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