October 29, 2012

Hey family and friends!! How is everyone?? I am so great!! This was on great week...but it was also very difficult! I forgot how hard and demanding it is to be a real missionary! It was hard getting back into a normal schedule, but it is also SO worth it! Are you ready to hear all about my amazing week as a missionary up here in FREEZING COLD Canada?? So Monday was a normal p-day...well kind of. Kevin and Cindi Palmer invited all the Sisters over for a final lunch. So we all met there and had a great time. We ate more good food and had great company! I love the Palmers and I am going to miss seeing them! They are so Christlike and I want to be just like them one day! After we all had lunch together, we went to the Temple. We met Linda Palmer and her daughter there. We took pictures with her. Kevin and Cindi also came and Elder Melchin just happened to be there as well. So he joined in on all the fun! When we were all done taking pictures, we went over to Jenny's house. That is where 2 companionships of sisters stayed while at the temple. She lives right accross the street. We all just hung out for a couple hours. Then we had to run because we had to still do all our normal things like e-mail and shop and everything else! When p-day was all over, we had supper with the Gough family. They are really nice and have a beautiful home in the middle of nowhere. It was wierd being a real missionary again. To be honest, it felt like we were purging into our area...the only plus side was that we knew where we were. Then comes Tuesday...there was a huge snowstorm...it reminded me how NOT ready for winter I am. I am really not ready...and it is probably going to be awful because the temple is done and we didn't have a bad winter last year...so I am really trying to prepare myself. Anyways we had our District Meeting. It was a gongshow as usual. But I have to admit I am actually grateful to be back with the Elders. I love the sisters, but I am ready for a break from them. After we went out to lunch, we had to take some stuff to the mission office. I love the Sisters that work there! While we were there, Sister Wansgard asked me if she could do my trunky call....I may have had a minor freak out!! She had to confirm which airport I was flying into and my parents e-mail...so they can send you my flight itinerary....like I said, I might of freaked out a little bit. That evening, we had supper with the McBrides. They are from Ireland originally and they just got back from a mission there. They are so sweet, but they are heading off for somewhere warm now that it has snowed...lots of Canadians do that. Then we made an appearance at ESL. It was great to be back for a little bit. One thing that I did not miss about being a normal missionary was nightly planning! It took us forever because we basically forgot how to do it! But things will get easier as we get back into the swing of things. Wednesday was great...besides the fact that it is hard to get the motivation to be a missionary when it is cold outside. After we finished our studies, we went to Jenny Aurora's house to do service. We moved everything out of her storage room into her living room....not sure what the purpose of that was, but we just do what she says. Then we had a lesson with Sister Jiang. We taught her a lesson about applying the scriptures to our lives. Then we met with Carmen. She is amazing! The book is at the publishers and she is so excited! She had a bunch of questions about the Book of Mormon that she wanted us to answer. We really like answering questions...that is one thing we are still good at. That evening we had supper with the Litchfield's. They are very nice and make really yummy food. And then last but not least that night, we met with Sister Kamenka. We talked with her and taught her about the temple and the importance of them. She was not as combative as she usually is. Hopefully she is feeling the Spirit telling her what she needs to do! Thursday was a LONG day. It was weekly planning. Well remember how I said it felt like we were purging in. It was not fun. As much as I already don't like weekly planning, I was taught how important it is because when you don't do it for 4 weeks things just get crazy. So it took us all day to do our planning and get all ready for next week. We had to update all our records and basically do Area Book CPR. It was a fun time let me tell you! Our dinner appt canceled that night, so we just got all our planning done and then we went to the Ford's. We had a lesson with them about the importance of listening to the Holy Ghost and avoiding the adversary. Friday was a great day! First after we did our studies we had to go to the SE part of the city so that Sister Batty could visit the Vampires....to get her blood drawn. There was a long wait, but I was prepared for it this time! I brought the Ensign! It was great read! On our way home we had some more paperwork that needed to go to the Mission Office, so we stopped by there. While we were there Sister Lawlor was stressed out because they asked for the typed comment cards to put in the cornerstone of the temple...but they weren't all done. So for a couple hours we were able to help her since we know the system. It was a great help to her! We had to leave after a few hours because we had an appt to give service to Sister Hobbs. We cleaned up her house and had a great visit with her. She is such a great missionary despite all her health problems! Then we had supper with the Walters family! They are so great!! It was probably one of the most entertaining dinners I have had in awhile. I was sitting by their 2 yr old son Eli. He was so nice. First he wanted to share his drink with me. Then when the meal was wrapping up and my plate was empty, he took his plate and dumped it onto mine because he wanted to share and didn't want me to be hungry. It was so adorable and all I could do was laugh. When supper was over, he wanted to show us all his toys. He was so excited! So we went downstairs and played with some toys for a few minutes. That family is seriously just so adorable!! Brother and Sister Walters were just called as Ward Missionaries...that means we need to get some investigators so they can help us out! When we were done there, we had a lesson with Christy. She is doing well. She missed meeting with us while we were busy at the temple. We read the 2000 stripling warrior story with her and talked about the importance of doing the little things to be prepared. Saturday and Sunday were AMAZING days!! I hope that I will be able to remember everything about them! First on Saturday, we had a very special missionary meeting!! Elder M. Russell Ballard had a conference with us!! We also heard from his traveling companions: Elder Craig C. Christensen of the Presidency of the Seventy and Elder Walker of the Seventy. It was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!! It was so neat to be in the presence of the Lord's apostles! We had a meeting with them and after they spoke to us, they answered some questions-pertaining to missionary work. I don't know how to describe how great it was! When we were done with the question portion, Elder Ballard bore his powerful testimony and the spirit that was in the room was so incredible. He wanted to shake all of our hands, but he didn't want to disturb the spirit that was there...and he didn't have the time...so he asked us all to stand up and put out our right hand...he did the same and we had an air handshake! It was great! We are so blessed to have met with him! After he left our new mission presidency talked to us for a min...guess who is one of the counselors...Kevin Palmer!! Maybe we will still get to see him and his wife!! It was a great morning! After that, we volunteered to help Sister Lawlor get everything finished that she needed to get done. So we met her at the Mission Office and helped her for a few hours. When we were finished there, we went to Sister Ford's and she ordered pizza for us. We had dinner and had a nice visit with her. Then we were able to go to the stake center and watch the Cultural Celebration via satellite. It was so good! I learned a lot about Calgary and the history of the church here. It really was a great program! The youth were sad that the prophet couldn't be there for the performance...he came Sunday morning because it was Sister Monson's 85th birthday and she isn't doing very well... so a few days ago they recorded themselves singing "We Thank Thee Oh God For a Prophet" and posted it on youtube. He also recorded a message for them that was played before they started their performance. He and Sister Monson were able to watch the Celebration via satellite from their home. It was just great! Then when we got home, the Elders called us and asked us if we were going to make lunch for them tomorrow...we agreed and threw together a meal of the random things we had in our apartment. Sunday was a wonderful day! It was the Calgary Alberta Temple Dedication. The prophet was there! It was so amazing! The dedication was done in 3 sessions. And they were all different. On Sunday I was sealed into the cornerstone of the temple! Never thought I would ever be able to say that...The dedication was great. We were watching it at the Stake Center. The first session included the cornerstone ceremony. After that session, we fed the Elders lunch. Then the second session started. It was great until right when Pres Monson started reading the dedicatory prayer, the satellite cut out. It was kind of a bummer. But it was still good. Unfortunately we weren't able to watch the 3rd session...but I heard it was amazing...because we had a new investigator lesson. We sacrificed watching that session but hopefully something good will come of the lesson we had. It was with a LA/PM family-the Sackley/Shaffer. The parents are living common law...the husband and his kids are LA members and the wife and her kids are not members. The lesson we had with them was great! And they are so open and receptive to the gospel!! I really hope something comes of this! Then we had supper with the Kneelands. He is one of our WML's. They are from the states and make really good food!! And last but not least we had a lesson with the Ford boys. We taught them how to use their scriptures...aka the topical guide, bibal dictionary, and index. It was a great week! Here are a few random facts for you! So Sister Batty and I counted how many stoplights we get stopped at and then timed them as well...ya we are wierd. So we discovered that we spend an average of about 2 hours per week at stoplights!! Isn't that ridiculous! Another fun fact is that we gave away 4 1/2 cases of copies of the Book of Mormon away at the temple...that is over 160 copies. That is pretty good for it not being a proselyting area! And here are a few temple comments! "In the Celestial Room my 3 yr old daughter said 'I want to stay here forever' Then she asked where people dance after they get married." "I am a inactive member of the church and this experience has renewed my faith. Thanks for the opportunity." "Just what I needed at this time in my life. Inspiring and calming." Well congrats to Ben and the McKell's on their mission calls! You are all going to be great missionaries!! I love being a missionary! I am so grateful for my family! I am so grateful for the knowledge I have that we can be together forever!! I love and miss you all so much!! Have a fabulous week!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant

October 21, 2012

Hey Everybody!! Oh my goodness...I LOVE the Temple! I am really sad it is over, but I have so many memories from being there! We had such a great end to the temple and I am going to do my best to tell you all about it! So I think I left off last week on Wed because I was running out of time, so I will start there for this week! Forgive me if it sounds all over the place because just remember that all of the days kind of run together...especially when you are at the temple! So Wednesday...it was a day of adventure. We began our day at the mission office. While we were there we were able to type up some comment cards. It is so much fun to read all the comments from people. It is one of the best parts of the day. We were there for a few hours and between Sister Batty and I we typed up 2 days worth of cards....that is like 1200. It was lots of fun. Then we had to run to the temple. It was a really busy day. We had lots of people because there were only a few days left. But then we had a little bit of a hiccup...the power in the temple went out!!! It was crazy. Luckily there was the backup generator! But it meant that the elevator wasn't working which meant we couldn't take wheelchairs to hardly any of the temple. It also meant that the wheelchair usher in the temple was trapped in the elevator for about 1 1/2 hours!! When we found out the power was out we had to stop everything because there was already a few hundred people in the temple and we had a long line of people. Luckily we were able to utilize the chapel and we moved as many people in as we could so they didn't have to be outside. Somehow they got everything figured out, but every once in awhile the lights would flicker. It was a crazy time! Thursday came way too soon. We were on the night shift the day before and then switched to mornings...so Sister Batty and I were going on about 5 hours of sleep. We probably looked a little bit dead. Well Sister Batty felt a little bit dead as well. She was fine when we left the apartment, but about an hour into our shift she got so sick. She curled up in a ball and slept through our entire shift. That left me to run 2 video rooms. It was great and I felt so busy, because as soon as one room started the other was getting out. It was just great! We also had to deal with the power thing again because it was still having some issues and they didn't want anyone getting stuck in the elevator. As soon as we got out of the temple we got a call from our DL and I was very grateful I told him he had 30 min to find someone to come with him to give Sister Batty a blessing and we would be at their church so they could do that. So we drove straight there. She got a blessing and then we had to hurry and email and shop and then we went home for the night. Oh but we also had to get a car wash because the night before someone dumped soy sauce all over our car. It was disgusting. But we then had a clean car! After that we were home so Sister Batty could get better and we could maybe get some sleep. Friday was another morning shift. It was just lots of fun! It was a really busy day. Luckily that morning and afternoon we were able to stay on speaking tours, but that night they had to move to silent tours because of the amount of people that came. We were really nervous for Saturday...but I will tell you about that in a min. Friday was a great day because there was a special surprise!! Well do you remember Sister Hayes? Well she is a convert and the only member in her family. Well President gave her permission to invite her family to come to the open house. She did, but she didn't know anyone was coming. Her mom decided to surprise her...but I knew about it for weeks! So she flew in on Friday and stayed with Kevin and Cindi Palmer. Then they brought her to the open house! It was like the best reunion ever! I can only imagine what it is going to be like to reunite with all of you! It was a great experience for her. They were able to spend a few hours together everyday and then she went back to AZ after going to Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. That day Sister Batty also had some visitors from Vernal and they brought her up a package. Then that night we went to dinner with some people from Lethbridge that Sister Batty worked with while she was down there. It was fun and they have a really cute little boy. By then it was time for us to go home and get some sleep...I really love sleep. Saturday!! It was the very last day! It was really sad. I didn't want it to end. The memories I have from the Temple Open House are priceless. It was so incredible and I know I was supposed to be here for it! That is why I was called to serve here in Calgary! So we were on the morning shift! Before the doors officially opened, Bro Kevin Palmer took some of the Sister Missionaries on a tour of the temple. It was incredible. We were the only ones there and he told us lots of little details about the temple that you probably wouldn't have gotten in a normal tour. One fun fact is that the Bride's Room cost more per sq ft to build than any other room! It is gorgeous! It was a really neat tour! Well when we got back to the church it was a madhouse! There were so many people there! Every tour was filled to capacity starting at 8 AM!! We were expecting over 10,000 people to come that day. Well things ran smoothly and everything was great, but the line just kept growing....and it was freezing cold and snowing outside. Saturday brought a whole load of fun. By 12:30 we had to move to silent tours. We had over 1000 people coming every hour, and we just couldn't keep up with it. We could do upwards of 800, but that makes for a very fast back-up. This meant that we had 9 sisters running videos (we had 2 that went in and counted and started a mass-vidoe in the chapel every half hour.) This left only one in the reception hall. Well, we knew that there would be silent tours possibly for the rest of the night, and we were the only ones that didn't have to be somewhere immediately afterwards, so we stayed to work in reception with the other shift. Unfortunately we weren't smart enough to figure this was going to happen, so we did what we had been doing. We ate at 6 AM before we went to the temple, and then we were planning on eating when we got home...we didn't think about the fact that we might have to stay. So we enjoyed our last and final day of the "Smile and Starve diet." It's actually quite effective for those wanting to lose weight! Don't worry. We ate...at 12:30 the next morning when we FINALLY got home. By 5:30 the snow had hit and a lot of people weren't wanting to be out on the very slick roads. It had been raining most of the day and it was now frozen and icy. We went back to talking tours, and we could have gone home, except one of the sets of sisters BOTH got sick, and we had to send them home. We sent the last tour through just before 10, and topping out our 100,000 guest goal. It was fun that we got to stay. This is an experice from Sister Batty that had us all in giggles: "I had started a bit of a feud with the head of security, who happened to be an off-duty police officer. He was on the temple committee, so he was there all day, every day, and he would walk past and stop our stopwatches and add numbers on our counters. He just tried to cause mayhem because he could. Well, you know me, I had to return the favor...so I told him my police officer joke (on Thursday). Now, my police officer joke goes something like this: "The other day, I was drivin down the road, and I got pulled over. The cop walked up to my window and whipped out his trusty-dusty flashlight and he shined it in my eyes and he said, 'Son, your eyes are red. Have you been drinking?' Well, what was I to do? I whipped out my trusty-dusty flashlight, and I shined it in his eyes and I said, 'Ossifer, your eyes is glazed, has you been eating donuts?'" I'm sure you can imagine what his reaction was to this...although I think he told all the other police officers it...So on Friday when he was over pestering us, I asked him if he'd eaten any donuts. Well, I started a feud with that one. Later that night, as I was standing, (telling our stanchant man, Ryan, my officer joke) Garrett Swihart, the police officer, walked past and threw a snowball at me! In the church! He pegged me right in my tummy right in front of the tour line! Everyone burst into laughter, and the podium lady giggled out, "You can't even call security, because he's it!" Well, when Linda came around to check on us, I told her what had happened and how I wanted to rub nice big snowball on his nice buzzed head. Now, this is our very business like, very intimidating supervisor. What does she do? She runs me down the hall, dresses me in her coat and gloves, puts the hood up, steals my timer and sends me outside to get a snowball! I went down the hall to make sure he was at the security office, and he was standing against the wall right outside, so I snuck out without him seeing me. I grabbed a snowball, and when I came back in, he was talking to a group of men. The security (another police officer) that let me back in told me to go ahead and do it. So I walked up behind him. Rubbed a nice wet snowball around on his head, and mushed it good. Then skiddled down the hall. What Unfortuantely it meant I spent the rest of the night hiding. At one point Brother Swihart came around the corner looking for me, which sent me down the hall, into Linda's office and under her desk. I actually hid under her desk, while she hid in the corner of the room so she couldn't be seen, because she didn't want anyone to think she had anything to do with it! Brother Swihart eventually caught up to me in the tour guide room, where I was "hiding from security." He just laughed as he told me that he thought it was funny, and well deserved, but wished I would have picked a better time. When it had happened, he had been talking about "very weighty matters with the temple president and some of the openhouse committee!" AH! President Bennett asked him why someone would do that and then told him it was well-deserved! Haha! Apparently what I failed to ask security first was who Brother Swihart was talking to...Yep. Surely was President Bennett." We were at the temple all day. But it was an amazing experience and I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world. It was the best way to end our time at the Temple! Our final numbers for the number of guests were 100,135. We reached the goal of 100,000! One of the neatest things of the day was that we, the sister missionaries, were the last tour of the entire open house! We went to the temple at about 10:40, when everyone was out. There were no shoe coverings in sight, so we all took our shoes off and walked barefoot through the temple. We were with all of our favorite Palmers: Linda, Cindi, and Kevin! But this tour was unique because as we went through the temple, Kevin asked one of the Sisters to explain each stopping point in the temple. I was asked to do the Bride's room. It was a really special tour. We also were able to spend a bit of time in the Celestial room and Sealing room. It was really neat! We got out of the temple at about 11:40. I just loved every second of the temple open house! I truly am going to miss it! Well we still had a long drive home, on very icy roads. Luckily Linda Palmer lives in our ward and she followed us home to make sure nothing happened to us. She is great! By the time we got home it was 12:30 and we were STARVING!!! So we hurried and ate something and went to bed. Sunday was a very long day...mostly because we were so extremely EXHAUSTED!! We had to be up early for church and then we were there for like 7 hours with all of our meetings. It was really hard staying awake, but be very proud because I did it! It did help that we had some treats with us! As soon as we were done with church we went to the Mission Home. We were all invited to come for dinner and then we had a training with the Sisters. Before dinner, President did all of our temple dedication reccommends as well. After dinner we had a training and it was all about the Doctrine of Christ and being missionaries. Basically it was all about going back to being real missionaries. It is going to be wierd having rules to follow! Also while we were at the mission home, we were asked to write a biography about ourselves and include some temple miracles you had and your testimony. They are going to put all of our bios and a picture of all the Sisters in the Cornerstone of the temple! I am acually going to be in the Cornerstone of the temple!! Isn't that neat? One miracle of the Calgary Alberta Temple is that it is the ONLY temple that has not had any protestors! When we were on the last tour of the evening on Saturday we ran into Troy. He is the project manager from SLC. He said that this truly is the Members temple. It is the only temple since the first few that members have actually worked on. It is truly because of the members here that it is finished! Being at the Temple has really strengthened my testimony about how important temples are! I am so grateful for the temple! It is so important to attend the temple often! I challenge you all to attend the temple as often as you can! Congrats to Ben!! I can't wait to hear where you are going on your mission! The CCM is one of the best!! I hope you all have a great week!! I love and miss you tons! I know I promised you some temple comments, but it will have to wait until next week because I don't have my right planner with me! You are all so amazing!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant Here are a few pictures!! 1- Me with the Platt's! 2- Me at a video room with my timer and counter 3- Sorting and reading comment cards on the last night

A few more pictures 1- Right before we went on the last tour of the night, with Kevin and Linda Palmer 2- The beautiful temple at night with the snow!

October 15, 2012

Hey Family and Friends!! Oh my goodness I feel like it has been forever since I have written to all of you!! And I feel like so much has happened since last week! I am going to do my best to try and catch you up on everything that is going on in Canada!! Sorry if this email seems like it is all over the place...just remember that I am not living on many hours of sleep at the moment!! All I do is eat, sleep, and breathe temple which is absolutely AMAZING!!! So starting with last week on Tues...So i remember that we were on the morning shift at the temple which meant we were up at 5AM and then we spent the day at the temple! I love being there everyday! It is such a neat experience. Then after our shift, it was supposed to be our p-day, but we found out that our ESL class was going to go to the temple open house and we wanted to go with them! So we called our mission President and asked if we could go with them. He quickly gave us permission and we were on our way to the temple with 11 nonmembers!! It was an amazing experience!! I felt so much peace as we toured the temple! Especially when we were in the Celestial room. It is just beautiful and they closed the door for about 1 min and it was seriously just silent!! It was amazing! I miss that peace! I love that about the temple! So that was a really neat experience to take our students to the temple. I could tell that many of them were very touched by the spirit...so you never know maybe it will open some doors for us to be able to teach some of them about the plan Heavenly Father has for them!! Well then came Wed. So that day we were at the temple in the morning as well and we had planned on emailing afterwards....well we got a call from Carmen telling us they had changed the book into pdf form and it screwed up all the formatting we had done. So we went to her house to see what we could do. After trying to figure it out for almost 3 hours, we finally decided to go work on it at the library since they have newer programs on their computers. But like I said we still needed to email. Well the library computers only let you stay on them for 2 hours....so we had 2 hours to fix the book and for both of us to email....so on my computer I emailed while Sister Batty fixed the book and then we switched. We didn't quite finish the book in the 2 hours we had, but I was done staring at a computer. It messes with your eyes after you have stared at it for 5 hours!! But we were exhausted and just ready to go to bed. But don't worry we were back at the library the next day bright and early to finish it so we can get it sent to the printers. Well we had to keep fixing it a few more times, but good news...THE BOOK IS AT THE PRINTERS!!! It will be good for it to all be done. Okay well on Thursday...after we worked on the book...we headed to the temple. I don't remember anything really great from that day, but I want to tell you a story. So a couple of weeks ago, it was 10 pm and someone was knocking on our door. We are 2 single girls living in Calgary and it was a scary looking Middle Eastern man standing outside our door. He had a beard and everything. We were really creeped out and locked ourselves in the bathroom. Well he eventually went away, but then about 5 min later he came back and knocked again, but this time he slid a paper under our door. It was from our upstairs neighbor and he said we had left our interior car light on and told us that if we got up and our battery was dead to call him and he would give us a boost. We laughed that we were so scared and then ran outside in our pj's to turn it off. He noticed us and yelled down to us "I see that you got my note." So we talked to him for a second and then ran back in the house to go to bed. A few days later, we ran into him in the stairwell after getting home from a late temple shift. We talked to him for a min and told him what we were doing and invited him to come to the temple. Well he told us that he had already set up a time to go with one of his friends from one of his classes. So we were excited. Well before you know it on Thurs night, Sister Batty and I are standing by our video rooms and a tour group goes by. Guess who was in it??? Our neighbor!! He said "Hey those are my neighbors!" and it was really funny!! It was also funny because he came with some of the Ushers that volunteered a few days before that were by us all day long. What a small world!! Well on Friday we were finally able to get some sleep and we even got to sleep in a little bit....we are some of the most spoiled missionaries in the world right now...When we were all ready we started our studies and as soon as we started comp study, we got a text from some of the sisters telling me that the Clark's...from Queensland...were at the temple and that I should come see them. So we dropped everything and ran to the temple! By the time we got there they were gone...we had missed them by 10 min. It was a bummer. But we were there a few hours before our shift was about to start and we had nothing to do...so we decided to go on a tour of the temple. It was another beautiful tour. We were with a lot of nonmembers and we were able to answer some questions!! One of the questions I get asked the most is what happens if a woman is widowed or divorced...can they get married or sealed again? I am grateful for the knowledge that I have and for the wonderful plan that we know of that FAMILIES CAN BE TOGETHER FOREVER!!! It is one of my favorite doctrines! Well after our tour of the temple it was about time for our shift to start! It was the East Stake's day for volunteering and I knew a lot of the tour hosts. So it was great and they would bring lots of people to me with questions. So I was busy all night long! I was able to teach the 1st lesson and give away a few copies of the Book of Mormon. Isn't it funny how we somehow can do that even with the temple being a non proselyting area?? Next Saturday rolled around and we were able to get a little bit of extra sleep and get all of our studying done! But by the time that all was done, it was time for us to head to the temple! It was such a busy day at the temple!! We moved over 8,000 people through the temple! It was insane! The miracle is that when there is a line it is really only about 30 min. It is so great that we can have that many people come through the temple and still have talking tours where our guests can learn more about the temple! It is really a miracle! It was such a crazy day that I literally don't really remember all the things that happened. I thought that Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest, but this week it did not feel like that. We got home from the temple just before 12 and then we were up again at 6:30 so we could go to Ward Council. I felt like a walking Zombie and I probably looked like one too. Then we spent the next 6 hours or so at church and in other meetings. It was fast sunday in our wards and all the testimonies were just great because they were all about the temple! Then Sister Linda Palmer who is in charge of the flow in the temple is in our ward and she used to scare me, but now she is one of my favorite people! She bore her testimony about the miracles of the temple and the privilege she has to work with all the Sister Missionaries. She made us cry and then we went and gave her a great big hug! After church we actually had a supper appt with the Williams family. They moved here from Texas and they have the cutest little boy. He reminded me so much of Sager! He is a lot younger than the rest of their children and is the only one at home still...which will be the case for Sage shortly. After we were done there, we went and taught the Ford boys and Sister Ford. They are doing well and are still progressing! Then when we were leaving their house, we got a call from Bishop Higham telling us he had something for us. So we stopped by his house on the way home. When we got there, he gave us each a copy of a newspaper that had an article about the temple in Calgary, a giant bag of mixed M&M's...from the States, because they don't have all the good kinds here...and some money to grab a meal before a temple shift. We were there talking for awhile and every once in awhile bishop would disappear and come back with some sort of food item and say "Do you want some ..." So we also left his house with a giant bag of Doritos, a giant box of fruit snacks, some carmels, and some bookmarks from his book. We are his new orphans. We can now literally live out of our car with all the food that is in there at the moment! Then Monday was a great day! After we got ready and did all our studies it was time for us to go to the temple! It was a shorter day today becuase it was Monday and so Bro Kevin Palmer and his wife Cindy took all the Sisters out for dinner at Earls. It is a nice restaurant here. It was so much fun and we just had a total blast! It was really fun just hanging out with the Palmers and the sisters. But one of the best parts of the evening was when Bro Palmer told us the story of how he and Sis Palmer met and fell in love. It was the most adorable story ever!! Seriously it made me miss watching really good chick flicks and reading good romance novels!! I can't wait to be able to do that again! There better be some people willing to catch me up when I am home! But seriously it was just a great night with great food and even better company! I love the Palmer's!! Oh and just to keep all the Palmer's straight...Kevin is Linda's brother-in-law. Tuesday...well for the first time in weeks we actually had time to go to our DDM! It was a gongshow! It was the first time we have been since all of the zone changes and now our district is different. It is us, our DL and his comp, and the ZL and his comp. It was hilarious. But in all acutuality I miss the Elders. Being with the sister all the time can turn into quite the drama fest! After we were done there, we had to make one last change to Carmen's book so she could send it to the printer and then we headed to the temple. It was a great day there! I gave away 3 copies of the Book of Mormon and had so many great conversations. I have one temple story and one comment card that I remember....so the comment card was from a 6 yr old boy. He said in the Celestial Room: "Being in this room makes me feel like I am in love with something!" I will try and remember some more of the good comments for my next email, but now here is one of the neat experiences I had. So I was in the Cultural hall which is where all the cookies are and a volunteer that was out in parking came in and came straight up to me and told me about an experience he had just had. A lady had come out of the temple and come straight up to him and said, "I have never heard of this church before. I feel like I am home. I want to feel like this forever. How can I join." He got her name and number and she left. He came and told me and I wrote it down on a referral card. The temple is really bringing so many miracles! Just rembember what Elder Nelson said at conference "Ask the Missionaries. They can help you!" That is what we do. Help people. And it is so amazing! I love being a missionary so much!! Well I hope you all have a fabulous week...well weekend now...and from now on I think we will be on a normal email schedule! And maybe I will get on the ball and have time to email some pictures! I love and miss you all! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant

October 8, 2012

Hey Family and Friends!! Ok before I get started I have to give you a disclaimer...I am completely exhausted...so if this email is all over the place and makes absolutely no sense, I am sorry. Give me 2 more weeks and hopefully I will be back to my normal self! We have had such a busy schedule since we spend 8 hours a day at the temple...and it is sometimes hard to find time to sleep!! But we do the best we can! So here goes.... To be completely honest, I don't have any super great stories from the temple...I have talked to lots of people and basically everyone has an amazing experience there, but nothing really stands out to me. I will tell you about some of my favorite comment cards (usually they are from/about children) : One little boy said "I felt like I was standing right next to Jesus." and another one of my favorites was that a little girl about 3 1/2 went through and as she was leaving the baptistry she started saying Oh, Oh, Oh...almost in disgust....so her dad asked her if something was wrong or if her hair was in her eyes. She said no my eyes are filled with tears. Those were some of the cards that really touched my heart! That is one of our favorite things about being at the temple, we LOVE reading all the comments. Most of them are positive and is is so great to see that everyone is having such a great experience!! The temple truly is the House of the Lord. We have been told by Elder Melchin...the area Seventy...that if we want the prophet to come to Canada to dedicate the temple, it will be because of the faith and the prayers of the members because of his health and his busy schedule. So we are definitely praying for that. We have also been told that if the temple is going to be finished on time, it is going to be a "Kansas City" miracle like Pres Monson described in his talk on Sunday! But it is the Lords house and He is in control! I have faith that everything will work out! I was able to see lots of great people at the Temple Open House this week!! The Platt's came and it was fun to see them! Thanks again to them for taking that bag of stuff home for me! That will save me lots when I have to fly home! Don't worry Mom, she also gave me a HUGE hug from you!! That day I was also visited by Ryandel and I was able to go on a tour of the temple with her! It was great and then she even brought me some delicious treats only found in the States!! I have also seen lots and lots of people from all the different areas where I have served and it is so fun to rub shoulders with them again! One of the highlights of the week was definitely General Conference!! Wasn't it so amazing!! How did you all react to the big missionary age change? If any of you were at a stake center full of missionaries...like I was...you would have seen how shocked we all were! But actually our mission is one of the ones that has a few 18 yr old Elders from England. One of them was actually there with us! I think it is a great change! To me it is proof to how strong and prepared the youth of the church are at this time! They will do great things! So now what are Braydon's plans? and Colton? and Ben? Being a missionary is the best and it has definitely changed my life!! I am so grateful I made the decision to serve our Father in Heaven! Anyways between Conference on Saturday we went to lunch with our Zone. We had transfers last week and our zone was completely changed and they made a new one! They dissolved the Spanish and Mandarin zones and put those Elders in English speaking zones. So our new ZL is a Spanish Elder. But I am excited! Then on Sunday we watched Conference again and in between sessions, Sister Batty and I made lunch for all the Elders....we made most of it ahead of time so it only had to be warmed up. It was fun and we were able to have another zone lunch! On Sunday night, we had a Thanksgiving dinner with the Ford's. It was fun and Sister Ford went all out for us. Do you want to know a secret....we had a different dinner appt that night, but it canceled at the last minute...so Sister Batty and I were both praying that we would be able to find someone else to feed us! Sister Ford was an answer to our prayers. We called to see if we could come by that evening and she asked if we had a dinner appt. We explained what happened and she invited us over! So we had fun. Then on Monday we really celebrated Thanksgiving...in the wrong month and on the wrong day...with the Hoganson family. They also have a missionary...he is serving in the St. George mission....and so they were excited to have us over. After our dinner with them we had our interviews with President Nicholas. He is an inspired man called of God! I love him and his wife! They are just so loving!! After that all of the Sisters were going out to eat for Thanksgiving...we went, but didn't eat because we were so full from our earlier dinner, but it was still fun to be with all the Sisters! Sometimes we take all the comment cards into the office when we aren't on the next shift...because we live the closest. The Sisters that are working in the office are so behind so we offered our help to them for a few hours and we were able to help them type up the comment cards and do the referrals and other odds and ends. It is lots of fun. I mean we get 100's of comment cards a day and they have to type every single one in a Word Document and when it is all done, Pres Monson and Elder Walker will sit down and read all of them together. That is a lot of work! But it is something fun for us to do! Well to be honest I don't really know what else has happened...all the days kind of run together. I don't know when my p-day will be next week...so just watch for an email! I know that this church is true! I am so grateful to be a servant of our Heavenly Father! I hope you all have a great week!! Thanks for all your love and support! I love and miss ya'll bunches!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant!

October 1, 2012

Hey Everyone!! I know you probably aren't expecting to hear from me today, but our p-day got changed back to Monday for this week....It will probably be on Tues next week because next Mon is Thanksgiving. Well I have had a crazy week, but I don't even know where to start. This e-mail won't be like most of them because we spend at least 8 hours a day at the temple so all the days run together and I don't really remember what happens on which day. But the Calgary Temple is BEAUTIFUL!! It still isn't quite all the way done, but it is still gorgeous! And we are having a lot of neat experiences! So I will tell you about all the neat things that happened this week. I do remember that on Monday we had a training will Elder Walker. He is the maid guy over the temple department of the church. He was here for the majority of the week to help with the VIP and Special Guest tours. So the training was with all of the tour guides for the temple. Basically he told everyone what they should talk about and such. It was fun. He used a funny analogy. He told us to think of ourselves as ducks...be very calm and serene on the outside but really underneath you are paddling like crazy. I thought is was a silly comment he used. Then on Tuesday we had another special training with Elder Walker. This one was specifically for the Sister Missionaries. I just have to say it is great seeing all of the Sisters everyday. He just told us how important our role in the open house is and gave us a little bit of advice. As he was ending his training, he invoked the blessing of heaven upon us to help us as we go through this busy time. That was the day that the Special Guest and VIP tours began. These tours ran from Tuesday to Friday. We had lots of political leaders, ecclesiastic leaders, CEO's, and other important people come through in those days. It was lots of fun. As Sister Missionaries, we start the movie that everyone watches before they go through the temple and then we are in the refreshment area for them to ask questions and just see how they enjoyed their tour. Now I will tell you about some of the neat experiences I have had. So the first night the mayor of Calgary came. He is muslim and we were told that he needed to be out of the temple in 1 hour because he had other appts to get to. Well 3 hours later he was still there. He LOVED the temple! We were told that he went to work the next day and told his entire staff that they have to go to the Mormon temple. They all said ok, and then he emphasized it again and said you HAVE to go...you will feel something different there. So the next day we had his personal secretary and her entire family come through. That first day we also had three 13 yr old boys that were skateboarding down the road come in the church and ask what was going on. They went on one of the last tours of the night, and we were in the temple at the same time they were. When we were in the temple, we saw and heard one of the boys on the phone with his mom telling her he was in the new Mormon temple. I am curious to know what the end of that conversation was like. Over the next few days I talked to lots and lots of people. There was one United Church minister and some members of her congregation that told me they loved the temple and they were going to announce it at their church and put the information in their program so that more of their members could come and see. There were 3 Catholic nuns that came and loved their experience as well. When they walked into the temple they said: 'He's here.' It is amazing to see the spirit touch the hearts of those that come to see this incredible building. There was also another family that had just moved here from North Carolina. They told me they had just gotten their voting paper work and were going to vote for Romney because they had come to the temple. We have had multiple people ask tour guides how they can join this church and it is just incredible!! I am so grateful that I have been here in Canada to be a part of this Temple Open House! Saturday was the first day open to the public and it was crazy busy!! We had 5,017 people come through. We are expecting over 100,000 people to come over the next few weeks!! The one thing the temple is doing to us is making us exhausted! We are sometimes there until 11...and we have a 30 min drive...and then we have to be back there at 7. We did the back to back shift thing 2 times this week. Luckily we don't have to do it this week. But President Nicholas has given us permission to adjust our sleep schedule when we have time to do so. So we try to sneek in a nap whenever we can. Thursday we were at the temple in the morning and then we had the baptism of Lorenzo and Daniel that night! So it was an exciting day. We had to fill the font at the chapel and had to stay there while it filled for 3 hours...well we were exhausted so we decided to take a nap there. Did you know that the padded chairs in the church are actually really comfortable. They make a great bed. Just turn two of them together and put 5 in a row and you are set. We slept for about 40 min and then Sister Brower and her comp Sister Sagers...the one that was here before me...came and brought us dinner before the baptism. It was great! The baptism was AMAZING and perfect! Their dad said the opening prayer and was able to stand in the circle of the confirmations. It was really neat. Sister Brower and Sagers did a musical number and it was just perfect. It really was just the perfect baptism. On Saturday I was able to go to the Relief Society Broadcast! Wasn't it amazing? Our stake did a little social of ice cream and cookies afterwards. It was really good. I was exhausted because we were on the morning temple shift that day and the night shift the day before so I was going on very little sleep...I used to be able to do that before I was a missionary...but now I feel like I need 8 hours of sleep to even be functioning. So I can't wait to reread the talks in the Ensign. On Sunday we had church and then all of the Sisters were invited to dinner at the Palmer's house. Brother Palmer is the man incharge of all of us at the temple. He and his wife have a gorgeous, gigantic house and they had all of the sister missionaries and President and Sister Nicholas, and Kim...the PR lady from SLC...to come for dinner. It was yummy and we had so much fun together! We taught like zero lessons this week, but hopefully things will be better this week and we will have time to do that! Well I love being a missionary!! I love the temple and the blessings that come from the temples!! Attend the temple as often as you can! It is such a wonderful blessing for us! Enjoy General Conference this weekend! I am sure it will be amazing! It is starting to freak me out that I will be home for the Conference after this! Congrats dad on you ginormous deer. Sister Batty is a little jealous. And way to go Sager and B-rad at the baseball and softball! Keep up the good work!! I love and miss you all have a great week!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant Here are a few pictures from the last week! 1- Me and Sister Batty having our nap at the church before the baptism...doesn't it look comfy? 2- The Classic Baptism picture 3- Me with the temple....more good pictures to come hopefully!

September 24, 2012

Hey Family and Friends!! Oh my goodness I had such a GREAT week...even though not a lot happened and basically all of our lessons canceled...but I will tell you more about that as we go! So Monday was p-day...we had a good day...but we didn't do a whole lot. We were really tired. So we did run lots of errands...including getting our hairs cut...and then we just went to our apartment and chilled. We painted our nails really cool...they are tie-die...they are really cool! Then our dinner appt canceled...but oh well. So we spent our evening doing stop-bys and delivering Temple invites! Tuesday we had our DDM's which were a complete gongshow. They have been getting progressively worse as the transfer goes on. After our meeting we went out for lunch and then had a lesson with Tammy. She still hasn't been to church since I have been here and we are a little bit worried. So we had a lesson on Families and the importance and blessings that come from our families. After our lesson with her we delivered lots of temple invites. We sure are learning where everything in our area is...after awhile it was time to go to dinner. So that night we had supper with the Terner family. They are really sweet and we had a great gospel conversation with them. Then we went to ESL. It is so fun going to that class. There is one girl that comes every week that I just love. Her name is Nana. She is from Korea. She is just so happy all the time and gives us big hugs when we see her! I love meeting all these people! Wednesday was supposed to be a really busy day....but we had some appts cancel. So we followed our back-up plans and we delived lots more temple invitations. We have been praying for opportunites to give these out, but we have had a crazy schedule for the last few weeks that we haven't had much time...but obviously there is someone the Lord wants us to see and invite to the temple. Because he is definitely giving us time to do this now. Then we had a lesson with Carmen and drumroll.....we FINISHED the book!! It is all edited and is now ready to be published. She is so excited and we are too because we finished it before the temple!! Then we had supper with the Walton family. They are really nice and are actively doing missionary work! Then we had a lesson with Christy. She is good,but has been slacking on her prayers and scripture study...so she is struggling a little bit. But we are still working with her. Thursday we had our weekly plannin and it was kind of difficult because we have a crazy temple schedule for next week and it is still a little bit up in the air. So it is going to take lots of careful planning to be able to teach as many lessons as we can in our off time. All the Sisters in the mission moved to the NW of the city...where the temple is...and we live the farthest away. We stayed in our apartment and we will drive there everyday...it takes us about 25-30 min to get there so we will be driving lots over the next few weeks. But it is all worth it. Anyways after our planning, we did some service for Tammy and we cleaned out her flower beds and cleaned up her back yard. It was a very hot day for Sept....35 C....but we are grateful for the warm weather! When we were done there I bet you will never guess what we did....delivered Temple invites! We want everyone to know about it! That night our dinner canceled again, so Sister Batty and I went out to dinner because it was my 1 yr anniversary of being in Canada!! Time has flown by. After dinner we went to have a lesson with the Ford's. We watched Finding Faith in Christ with them and created a BINGO game for them to play while they watched which made them listen better. They are still preparing for their baptism on Thurs!!! We are really excited! We got the program all organized and Daniel asked his dad if he would say the opening prayer...he actually said yes. We were all shocked but are grateful that he is supporting them. Friday was a day for the History Books in the great Canada Calgary Mission!! So we had some visitors from the MTC here and they were here to create a training program specific to our mission. So on Friday President Nicholas was told to hold a special ZLC...zone leader council...and he could invite a few other companionships if he wanted. So he invited 2 District Leaders and their companions and 2 sets of Sisters!! Sister Batty and I were invited to go...as well as Sister Hoyt and Sister Newby...So it was a really neat experience. First we had breakfast at the mission home and that was when Sister Newby and I realized that it was exactly a year from the first day we had breakfast in the Misson Home when we first arrived in Canada. It was crazy!! Then we had some training and counsel, then lunch and more training. It was really neat to go to the meeting, but it made me really grateful that I don't have the responisbility to train all the missionaries about the things that were discussed! Then we did some service for Sister Hobbs. She is so sweet and I feel bad that she is so sick. But she doesn't let that get her down and she is still a great missionary! I bet you would never guess that our dinner appt that day canceled as well...Well it did! So did our other lessons that night...so what did we do?? Yep. Delivered Temple invites! The Lord really wants them to get out to the people here!! Saturday all of our appts canceled again!! So all day we delivered Temple invites. We reached our 1/2 way goal and have delivered just over 200 of them!! Around dinner time, Sister Baker took us out to dinner at a restaurant. It felt really wierd to be in the world on a Saturday night. Sunday was kind of a gongshow...but good too. So we received our temple schedule and we were supposed to go to church with all the Sisters in the NW and then we were supposed to have training all day...so we canceled all the appts we had set up for the day...well guess what most of our trainings were canceled. So we got the the church at 9 and nobody was there...well they forgot to give us the memo that church wasn't until 11. So we chilled with some of the Sisters for a little bit until we went to church. Then we had a training with the Temple Committee and they basically just explained what our role in the open house is and trained us on what we are supposed to do. After that all 900 tour guides were supposed to come in 2 different shifts and go through the temple....well guess what...the temple is still NOT finished and has lots of work to go...The temple is still under the Contractors and The Church doesn't have it yet, so those trainings were canceled. They were even given permisson to work on the Temple on Sunday because it is that far behind. But it is the Lord's house and everything will work out! So since we canceled all our lessons and our dinner appt. we were a little bummed. And all of the tour guides are going to be doing tours of the temple without ever seeing it for themselves. But like I said everything will work out. Then we were talking to Sister Thomas and she found out we didn't have a dinner, so she invited us over because she was having the Elders over too...the YSA elders....aka the Assistants....and we had so much fun! I love those Elders! They are great and basically they were teasing us all night long. But mostly Sister Batty. She doesn't know left and right...so they like to make fun her for it. She grew up with North, South, East, and West. So it is probably pretty funny listening to her giving me directions! She is great! I love her! And then after dinner we actually had the Baptismal Interview for the Ford boys. They passed with flying colors! Life is great here in Canada! I am so excited for the coming weeks with the Temple Open House as crazy as it is going to be! Sage is such a stud! Tell him to keep up the great work! Well I sure do love and miss you all!! Have a great week!! Love ya!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant

September 17, 2012

Hey Family and Friends!! Well how is everyone? Getting back into the swing of school things? Well things up here in Canada are pretty great. But this week wasn't very eventful. But it was fun. So I will tell you all about it. So Monday was p-day...we didn't really do anything exciting this week...all we did was the normal stuff. But I did finally talk Sister Batty into getting her ears pierced. They turned out really cute! Then we didn't really have anything important to do so we decided to stop by the Mission Office and say hello to the Sisters that work there. They reminded me of Grandma Wayment! I love the sisters that work in the office. I mean we stopped by there because we missed them...since we hadn't seen them for about 2 weeks. Then that evening, we had supper with the Johnson family. Sister Johnson is the RS pres in one of our wards. They have a family full of boys...so needless to say dinner was entertaining. Then we had a correlation with one of our WML's, Bro. Loewer. We have great leadership in these wards and things actually get done! It is great! Tuesday comes next...we started off my doing service for Jennie...the really rich Indian lady. We cleaned out her garage...which is the cleanest garage I have ever seen...and then we basically put everything back where it was. It was kind of ridiculous, but it made her happy. Then she took us out for lunch afterwards. Then we had a lesson with Tammy about the Doctrine of Christ and encouraged her to be a missionary and invite people to the temple open house. Then we delivered some temple invites...we are running out of time...it starts in just under 2 weeks, but we only have this week left to proselyte...That evening we had supper with the Allred family. They live on a golf course that they own...oh and Bro Allred is a professional golfer. They were a fun family and we had really yummy tacos! That night we had ESL...not as many students as last week, but there was a good turn out still. After that we met quickly with Bishop Higham and the RS pres to discuss the ward lists...basically to find out who is LA and who we should focus on giving temple invites to. So that was successful and we definitely have our work cut out for us! Wednesday...busy day...first we had a lesson with Sister Baptiste. She told us she was going to read the BOM las week, but she didn't. So we read with her. We started at the beginning and read about Nephi. I love the beginning of the Book of Mormon. It has so many great stories! Then we met with Sister Jiang. We watched 'Finding Faith in Christ' with her. She really loved it. She loved watching some of the miracles Christ performed and just about His life. It really is a good movie...despite being a corny church made movie. After that we helped Carmen. We are really trying to finish the book! And we are definitely getting closer. That night we had supper with the Reil family. They are really nice. And to finish our night, we had a lesson with Christy. She is still doing good. She is kind of slipping on doing some of the basic things...like praying and reading the scriptures, so we had a lesson about applying the scriptures to our lives. It was good and I think she learned some things that can help her. Thursday...it was Weekly planning...but we just hurried to get it done so we could move on with our day. After we finished our planning, we had to clean our car because we had car inspections the next day. Then we got a call from Jennie. She asked us if we had time to go help her again for about an hour. So we made some time for her...when we got there she wanted us to organize her office. It was also a little bit ridiculous...I feel that we basically combined lots of piles into one big pile...but it made her happy. So we will keep doing what we can for her. That evening we had supper with the Wieb family...they also are a family of boys which made for another exciting dinner. Then we had a lesson with the Ford boys. We told them that we will make one lesson a week really fun...so we decided to play my made up game of "Stay on the Path". They absolutely loved it...maybe because it consisted of eating candy... Friday we had our Specialized Training/ZTM/Car Inspections...we got 100% on our car inspection...we had a great training about setting goals and being accountable to them. It was great. Then after the training, President Nicholas took our entire zone out for lunch at Tony Romas. It was really nice of him to do that. And we all had a great time together! On our way home, we had to drop something off at the Mission Office so we got to visit with the missionaries there for a minute. After that we went and contacted a referral we got. He is pretty solid...but he lives in the middle of nowhere, and he is YSA...but he is pretty interested. Then we had a ward party to go to. It was the Anual Corn Bust at Edworthy Park. It is just a time to get together and eat corn...at a park in downtown Calgary. It was lots of fun and I met so many of the ward members which was great!! Saturday was another really busy day....which is great...so first we had brunch with the Ivany's and had a lesson with them. Then we delivered a bunch of temple invites. Then we helped Carmen with the book! We only have 12 pgs left...so we are totally going to get it done before the temple!! Then we had supper with Sister Thomas. She is great. Her husband is from Jamaica and is living there until he can get citizenship in Canada...but they are building a house there...so now I am just going to have to go there to visit. Darn...Then we had a lesson with Sister Kamenka...she is a LA recent convert of 3 yrs...she was blessed with an incredible gift of Faith. She just has faith, but doesn't accept many of the basic doctrines of the church...so needless to say lessons with her are interesting. But she is super nice. Then Sunday we had church! Guess what happened...a lady, Catalina, just walked into the church and wanted to know more! She is from Mexico, but has been here for awhile I believe. She doesn't live in our area though...but we don't have an address for her. Then we had a quick meeting with the other ward to discuss LA's they want us to take temple invites to. We have lots of people we need to see this week! Then we taught Gospel Principles in that ward. We got a call from our WML the night before at 9 pm...so it was kind of just thrown together, but it went well. The wards here are really good at having class discussions...so I think everyone learned something. That evening we had supper with the Gillis family. They are really nice and live in the middle of nowhere. But after our appt with them, we found a new part of our area as we delivered a invite to a LA. It was even more in the middle of nowhere. Then we had a lesson with the Ford boys. They are going through a hard time right now. Their dad is starting to get nasty and it is really sad that they have to go through this!! Well it sounds like you had a great week! Way to go Sager with all your baseball games...I never thought I would say this, but I never realized how much I actually liked sports until I came on a mission and can't watch them...Don't die because I told you that. Well I hope you all have a great week!! I love and miss you all a whole bunch!! But I love being a missionary and I wouldn't trade this for anything!! Love Ya!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant

September 10, 2012

Hey Family and Friends!! I LOVE being a missionary!! We have had so much fun this week and there is so much work to do!! It is amazing the miracles that are coming to our mission because of the temple being built in Calgary!!! Well I have lots to tell you so here goes!! We will start with Tuesday. First we had DDM's and then somehow Sister Batty and I convinced the Elders to go to lunch at the Calgary Tower! It was so fun! So you ride all the way to the top and there is a retaurant up there...the coolest thing about the restaurant is that it spins as you eat, so you get to see the entire city during the course of your meal. It was lots of fun! Then we also got to go out on the observation deck. It was lots of fun. Then we had to hurry and do our emails because we had appts to go to...we were late to everything because traffic was super busy because it was the first day of school. But we got everything done we needed to. So then we went to help Carmen with the book and we are still making progress. Then we had supper with the Larson's. They are an adorable older couple. Then we headed to ESL. It was so great!! We had like 7 new students!! It is really fun to help out at that class...but it makes me realize how bad my grammar is. But it is fun. And the students that come are great! Wednesday we just did a bunch of stop-bys and then helped Carmen a little bit. Then we had supper with the Higham's. He is the bishop of one of the wards. He also gave me a book that he wrote...he gives one to all the Sister Missionaries that serve in his ward...it is called "So I went out with this guy last night..." It is an adorable book and maybe it will come in handy when I get back. On our way home we taught Bill about the Atonement and how to more fully apply it in his life. Thursday we had our weekly plannin session and then we did a bunch of stop-bys. So all of the companionships in our mission were given 400 temple invitations to give out...well now we have under 2 weeks until all the sisters start training...and our goal is to give out all of them. So we definitely have our work cut out for us!! Then we had dinner with the Penner's! Oh, my! Funniest Story...So we have a man in our ward who is deathly allergic to fragrances. No one in our ward is supposed to wear anything with any type of fragrance. That's just common courtesy, since there are a lot of people, especially in this ward, that are this way. Brother Penner, though, had to move here from his last town because the air was effecting him so drastically. Needless to say, we don't wear much of anything in the way of smell-good-stuff on the day that we have dinner with his family. We were so careful all day not to put on lotion or anything else. We are about 3 minutes from their house, on the way to dinner when I realized what a horrible headache I had. So I asked Sister Batty if she thought I should put Peppermint Oil on, which is an Essential Oil which works amazingly well. I couldn't understand why I shouldn't, and neither could she. So I did. A lot of it. And just as we started to smell it, I said, "ooh, it smells so good--OH NO!!!" We were sitting in the car at a stoplight, 15 minutes from our house and 10 from the church. I got the brilliant plan to wipe it off with my hands, but that just meant it moved from my forehead to my hands. So then I was going to wipe it on my sweater, but then it was still on my clothes. We were panicking, searching for anything to get the stuff off with. We were about to kill one of our high councilmen! Luckily we haven't had car inspections lately, so Sister Batty had a sweater in the backseat. I grabbed it and started to scrub my forehead with it. We tried to go to our WML's house so we could wash my face, but he wasn't home, and we were out of time. We go to the house and decide that I will just immediately ask to use the washroom. Before we get out of the car, I leaned over and asked if Sister Batty could smell it on me still. Well, what's a good companion to do? Sister Batty sniffed my forehead! Yep, she could still smell it. We get out of the car and realize that maybe it's just the car that is super strong, so as we are walking across the street, I asked again, and yep, she sniffed my forehead again. It wasn't too bad. Maybe we would just send him to the hospital...less worries. We get to the door, knock, and go in...and guess what? Brother Penner wasn't even there! He was out passing out food drive bags and would be gone all night. So there I sit, with a red, raw forehead, and a headache...yep, we just about died laughing. We decided if you look up the phrase "Gongshow" in a dictionary, our pictures would be next to it, probably holding a vial of Peppermint Oil and black sweater. Then we had a great lesson with the Ford boys. We had a lesson about judging people so we did a little object lesson with them. Have you ever seen the one they do in seminary a lot where there is a picture of Christ behind a paper on a dart board and when you take it off after throwing darts at it you realize you did it to Christ? Well we did something similar to that and it was really effective and of course the boys liked it. Friday was a crazy busy day!! We had back-to-back appts which is great!! First we started with Sister Braithwaite. She is a widow that lives in a care center. She is really nice and appreciated our visit. Then we kept going with Sister Jiang and we taught her the Doctrine of Christ/Atonement. She is totally taught by the spirit and it is so neat to watch her learn and have things just finally click. Then we helped Sister Hobbs again. She is great and can really use our help! Then we taught Tammy about the importance of taking the Sacrament and keeping the Sabbath Day Holy because she hasn't come to church for a few weeks...she didn't come this week either...but hopefully she will come next week. Then we had supper with a new family that just moved into the ward from Sasketchwan, the Flecks. They had lots of stories from their last branch. I can't imagine living in a place where the chuch is basically non existent. They have adaorable children so we had lots of fun there. Then last but not least, we had a lesson with Sister Baptiste. She has been really busy with visiting her children, but we had a quick lesson about reading the scriptures and committed her to read everyday! Saturday we had a GREAT day! We were busy delivering temple invitations when the Elders called and told us to come help out with the Food Drive! It brought back lots of memories, because the last time I helped with the food drive, it was my first Saturday in Canada. It was so much fun though. The goal was to set a Guiness World Record...but we fell a little short. We collected 520,000 pounds of food!! It is a fun service project. The Mayor of Calgary even stopped by where we were helping. Then we continued delivering a few temple invitations...because we have to get to work if we are going to deliver all of them. Then we helped Carmen. We have to finish editing the book before we go to the temple. We are really close! She has such an incredible story and is such an amazing woman! Then we had supper and a lesson with Sister Ford. She is great! Sunday was incredible as always! It was also another busy day. But the busy days are always the best! So we had church. Funny story about church...there was a new Spanish speaking student at ESL and she came to church as well...so the Spanish Elders were there and they translated for her...but the best part was that they had to stay for Relief Society as well. It was funny...they said it was their first experience there. After church we had a correlation with our WML and WM's. Then we were off to our dinner appt. with Sister Larsen. She is a single sister and is really sweet. Then we had an incredible opportunity to teach a potential investigator. Her name is Jianni and she is from Brasil. She has been coming to church the last few weeks with one of the members in our ward and her and her children are interested in the church. So we taught them. Hopefully we will be able to continue teaching them! I will keep you posted! Then we had another lesson with the Ford boys about the Priesthood! It was great! Being a missionary is great!! I LOVE it!! I am so happy everything is good in good old Utah! I can't wait to see the Brigham City Temple! I am sure it is beautiful! CONGRATS Grandma!! I am so happy for you to be able to serve a mission!! I was really hoping you would come to Calgary Canada...but St. Louis is great too!! The people there will definitely be blessed by your service!! Sage...you are a stud! Keep rockin' the baseball field! I Love and miss you all! You are the BEST!! Love, Sister Kaitlyn Marchant