Letter as of 5/26/2014

Hello everyone!

 I hope you all had a fantastic week! I cant believe its already week 5 of transfer 7. Where did all the time go?

We found a new investigator this week! His name is David, he's super great. We only had time to teach him the first half of lesson one but it went really well. Cheri has been progressing so incredibly much. Her baptism is set forJune 28th and she's really excited for it. Shes rearranged her work schedule so she can start coming to church every week. She's already asking if she can have a calling in the ward lol. She said her first prayer the other night! She was raised saying tbe Lords Prayer and so this was her first nonscripted prayer ever. It seriously was the most heartfelt, honest prayer I have ever heard. It was fantastic :) I'm so excited for her.

I really hope I don't get transferred in two weeks, that would stink.  I really don't think I will though, this is Presidents last transfer and I don't think he will change a lot of things before he leaves.

Brooke went to the temple for the first time in 6 years! We were able to do baptisms with her on Wednesday, which was so so so incredibly fantastic.

                                                   Its raining outside! Reminds me of home :)

So something fun that I have been doing in my studies is I have a blank copy of the book of Mormon, and as I'm reading the only thing I highlight/circle are the names of Christ. Its amazing to see how often he is mentioned on every page. The average is about 10 per page I've found.

Exchanges with the sister training leaders went fantastic as always. I love exchanges, I always learn so much. Turns out Sister Boyd is as huge of a harry potter fan as I am. We ended up trying to stump each other with random trivia facts. I totally won. Then we felt bad that we weren't as focused as we could be so we played book of Mormon trivia instead.

There is this super awesome member family we teach pretty regularly, and there son just came home from a mission.Everytime we teach he always tries telling us better scriptures to share for the principles we teach, or if we share an object lesson he always says he's seen it a hundred times. So annoying.. Kevin, get out! Haha. 
Besides that hiccup its been a super great week.

 I love serving a mission, I love the Lord, and I love you guys.

-Sister Jessica Cannon

Letter as of 5/19/2014

AHHH BEST WEEK EVER!

 

Miracles are happening here in Dove Valley!

 

PHIL FINNALLY ACCEPTED A BAPTISMAL DATE!!!! This is huge. Huger than huge! I honestly thought this day would never come. Oh man am I excited. Details to come.

 

Monday was super great. We met with this super less active woman, named Gini. She's been divorced for 5 years, and she's still pretty bitter about it. She feels that there is no place for a divorced woman in the church, and she's gone pretty anti. But for some reason she loves us and wants us to come over each week, so that's a huge miracle right there. I feel a little out of my element since I have obviously not been divorced, so I don't really know how to handle this, but I know it will all work out.

 

Tuesday and Wednesday were fantastic as well. We taught a lot of wonderful lessons, especially on Wednesday night. We met with one of our investigators, Cheri, in a members home. We taught her the Plan of Salvation, and she had a lot of great questions. Some were pretty deep, so we put a rain check on answering a few of them. She has accepted the invitation to be baptized, but we didn't put her on date yet. When we meet with her this Wednesday we will put her on date though, for June 21st. I'm super excited. Things are finally happening in the ward.

 

 

President and Sister Toombs

 

 

Thursday we had Zone Conference, so three stakes of missionaries got together to receive amazing trainings from President and Sister Toombs, and our Assistants to the President, Elders Hoyt, Wiffler, and Brennan.

                                                                      THE ZONE

 

 Man oh man I sure learned so much from them. A lot of the training was about Hastening the Work, and also learning how to ask inspired, heaven-sent questions.  I learned the coolest thing ever! So the Story of Gideon vs the Mideonites. (sp?) Gideon started with 32,000 men God weeded out those who were fearful  – 10,000 men remained God weeded out those who were not dedicated – only 300 men remained God confirmed His promise to win with only the 300 , even though the ratio of good guys to bad guys is 1/500. They kicked butt and won of course. There are 7.5 billion people in the world. 15 million members of the LDS church. The ratio is still 1/500. Now is the time to go to battle. Pretty cool, right? My mind was basically blown. Friday we had our lesson with Phil. We went in there thinking we were going to talk about prayer, but then we asked him a question, I don't even remember what it was, something along the lines of What do you want to learn from meeting with us- and it exploded from there till we invited him to be baptized, he said now, we testified and invited him again, this time with the specific day of the 12th of July, and he said yes! The Spirit was sooo strong it was ridiculous. My heart was racing the entire time and it was fantastic.

 

I love this church.

And I love you too! :)

Sister Cannon

Letter as of 5/12/2014

Happy mothers day!

 

Man, it was so so great to see everyone yesterday. You guys are the best! :)

 

Its been a pretty great week, besides the fact that it is snowing outside right now, and there's about 4 inches of it on the ground. :/

 

 

 

 

 

I hit my 9 month mark on Wednesday! The tradition for sisters is to take a nine month pregnancy shot, soo I did. I felt stupid but it was pretty funny. I was praying that our host mom wouldn't walk into our room when I was taking the picture ha-ha. I stuffed clothes under my shirt, like I said felt stupid...

 

 

 

On Thursday was Zone meeting, it was so great. The missionaries here that are in leadership positions are top notch. A lot of the training was about having a vision, our desire to serve, and overcoming discouragement. I learned soo much.

 

This week is going to be awesome. Wednesday we are going to the temple, whoooh! And this LA(less active) we have been working with forever just got a limited use temple recommend on Sunday, and so she is coming to the temple as well on Wednesday, so after our sessions we'll go do baptisms with her. I'm so excited! I honestly don't even remember the last time I did baptisms, I think I was like 17.

 

And then on Thursday we have zone conference, so about 4 stakes of missionaries get together for training. Spiritual high here I come! Its our last zone conference with President Toombs, since he goes home in July. I'm looking forward to meeting President Mendenhall (Sp?) but its going to be weird ha.

 

This ward has been so great. we got 10 referrals this week from members, that never happens! We normally will get like 2 tops a week.

 

Uhhh, I don't know what else to say, sorry my letters are getting smaller and more boring each week! My bad :)

 

Love you all so much!

You rock!

-Sister Jessica Cannon

Letter as of 5/5/2014

Hi hi!

Oh wow, this week has been so insanely busy. Picked up my new companion on Monday, taught a bajillion lessons, well 22 but same thing, was given the opportunity to speak in sacrament meeting, with ten minutes notice.... and today we are moving again so I was busy packing earlier as well. Insane!

And I haven't had sweets in 9 days, so that's impressive I think.

Short story long, I love missionary work :)

We taught some fantastic lessons this week, we met with Phil 3 times this week, and he finally progressing! He's reading the book of Mormon on his own, and he came to church! Well just the first hour, but still, he came.

We met with a lot of members this week, trying to introduce Sister Robbins to the ward and all that. Its weird being the senior companion haha. But things have been working pretty well, she's super great. A little young, but whatevs! She grew up in a small town of 1000 people.... that's so insane!

Saturday morning we had our stake missionary breakfast. The stake presidency has all the missionaries in the stake over for breakfast every other transfer, this time it was at stake president carpenters house. Its always so great, they feed us amazing food, and then give an even more amazing devotional afterwards. It was focused a lot of how to become a consecrated missionary.

And then President Crawford stood up (Maryns dad) and since it hadn't even been 24 hours since Maryn opened her mission call (She's going to the Houston East mission, Spanish speaking, reports to the Mexican MTC on July 23rd) he was a little emotional about missionary work, and his talk was 12 pieces of advice he wants to give his daughter before she left. It was so great.

Sister Cannon and Maryn

Since Maryn has become such a great friend to me, this talk really stood out to me. It wasn't anything profound, in fact the advice he gave us( for her) was: Get up on time, smile, have confidence, get involved with the ward, don't become casual about your mission, work, follow all the mission rules, serve your companion, trust the Lord, love everyone.

Like I said, nothing unheard of, but it was great to hear it from him.

Sunday right before sacrament meeting, Brother Behrmann the first counseler in the bishopric asked if I could speak because the speaker wasn't coming because she was sick. I almost asked if my companion would do it so that she could just jump right into things with the ward, but I didn't. I ended up talking a lot about Grace and the Atonement, I feel like it went really well, but who knows :)

So we get to move again today. My 3rd house in one week. We knew we wouldn't be staying with the Jensons for long, just didn't realize it would be this short. Sister Myrick was ready to have us move in earlier in expected. We could stay at the Jenson's for another week, but we just want to get settled into our new house.

Its been so beautiful the past couple of days. Its been in the low 80's and the sun has been out in force, its been great :) I'm getting a tan, you can notice it when I take off my watch, ha-ha.

Hope you are all doing fantastically swell! I love you!

-Sister Cannon

Letter as of 4/26

Hellllooooooooooooo!

Big news first. We moved houses Saturday. Sister Falke got transferred :( I'm still in Parker, the Dove Valley ward. My new comp is Sis. Robbins, she's been out four months.

She's super sweet, a little unsure of herself, but that's okay! 

Funny story. She's from a extremely small town in Idaho of 1000 people, and no stop lights. she is so scared to be the driver here, no one informed her that I didn't have driving privileges. She looked like she was going to pass how when I told her she was the driver, haha. But we got to our home in one peace! So it all works out :)

This week has been so insanely busy. Moving houses two days before transfers is the worst. Never knew how much stuff I had accumulated! I have no idea what i'm going to do when its time to go home. Ugh. Good things that's forever away :)

We had a sleepover at our sister training leaders house last night, it was really fun. It was good to see everyone one last time before we all got split up. Sister Falke got transferred to Brighton. She spent the first 8 months of her mission there, then came to parker for two transfers, and now she is back up there. Different ward but same stake. She got "promoted" to sister training leader, which is super exciting, she'll do great.

We got a new ward mission leader, Bro. Leishman. He is awesome! Our last ward mission leader didn't really know how to move the work forward, and got discouraged super easily, and basically Brother Leishman is a boss. He was the ward mission leader in his last ward, and I know the missionaries really well there, and they couldn't stop raving about him. So i'm super excited about that.

We found a new investigator this week! Cheri C. She came to church on sunday as well, which is super great. That's always the hardest part. She told us after the service that she wanted to get baptized! Ahhhh. The problem is she is the busiest woman I've ever met, its almost impossible to meet with her. She is a in-home nurse, or something like that. It'll all work out though! I'm super excited.

I love the Dove Valley ward, I'm so grateful that I get to be here another transfer.

Life is great, your great, everything's great :)

Love you all!

-Sister Cannon