I'm Back!

Well, I'm home.

It was a wee bit windy and the signs got torn a little bit...but they were pretty sweet! 

Some of my welcoming committee at the airport! 

It was a long flight home...lots of pondering time.

Oh man, it seems as though I have so much to talk about! I'll definitely have to do it in segments. I hope you're in for reading stories...Oh, and thanks for reading my letters while I was away! It's awesome when I see someone and they say, "I enjoyed reading your letters!" Ya'll are the best, you know that?

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

Key word of this week: URGENCY!

Hey Hey Hey!

   Well, in all honesty, it's been a pretty slow week. Jacob didn't get baptized and we went finding a lot. But we had a great comp study yesterday in which we set some new goals to help us be better and more effective. I was sitting at my study desk during dinner and I was like "gahhhh! We HAVE to be better, work harder and baptize this transfer! We're in flippin Toronto!" You'd think I would learn by now that God continues to make me grow in order to see blessings. Crazy how he does that, eh? He's like "oh, Sister Messer stinks at bus contacting so lets have the Spirit tell her she needs to do better at that. She'll deny it for a few weeks and then finally surrender and be the missionary I expect her to be. Then the harvest will come." Ya. So stay tuned, i'm hoping this week i'll gain some guts and yet again open my mouth. Key word of this week: URGENCY. We're going to have a sense of urgency all the time!

   We did have Alice at church yesterday, which went very well. She even brought a friend with her. She's been reading steadily from the BoM and she's very close to the Spirit. As we've helped her recognize the Spirit it's made a big difference in our lessons. We gave her a church tour on Tuesday and it was awesome. We taught the 5 steps of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we did. For example, as we taught faith, we showed her classrooms that she would learn in and explained how that would increase her faith. Repentance, we talked about prayer and how leaders in the church help us to repent if needed. Baptism took us to the font where we also talked about the Gift of the Holy Ghost. We ended in the chapel and talked about enduring to the end and the sacrament. That was definitely the highlight of the tour. She used the words "peace" and "sacred" to describe the feelings there. We were able to point out that it was the Spirit and that really touched her. She said she would be baptized as she understood the commandments and knew that this was true. We were hoping to set a date at church but it didn't work out. Stay tuned :)

  We also taught Nora and Sylva. They're from Africa, we've been working with them for quite a while now. Working sundays is keeping them from church. Nora is a single mom and Sylva is her 10 yr old son. he wants to be baptized soooo bad! His dad who is in Africa says he needs to be older. However, Nora told us she could talk his dad into letting him...so mainly it's her holding him back. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and invited Sylva to say the closing prayer, in which he said, "Please bless the missionaries that they will have eternal life and that me & my mom can be baptized on time." We thought that was very sweet. He's such a stud. We wish he only had permission!

  We heard about the bombing in Boston on the bus right after we had gone downtown on Pday. That's crazy stuff! Boston isn't too far from Toronto, everyone has been talking about it. But the details you mentioned were crazy! I had no idea about the lockdown and finally finding the guy in a boat? So weird. All the terrorists seem to be muslim, eh? Which is weird- the muslim people here are so kind even though they're usually not interested. They all seem to be very family focused people too.

  Last pday we went downtown and wandered through Kensington Market- a multi cultural marketplace. We soon found ourself in China Town and had lunch there. Coolest part of the day- we rode a street car! They're all over the place. From the subway we boarded it and i felt like I was getting on Indiana Jones at Disneyland. haha but for real. It was  in this dark cave like place and we got quite excited.

  Well, today we're going to Target!!! They're new to Canada! I haven't been in a Target in so long. I've been looking forward to this day. ;) Have a wonderful week! I'll see ya soon!
Love Sister Messer

"Would you like to stand?"

Hey!

Well this week was great. Especially Sunday...here's why.

A cool hindu mural walked past. I'm telling it a secret.

It was fast & testimony meeting. A member in our ward got up because her little boy kept saying he wanted to. So they get up there and of course he just stares at everyone and doesn't say a world. You can tell the mom just is kind of embarrassed and our investigator, Jacob, was sitting with all the YSA in the front and says, "can i help him out?" hahaha he walked up to the pulpit and tried to whisper what to say in the little boys ear but he still didn't say anything. Well, Jacob stayed up there and bore his testimony too! It was classic I couldn't help but smile and he looked down and saw sister cross and I as he was speaking and smiled and said, "and these sisters have given me tools to help me quit smoking,

would you like to stand?" I about died. We both just shook our heads and S. cross audibly said, "nope." It was a classic moment for sure. Jacob is one of a kind. He tries to make things difficult as we teach, kind of making smart comments but you can tell he knows that the gospel is changing his life. His baptismal date is set for this coming Sunday. We'll see how following the WoW goes this week. We may move it back. Hopefully not!

Sunday night we were walking to an appointment from the subway and met Gidey, a younger guy from Ethiopia. We were introducing ourselves and telling him what we do and how we teach about Christ. He was like, "I want that. I was Christian when I was young but fell away and now the devil holds my life. I was at my apt and he was tempting me to do bad things and so i left and came on a walk." That kind of sounds fake but he was so sincere! We taught him about baptism and how he can have a fresh start and he basically asked when he could be baptized. So we prayed, taught and committed for baptism on the sidewalk. We're meeting him on Tuesday-that's when we'll see if it's all for real.

We also started teaching Alice this week. She's from mainland China. She's very sweet, we hope things start progressing for her. With great things come bad ones too...haha We met a false prophet on the bus this week! I heard there were false prophets in Toronto. It was pretty classic. We got on and I saw him and you know how sometimes you can just tell someone isn't very nice? Ya. So he read our tags and scooted to the nearest seat to us and pointed directly at me and yelled, "Sister, sister, when you go home you need to pray..." and then went on about all sorts of wonderful things. You know me, If I started talking back to him I'd get feisty so I just smiled and kind of shook my head and then said, "have a great day!" and got off at the next stop.  Oh crazy people. I also had someone ask me if I was a nun this week. I told him no and he said, "well that's good, i didn't think you looked very much like a nun!" We taught him the Restoration on the bus. He's super cool but lives out of our area.

I guess this week was full of cool experiences. One of the bus drivers smiled really big at us as we were getting on. We exited at our stop out the back door and were waiting at the stoplight when he pulled forward at the red light and opened the door and yelled, "where are you from?" I responded and he said he had member friends who served missions and that they always told him to watch for people with tags get on his bus. We prayed that we would be able to meet him again (we'd never seen him before now) and the next day, on a different bus route, he was the driver! We rode it to a subway station and everyone exits the bus there. So we got off last and talked to him for a minute, gave him our information and stuff. THEN we saw him a couple of days later pass us and he just smiled and waved really big. It's great.

At ESL this week there were only a couple of students at our class and they were both at very different learning stages so we did a one on one lesson. I taught a man named Jimmy who is from China. He came to General Conf last week and noticed the prophets picture on the wall in the classroom. That started a big discussion about who he is etc. He had never prayed before so I was teaching him about prayer. at the end of the class he said the closing prayer! He was so excited, had a huge smile on his face. The mandarin speaking elders are teaching him and he's actually progressing towards baptism now! yay!

So it's been a pretty good week. We've found some great new investigators and the weather is getting warmer...i'm not wearing tights today! Sadly my nice tan from last summer isn't showing anymore. haha I'll have to work hard for one in the next few weeks ;) Pray for Jacob! Hopefully he'll get baptized soon!
Love Sister Messer

p.s. Sister Chidester fwd this in her email- i thought it was pretty cool!

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is making adjustments to the way its 405 missions are organized, to better utilize the skills and abilities of all missionaries in training and leadership….. Each mission in the Church will organize a Mission Leadership Council that will include both elder (males) and sister (females) missionary leaders. The new mission leadership council will consist of the mission president and his wife, assistants to the president, zone leaders, and sister training leaders — a newly created role….. The role of sister training leader has been created as more female missionaries serve in missions around the world. Sister training leaders will be responsible for the training and welfare of female missionaries assigned to them, and will be members of, and participate in, the new mission leadership council. Assistants to the president and zone leaders will also participate in the council, and those roles will remain unchanged. Missions will continue to be organized by zones and districts, with district leaders being responsible for baptismal interviews, but the Mission Leadership Council will replace the Zone Leader Council….. Sister training leaders will continue to proselytise and will also spend time each week training and evaluating the needs of female missionaries. They will report directly to the mission president on the needs of sister missionaries. Additionally, the wives of mission presidents are now being asked to play an enhanced role in training and caring for sister missionaries….. Councils assist in Church governance at every level. In councils, assigned members meet to discuss individual, family and organizational needs and work together to determine how to respond to those needs effectively. Full expression from all participants is invited in council settings, unifying the efforts of both male and female council members.”

The Lord is hastening His work, and it's a joy to be a part of it!