"Even if what you had planned doesn't work out God will bless you"

Man This week has been Crazy!! P day was pretty normal but on Tuesday we drove to Merritt  to go on Exchange with Elder Walker and it reminded me of old times because Merritt didn't have a car so me and Elder Walker walked everywhere in Merritt but luckily Merritt is pretty small and not as big a Kamloops but it was still stinking cold so I was dying but it was really good we went and taught a potential investigator named Dan the Bearman and him and his roommate are stinking CRAZY!! Dan was telling us how we where put here by aliens and how the wise men where guided by a spaceship to Jesus and then his roommate went outside and cussed out a dog across the street and the weirdest thing is this is typical Merritt but it was really Awesome to because we set a baptismal date with one of their investigators so that was pretty sweet! then we had to get picked up the next day to go to District Meeting and then we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders and I went with Elder Anderson to Vernon which was pretty Crazy because Elder Anderson just got to Vernon last Transfer so he doesn't know where anything is and we got lost and went to Salmon Arm which is luckily on a half hour away from Vernon and then all our our appointments fell through for the night and so we went tracting and we tracted into an Active member! Yeah an Active member and they invited is in so we had an unexpected member visit which was pretty Awesome! Even though it was kind of embarrassing because we should know where active members live but it was cool and Elder Anderson is way Awesome! Then the next day we went tracting and ran to a guy on the street named Shaun an talked to him for about 20 minutes and he told us have he is an alcoholic and was sober for 17 years and just started drinking again and was looking for a way to over come it and to get sober again. So we talked to him for a while and set up a return appointment and it was really sweet. It just shows that if you are doing what you are supposed to be doing  and even if what you had planned doesn't work out God will bless you if you just keep doing what your supposed to do. After we exchanged back on Thursday we weekly planned and had correlation meeting and talked about an open house that we will be doing in February just as something to get non members to come to the church and see what it is about. Then on Friday we pretty much just tracted the whole day and apparently we tracted some where the JW's just tracted because people where not happy with us. I knocked on one door and the guy threatened to call the police on us for trespassing so it was pretty interesting but then we went to sister Collingridges house for dinner and it was so good but then we had a really Awesome lesson about the Book of Mormanand how important it is in our lives and how important it is to continually receive a personal witness that it is true. It was a really good lesson and the spirit was so strong it just felt Awesome! Nothing to interesting happened the rest of the week except on Sunday our plans fell through after church until dinner so we went tracting and we found 6 people who invited us to come back and we could tell them more. So that was just another testimony builder that if we just keep doing what we are supposed to be doing even if things don't work out how we wanted them to God will bless us and will help us over come what ever is placed in front of us, 1 Nephi 3:7. Hope Everyone has a great week.

Love Elder Slack

Just Do It!

Hey, Sorry my email last week was pretty boring and didn't really say anything at all but this week’s will be a lot better.  Luckily the bar is not set that high.

            Well this week we didn’t have a lot of teaching appointments and so we did quite a bit of tracting and trying to contact former investigators because at the end of the last transfer we stopped teaching a bunch of our investigators because they were not progressing and they were just not getting anything out of our visits. So this week we were trying to find some new people to teach and we found some really cool people while tracting so hopefully we will get to meet them this week. 

Tracting in Barnhartvale

One of the people we met was a guy named Corey and we tracted into him on Friday and we did our usual missionary door approach and asked him if we could do any service for him and he told us on Sunday he was going to shovel and scrape all the ice off his drive way so we quickly jumped at the offer to help him. When we went back on Sunday to help him we didn’t really go expecting to teach him or expecting anything from him to want to listen to us but while we were shoveling off his driveway he started asking us questions about what we believe and why we are so different. So we answered a lot of his questions and one thing that really seemed to surprise him was that almost everything besides the trinity was what he believed in. This really seemed to stick out to me because people always think that we are so different and that we believe in crazy things but when it comes down to it, to the things that we truly believe are not that different. When it comes to how Christ ran his church when he was alive it’s the exact same way our church is run today. A lot of things people hear about the church are wrong, like the guy we ran into this week who told us that to be a Mormon you had to have 1 year’s worth of food storage and If your husband was not a member you only have like 5 years to convert him or you have to divorce him.  People seem to trust the internet instead of the people who are actually apart of the church. At the end of the day all that matters is that we know that this is the Church that is ran by Christ today and that we know that what we are doing is right. 

            On another note I had to give a training in District meeting about relying on the spirit. This is something that I have really learned on my mission is to always follow the spirit! One of the most asked questions when it comes to following the spirit is "How to I know if it is the spirit or if it is just me thinking?" and a quote in PMG from Gordon B Hinkley that said something to the effect that if it is a prompting to do good then it is from the spirit. This is something I have gained a testimony of that if we are prompted to do something good then Just Do It!! Because almost all of the promptings we get to do good or to help are from the spirit. The spirit is so crucial to us but if we do not follow the promptings we receive then it is useless. So it is crucial and vital to follow those promptings that we receive. I know how hard it is to follow those promptings especially when it is something we struggle with. If we follow those promptings and do it even if we feel inadequate we will be blessed to accomplish it. I have seen this because if you don’t know I am not a very outgoing and talkative person so missionary work is not the thing I am best at but I have really learned to rely on the spirit to help me and to guide me in those things that I struggle with.  It just takes some faith. 

            Well I have to go hope this email was a little better than the last and if it wasn’t, well, what you are going to do I’m in Canada!

Love Elder Slack

 

Goodbye to Elder Kelly...Hello Elder Pierson

Well this week has been pretty uneventful since most of Tuesday was taken up by member visits and packing for Elder Kelly and all of Wednesday was spent  dropping Elder Kelly off and picking up Elder Pierson and a whole lot of tracting this week. I don't have a lot of time to email this week just because we have a lot of stuff to do today. So sadly this is pretty much it. I know, a really boring email. Canada is still cold and there is still a lot of snow here!!

Snow, snow and more snow!

Tolman, Will & Pierson With the Watters family

Well, that's it folks.....No, really, that's it....

Transfers brings a new companion for Elder Slack

Meet the new tripanionship of Elder Tolman, Elder Pierson (who comes to the group from San Francisco, California) and Elder Slack. Looks like a mighty good group of YM there!

Another "interesting" week in Kamloops

Well, this week has been very interesting. The first few days where normal get stuff on Monday and knocking on D's teaching people and meeting with members, you know, the usual. On New Years Eve we had to be in by 6 and weekly plan until 9. That was really different and we had one of our Zone Leaders Elder Smith with us. 

         Then we had exchanges on Friday.  Elder Tolman and me went with Elder Woolf, who is in Kamloops First ward. This was the beginning of a very different week because in Kamloops first area they have downtown Kamloops and so they go street contacting, which is when you go on a busy street and you just go talk to people basically what you do on the door step except you are walking with them down the street. This is very different from what I am used to because in our area we have no places to go street contacting so we just knock on D's. Street contacting is a whole different animal in that you have less time to teach and to testify so it took some getting used to but eventually I got some what comfortable with it and it was actually pretty successful in that we got quite a few potential investigators from it. Then that day it started to snow and it wasn’t too bad maybe an inch at the most. So exchanges were really good and Elder Woolf is really cool.

         On Saturday we exchanged back and we went and tracted up in a new subdivision and we literally had to hike up a mountain to get there but Elder Kelly insisted on tracting up there so we did and it was pretty cool but the people there where pretty prideful and didn’t want to listen to us. It was stinking cold and windy. 

Tracting in the freezing cold

We found a rooster

We did a lot of service on Saturday for members. We where kind of stuck in at night and had to have members drive us to places after 7 because the roads where so slick. 

         This is where it gets really interesting. On Sunday is was pretty cold and kind of snowy but during church it snowed a ton and we had to go shovel the sidewalks twice because it was snowing so much and then we had to go the hospital to give someone a blessing and it took us almost 40 minutes to get to the hospital and we got stuck like 6 times trying to get up there and had to back up a road because it was too steep for us to get up it. So, after that we got members to drive us everywhere and we walked a little bit but driving was out of the question and the members we went and visited that night told us that it was going to snow until Tuesday and they weren’t lying because when we got up there was 11 inches of snow on the ground and we spent our whole companion study getting the snow off our car. 

Well I have to go because we have to go shopping and one of our members is taking us so we can actually get there. Bye!

Love Elder Slack