another one has a mother who is Muslim and a father who is Hindu. But they both want their son to meet with us and we taught the Resto. with his mom there and committed him to baptism and she was like, "maybe your sister will follow you too." It was really odd. What muslim woman wants her son to be Christian? holla!

     Alison and Arthur were both confirmed at church yesterday! yay! It was great! Our branch missionaries are teaching Arthur the new member lessons and at church yesterday he said, "are you girls going to teach me anymore?" and we explained that we will just not as much and he said, "awww i wanna be baptized again." hahaha it's good to be appreciated.

   So our zone leaders asked us to cover for them (one was sick) and teach their ward's primary yesterday. So we taught sharing time for jr. and sr. primary. It was quite the experience! It was fun. We packed a suitcase with stuff that help us prepare to do missionary work every day and pulled each item out and talked about it. Then asked them how they can prepare to share the Gospel with their friends. I'd like to say it went pretty well. They seemed to enjoy it alteast!

   To answer your questions- what are we doing for Thanksgiving? Mady suggested I make a turkey sandwich. That'll probably be the extent of my American Thanksgiving. There are already Christmas parades going on and lights and stuff all over. They start the party early around here!

   Well, Have a great Thanskgiving this week! 

Love Sister Messer

Arthur was baptized yesterday!

Sister Messer's been out one year now!

Arthur's baptism!

Elora

Elora

With other missionaries near Elora

Hey Everybody!
Good news! Arthur was baptized yesterday! I'll attach some pics to proove it :) He was so flippin excited, it was awesome. Our branch mission leader (Jack), Arthur and our investigator Kevin all drove to church together yesterday. It was stake conference so there were a ton of people there and we didn't see them arrive. A couple of min before it started we text Jack to see if they had arrived and he said, "oh just woke up, sorry." I was like, uhhh he's kidding. He's totally kidding. he better be kidding. We asked him if he was lyin and he said, "um i wish." So we text Arthur and asked if he was able to get to church but he didn't reply! We were a hurtin' unit (as dad likes to say). But like 10 min. later he text, "jk we're sitting in the back." All 3 of them had decided to play a funny prank on us. How nice of them, eh? I thought the joke had continued when he came and found us to tell us that he had started filling the font but the people in the "scent-free" room just happened to be where the font was and it was making too much noise for them. Long story short we just turned it on really low and cranked it before the baptism started...it did get started a little late but whatever. So it was a high-stress morning. Perks of working with YSA- they're all jokers.

   Our other investigators- Kevin, he came to church and is reading/praying. Hopefully he'll continue to progress. He was able to attend Arthur's baptism :) We'll see, we're meeting him again this week. Jame dropped us- she said that she can't commit to something (so awesome) at this time in her life. I added the awesome part. So we're low in our gator pool but have been doing a lot of finding and talking to lots of strangers and have some great appts this week and potential to get some new ones! holla!

   Last pday we went to Elora with a bunch of missionaries in our zone. It was a lot of fun. It's a really old small town with a quarry and gorge. There was a small downtown with cute shops and stuff. I"ll also attach some pics of that too. We just explored the canyon and old ruins of buildings. It reminded me of our New Years adventures! 

   Yesterday was Remembrance Day here. There was some sort of parade done by the army peeps but it was during church. Everyone and their dog wears a poppy though. It's crazy! They've been wearing them all week. We even got free ones in the mail. I rocked one on my satchel.

 Hope that all goes well with football state and whatever else is kickin. Oh and the glorious Vet Day parade. It's gone down hill ever since Muddy River Cloggers and Corinne's Creative Dancers stopped stealing the show...oh and when the class of '08 graduated for Pirate Motion. But i'm sure it will still be thrilling. Have a great week!

Love Sister Messer

Yay Alison!

Hey everybody!

Alison's baptism!

Well good news! Alison was baptized yesterday!!! Can you believe it? Just a month ago I decided to approach the girl in the hot pink pants even though i knew we wouldn't be able to teach her cuz she's chinese but i did it anyways and now she's a member! She was sooo excited. She sat by us in Relief Society and right before her baptism i was like, "alison! are you excited?!" and she did a happy dance! hahah then last night we had dinner with her and Kate (a recent convert) She made us real chinese food. I even ate with chopsticks. But who knew- if you stick both your chopsticks in the food so they're sticking up it signifies death. I found that out the hard way. hahah I just stuck them in the rice and elder mangum was like "don't do that!" hahaha we all got a good laugh out of my dumbness. 

Arthur had his baptismal interview yesterday and he's all ready to go! He's quite nervous but soooo ready. We're so excited for him! He's basically the coolest guy ever. I asked him if he'd told his family in Brazil about it and he said he talked to his mom about it and she was pretty shocked but supports him. He said he grew up only 2 blocks away from the temple in Brazil and had always wondered what it was. Only a few days ago did he put the two and two together! cool, eh?

We've also been working a lot with Jamie. She's been noticing answers to her prayers which has been super cool to see! She went from being semi- athiest to really knowing that God is communicating with her. It's sooo neat. We taught Word of Wisdom and we'll see how that goes. College kids and their partying... 

Halloween was pretty uneventful on our end. We did dress up...as sikh people! is that a disgrace? hmm. Hurrican Sandy was also pretty uneventful. We got caught out in the worst of it- just some rain...we were soaked though!

from L to R. Elder Sorenson, mangum, lynnm, ellsworth, lai, bean, sis. wester, me, sis carroll, sis varley 

Well, our district had been changed up! We have some new sisters! They're covering the Spanish branch. Sister Varley I came out with! It'll be fun to have some other sisters around. I attached a pic of our new district. We're going out to Elora today. It's a big gorge somewhere nearby. There were snow flurries on our way to the library- hopefully it doesn't start snowing! yuck. But we're leaving pretty soon so i'm in a rush today! Have a great week! Pray for Arthur's baptism this Sunday :)

Love Sister Messer

p.s. ya, ya, ya...i can't believe it'll be a year this week! insane.