Week 33: Banished

Hello everyone! The big news of this week is that I'm getting TRANSFERRED!! I'm going out to Medicine Hat, Alberta tomorrow, which is a little city southeast of Calgary, and Sister Lamontagne is staying here in Auburn Bay and McKenzie and getting two new companions! My new companion's name is Sister Bueno, and she's a baller. I'm super pumped. All of the missionaries love Medicine Hat!

My last week in this area was crazy and fast! I was still pretty sick last week, so we tried to do some missionary work but on Friday we stayed home and slept and watched 2 silly church movies and some members brought us Subway through our sliding glass door so that I could be all healed to do lots of good missionary work on Saturday! We stopped by loads of people and had some great gospel conversations and ate LOTS of Chinese food for dinner (ginger beef is one of the perks of being in Canada!). On Sunday, we had our usual lots of church and meetings and we did some super good door-knocking. We had an awesome dinner and telestrations lesson with this cute family in our ward and we were so excited about teaching the gospel and wanted so badly to find somebody to teach that we spent a whole extra hour trying to find someone who was interested in learning the gospel with no luck, haha. But good things come to those that wait! On Monday we texted one of our friends who we've been trying to meet with for a long time and told her about transfers and she told us she could meet with us! So we met her at Tim Horton's yesterday and set up a time to teach her more about the gospel. It's so exciting. And yesterday we were knocking on doors and somehow not a single person is home, but we felt prompted to go to a different street and the first guy we talked to told us that we could teach him while he was puttering around in his garage, so we talked about the Book of Mormon and the need for priesthood authority and the restoration of the gospel! It was awesome and he told us that he's going to check out the Book of Mormon that we gave him and see how he feels about it. He's elect, he just doesn't know it yet!

On Saturday we had a lesson with Naomi and it was so much fun! We talked about Lehi's dream and had her draw it out on a whiteboard and talked about why it's so important to do things that keep us holding on to the iron rod. She's a great little artist and scripture reader and was so sad when she found out one of us might be getting transferred. I'm gonna miss her but she's gonna do great!

Alma 5:26 says "And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" I think this question is so important because Alma is asking it to people who have already found God and experienced His love in their lives, but as I've grown up I've found that it's so important to be continually assessing your relationship with Him and repenting and changing so that we can sing the song of redeeming love! Being a missionary has taught me how centered the gospel of Jesus Christ is on the idea of repentance. I'm so grateful for the ability to change and grow. I love the hope of the gospel and I love sharing it with other people!

I love you all! Have a great week! I'll write you next week from Medicine Hat!

Sister Willis

Pictures! Of the district and my friend Naomi and the big Auburn Bay chair. I'm gonna miss it!