James has really been a miracle in my life and my time here in Victoria!

      Well this week has been really crazy! So James had his baptismal interview on Saturday and passed!!! He is getting baptized this Friday evening!!! So this week has been pretty amazing besides the fact that we still do not have a car and are still waiting on the insurance so that we can take it in to get fixed but we have been able to use the busses here and has reminded me of when I was with Elder Ringheim and we only had bus passes so it has been interesting!

 

     James has been doing really good! He has been clean of smoking for almost two weeks and he has really been changing and seeing the blessings from not smoking. He has been progressing so much and has changed a lot since we started teaching him a couple months ago. We were able to teach him about the priesthood and how he would be able to receive it after his baptism and we brought Bro Miehe and he bore a really powerful testimony of the power of the priesthood and some of the ways that it has blessed him in his life and it was very powerful to see that. I am really grateful for the way that the Victoria 1st ward has been so friendly to the people that we bring to church and really make them feel welcome and from a lot of the investigators that I have taught that is something that many of them have said is they really love the fellowship that our church has and how lots of people in the church seem to be really good friends and are very welcoming of new people. That is huge for someone that is coming to a new place for the first time and have people come up and welcome you and introduce themselves to you it huge! When James first came to church that is the one thing that he said that he liked the most and something that he has not found in other churches that he has been to. James has really been a miracle in my life and my time here in Victoria! It is meeting people like him and being able to teach him that really make everything worth it and really show that all the hard things that we have to do dont really matter and that miracles will come as we do our best and as we just keep pushing forward and do what the Lord asks and expects of us!

      I just want to share something that really stuck out to me in my reading this week! it is in Jarom 1:9 the phrase that really stuck out to me was"inasmuch as ye will keep my commandments ye will prosper in the land" That is a promise that we WILL prosper not that we might or probably but that we will. We do not know when the prosper will come or how it will come but it will come in the exact way that we needed it. I have truly learned that the Lord is mindful of each and everyone of us and are unique situations and will be there to help us prosper in the land as we keep his commandments and do all that he has asked of us!

Love Elder Slack

Coolest experience of my mission to see how big of a help members are to this work

     This week has been really amazing and as you can see by the subject line, which I usually never use, but I felt it was appropriate for this occasion. So I will start this story with last Sunday. So we went to visit a couple, The Merretts, and we followed up on someone that they had talked about at a cottage meeting we had my first Sunday here where they talked about a guy in their building named Peter. They told us how they had been talking to Peter and had told him a little about the church; about how they just returned from a mission in England. As we were talking to them and how they could help Peter more they told us how they had planned to have us over for dinner the next Sunday; so they told us that they would invite Peter to come as well and they did!! On Sunday we went over for dinner and Peter and his wife came and we were able to talk a lot about the church and what we believe and what we, as missionaries, do and it was great! At the end of the meeting Brother Merrett asked if we could come visit them again and they said yes so we got their phone number and are going to be seeing them this week or next week! It was one of the coolest experience that I have had on my mission and to see how big of a help members are to this work because they know people and talk to people that we never could as missionaries and people can see members and see how they are just normal people. It also helped me see that I need to do that when I get home, to continue to be a missionary even though I do not have the nametag anymore.

      We have also been working with a guy named Ryan and we have seen him four or five times and he has been coming to church and is really solid! We saw him on Thursday and we had planned to teach him about the word of wisdom and before we started to do anything he asked about the word of wisdom because he had heard about it a little bit at church and from members so we were able to teach him the word of wisdom and he took it so well! He told us how the blessings that come from the word of wisdom are exactly what he wants and he has already been trying to cut down on smoking and in the last 2 weeks he has gone from forty cigarettes a day to ten a day which is amazing especially for not even knowing about the word of wisdom! It was so amazing to see how prepared he is and how much he has changed by himself because he is reading the Book of Mormon daily and comes to church almost every week! He has changed so much since we have been meeting with him and it mostly has come from himself applying what he has been learning, which is something that we should all be doing. He has told us that he does want to be baptized and that he feels that this is where Gods is telling him to be and he has such a good testimony of the Book of Mormon so once he quits smoking he wants to be baptized! Also he was member referral from someone in the YSA so yeah member work is the way to go!

        We were able to teach quite a bit this week and have been seeing a lot of success and a lot of progression from the people that we are working with! Being on a mission has been a pretty amazing experience and I am very grateful that I still have some time to be here in Canada eh! I have really learned that as we share the Gospel our testimony grows and as we learn more about the gospel and apply it our desire to share the Gospel will increase!

Love Elder Slack

Sometimes we like to just have some poutine :)

Elder Ringheim is a pretty great cook! 

Look at our sweet new Car! runs pretty good:)

It is a lot easier to do the hard things that are required of us from our Father in Heaven when we truly love the Lord and love the people that we are serving

This week has been really good! The weather is finally starting to get better, it has been raining less and not as hard so I have been enjoying walking around a lot more than the last couple of weeks. Our teaching pool has been shrinking a little bit just because people are not progressing right now and some of our investigators are out of town for a while and a bunch of other reasons so we have really been trying to focus on find new people to teach and to really share the Gospel with people because we love them and because it truly is something that we love and cherish and something that will help others in their lives. I have found that when I really talk to people and share this unique message that we have out of love and because I love the Lord and the Gospel and want others to have the Joy that I have had come from it that people. It is a lot easier to do the hard things that are required of us from our Father in Heaven when we truly love the Lord and love the people that we are serving. 

   We have had some really cool miracles that happened is that we got some really good referrals from our members! One of our members called us and asked if we had a dinner appointment and invited us over for dinner and one of their friends that just moved into their basement was talking to one of the people that she works with and she was telling him about the church and what she does there and he was asking her why she was so happy and she told him it was because of what she believed and he is really looking for something in his life so she told him about us and how we love to share a message of happiness and she asked if we could come over to tell him more about it and he said we could. So we went over there yesterday and told him about the Atonement and Repentance and how he can find that happiness in his life. We invited him to read the Book of Mormon and he was very eager to read and to see if this is something that can help him in his life. It was so cool and he is someone who is definatly prepared by the Lord to hear the Gospel. His name is Dan.

  Then we got another awesome referral that we are going to see this week. The family that gave it to us, the Adams, told us how they met RJ and he actually came up to them and asked if they where religious because he noticed that they were different and he told them that he is looking for a church and can't seem to find the right one and he wants to learn more about what we believe. 

 It has been such a good week but transfers are next week and we get calls this Saturday so hopefully I can stay in Abby for another transfer. I guess I'll find out this week.

Love Elder Slack

Round 2

Well, this week has been crazy and really weird mostly because I got transferred back to Abbotsford 2nd Ward and they had their Christmas party on Friday so I got to see all the members again and they all kept asking me if there was a reason I was back or if we were on splits or something but I had to tell them that I had been transferred back. They were all saying that I should just call this place home from now on. 

 

  Something else really crazy happened on Friday. So, there were 2 sets of Elders in the Abby 2nd ward and I served in the other one first and one of the other Elders in the other area was supposed to train a new missionary but the new missionary went home in the MTC so that Elder got sent up to Prince George and they closed his area and we took over their area so we are taking care of both areas until next transfer when they re-open the other area. So, I am in exactly the same area I was in 7 months ago. We have been teaching quite a bit and have been seeing a lot of success in the last few days and have been crazy busy trying to combine the two areas. So we have twice as many people to teach right now so it was kind of a blessing to us because our area was pretty slow when I got here but now we are crazy busy.

  I am really glad to be somewhere that I actually know because I really did not want to get transferred 3 weeks before Christmas but it's ok because I got transferred to one of my old areas! One of my favorite areas! This area is so amazing and really takes care of us. It is really crazy because when I left Abbotsford I always wanted to finish my mission here or in Kamloops 2nd and I didn't get to finish my mission but I did get to come back to Abby 2nd Ward so God does really answer prayers and I really can't believe that I got to come back.

 

Well gotta go Love ya Bye!

Love Elder Slack

{Dec 7, 2015} A Night in Bethlehem

Well this was an interesting week with a lot of very funny moments, like yesterday we got to church and figured out that Elder Harris grabbed the wrong suit jacket so he was high priesting it to all of our meetings and to church which was pretty funny at least for me. Lately we have been talking to a lot of people that say they are not religious but they always say Merry Christmas. So, we were at one door and Elder Harris was talking to a lady and she told us that she was not religious even though she had a ton of Christmas decorations on her house and so he went to give her a card and said "we have a really cool video on this website all about Christmas and you don't have to love Jesus to love Christmas" and after the lady shut the door. I just about died laughing so hard but that is how the world seems to be now, that Christmas is just an event and not about anything more than presents and a big man in a red suit.

 

   Besides that we were able to have a really good week. Ken, the guy that Elder Mattingley and I Baptized received the Priesthood and we took him out to a lesson for the first time so that was Awesome! I has been really great to see how much he has grown and changed from this gospel! He is almost a completely different person that when I first met him. We also were able to see our investigators Sabas, who is from Mexico, and we brought a member that speaks Spanish and we taught him about the Book of Mormon. He does not speak very good English but he told our member that he does not understand everything that we say but that he does feel good. We had a very good lesson and our member was able to talk to him a lot about the Book of Mormon and what it was about. He was very excited to read it but he is going back to Mexico for a month and will not be back until January 15th so hopefully Elder Harris will be able to reconnect with him when he gets back.

   Also we got transfer calls on Saturday and I am getting transferred to Abbotsford 2nd ward or I guess I should say I am getting transferred back to the Abbotsford 2nd ward because they have 2 sets of Elders in that ward now. So, I served in Clearbrook and now I am going to the other set of Elders, but they both cover the same area and the same ward so it should be pretty awesome because that ward is really cool and I really like it there.

  This week our ward also had a Christmas activity called A Night in Bethlehem and it was so cool! They decorated the gym to look like Bethlehem with little tents with shops and activities and they had a play of the nativity and it was awesome. It was way better than the standard dinner and it was really centered on Christ and what Christmas is Really about!

Well I have to go Love ya Bye

Love Elder Slack

Another great companion in Brookswood

So, this week has been really crazy and I do not have a lot of time but I got a new companion Elder Harris and he's like 6 foot 5 so I am pretty short compared to him. Brookswood has been really good. We have a few new people to teach this week and we were able to see both of them this week. Their names are Mike and Ray. I'll tell you more about them next week but today has been really crazy and our email time is getting cut short because the library is really busy.

 

The Brookswood Ward has been really awesome! I am really glad that I got to stay here because the ward here is so supportive of us here. Well I am out of time. sorry for the lame email.

Love Elder Slack