This is soooooooo weird.

Helloooo!!

Well, we just received an email from the mission office telling us about Pday changes next week because of Victoria Day-it's changed to Wednesday which is when I fly out Sooooo this is my last Pday!!! Just an extra full day to serve the Lord, eh? :)

Self explanatory!

   This morning I was working on a letter i'm supposed to write to President Scott about what "my mission means to me"...I didn't know where to start! I'm so grateful for my mission. To try and even sum up what it means to me on paper or in words seems impossible. I've been thinking a lot about how i'm going to keep the good habits and characteristics i've developed on my mission and carry them throughout my life. Realistically I won't be able to have hours of solid study every morning etc but there are definitely things I can keep with me! My full-time mission may be ending but my responsibility to serve doesn't! I'm excited for what will start happening next but it's for sure a bitter sweet feeling.

   It was so fun talking to all of you on skype yesterday! I must agree that it was an odd feeling to just be like "well, see ya in a few days!" haha

us with Laeke

   This past week has been pretty good. We picked up a new investigator- Alice (yes, another alice! haha) She's from Rwanda, Africa. She's kind of a cool story. We found her in our former investigators and dropped by a few weeks ago. When she answered she told us she wasn't interested but I felt like we just needed to continue to talk to her, so we continued to. A few minutes later we asked again when we could come by again and talk with her & teach her more. She gave us her phone number and we called last week and made an appt! The teaching appt went really well, she prayed for the first time and you could tell she felt really happy. We're seeing her again tomorrow.

High Park and the Cherry Blossoms

   Our other investigators have been reading and praying but struggling to come to church. We have a few that we're excited to work with this week and help them overcome that barrier. One particularly we're quite excited about is Louis- he's from the Congo. He's a smart and educated guy who is sincerely seeking truth. When we taught him last week the lesson went really well. He actually showed up to church that Sunday but was like 2 min. late and we didn't see him so he left! booooo. So fingers crossed (and prayers being said) that this week goes better and he comes to church!

High Park with the Hermanas (Spanish speaking missionaries)

   Last week we met the hermanas and went to High Park. All the cherry blossoms were out so tons of people were there taking pictures. We walked around and took random pictures and what not. It was a pretty place! Today we're planning to go downtown, probably U of T and Little Italy. :)

   Well, you also asked about S.Cross skyping- it went great. She's a lot stronger than I was the first time I talked to you guys! Not a single tear was shed! haha

   Well, I suppose this is it. See ya at the airport! Don't leave me hangin'. ;)

Love Sister Messer

This is soooooooo weird.

This week was crazy in a 100% great way!

Hello Everybody!
Well this week was crazy. Crazy in a 100% great way.We began teaching Gabriel this week and he found out that he had to leave for boot camp in Quebec a lot earlier than first planned. (He's leaving this Friday) So we were working through our leaders to see if he would be able to baptized before he leaves. So we taught him on Wed&Thur, he went to institute Friday and at Friday night at 10:25 our DL called us and said, "So President said how about he gets baptized on Sat (tomorrow) and confirmed Sunday." We were both like HOLY SMOKES. seriously? He had only been to church once but we had seen some serious commitment from him. Plus he had been going to institute activites. So we tried calling him before our curfew and couldn't get a hold of him. Saturday morning we taught ESL and finally were able to reach him and we told him about the situation and how being baptized that day would be good because then he would be confirmed Sunday. He said, "Ok ya, that's a possibility I guess." At that point we were like holy smokes! This is actually going to happen! So he had his interview a couple of hours later and at 6 we had a baptism. It was really neat to look back at the week and see how easy it was to cover the lessons so quickly. When we would teach him, it would just roll right into the next topic or commandments. Making us able to teach basically 3 lessons in 1. He brought up concerns really quickly and everything just worked out so very simply. Oh, the elect! Sunday at his confirmation we were waiting for him to get there and he wasn't showing up or answering his phone. It was after sacrament meeting had started and we were stressin. But he finally txt us and told us that his roommate had gotten arrested and had all the keys with him at the time. Long story short, our ward mission leader (the one who baptized him in the picture) drove us to go pick him up and he was confirmed after church. Gabriel is SO funny. He walked in after the stress of the morning and let out a sigh and said, "I missed {the} church."  hahaha I hope you can all meet him some day! I still can't believe we met him last Sunday, he was baptized this Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. All in a weeks work. With A LOT of special permission from President and the Lord.

   Right after Gab's baptism we went with the Don Mills South elders to downtown and handed out BoM's at the BOM play! I've never had such a fun day on my mission. It was classic. Because of the baptism we were a little late and part of the subway was shut down so we were booking it through downtown to make it to the play and just caught the tail end of the crowd. Hopefully we'll get to do it again this week though! I was surprised at how many people already said they had a BoM because they have friends who are members. Glad to hear that missionary work is happening :)

   Favorite quote from Gab this week, as we were walking the bus stop with him after church, he said, "Last night my brother brought a case of beer over as we watched the hockey game and guess what I did? I made a smoothie!" haha

   Our other investigators are doing pretty good. We're working with them all! Slowly but surely they're progressing. 

Well, in all of the excitement I hope I didn't forget anything crucial to tell ya :) The church is true! Thanks for the prayers :) We definitely felt them this week!

Sister Messer

Great blessings this week!

Hello Everyone!

  Our sense of urgency and positive attitudes brought great blessings this week! Where shall I start? Hmmm well, we hit the standards of excellence set by Pres. Scott! If I haven't explained that before, he sets goals for us in our member present lessons, new investigators, baptismal dates and progressing investigators. We hit all of them! We found some new investigators this week that we'll continue working with, hopefully helping them to progress towards their bapt. dates. The greatest blessing came on Sunday. We've been working hard these last 2 transfers opening a new area and all, seeing success but no baptisms. I have 3 Sundays left of my mission. Saturday night I prayed and told Heavenly Father about our troubles and my desire to baptize before I go home. I told him that I know baptisms take 3 Sundays (in our mission at least they have to come to church 3 times) and that right now it's not looking like we have a SUPER solid one...and that the only way that would happen is if someone showed up to church Sunday that is prepared. A boy named Gabriel just showed up to church. He's been coming to sports nights/institute on Fridays and no one told us. He said that he felt like he wanted to finally come out to church and he just wants a good influence in his life- He's getting baptized May 12. He's moving to Quebec on May 13 for boot camp. He's an engineer for the Navy. He's YSA and super cool. Has tattoos all down his arms- he's quite the guy. Heavenly Father definitely hears our prayers and prepares people. Now it's up to him to progress- we'll be doing everything we can do!

   Remember Gidey? From last week or two who had left his apt to get away from temptation? Well we knew the complex where he had told us he lived so we went tracting inside. We weren't able to find him so we left, took the subway to a different area and start walking when he crossed us on the crosswalk! We turned around and started talking to him. Since then we've run into him every day. We have an appt tonight with him but we think he'll bomb it again.

Toronto Blue Jays doughnut!

   Funny street contacting experience of the week- we were standing on the sidewalk talking to a nice lady and I could see a homeless person coming towards us, pushing a shopping cart kind of mumbling to himself, so i stepped aside to let him pass and he creepily whispered, "I like your thighs." Everyone stopped talking and looked at him, let him pass and started laughing. The lady we were talking to thought it was super funny. Toronto never fails to impress.

   Alice is doing great, she's progressing well. We found out this week that she has cancer. So the decisions she makes are of course really important to her because the Dr. hasn't given her more than a couple of years max to live. She received a blessing a few days ago and she's reading the Book of Mormon like a mad man! She's great! We love her! She has a date for May 12. It's pretty

 soft but hoping she'll receive answers to her prayers. Gotta ask specific questions :)

   Our other investigators are doing well too. Jacob came to church yesterday as well. So it was a great week. We're excited for this coming week as well. Good things happenin'. Riding the rocket 'til the end! Speaking of riding the rocket...you asked about the Toronto terrorist alert. hahah yaaaaa. Apparently they found a plan to bomb parts of the subway? We were told to just listen to the spirit and be careful. They have the guy in custody. I think we're good :)
Love Sister Messer