James was baptized!

     This week was just full of miracles! Well James Goheen was baptized this Friday and was confirmed this Sunday. So that was amazing! I am so grateful that I was able to stay here in Victoria and finish my mission especially so that I could see James get baptized. He has been so solid! The day after his baptism he went and helped the ward weed the church and is going to help a move this Saturday! So he is pretty much become one of the members! He also get interviewed to receive the priesthood yesterday so he is doing pretty awesome!

       I have never noticed, before my mission, how much the Gospel can change someone's life and how powerful it can be. Being a missionary you see that a lot and you make the Gospel the center of your life because all you do is preach the Gospel and everything is focused on that. I guess that is how life should be more or less, in the sense that the Gospel should be the center of our lives. I have seen how when people make it the center how much it changes them and how much joy it brings into their life! I have seen that in my life as well over the past two years and how much the joy the Gospel has brought me and how much it has changed me and molded me more into the disciple that Heavenly Father needs me to be. Now, don't get me wrong I still have a long way to go but the Gospel has helped me so much in my life. I have seen first hand how if you put the Lord first everything else will work out for the better and he will provide a way for all things that we need and will bring joy into our lives. That is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to do. Bring Joy into our lives that will last forever.  It is not meant to restrict us or make life more difficult but to allow us to have the best experience while we are here preparing to meet God.

  

      I can testify that this Gospel is the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and that this is the way to lasting happiness in anyone's life. I have felt this for myself and have helped others who have been able to experience it as well. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and will strengthen our testimonies of our Saviour and help us to grow closer to him and to learn of what His will is for us. I know that because I have felt and seen it in my own life! 

Love Elder Slack

ps I don't know if I will be able to email next week so this might be the last one, which is kind of sad but it is part of the Plan.

Welcome to Elder Cowley...fresh from the factory :)

     This Week can only be described in two words... Gong Show...yep that pretty much sums it up of how today went. So, Tuesday and Wednesday I was with the YSA Zone Leaders because I had to wait until Thursday to go pick up my new companion in Richmond. So those two days were pretty interesting and a lot of driving because we had to go pick people up from the ferries a couple of times then finally on Wednesday night I ferried to Richmond by myself again but this time when I got off the Ferry no one was there to pick me up so it was pretty interesting when I got there but luckily a few minutes later one of the senior couples that works in the office showed up to pick me up thankfully and so that night I stayed with like 3 other Elders that were training too. 

     On Thursday I finally got to figure out who my new companion would be. Just because I am really lucky I was the last name to be called to say who my new companion would be so I guess that Heavenly Father is trying to teach me patience but my new companion is Elder Cowley and he is from Orem, Utah. Members think it's really funny when a missionary comes from Utah and always call it the Factory so Elder Cowley has gotten quite a bit of that. Another amazing thing that happened at Transfer Meeting was that we finally got a Car!! So no more buses, well not all the time because we still have bus passes but a car will make it a lot more convenient to get to places and we do not always have to rely on the not so reliable BC Transit. After Transfer Meeting it was just really crazy because we had to take 3 boxes of supplies and mail and a vacuum and Elder Cowleys bags with us to Victoria in the car so after some really intense tetris we got everything to fit in our little Cruze but then we had to figure out how to get to the Ferries in rush hour traffic with was pretty interesting; took for ever and we got to the ferries 20 minutes before it left and got on so we were pretty lucky so we did not get back to Victoria till 6:45.

     So, needless to say we did not do too much teaching this week.We were able to see our investigator Mike who has been taught by missionaries for about six months now and the only thing that is holding him back is that he is living with his girlfriend and can't find a place to move to. Elder Ringheim had been praying for a place to open up that he could move to and found out that it would be a miracle if he found another place in lower Victoria so that is what we prayed for for a long time and then...We had a miracle happen on Friday, we found out that one of our members is moving to Vancouver and wants to sublet her apartment out to someone from the church so we have been getting the info and told Mike about it and found out its only 10 minutes from where he lives now and the price is the same as what he pays for his current place and it's bigger! So it sounds really promising and like it could really happen!!! It was a huge testimony builder that Heavenly Father does answer prayers and that he does not do it in our time table but he does it when it needs to happen. We are really excited to get this moving forward and we have a really good member couple helping us out with it who really want to help Mike get baptized too! 

   

   This week has been really good and it shows me just like every other week why I am serving a mission and why I want to continue to serve and serve even after I leave BC. This work is so true and it is real and Heavenly Father really does lead it and it will succeed as we do what he asks! It helps us just as much as it helps those that we are working with!

Love Elder Slack

Will and his new companion Elder Cowley

New missionaries and their trainers luncheon

Who would have thought that you could get so much out of a book.

This few weeks has been crazy! We finally got our bed bug problem fixed for good on Friday and we got new mattresses which was awesome because my last one was pretty much a board or that's what it felt like and Elder Mattingley's box spring was broken so his bed looked like a U, well kind of.

  Then there was a huge wind storm in the Lower Mainland and it knock out most of the power here in Langley except for downtown which is luckily where we live so we had power but most of our ward did not so it was pretty crazy! There was a ton of trees that fell down on to the roads and a huge tree fell pretty close to the church. So we spent sometime raking up leaves and helping people fix up the mess. Because of the power outage we had Sacrament in the dark, skipped Sunday school and combined Priesthood and Relief society outside. It was pretty cool and a lot of fun.

 

  Last week Elder Johnson of the first Qumran of the seventy come and talked to all the ward councils and the missionaries about how to help the members remember that we are all full time missionaries. When we are Baptized we are commanded to preach the Gospel and whether we where a black name tag or not. The only difference between set apart missionaries and members is how we do the work. set apart missionaries go out and knock on doors and talk to people on the street and go to peoples homes to teach them but members can do it in a very similar way by talking to people and their friends. Not just about the gospel but about them. Elder Johnson talked about how if we just go and talk to people and to our friends and really get to know them and care about them we shouldn't worry about sharing the gospel or how we will tie the gospel into the conversation because it will just happen. It was a great meeting and it is really how us as missionaries with name tags are trying to do it as well by talking to people and getting to know them and to just wait for a time when the Lord will fill our mouths with what he wants us to say.

 This week was a little harder because lots of our investigators have been out of town or busy with things and we have not been able to see them but we were able to see Leaf this week and we had 2 really good lessons with him and we are trying to help him recognize the spirit and to help him receive and recognize the answers that God is giving him. He is very cool and is really wanting to know what God wants him to do. He has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying so we are really excited to see how he progresses and recognizes his answer. If there has been one thing I have learned it is that the Book of Mormon can change lives. I have seen it change my own life and the lives of others. That is the other thing, I finally finished the Book of Mormon! for the second time on my mission and it was awesome and I feel like every time I read it i get just as much out of it as I did the last time. The Book of Mormon is awesome and I never thought I would ever love it or enjoy reading it like I do now. Who would have thought that you could get so much out of a book? It's almost like it was inspired revelation from God sent here for us in this day!

Love Elder Slack

One of our investigators Sheila has a farm and we went out and picked some corn! And she let us keep it!

{Aug 17} Canada has been so awesome!

     Well this week was great! Elder Mattingley is so cool. He is from Layton, Utah. Brookswood has been really good but is a lot different than Surrey. Mostly because it not as big and we do a lot more tracting here and the area is a lot nicer than Surrey.

     We did a lot of service this week, well we did a lot of moving. We also were finally able to see one of our investigators Shelia who has been out of town. Sheila was meeting with missionaries like 20 years ago and was about to be baptized but someone told her she couldn't get baptized or something like that but anyways the missionaries got back in contact with her a couple months ago and she is so cool and knows that the church is true! We are just teaching her the things that she was taught before and she has forgotten and helping her quit drinking coffee but she is really solid and could definitely get baptized this transfer. So we are really trying to work hard to help her get to the point where she is ready and worthy to get baptized. She also owns a farm and gave us some fruit from it and it was really good!

     Speaking of food, in the Brookswood ward we literally get fed every night. Since I have gotten here every night for dinner we go to a members house. It's so cool except for the fact that I have had to start running again so I don't get fat! It is really cool though because the members here are so cool and really are missionary minded which is awesome! The ward here has been really good about helping us with anything we need especially coming out to lessons with us.

 

     Some other cool things that happened this week while finding were on Friday I was on exchanges with Elder Haase, (who is in the other ward in Langley and just got to the mission field), we were out contacting at the bus loop and started talking to a lady named Amanda and she started asking a lot of questions about things that she had heard about Mormons and we talked to her and told her what we really believed and it was really cool because at first she told us she didn't really want to talk to us because she "knew what we where about" so we asked her "what were we about"? so she started to tell us random things and we taught her what we really believe in and the truth about Mormons. By the end she was really interested and very curious about what we teach but sadly Satan is a big jerk and right in the middle of talking to her, her bus showed up early and she had to run to catch so we didn't get any contact info but hopefully we will run in to her again.

     This week has been really good and Elder Mattingley and I have been working on trying to build up our teaching pool and finding more people to teach. It has been going good and has really helped me remember that we need to rely on the Lord in everything and never think that we can do it our selves. Canada has been so awesome! Even though they are having their hottest summer in 25 years. I love it here! Well I gotta go.

Love Elder Slack

"Miracles do not produce Faith, Strong Faith is developed by obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ"

     Well this week has been really uneventful mostly because we had to stay inside from Monday to Thursday because Elder Boehmer was sick and he got me sick to so we were not able to go out and work so it was really boring but we did get our apartment really clean and were able to contact a lot of former investigators and set up lessons with them so it was not a complete waste but we didn't get much done while we were in the apartment for most of the week. 

      On Friday we finally got out of our apartment and did something. We actually helped one of our members build a deck for a less active member so that was pretty awesome and it was a lot of fun. It was also really good to get out of the apartment and do something and then we went to Dairy Queen for dinner because we were tired of our apartment and Elder Boehmer bought an ice cream cake for no reason except he wanted one so that was really random and kind of funny. 

Then on Saturday we planned for our next week with our Zone Leaders and it was really good. Our planners are so full with what we are going to do this week and I am really excited to get out and have a full week again.

      While I was studying I was reading lesson 3 and reading about Faith so I went to the Bible Dictionary and read the definition on faith. One of the things that really stuck out to me was one line "Miracles do not produce Faith, Strong Faith is developed by obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ". This really stuck out to me because I have always wondered why people like Lamen and Lemual never became fully converted even though they had seen countless miracles. It is because seeing miracles will not build your faith only obedience to the things that we have been commanded to do will help us build our faith but the Bible Dictionary also said "True Faith brings Miracles,visions, dreams, healings, and all other gifts from God". It doesn't matter if we ever see a vision or see an angel because those things will not help us become converted members of the Gospel. Well, not much else has happend and we have to go.

Love Elder Slack

We saw some pretty amazing miracles this week!

Well this week has been Awesome!! Elder Johnson and I went on exchanges with the Assistants on Tuesday. Which was crazy because I went with Elder Englestead who is from Cedar City, Utah!! (For those who don't know it, Will's father, grandparents on both sides, great grandparents grew up in Cedar City, UT and he has multiple family members still living there. Will even lived there for about 5 years) He was also good friends with Ty!! (Ty is Will's cousin!) It was so crazy to find out that we knew a lot of the same people in Cedar! Anyways it was really cool to go on exchanges with him because he really taught me a lot and we both did something that really scared us which is store contacting. I know that sounds weird but its when you go into a store and you just talk to people, since we can't legally preach in a store we just talked to people and when they ask questions to us like why we had tags or something like that we could talk about who we are! That terrified me because I have only been kocking on D's and never have done any street contacting which is what store contacting is a lot like. It was really cool though because we founds someone at a Walmart and gave him a Book of Mormon. We do not have a lot of investigators but we do have four really solid ones. We just set a baptismal date with a girl names Carol who is the girlfriend of one of our other investigators Gary. It was a miracle that we set a date with her because we showed up to their place to teach Gary and he was not home so we asked it we could teach her and so we did! It was such a great lesson and we set a date for the 22nd of March. It did not stop there because we got a call from Gary and he told us that he was really surprised that she had committed to get baptized and he told us he wanted to work with her and get baptized with her! So we saw some pretty amazing miracles this week!

Well I have to go and help someone move.

Love, 
Elder Slack

New transfer...new companion...new adventures ahead and it's going to be Awesome!!

Man this week has been Crazy! We where supposed to get transfer calls on Monday night but we didn't so we thought we were in the clear until like 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday when we got a call and I was told that I was leaving and going to Clearbrook, which is in Abbotsford. I was kind of surprised because I felt like I was going to stay but I guess I was needed somewhere else.

Will and his old Zone Leader, Elder Anderson

Saying goodbye to the Mortensons

   At first I was really sad because I didn't want to leave Kamloops because I had been there for a while and knew all of the members and the town really well. I was really comfortable there but I think that is why I left because we don't grow or progress as much when we are comfortable so I guess the change was needed. When we got that call it meant I had to be packed and ready to go by that night, which at first I didn't think would be a problem. I didn't think I had that much stuff. So we decided to go do some service and visit some members until 3:30 and then I would pack until 5. 

I quickly realized that I did not know how to pack all my things into 2 bags and that I had accumulated quite a few things since I got to Kamloops and I needed to fit it into 2 suitcases both under 50 pounds, which doesn't sound hard but weight builds up fast with coats, scriptures, books and a bunch of other junk that I need to take so I had to leave a few things back in Kamloops; Nothing big, just some shirts, hangers and a sweater that another missionary gave me. So it wasn't too bad but I ended up playing Tetris for 2 hours trying to get everything in and under weight.

  Finally I got everything done and we went and did normal missionary stuff and stopped by a few more members’ homes before I had to leave in the morning. It was sad to leave. It almost felt like I was leaving home again because that was my home and I was never transferred before so I had no idea what to expect. The next morning we left to Kelowna to catch the greyhound and to pick up Elder Persson and Tolman’s new companion. When we got their new companion they dropped me off. Then Elder Woolf, Maurer and I took a 5 ½ hour greyhound down to Langley and we didn't get there till 8:30 because we were running behind schedule. It was so long and boring! So I pretty much did no missionary work the whole day but I did get to catch up on my sleep; but it was a pretty boring day.

The tripanionship's last photo together

Kamloops Elders last group photo (L to R) Tolman, Persson, Woolf, Will, Hawkes

   My new area is really awesome and my new companion is sweet. His name is Elder Johnson and he is from Ephraim, UT and he has been out a little over a year. We have a few really awesome investigators that came to church yesterday. Theresa and her son Daniel came for the first time yesterday! They seemed to really like it and Gary came too but it was his 5^th time. They are really cool and are progressing towards baptism so I'm really excited for this new transfer. It’s going to be awesome!! I am really excited to see what happens this transfer.

The Sikh Temple across the street from the church

Well I have to go see ya next week!

Love Elder Slack

Oh yeah One thing that I forgot because i was in Kamloops so long is how funny people think my last name is. I got so many jokes it was crazy! and it was really funny how many people came up to me and told me not to slack off.

Normal and different at the same time

       Well this week has been pretty, um, I don't know what this week has been like. It has been kind of normal and different at the same time. One of the things that I really love about the Kamloops 2nd ward is they feed us a ton! I know that sounds selfish but honestly if it wasn't for member visits I probably would not get nearly as much healthy food because healthy food is expensive and in Canada everything is even more expensive than normal. We have some really cool members who feed us all the time and it is so nice!

        One of my favorite members is the Brooks Family who are a really old couple but they always give us a ton of food every month and they give us bacon!! which is Amazing!! When we go over there we always have really awesome lessons because Brother Brooks knows a ton and always teaches me something and probably more than we teach him.

        This week has been kind of different because we have been doing a ton of tracting, like 4 to 6 hours a day at least, because we don't have a lot of people to teach but we have found some really cool people that we will be going by to see this week. Our tripanionship has been going a lot better. At first me and Elder Persson did not get along very well but now we are getting on the same page and we are getting along a lot better than we were and we are seeing more success since that. Well, I have to go so, I hope everyone has a great week and that everyone stays warm because its cold here!

Love Elder Slack

"I've also become a chef in the last 4 months as you can see"

Study area (I don't see a picture of his mother anywhere...)

Will and Elder Tolman (apparently Elder Persson doesn't like his picture taken) 

Tracting in Chase

"I'm still an American"