Sister Messer & Sister Wester!

Hey everyone! 

This week has gone by pretty quickly! Things are hectic, crazy and going well. My baby's name is Sister Wester. After introducing ourselves we've learned to take a pause and wait for a laughter...it's a great intro do gain attention! Try saying it outloud- "Hey! I'm sister messer and this is sister wester." yup. laugh away. She's awesome. She's from Florence, AZ and she's the only member in her family. She was just baptized a little over 2 years ago. Training is hard...however it's made me be more outgoing! Because i know she'll do what i do not what i say. So it's been good for me to have to be the good example. 

   Actual transfer day was crazy. It was pouring rain and sister Tuia and I had to pack our car in it. It made for a great hair day! We had a really great meeting with all the missionaries that were training and then met all together with the new missionaries, had a testimony meeting and then they assigned us. Sister Wester and I were announced very last :) Then we had a luncheon with everyone and went the mission office, got supplies and drove to Kitchener. Now let me tell you a little bit about Kitchener- It's a tri-city area. So we actually cover Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge. We live in Waterloo right by two very big universities. U of Waterloo and Laurier Univ. U of W is a very smart school- well known for their engineering programs which attracts A LOT of asian people. We work a lot with the mandarin speaking elders and they baptize a lot! Laurier is a party school. We live within close walking distance to both Universities...quite the college town! Street contacting is much more useful now- there are always lots of students around. However, talking to kids our age is intimidating! haha It's hard, most of them will listen for a minute but then just tell us they're not interested. BUT that doesn't mean anything. We're working on our approach to ask better questions to make them think about their future and how much they really need the gospel! :) For example, we stopped this guy and he told us he was athiest so i asked him what he thinks the purpose of life is and it was quiet for a second and then he said, "to eat." and walked away. It's gonna take some getting used to. haha It's sooo different than working in a family ward but i know i'm growing to really love it. We serve in the Kitchener YSA branch which is VERY similar to ours back home! Same size and everything. It's very strange working with kids our age but they're SO missionary minded. They have no fear of sharing the gospel with their friends and that is very nice compared to family wards :) So all in all i'm overwhelmed but totally excited to work with YSA. should be interesting. Our branch pres is Pres. Buckingham. He seems to be super cool too.(of course not as cool as my old branch pres. leavitt)

Sister Messer and Sister Wester!

   To answer some of your Q's- YES! we saw mennonites! We had dinner out in the country with the Sellars (in branch presy) and there are mennonites out there- riding around in their horse & buggy.

   Investigators- We are teaching 2 people right now. One is Jeff, he wants to be baptized but is working on WoW problems. He is so humble but we have to teach very very very simply to make sense to him. Another is Garrett who is totally prepared and hopefully makes his date Oct 21. He has been working with the sisters since March and is sooooo ready! Hopefully Sis. Wester (being a convert and all) can really relate to him. He came to church yesterday, we taught him with our Branch mission leader and asked to meet with us this week again. Super cool guy. We're also working with some cool less-active members as well.

   New living quarters are big. In an older, kinda run-down apt complex by Waterloo Univ. But it's not too shabby. Hopefully we'll have time to unpack today.

The Kissing Bridge-Only open for Mennonite horse and buggies!

Isn't it impressive!

The new apartment in Waterloo

Living area

Looking out the apartment window

    I love the pictures and all from Tar & Shanes wedding. Looks super classy! holla! She looked beautiful!  It's getting quite colder already and Saturday while we were contacting people in the rain, i was thinking about Tar getting married! haha Figuring ya'll were having quite the good time. well just for the record, so was i! :)

   Well, it's been a pretty good week! We have some appointments this week with some potential investigators and hopefully some baptisms coming up! We're excited! YSA is a new adventure but i know i'm going to learn a lot about myself as I teach and contact people my same age.

Love Sister Messer

Splitting up the team!

Hey everyone!

Boy, have I got news. PRESIDENT called last night to let us know that he was "splittin up the team!"  Sister Tuia and I will both be training. I'm whitewashing Kitchener YSA ward and she's staying here in Brampton. I'm pretty bummed to be leaving the hub but feel real lucky to have been here for almost 6 months. Kitchener will be a fun area...so i hear. YSA should be interesting :)  Hopefully i get the hang of things quickly.

  Cool news also is that Oakville sisters and 3 baptisms this week and when I was there we taught them too! It's cool to see that they continued to work with them and hammer things out. One is a father of a part member family and the others are 2 sons of a less active member.

  zone conference this week was good. We learned about managing stress (haha but good), about filling the gaps that cause stress and the savior to fill them, helping us to grow and become better disciples of Christ. We also practiced teaching members to get referrals. All of you please do missionary work. Working with members is a pain sometimes! They're worse at keeping commitments than investigators are! haha

Zone Conference

Gay, Navene and Clint with Sis. Tuia and Messer

   We had some great experiences this week. We gained the same amount of new gators this week as we have the rest of this transfer! We worked hard and hit the standards of excellence set by Pres. Scott. One of the new gators' name is Linette- an old lady from guyanna. We set her for baptism Oct7. We brought a member and her daughter to the lesson with us. While we were there, Linette's daughter ran through the living room, she was getting ready for work and the member we had with us said, "hey you!" and they both jumped up and started hugging each other! Well, apparently the work together and have a great relationship! It's really cool to see the Lord's hand in the work. Now this member can introduce the gospel to Linette's daughter at work and be able to really be a great fellowshipper to the family! Super cool, eh?!

   The elders met Anita in the elevator at the hospital and referred her to us. She has 3 small kids, her husband just up and left them so they're really struggling. Amongst that, her youngest child has seizures every 10 days or so making him stay in the hospital a lot. She is from India and is losing all belief but found out that someone could give her son a blessing so we invited her to church and she came with her kids yesterday! THey loved primary and her son was able to get a blessing. She met some great members that are excited to help her out. I'm sad I don't get to continue to help her too but know she's in good hands and hope she accepts the gospel!

   We met one more cool guy from Jamaica that was really excited to read the BOM. Bummed that i can't teach him again cuz he's so open! but again- in good hands!

   Our recent converts are doing well, thanks for asking :) Our meeting with the sikh lady was interesting. .. She's not interested. But it was a fine experience. We introduced the 15 step stop smoking program to the trio last night- today is the day the start it. Hopefully they're game! We got the supplies for them and they seemed really excited about it last night. Now it's all about follow up!

  Have a great wedding weekend! Wish i could be there :)

   Have a great week everyone! I'll need your prayers so pleasssse dont hesitate to belt one out for me :) thanks!

Love Sister Messer 

FULL of miracles, that's for sure

Hey everybody!  

I didn't even realize i had hit my 10 month mark until basically every email mentioned it! haha thanks for rubbing it in ;) Weird thing is, I had two different members ask me if I was "almost done"...what's that supposed to mean? I took it as i must not be caring as much about what i look like i.e. if my clothes match, if my shoes are falling apart...maybe my hair is bad..but i just got it cut on monday! And it was my first hair cut since i'd left last november. Hmmm. whatevs! This week was a pretty good one. FULL of miracles, that's for sure. Remember Michael David from July? We met him street contacting and he had just been feeding the ducks? Anyways, he needs the gospel and he knew it but wasn't ready to give up all his bad habits. Well, a few days ago we got a text that said, "i'm ready. when can we meet?" We were like say whaaat?! He came to stake conference on Sunday! Hopefully we'll meet him this week and things will continue to look up. Another miracle took place as we were dropping by a less active. We had gone by 4-5 times in the last month and they never answered so we knocked on the landlords door and it was an older indian lady and she was smiling really big. She spoke broken english and told us the people had moved. Then she said, "i was feeling really disturbed inside and was praying and then one second later the door bell rang immediately!" She invited us in and gave us water. (indian people are very good at offering water whether or not they're actually interested) She's sikh but we started to talk about prayer. Sikh beliefs are interesting. They worship gurus and there's 10 of them. So whenever a prayer is answered it's the gurus that are answering their prayers. However, on the street they'll always say "god is one! god is one!" so i'm a little confused at whether they believe in God as well or what. Anyways, she invited us back next Sunday and we're bring Bishop Solomon's wife who speaks hindi so we can communicate. That was our only new investigator for the week.

     I learned to do a couple of new things this week! One, I mowed a lawn! Two, I made homemade tomatoe sauce with an italian guy! It's a member family from Italy and every year they make their own sauce and bottle it to last the entire year. They made us pasta and pizza the italian way and it's quite delicious! But the process was pretty fun- as you can see in the pictures!

   The trio's smoking problems are getting better but are still there. They came to church yesterday and had a great experience! They're so humble and are really great at recognizing blessings that have come into their life since they've been changing and seeing answers to their prayers. Navene left church for a few minutes and last night she told she left and went over to the temple. She said while she was there she was praying and got the answer that she shouldn't wait so long to be baptized. (her date is for nov 25 and she wouldn't budge!) But now she wants to get baptized with her bro and sis on Oct 28. Still too far away but better, eh? They're all very excited to get baptized. Now if they would stop procrastinating and quit smoking, they'd be prepared! That's what we're working on now.

 Now i'll answer your Q's, mom. Did Subhash bless the sacrament again this week? Nope, it was stake conference!

Did Joseph come to church? Of course he did! He's awesome. Before stake conf we had a meeting for all investigators and recent converts with the stake pres and pres scott. He made some great comments. he's definitely super solid!

 Any more luck with Shannon this week?  Did she come to church? We've talked to her and she's still struggling a lot. She didn't make it to church. But we're still in contact with her.

How was zone training?  It was good. we focused on meeting with members and getting referrals. We're implementing that into our dinner appts now and it makes the message we share a lot more powerful.

A cucumber a member in our ward gave us

When is zone conference? Tomorrow! I'm excited. We're the last zone to have it so we've heard a bit about it and it seems to be a wonderful conference. We'll see quite a few sisters :)

 So that's this week. Thanks for the prayers and everything!  Love and miss ya

Sister Messer

he told his boss that he can't work on Sundays anymore and his boss said, "oh ok!"

us at the office with ysa elders elder soo and rodee. 

us with the Nwaka family

This week has been a pretty good one. Joseph was confirmed at church on Sunday. Then he bore his testimony and it was awesome! After sacrament meeting he told us he had been praying about working on Sundays and that he told his boss that he can't work on Sundays anymore and his boss said, "oh ok!" and was pretty impressed by it. So he's made a personal commitment to make sure he's back in Brampton every Sunday for church! (he travels in the U.S. every week) Subhash blessed the sacrament! He's on fire and he's so close the spirit, it's amazing to hear him talk about it. For example, yesterday sister Tuia and I were feeling a little down about our pool of gators and their progress and we were talking about how transfers are coming up (never do that!) and baptismal dates etc and we get a call from Subhash and he's like, "how are you doing? i just felt like i should call you." So even in times where things aren't going as well as they were last month, Heavenly Father reminds us of how blessed we have been! We know we  have to work harder and take care of the gators we do have in order to be able to find more.

We did find one new gator this week. We were able to visit her and she's great. her name is Shannon and she told us she wants to be baptized! She's a single mom right now and has two kids under the age of 2...so she didn't make it to church on Sunday :( but we're definitley not giving up yet, she needs the gospel! While we were in the area, we were street contacting and talked to this man who said, "oh, i know you you are! I'm related to one of the founders of that church. But i'm not interested." He told us he is a cousin to Brigham Young! haha but he wouldn't stick around to talk to us...his loss.

We're still working with the trio (Gay, Clint and Navene) However, this week we had a great lesson with Bishop Solomon there and he explained authority to Navene and she commited to be baptized! However, not until Nov 25. Gay and Clint are set for Oct 28. SO FAR AWAY! it's killing us. We're hoping that as they stop smoking, their desire to be baptized will quicken and happen sooner. Pray for that, eh? :)

We got a new ward mission leader this week- we're really excited to work with him. The RS, Pri & YW all got released so there's been a lot of awesome changes in the ward. Stake conference is coming up this Sunday and there's a meeting beforehand for all recent converts and investigators to meet with Pres Goobie (Stk pres) and Pres Scott. Should be a great week! We have zone conference coming up as well and a zone training tomorrow...lots of training. yippee!

Other than that, we have quite a few gators ready for baptism but they just won't commit to a date. Gah! It's so frustrating at times but Dad, the quote you sent me put it all in perspective. :)

How was it without a kitchen? Well it wasn't bad at all. It was only a few days and once we leave in the morning we aren't back until 9. We usually pack our meals unless we have a dinner appt cuz we live so far away from our area. So it wasn't bad at all.

 Umm, about the vegetable question- i can't think of any weird veggies here...oh wait, i tried these weird fruit things from Subhash. It looked like a yellow grape tomato but it had a outer shell that was like a leaf. So it looked like a lantern...can't remember what it was called. but they were good.

Have a great week!

Love sister messer

"You build it, we'll come!" and I said, "Deal."

Joseph's baptism!

old kitchen

new kitchen!

Hey everyone!

Well, looks as though moving Mady to provo was a success! her dorm looks really cute. Not gonna lie, made me excited to go back to school next Fall! 

Joseph's baptism was last night! It was soooo great! His daughter came and had a really emotional time! She's 21, wasn't interested really but we talked to her quite a bit and hopefully we'll be able to meet up with her soon :) There was great support from the ward and he's such a cool guy! We're so excited for him! Sister Scott's mom is visiting so she also came, along with Pres and Sis scott's son. So that was neat too. When they were leaving i said, "thanks for coming!" and President kinda laughed and said, "you build it, we'll come!" and i said deal.

Bibi and Avi both were confirmed yesterday too! And Zarah got a baby blessing. Phonetically spelled Bee-Bee and A-vee and Za-ruh. Good peeps.

What are the food stores here like? ummm basically the same as U.S. but more international sections and in Brampton- YES, lots of indian food in that section. But walmarts are exactly the same, produce is basically the same. Cheese and milk are a lot different. Not in taste but how they sell it. Milk is in liter bags (sooo annoying) and cheese is really long and skinny. like a shoe box lid. i do not know why.

Subhash recieved the priesthood last week and  he did baptisms for the dead this week! He loved it.

OH! every week we volunteer at the salvation army garden and we were in the newspaper! Bramptonguardian.com i think. it's called the brampton guardian. It was only online, not in print, but i saw the article and i'm in a picture! good luck finding it.

Funny story of the week, we taught subhash some follow up lessons on Wednesday night and he was sitting on the church steps waiting for us and we walked up to him and he had his hands up to his face and we noticed a ctr ring on his pinky finger- we said, "hey! check you out- that's pretty sweet" It was a green primary kids ctr ring. He said, "oh these?!" and he had one on each pinky finger and they were upside down. hahaha we started laughing and he was like, "what? what?" who wears ctr ring on 2 pinky fingers? haha we tried to resize them but he wouldn't let us-saying they'd ruin the figure of them.

We had a ward picnic this week! It was fun, we got some potential investigators, had a bbq and talked to lots of people. It reminded me of the L2 ward corn roast. Which sounds like it was a success in itself.

ward activity...

Other than that...we've been struggling to find new investigators. All of our gators are being baptized and we haven't re-filled the gator pool! not good! This week we'll be really focusing on that. But things have been great. Pretty hot week but today is a rainy day in Toronto.

Love and miss ya

Sister Messer

i decided to talk to all of them at the same time. (mistake.)

Bibi and Avi's baptism yesterday :) It went great! 

Hey!

This week was a good one. It's always great to end it with a baptism! Bibi and Avi were baptized and it was great! They were both very excited and we had a lot of support from the ward and President and Sis Scott came too. Subhash was up in the middle of it all! He went and bough a bunch of indian food, when i asked him about buying food on Sunday he said, "i didn't pay for it! I just picked up and told them i'd come tomorrow and pay for it." haha is that cheating? He's so funny. He helped in the kitchen and stayed and helped clean up too. He also recieved the aaronic priesthood today! He was so happy. He's planning on going to the temple to do baptisms this week. We aren't allowed to go with him but some awesome members are going to help him out.

You're wondering about Mo? Well we did see him a few days ago. He was riding his bike around the church. Right after he was baptized, the place he's working at gave him a full time job (including sundays!) So he works Sundays for the summer but should be coming back soon. That's what always seems to happen, eh? He's doing pretty good though i think.

I did hear about that shooting at the sikh temple. It hasn't hindered our teaching at all. We never teach sikh people anyways. They're never interested.

So there's a new office couple- the Caldwells. So we're getting to know them since we visit once a week. Well, last week i found out she's an interior design teacher at LDSBC! Cool, eh? So we started talking design and i've realized how hard it will be to go back and try to remember all the software programs! haha uh oh. She said a lot of the teachers at BYUI are retiring this year :( sad day!

We had one of the most awkward street contacts this week. We found a pretty good spot in part of our area at an intersection. There's a bus stop on each corner so we were walking around. The buses come often so there's usually a good # of people. However, it's kind of difficult (i think) to talk to an entire group of people cuz they're all standing really close to each other. So you can either pull one person out and focus on them, but that's awkward too. Or i decided to talk to all of them at the same time. (mistake.) A couple of people turned and looked and turned away, a couple other people didn't even look in the 1st place and a few others just stared and talked on thier phone. So after introducing ourselves and saying a few other things there was no response whatsoever...so i just said, "no takers? alright...well have a great day!" it made for quite a journal moment.

We had a zone training meeting in Weston this week. Drove down to Toronto and met with all the missionaries in our zone. (about 25 or so) We practiced teaching and learned some good stuff.

So that about covers everything I believe. have fun taking mady to college! A few missionaries left a transfer early to be able to attend this semester at BYU. Just remember mady, nothing good comes out of a date with an RM. ok? :)

miss and love you all

Sister Messer

All you can do is testify

Hey everyone!

Well this week has been a busy one full of adventure. Now that we took over the elders area, we have like three times the area...we've been looking for good places to street contact and all that good stuff. Good thing is now we get to meet the entire ward! We have a lot more dinner appts (which means we don't have to pack dinner and eat it at the church! haha) and it's been great to talk to all the families I only met in passing at church. This ward is pretty sweet. We also met and taught a few investigators the elders left for us. I don't know if sisters are just smarter when approaching people or if it was just luck (I prefer to think it's the first suggestion) but I was involved in the first real bash of the mission. The elders had met this lady in this sketch appt building and taught her the restoration. When we went back she had this big thing typed up where she had researched and all this stupid stuff she was saying. All you can do is testify, eh? She wasn't mean, thankfully, but just kept asking stupid question after question. I was like, for real? Can we leave now? So we finally get out of the place and we're waiting at an elevator and we can hear her talking to her kids and walking down the hallway. haha we were like ohhh no cuz the last thing we wanted want is to get stuck in the elevator with her. We could hear her getting closer and closer and sis tuia and i are busting up- we were like oh my gosh, this would be our luck! i'm pressing the button like a million times a minute and finally it opens. We hop inside and push the door close button- we made it! haha

We had some great gators at church yesterday and have been teaching Bibi and her daughter Avi (who are set for baptism this coming sunday!) Joseph, who i told you about last week, is set for the week after that (26th) and Nadine too! So all is well and things seem to be going great for all of them. Thanks for the prayers on your side! I know they help for sure! We set a new date for Gay and Clint- we taught the WoW to them last night and they're so determined about it--they'll definitely need your prayers! We brought Subhash with us to teach them because when he bore his testimony last fast sunday it really made Gay want to baptized too. He was soooooo good! This man is gonna be the next prophet, no doubt. Gay & Clint's sister, Navene, is going through a rough time with a divorce and what not so he was talking to her and she had a super cool spiritual experience and just started crying! She said he heart felt like it was attached to a bunjee chord. She, out of the 3 of them, won't commit to be baptized, so we hope as she sees her siblings change and continues to experience these things that she too will want to change.

The coolest things happened a few nights ago- Sis Tuia sleep talking woke me up- she was teaching a full Word of Wisdom discussion. hahaha yes.

Hmm, let's see...i think that's about it. This week we'll be working hard with Bibi & Avi's baptism on Sunday, helping the trio (that's what we call gay/clint/navene) stop smoking and keeping in touch with all of our investigators helping them to progress!

Miss and love you all

Sister Messer

August 9th: Sister Messer's half way point!

some of our district by the temple last pday while saying our goodbyes

Hey everyone! happy anniversary mom and dad!
Well, it's been a pretty sweet and a crazy week so far. A huge transfer took place Tuesday. 71 out of the 91 companionships were transferred, so we played taxi drivers to some spanish sisters serving in toronto. I didn't know we lived so close to downtown. in a 25 minute drive you could actually make out the colors of the CN tower! You could see it from their balcony- totes jealous! But the stake center was a hoppin place. Subhash came and sat there and watched all the missionaries walk around in a hustle and everything. He was giving a few of us some wise advice- he's the best at that! haha This time it was about jobs and marriage- both things i don't have to worry about for at least 9 more months. (hump day tomorrow- say what?!) For us though we did take control of the entire brampton 1st ward! The elders got transferred out and so it's just us now. We have a really young mission. (straight from pres scott's mouth) One of our zone leaders and our district leader came out with me! We're the oldest missionaries in our district- can you believe that? minus one spanish elder that came out 2 months before me. crazy, eh?

sister tuia got a huge box of food from her aunt that lives in vegas.

sister hurst and me

Sister tuia, subhash, my fav elder silva and me! elder silva and i have been in the same district since forever! only 1 transfer that we weren't. he's the coolest kid everrr.

Subhash's confirmation went really well! Church this week was too. We had 4 gators show up and it was testimony meeting. in RS gaye said, "i want to bear my testimony too but not until i'm a member!" hahaha we set a date for the 26th but she has WoW stuff to change up. We have a solid date with Joseph for the 26th! He is a friend of a great member family. he was taught all the lessons about a year ago but has been traveling in the US for work a ton. but now he's finally ready and we're stoked he's getting baptize don the 26th! Also we're still working with nadine for the 26th and the elders had an investigator, Bibi that was turned over to us and her daughter which seem pretty solid too! so that's 5 dates for august. wow, eh? pray for them!

So it was fun to get a package from home on Sunday! april roberts walked up to me and said, "this is from your mom." and i didn't recognize her! i was like, "wait, who are you?!" and she inroduced herself and then just quickly walked away. I went up to them a few minutes later and they said they were just here on vacation. I recognized her name though! I guess since i'd been going to YSA and BYUI before leaving i never really got to know her. It was fun though! she introduced herself in RS and i was able to tell everyone she was from my homeward. You can imagine the ooh and ahhs from all the old ladies :)

quick question, is there an efy 2012 cd? if so, you should send me it! :)

So, the work is going well! The new district is cool, we have some pretty promising baptismal dates and the weather hasn't been totally unbearable!  I can't believe it's august already- i got my call a year ago! have a good week!

sister messer

Happy Day!

Sis. Tuia, Sis. Messer, Subhash and Elder Stark, who baptized him

Hey everyone!

President & Sister Scott

So, Subhash did get baptized last night! It was basically the best baptism everrrrr. Great support from the ward, too! Subhash brought a bunch of indian food and we had a feast afterwards. President and Sis Scott were both able to come and a bunch of the elders in our district who were able to bring some investigators. He bore an awesome testimony after he was baptized! Elder Rodee, in our district leaned forward and whispered, "you guys just baptized a quorum of the 70." haha it's true though! He's so awesome! Actually, all of Sunday was pretty legit. We had 5 investigators at church! RS and PH was combined the last hour and guess what the topic was? It was the stake's Reach Out and Rescue Plan- we were terrified! They started talking about non-members coming to church, dealing with less-actives and all that jazz. So basically our investigators were sitting in the lesson hearing about how members need to fellowship non members when they come to church and to be notified to fellowship before hand- we were like...uh, why are they talking about this? and one of our investigators- Gay, turned around and said, "you two are in trouble!" (she's sooo funny, we love her) but then it turned into the investigators telling the members how it works! haha It was a miracle! i was praying the whole time that the spirit would filter anything that may hinder their progress. Gay turned around and started to tell us how we did a good job making her feel welcome and excited about church so i said, "tell them that!" so she raised her hand and the teacher brought her to the front and she was able to tell everyone how excited she was to come to church and how everything we've been teaching her makes her happy and then subhash walked up and said, "those two taught me the same thing!" Gay was like, "now i'm stuck! I'm always coming!" hahaha Everyone was like, yaaaa! So things worked out perfectly and it ended up being a great way for the gators to get involved after all!

Our investigators are doing well. Gay, who i just talked about- we met her brother, Clint (who also came out yesterday!) while playing a bible game along the street. We stopped by to see if he was home and they were outside doing yard work so we helped gay and her sister nav in their garden. One thing lead to another and now we're all bff's. We're getting to share the gospel with all 3 of them! The cool thing is, we met Gay's son outside too and he's like, "now you guys are showing up at my house too? Oh wait, are you the ones who helped in our garden?" We had met him last transfer and he gave his # only to tell us later that he wasn't interested. So we've met all of their family in 3 different ways. Coincidence? they don't think so :)

Nadine is doing great! She was also present in that wonderful lesson at church. We're meeting her tonight. She's working towards baptism this August!

Guess what i tried for the 1st time this week? Sushi! Our district went for sushi after district meeting on wednesday- it was way good! mady, didn't you say you tried it in vegas? well, i'll take all of you next summer. haha

That's so cool about meeting with dad's half brothers and cousin. Who knew that my great gma was just like me! Man, she must have been pretty cool ;) I met a bunch of people from the 7th day adventist faith here in brampton.  So do dad and his brothers look alike? i'm sure dad's more handsome and charming too, of course.

This boy is hilarious!  We call him Papa

Your SF trip sounds like a classic! The youth in my ward just went to Nauvoo this week! They took a bus down for 2 days, saw the pageant and all. I told Sis Solomon if they'd done that last year i could have met them! haha I've been thinking about that trip this week- i can't believe that was an entire year ago! good times. I'm looking fwd to getting my giants shirt :)

Alright, well it sounds like things are going well! We're still chuggin along. Looking fwd to subhash's confirmation on sunday! talk to ya soon!!! love and miss ya

sister messer

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors....What?!!!

Hey everyone!

attached are pictures of this week. We had some odd plumbing issues i let sister Tuia handle...and these 2 sikh guys are at the church every day. The one is reading a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet in Hindi :)

Well, this week has been a good one. We've been teaching Subhash a lot and he's doing so well! There were 2 baptisms last night- one from the elders in our ward and from the Heart Lake ward and he stayed for both! haha He met President Scott and talked to the RS president about food for after his baptism. After asking for permission to walk up and stand next to the font for the second one, he got up looked at us and put 2 thumbs up in the air! haha we just laughed. He's so ready and really excited for NEXT sunday at 5pm! holla! We had the funniest thing happen while teaching him the 10 commandments a few days ago. He was reading them out of Exodus and he got to "thou shalt not covet thy neighbors ass" and he paused and said, "oh my gosh....am i allowed to say that?!" Sis Tuia and i looked at each other and busted up. In his indian accent it was priceless. We assured him that it meant donkey and he was ok with it after that. But thinking about it how he initially thought it meant made me laugh even harder. He's awesome. Last monday he and his wife came over for dinner at the Bishops house. He has an amazing relationship with Bishop Solomon and his wife :)

This week we picked up a few new investigators. One being a lady named Nadine from Jamaica. The spanish elders found her about 2 months ago and we've been in contact w/her, inviting her out to church. 4 weeks ago, she came out and luckily sat right in front of us, since i didn't recognize her-after sacrament meeting i leaned forward and introduced myself and found out it was her! she had come! Well, 2 weeks later she came again (that was last week) and we taught her this week. She's gotten a lot more comfortable and fun to teach. We're seeing her tonight! She ran into her fellowshipper on the bus a few days ago and was asking her about baptism :) She even missed her stop (on purpose!) to continue to talk with the member!

We also started to work with Kira. Last week we were the elders at the church and they got a phone call from a Less active member who had just moved back into our ward boundaries. Luckily she lived on the North side which is our territory so we've gone over a couple of times to see her. While we were there on Saturday, her friend who lives upstairs (brampton is all about basement apartments...) and offered us some snacks and asked if she could sit in on our lesson. Well, she sat in while the elders a few years ago taught the less active member and she knows quite a bit. We're excited to try and continue to meet and teach the both of them together. Other than that, the other investigators we have are off and on. We had some good lessons with some this week but they haven't been answering calls. typical...

So it's been a good week. Pretty warm and humid but cooled off mid week making it a little less sweaty.  Sis Tuia and I are having a lot of fun. It probably helps that Subhash is such a golden investigator- we're excited for his baptism on Sunday! 

Love Sister Messer