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.

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

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

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:)

I also know that he calls the weak and the simple to perform great things

     This week we were able to see a lot of success in teaching! We were able to do a lot more teaching this week and find some really good people that we are going to meet with this week.

     Monday, after P-Day, started off pretty slow because we were supposed to have a lesson with one of our investigators and then go to a FHE with a family in the ward but we were not able to get a hold of our investigator and the wife in the family fell and had to go to the Hospital on Monday so our evening opened up real quick! So Elder Ringheim and I decided to pray to know where we should go and so after we prayed we felt like we should go by a former investigator that we have been trying to contact so we bused over there and went by him and he did not answer so we decided that there must be a reason that we should be over there so we were walking down the street and I felt like we should go and knock the house on the end of the street and a lady answered and so we talked to her for a little bit and she did not seem too interested until we started to talk about the plan of salvation and she was really intrigued by it and told us that she would invite us in but she had plans later that evening and she was really busy that we but that we could come by next week! So we are going to go by this week and teach her more! Then we kept walking and Elder Ringheim felt like we should knock a house that was across the street and so we did and it turned out to be a lady who was visiting her parents from Mexico and we felt like we should talk about the Plan of Salvation and how it blesses our families and it turned out she had a little daughter and so we talked to her about how we believe that families can be together forever. She told us that she would like to learn more but she was going back to Mexico on Wednesday morning so we told her that there was missionaries in Tijuana where she lived and told her to contact the missionaries there and she told us she would!! So it was so amazing to see how the spirit guides even though our initial thought did not work out there was a reason why we where there!

      Then our week just kept getting better! We were able to see Ryan a guy that the YSA elders passed to us and he is very prepared and he was telling us how since he has been reading the Book of Mormon it has really helped him, especially with his patience at work and he told us how his friends have told him that he has really changed over the last month that he has been meeting with missionaries and coming to church! He has been very prepared and is a very sincere and humble guy. He has been having great experiences with the Book of Mormon and has prayed about it and he has felt that he received an answer that it is true! I have seen so many times how the Book of Mormon changes people and it really is that way that people can come to know if Jesus Christ has restored his Church and brought the fullness of his Gospel back to the Earth! 

      We also had a great Lesson with Matti Lott and his kids and him and his son have come to church the last two weeks! We had dinner with them on Wednesday and were able to teach the Plan of Salvation and it was a really great lesson and Cameron was very interactive and asking a lot of questions so we hope that we can continue to work with them! Hopefully we can help them become fully active and help Cameron get Baptized!

       Then we had a Zone Meeting on Friday which was really good and we talked a lot about conversion but it was a little nerve racking for me because I had to give a training on Conversion in front of 25 people which was very interesting but it went well. I have seen on my mission how as we put in our effort to prepare, the spirit will guide us and help us to accomplish whatever the Lord has asked of us. I have also seen how since I have been on my mission that I have been able to overcome my fears more and put more trust in the Lord to help guide me because I don't think I could have given a training in front of a group that big at the beginning of my mission. I have been able to trust in the Lord and in myself more. 

     A lot of the things that we talked about were about conversion and about why we do things. Do we do it out of obligation or out of a love for the Lord and his Gospel? As we become converted to Christ and his Gospel our desires will be pure and righteous. As we do things out of a love for the Lord we will do them better because we have a pure motivation and the Lord will bless us for that and help us even more. I have been able to think about why I do the things I do and I would invite everyone to do that. I also learned that if we are doing this out of duty and obligation that it's much better than not doing it and God does not expect us to change right this second be he does expect us to be progressing. It is about eternal progression not instant perfection! So it is ok if we are not perfect yet God does not expect us to be but he does ask us to get a little closer everyday and to just get a little better than we were before and that is how we will become more converted!

     I am very grateful for the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that he would love us enough to give his life for us! I know this Gospel is true and that this is His church restored to the earth once again! I also know that he calls the weak and the simple to perform great things and that we can accomplish anything that he gives us as we follow Him and our Saviour! Life was meant to be enjoyed and happy so make it that way and Pure Eternal Joy comes through our Saviour Jesus Chris so "look unto him in every thought. Doubt not fear not!" D&C 6:36

Love Elder Slack

Beautiful sunset in Victoria

Healthy living in Victoria

Peacocks in the park

Conference was Awesome

Well Conference was Awesome. I wish I would watched Conference when I was home. There were a ton of Good Talks but my favorites were Elder Holland's and Elder Renlunds. All the talks were Awesome but those were my favorites. 

  Elder Renlund's talk that was all about how "He did it for me" The Atonement is so vast in that it covers everyone who has ever lived for all things that we have faced and will face but it is also so personal in that Christ knows how each and everyone of us feels in every moment of doubt, sorrow, pain and sin. He can comfort us in any situation that we are in because he has felt what we are feeling exactly. He loved us enough to do if for us so that we could experience the same joy as he has. As we grow closer to God we will realize how much we are unprofitable servants and see the love that he has for us and the more we will want to do. The more we will strive to follow him exactly.

 Then Elder Holland's talk was amazing on how we need to hold fast to the spirit and the impressions that we receive from it when we are at places like conference or the Temple or at church. But My favorite quote from his talk is " The Lord blesses those who want to improve" We do not need to be perfect to receive the blessings but just like it says in Alma 32 if we no more have a desire to believe also if we have a desire to do good the Lord will Bless us. Sorry I did not have much time today but i'll talk more about conference next week!

Love Elder Slack

{Mar 29 '16} God has truly helped us to bless the lives of others

These last two Weeks have been really good. The work here has picked up a lot and we finally have more people to teach so it is really looking up here in Kelowna. This last week we have been able to teach a lot more and have some really good people that we are working with. We have been working with Lillian's friend Rob, Lillian is a recent Convert of about a month, Rob is doing good he has a lot of good questions and really is seeking to know the truth and to find out. He tells us that he has a long way to go but we have had some really good lessons about the Atonement and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they have been really good. Testifying of how Christ is there to help us no matter what situation we are in or where we are at in life. He seems to be doing good but he is taking it slow but Lillian is Awesome and is a very good true friend she has been talking to him a lot and helping him answer his questions. Then we had a former investigator come to church on Sunday! Her name is Radmila and she has really changed from how she used to be and has a strong desire to learn more and to continue to change and figure out how she can find more happiness in life because she told us that she has a big house and a really good paying job and a family but she just does not feel that happy so we were able to tell her what she is missing in life and it is obviously the Gospel so we are really excited to see where it goes with her.

   Another really Sweet Miracle that we saw this week was we decided to go out to this small town that we cover outside of Kelowna called Lake Country to do some finding because missionaries never go out there and we went to the street that we had planned and knocked on a few houses and it just did not feel right so we went to a back up street that we planned and the first door that we knocked on we talked to a Mom named Amy and we talked to her for about 20 minutes about families and how this gospel blesses families and how we believe that families can be together forever and it was such a good conversation and she told us that we could come back to teach her family more. Then the next door that we knock on we meet a Lady named Tina and talked to her and she told us that we should comeback to teach her and her family more. So we where pretty excited and thought that maybe we should go and end on a high note but we both felt like we should stay and so we kept knocking and the next 15 houses there was no luck but then we knocked on this house and we thought there was no one home but a little kid answered the door and his mom was right behind him and we were able to talk to the mom, Gale, and teach her about the Book of Mormon and she told us how she had always wanted to read it and find out what it is all about and she told us how she really admired missionaries on how we go around and teach people and offer to help people and she told us to come back and we could talk to her and her family more about the Book and where it came from! It was such an Awesome Day! We found three really cool solid families to teach. We have really seen a lot of Miracles this week which is really nice and has shown me that God really does have a plan and that he is always preparing his children to hear this Message because before this week we had not seen much success but this week it just did a 180 and is going really well. We have not been doing anything dramatically different but Elder Frye and I have been trying to make little changes in our lives to help us be more obedient  and God has truly helped us to bless the lives of others. 

  I really love my mission and what it has taught me about being a follower of Chirst and I am so grateful for all that I have learned and that I still need to learn but this week I have been able to see how as we just continue to do what the Lord has asked of us he will bless us. He is bound by his word to bless us!

Love Elder Slack

A mission is definitely not what I expected or anticipated but it has been exactly what I needed

This week was good. It has been a little hard because lots of our investigators stopped meeting with us but we have really been blessed with some new people to teach. We were able to find a family this week and they are really cool. Their names are Troy and Joslynn and they have four kids. They are a really cool family that we tracted into and they let us in and we talked to them for 30 minutes and went over what we do as missionaries and went over how that message that we share is meant to bless families and how important the family is and they told us how they used to go to church but they felt like God was being taken out of church and that people were not living what they were preaching and they told us that the church they used to go to did not feel right and that something was missing. We told them a lot about our church and how we feel the spirit there. It is a place that we go to worship and fellowship. They really liked it and told us that we could come back after spring break because they would be really busy. It was such a great experience! We talked to them about how that spirit that is missing in other churches is in our church and that we believe that the church that Jesus Christ established is the same church that we attend now and it has been restored to the earth. It was really great to meet them because we have been doing a lot of tracting and going by people that met missionaries before and we have not had too much success but we met this family who have really been prepared to hear the Restored  Gospel. They have been missing something and This Gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness. We have been able to set up some lessons with other people that we met and with some people that met missionaries before so the work has been a lot better here and it is going good. 

   A mission is definitely not what I expected or anticipated but it has been exactly what I needed and I am very grateful that I still have some time to learn some more and to continue to share this Gospel that has blessed my life so much. Crazy thing is I didn't understand, and I am not sure that I still do completely, how much it has impacted my life and blessed me until I came on my mission. I have seen how it has changed others lives as well and given them that hope that it has given me. I have come to learn how real the Gospel is and how much it does help us with and how much Christ helps me with everyday, even things that are not directly related to the Gospel or things I thought were not related to the Gospel. I have also learned that life is not meant to be easy and it will never be easy. Something that President Burt says a lot is that there is not much growth in a comfort zone and there is not much comfort in a growing zone, that is a butchered paraphrasing but basically it means that hard things help us grow and learn and mold us into who God needs us to be.

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

Another crazy week in Brookswood

Well we have had another Crazy Week! After Ken got Baptized our teaching pool went down after we reflected some people and some people said they did not want to meet anymore. So we did a ton of finding this week and we actually got 2 new really cool people to teach. One of them was a referral from a member and his name is Ray. He is an ex Jehovah witness and we are not sure why he is not a JW anymore but what really matters is that he wants to learn more about the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints so that is really awesome and he really wants to read the Book of Mormon and he actually has some roommates who are interested in Mormons too and would like to learn more so it looks like the spirit is a real thing and that it does really work on people and the God does really prepare his children, who would've guessed?!

  

  The other new person that we are teaching is Mike. He was given our number by some previous missionaries in Brookswood and he gave us a call a few weeks ago and we finally got to meet him last night and it was so cool. We honestly thought he was not going to be that interested and be one of those people that likes to argue and we were dead wrong. It was such a great lesson and he told us how a lot of things have gone bad in his life recently and how he is really trying to put his life back together and really wants to grow closer to God and it was a super good lesson and we talked a lot about the things that Christ has done for us and how the Gospel and the message we share is meant to bring joy to our lives and we invited him to be baptized and he accepted it!! It was so awesome and the spirit was so strong!

  So this week has been a little harder because we have not been able to do as much teaching, but meeting these two new friends it was all worth it and we are so glad the God has prepared people to accept the message of the restoration and to feel the Joy and happiness that comes from this gospel.

  In knowing that, this should not be a side note but Ken was confirmed yesterday and it was great. After the confirmation he had a huge smile on his face and was just really happy! It was great and Ken is even cooler because he loves baseball and he always tells me what is going on with the post season so I guess we are pretty good friends. 

  Oh and we got transfer calls and I am staying in Brookswood and Elder Mattingley is going to Powell River and my new Companion is Elder Harris and he has been out for 3 months. Well I gotta go so see ya!

Elder Slack

He seems a lot happier and it seems like he is feeling a lot more joy!

So this week has been crazy! Transfers were this week and neither of us got moved but we did have to take our car to the mission office so that we could swap our car with some Elders in Kelowna because we had a Subaru and they had a Cruze but in Kelowna it snows and it doesn't in Langley so they took the all wheel drive car to where it snows and the front wheel drive car where it doesn't snow. So we drove to Richmond on Wednesday and were there for 2 hours waiting for the car to get there and for it to get switched so they know were it is and everything so needless to say it was kind of a mess but it got done.

  So about a week and a half ago we went to the Canada US Border and it was pretty cool; no wall yet but that should be up right after Trump gets in office but for now it's just a ditch, trees and a piller because I guess it is not a big problem. 

We saw In-N-Out up in Canada but it was a 2 1/2 hour wait to get it so we didn't....it was really sad ;)

   Ken is Also is doing awesome! He came to church yesterday and loved it! He was able to meet a lot of members and had a really good time! He has changed so much since we first met him. He seems a lot happier and it seems like he is feeling a lot more joy! He is still on track to be baptized on October 4th still! He is so prepared and very willing to learn more. Sheila has also been doing well. We were able to give her a blessing yesterday because she has been sick for a week and it was really good because she said she felt a lot better. She is progressing really well and just needs to tell her family that she is getting baptized and then she will be baptized!! Another one of our investiagtors is Leaf and we have had a few really good lessons about the spirit and found out when he has felt it which was really good because he says he has never felt it but he has!

We found a free book thing on the side of the street so we put in a Book of Mormon and it was taken a few days later! So thats pretty cool.

Well I have to go love ya Bye!

Love Elder SLack