We did not even plan to be downtown at that time but we felt that we should go there

   This week was not quite the same as the previous. We where not able to see many of our investigators this week but we where still able to see Ryan and he is doing so good! We were also able to find some really cool potentials that we are going to be teaching this week!

    Ryan is still doing amazing and is still changing a ton! He set a goal to be fully clean by Sunday so we are really praying for him that he can do it! We had a really good lesson this week with him and we taught him about the temple and how we want to not only to be baptized but to also continue on and prepare to go to the temple and it was such a good lesson and he told us how he wants to do that and make it a goal and how he wants to be married and sealed there! It was so Legit!!! He has such a good testimony of the Gospel and how it can change peoples lives! He even brought his cousin to church yesterday! He is pretty much doing everything a member does except he is not baptized but he is a great missionary and pretty much the coolest thing since sliced bread. He is preparing to be baptized in August so I hope that I am still here when he does!

  We also went on an exchange with the YSA Elders this week and I was with Elder Evans in their area and We were in Downtown Victoria and while I was talking to someone another guy came up behind me and just stood there until I finished my conversation and then he just asked me what I was doing so I told him how I was a missionary and how we share a message of Jesus Chirst and then he told me how he wanted to learn more about Jesus Christ and that he had tried to contact a Catholic priest but he never got back to him and then someone told him that "those guys who walk around downtown in white shirts and ties teach people". He said that he did not believe the guy that told him it so he came to see if we really do that and once he saw that is what we were doing he came up and started to talk to me. It was so cool because before this we had been walking around for 35 minutes and had no luck and we did not even plan to be downtown at that time but we felt that we should go there and it was a Miracle! His name is Jasam and he is from Iran and we are going to see him tonight!

Well that is all the time I have but Victoria is about the most beautiful place in BC and I am really loving it here sooo talk to you next week!

Love Elder Slack

{7/18/16} The Gospel was meant to work wonderfully we just need to let it do that!

This week was pretty Crazy but good I am really glad that I get to stay here in Victoria with Elder Cowley. This week was a little trying because Ryan who was our other Baptismal date was not able to quit smoking yet to make his date but a miracle did happen with that! When we saw him and talked to him about it on Friday and we told him that we wanted to help him be fully prepared for his baptism so we where going to help him quit smoking first and the lesson went really well and then later that night he texted us and told us he was going to try to live the word of wisdom fully and he has not done anything it 2 days!! So he is doing really good and is progressing a lot right now and has such a great testimony of the Gospel and has seen how it has changed his life. I have really been blessed to have been able to teach Ryan because he is someone that has been so prepared by the hand of the Lord to hear the Gospel and everything that we have taught him he accepts and prays about. He is doing so good and while we where in Priesthood yesterday the lesson was on temples and Ryan was asking questions about the temple and after the lesson he told us how he wants to go to the temple and that it is one of his goals now after he is baptized! I don't know about you but that was about the coolest thing someone has ever told me here in Victoria! 
   We where able to also find a really cool new investigator named Kyle who Elder Cowley and I found at the beginning of June but he and his family traveled to Whitehorse for a month so we where finally able to see him this last week. We taught him the restoration and it went so well, he had a lot of really good questions about what we taught and soaked it all in really well! He was very excited to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it to know if it is true. He told us that he wanted to check out or church but that this last Sunday he had plans with his family already but that he would come next Sunday. He is very interested and he has a wife and a new son. He wanted to check us out before we met his wife so hopefully we will get to meet his family soon!

  Victoria has been great and has the best weather I have ever seen! The summers here are just a little nicer than the ones in Mesquite, but just a little. I have been thinking a little more about how close my return date is and I don't like it so I am going to do that less! As I was thinking about it I decided to do an activity in Preach my Gospel on page 152, it's the personal study activity and it talks about what you want to be like when you return home and as I was doing it I noticed that there where still some things that I need to change and work on so that I can be as converted and as changed when I actually do go home. In a very simple way of putting it I want to see how wonderfully the Gospel works in my life and do all the things that God asks of me so that I can see how wonderful it is because that is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ are supposed to do. Bring us the most joy and happiness and to also help us fulfill the potential that our Heavenly Father Knows that we have! I have been able to see first hand how it has dramatically changed people's lives and how much they cherish the truth they have learned and It reminds me how much of a privilege I have had to be raised in this Gospel and to enjoy all the truths and blessings of the priesthood and the church in my life. I have been an amazing blessing to have it in my life and to help others apply it into theirs and so see the Atonement work in their life. I really love being a missionary so much the pleasure of having the spirit always with me, which is not exclusive to only missionaries to every member! The Gospel was meant to work wonderfully we just need to let it do that!

Love Elder Slack

{7/11/16} Final Farewell to Elder Kelly

This week has been really different from most in Victoria but still really good! Saturday was transfer calls and both Elder Cowley and I are staying here in Victoria. Which I am really excited about because we have some really good Investigators that we are working with and I really did not want to leave. We were not able to teach as many of our investigators this week but we where able to set up quite a bit of lessons for next week.

  Ryan is still doing really well and is progressing towards his Baptism in July! He came to church yesterday and brought one of his friends with him so it was really sweet! He is already doing missionary work even before his Baptism. We also had a lesson in priesthood about the Temple and about how important is is and we told Ryan a little more about the temple because he was pretty confused and we told him that our hope is and what we want to prepare him for is to not only to get baptized but to also go to the temple and he told us how he wanted to make that a goal to go to the temple after he is baptized! He is so awesome and has changed so much since when I first met him. The Gospel has truly changed him for the better and has seen how much joy it has brought him! I am really excited to be here for his baptism and it is going to be so Cool!

  We also have found some new investigators that we are working with and we have a lesson with a family that Elder Cowley and I found at the beginning of last month but they went out of town for the month and just got back so we are going to be seeing them this week and they are really cool! We met that dad and his name is Kyle and when we first met him he told us how he was really interested in what we believed and they just started to go to a new church but are not too sure if they want to stay there so we hopefully can get them to come to ours! We also have a guy named Doug that has met with Missionaries a few years ago and we just re connected with him and since we first saw him a couple of weeks ago he has read all of first and second Nephi and told us how much he has enjoyed reading the Book of Mormon and feels that he has received an Answer that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God! It was really cool and he is really been prepared since the last time that he met missionaries!

  The last eventful thing that is happening is the Elder Kelly is going home! This is his last couple of days in the Canada Vancouver Mission. If you do not know, Elder Kelly was my trainer and we were together 21 months ago! It is crazy to think that it has been that long since I got to Canada! It has been Amazing and I am really glad that I still have 3 months left to serve the people here in BC!

Elder Kelly and Will

Just another great week in Victoria!

  This week was just another great week in Victoria! It was not a normal week especially with Canada Day and there was a lot of things going on and Downtown Victoria was just a huge party but we were still able to get some missionary work done!

   Ryan is still doing great! We were able to go to a baptism for some of the missionaries in our zone with him and it was really good. He had a lot of questions about it and said it got him excited for his own Baptism which is happening this month! He also was finally able to come to all three hours of church and really enjoyed priesthood and it was really cool because the whole lesson was on the Priesthood and that is what a lot of his questions were about after the baptism. He is still doing so good and on track! We have seen such a big change in him over the last couple months that we have taught him and he is progressing so well! 

  We were also able to finally see Matti and Cameron. Matti is the member that owns La Belle Patate and his son Cameron is 10 and not baptized so we have been trying to help him get baptized and we had a really good lesson on Friday and Matti just told Cameron how important baptism was and how they need to start to come to church more and it was such a good lesson. It is really looking promising with them!

   We also have had some good lessons with some other investigators and we are finally getting some referrals so the work here is going good! This month they gave us money for bus passes on our mission fund card so we may or may not be getting our car taken away. We are not sure, hopefully the latter.

  Sadly, I can not remember too much else about what we did this week but it was good.

 Elder Cowley and I are doing great! He is really getting used to being a missionary and he is getting a lot more confident and out going so it has been really good!

Love Elder Slack

Climbing trees while hiking in Victoria on P-Day

"So we were just tracting in the city, not even a rural area, and we saw this deer eating someone's flowers"

Share the Gift

     This week has been a really good one! We have been working with Ryan and he is making some really good progress and he is continuing to move forward to his baptismal date of July 22nd. We were able to teach him the law of tithing and he told us how he did not like giving his money to churches but that this church is different and that he would live the law of tithing and that he wanted to pay his tithing from when he first started to come to church six weeks ago! We have seen so much progress with him and he is doing so well! He really is becoming converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is gaining a strong testimony of the restored Gospel! He is so solid and it is just another testimony of member work because he was brought to church by a friend and he had talked to missionaries before and they had invited him to church but he never came but since his friend brought him to church and it was someone he knew it was different and since then he has been progressing so much and has been doing so good!

      Elder Cowley and I have been able to do a lot of teaching this week and have been able to see some really cool miracles this week one with that referral from the Merretts and we were finally able to see him this week! His name is Peter and he is so Cool! He used to be a financier for the Canadian Government and used to travel all over the world with the Prime Minster and finance projects that they were doing. Anyways he has been retired for a few years because he is confined to a wheel chair and could not travel anymore but when we met with him he told us how he had met a lot of members of our church and he had always been impressed by how we live and how we seem to be good people. He really wanted to know why, so we told him about how we follow the example of Jesus Christ and believe in living what we preach and how we believe it is very important to live the life that we learn about. He is very interested because he grew up Catholic but left it because they told him how asking questions was bad and they would not answer the questions he had but he does still have that belief in Christ and God. He is very interested in learning more and finding out for himself. 

      It is really cool to see how people seem to notice what we do and how we as members do live our lives and that is definitely doing missionary work but if no one would have talked to Peter that work might not have yielded all the fruit it could have. I have seen a lot how important it is not only to live what we teach and doing our best because we will not be perfect and then talking to people and trying to share the Gospel in any way we can, not being crazy weird or pushy, but just sharing what we know has changed and blessed our lives, kind of like how we tell people about a good movie or a good place to eat!

  Well I gotta go so talk you next week!!

Love Elder Slack

It was so cool to see how Heavenly father does truly prepare his children to hear the restored Gospel!

 Well I do not have too much time today but this week has been great! We have been able to teach so much and have had a lot of success in finding too! We found three new people to teach this week by knocking on their door and them just letting us in! It was so legit!! We have seen so many miracles! One of the people that we knocked in to is Clark and we were able to teach him the restoration and when we got to the first vision and the Book of Mormon he was so shocked. He told us how he had never been taught that before and wondered why no one else taught about there being another prophet on the earth. It was so cool to see how Heavenly father does truly prepare his children to hear the restored Gospel!

   We also had some really good lessons with Ryan who is down to 2 cigarettes a day at the most! He had been coming to church every week and has been reading the Book of mormon like crazy! He even started to read the gospel principles book to and he is really loving it!

 Well I have to go but thanks to everyone for all the Birthday wishes!

Love Elder Slack


Yep, you read that right...it's this missionary's birthday! He's finally hit the big 2-0! Crazy! How did this boy...

Get to be so old, where has the time gone...but, just look at him now...a mom couldn't be prouder. What a wonderful young man he has become. 

I am always amazed at how many miracles and blessings we see as missionaries

This week has been really great! Elder Cowley and I are really getting into a good grove now with teaching! Elder Cowley is starting to get used to the schedule and everything now! We had some really good lessons! The weather here this week was pretty crazy which I have come to know is usual for Victoria. It was 33 degrees at the beginning of the week and by the end it was 19 so it fluctuated a lot and it can never seem to decide what it wants to do but overall it has been good and having a car makes a lot less important if the weather changes.

   We were able to have a few lessons this week with Ryan and Mike. We got the whole apartment thing figured out with Mike and we are going with Mike to check it out on Wednesday! Mike told us if it works out he will set a day to be baptized on then! So we are really hoping and praying that it does work out for him because this is something that he has been waiting for for a long time and now it is finally here so we will be focusing a lot on that this week to see if there is any way that we could help out and continue to support and motivate Mike! We also saw Ryan and he is doing so good! He came to church yesterday even though he got off work late and did not get to have any sleep but he told us that he really wanted to come so he did, even though he was tired. He has really been cutting down on his smoking and is down to 5 a day at the most! It has been so great to teach and work with him because he is someone that I have seen the Gospel change and he has been doing the change by himself! He is changing things as he learns with out reminding or telling him. He has just seen how the Gospel has changed him and how much it has helped him in his life! He is doing so good and is working hard to be baptized on July 22nd! We have seen some really cool miracles this transfer and a lot of good progression from those that we are working with!

 We also did some finding and on Wednesday we found a really cool family this week when we went by a referral who was not home so we decided to stay in the area and knock on some of the houses next to this referral and we talked to a guy named Kyle who just recently had a baby and he and his wife just started to go to a new church but he was really interested in what we were doing and why we were doing it so we talked about what we do and about the restoration and how we have come out to share this message with others because it has helped and changed our lives. We talked to him for a while and he told us to come by on Tuesday and gave us his number and told us to text him to confirm and we did last night and it is all set up! It was such a cool miracle to see that we went there for a reason! 

   I am always amazed at how many miracles and blessings we see as missionaries and how prevalent the hand of God is in our lives and I am sure that it was just a prevalent in my life before my mission but being on a mission has helped me to recognize it more! I have learned how much God does truly love all of us no matter where we have come from or what we have done he loves us no matter what that is the first great truth!

Love Elder Slack