Hey everyone!

This week was pretty good! There are a lot of great things going on in our area right now that we're really excited for!

So first I have to tell you about the Kernyang family. They're a part member family, and they're awesome! It's a single mother with a lot of kids. The Mom is from South Sudan, and is not a member. The three older daughters that live at home are all members, their little brother, Lual, is 9 but not baptized, and they have another younger sister named Ayani, but we call her Queen Elizabeth for some reason haha. They're all pretty active in church. They come on Sunday, and they are involved in all of the youth activities. The ward is pretty involved with them. We're helping Lual prepare for baptism right now. He's a really funny and high energy kid, but he's reverent during lessons, and he has a really good understanding of the gospel. We've wanted to get the mom more involved in the lessons, and help her grow in her testimony too. This week she sat in on one of our lessons, and agreed to keep meeting with us! She already has strong faith in God, and we're hoping that we can help her grow that even more! 

We have some recent converts that we're teaching too. Paula is a semi-recent convert in our ward, and her son, Paul, and brother, Wayne, just got baptized right before I got here, so we're teaching them the new member lessons. They're doing great! Paula's Husband, Mike, isn't a member, and doesn't want to take the discussions, but the spirit is working on him! He'll be in another room during our lessons with Paul and Wayne, but he'll listen in, and he'll even make comments some times! He comes to church every Sunday and stays for all three hours, and he reads the Book of Mormon every night! One of these days the spirits just going to hit him and he'll be ready to be baptized. Until then, we'll keep working on him! 

This week we also had a cool lesson with a potential investigator! His name is Shulin, and he's from China. He has pretty good english, and wanted to learn more about what we believe, so we got to teach him about the restoration, and had a great discussion with him on the Book of Mormon! He wasn't interesting in any more meetings right now, but we left him with some stuff to study, so hopefully he'll continue to be prepared!

Spiritual thought!

I may have shared this one already, but it really came back to my mind this week. We had a visiting authority in the mission a while back, and he said a phrase that has really stuck with me. He said that, "The Lord is pleased, but He's not satisfied." What a great quote! Our Heavenly Father is so proud of where we are today! He recognizes the progress that we've made, but that doesn't mean that we can stop! This life is all about getting better little by little. We should take moments to recognize how far we've come, but we shouldn't let that make us complacent. I think that this quote goes great with the talk from J. Devn Cornish from the last General Conference, "Am I Good Enough? Will I Make It?" It's worth a read!

Love ya'll!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

Getting Czeched

Ahoy!!!

This week has been crazy! A lot has happened, and a lot has changed.

At the beginning of the week, Elder Stringam and I picked up Elder Assily, Elder Stringam`s new companion, and we were in a three leg for most of the week.

On Tuesday we got to go and pick up the new missionaries! This is always my favorite part of transfers. It`s fun to see all of those new Elders and Sisters come into the mission excited but nervous. It always take me back to when I first got here in Canada and the crazy adventure that it`s been since then. We got to know them a bit, and have dinner with them before going through some trainings and telling them about the mission. There were a few of them who had to wait until Thursday to meet their trainers because of how far away they were, so we had one of them stay with us! So we were in a four-leg for a day! We had Elder White with us, and it was great to get to know him, and introduce him to the mission!

On Thursday I got transferred down to Medicine Hat. It was really hard leaving. It`s always sad to leave an area, especially after spending 6 months there. The people in the Woodbine ward had really become my family, and I`m going to miss them a ton. I`m so grateful for all of the wonderful people that I was able to meet, and for all of the things that I learned in my time there. I got to serve around some great missionaries there too. Elder Stringam and I were companions for a total of 6 months! I`m really going to miss that guy, we had some good times together!

I`m excited to be here in Medicine Hat 5th ward! There are some great things going on in this area, and we`re teaching a lot of people right now. Med Hat is an interesting place. It`s a smaller city kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Their claim-to-fame here is that they have the worlds tallest tee-pee, so that`s pretty cool. It`s the hottest part of the mission, and the sunniest, so it should be fun! The members here are awesome, and excited to help us out in the work! My new companion is great! His name is Elder Neulinger, and he`s from the Czech Republic. He`s a convert of only about 3 years, and he`s full of enthusiasm for the work! He`s older, about 25, and he`s a goof haha. He reminds me of the guy from the movie Frozen who works in the store, it`s great! We`re going to have fun together!

I got to meet some of our investigators this week. I`m sure I`ll talk more about them in later emails, but one that I want to mention is Sofia. She`s actually the 1st ward Elder`s investigator, but she`s from Hungary, and so Elder Neulinger can communicate with her because their languages are pretty similar. We go on splits with the first ward Elders each week to teach her. This week she fed us lunch, and we had a lesson. I didn`t understand anything that was said, but it was pretty cool! She`s actually on date to be baptized in the next couple of weeks!

Spiritual thought for the week! I`ve been reading in Alma this week, and I got to read about Alma the younger`s conversion experience. It`s one of my favorite descriptions of repentance in the scriptures. He talks about how he was able to gain a forgiveness of his sins through Jesus Christ, and the joy that it brought him. His account is in Alma 36:11-24. I just want to share my favorite verse from this section:

21. Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.

Repentance brings joy! It`s only through our Savior Jesus Christ that we can gain full forgiveness of our sins in this life. I`m so grateful for Him and His sacrifice that allows us to repent!

Love ya`ll!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

The Foothills Zone!

Chik-fil-A!

Elder Neulinger!

Lesson with Sofia!

At the airport

Last Slurpee with Elder Stringam!

#Twinning

#PrayForAjy2017

Hey!

So we'll start off with the subject of the email. This week Elder Ajeman (my second companion) fractured his femur. He's been in the hospital for a while now, and had surgery a few days ago. They put a rod in his leg, so he's actually already started walking on it a little bit. He's doing a lot better, but prayers for him would be appreciated.

Monday we picked up a new investigator! We visited a family who were former investigators in the Evergreen Ward, and they're awesome! The Dad's name is Moses, and his wife's name is Aisha. He's from Kenya, and she's from Jamaica. They've both very christian, and have had a lot of contact with LDS missionaries. We had a good discussion with them just about how past lessons had went, and about the Book of Mormon. They're very open to learn, and so we're going to be going back and studying the Book of Mormon with them to try and help them gain a testimony of it!

We had a couple exchanges this week. They both went really well, and we were able to get a lot of work done! We had a few lessons with Amelia Kelbert, who is on date to be baptized on the 19th of this month. She's doing pretty well. Sometimes it's hard to get her to focus, but in her defense, she's only 11.

We had another cool experience tracting! Elder Stringam and I were tracting Saturday morning, and we met a guy named Anup. He let us in, and we were able to spend about half an hour with him sharing beliefs. He's hindu, and it was interesting to learn a little bit more about that. We shared with him a little about what we believe, and shared our testimonies of the Book of Mormon. He wasn't eager to learn more, but he accepted the Book of Mormon, so hopefully one day he'll be able to read it and gain a testimony of it!

I also found out that I'm being transferred this week, so next week I'll let you know where I'm at and who I'm with! It's been a great run in this area, and I'm really going to miss it, but I'm excited for what the Lord has in store for me!

This week's spiritual thought actually come out of the Worldwide Missionary Broadcast that we had a few weeks ago. In it, Elder Bednar talked about success, and I love what he said. He taught us that success is something that is a gift from the Lord, and that we need to continue working hard, whether or not the Lord decides to give us success. It's like the account in the Book of Mormon about Ammon and the other son's of Mosiah when they went to preach to the Lamanites. In Alma chapter 26 it says

27 Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.

The Lord gave them success! They still had to work hard, and they experienced a lot of persecutions and trials, but through it all, the Lord made it so that they were able to see their brethren come unto Christ. In our own lives, we need to be patient and work hard, even when the Lord doesn't grant us success right away.

Love ya'll!

'Till next week

-Elder Moffitt

It's too cold to think of a witty subject today

Hey!

Last time I wrote it was nice and warm up here (kind of), but that all changed a few days ago. It's back down to -21 Celsius today, and we've gotten about a foot or so of snow. It's been crazy. Luckily the Dodge Grand Caravan handles winter like a champ! Unless it's snowing, then it's pretty bad. On the bright side, we were able to get out of our neighborhood today without Elder Stringam pushing us up the big hill outside of our house! Tender Mercies!

This week was a pretty good one! We were on exchanges with BC this week, and so they both came to our area. I went with Elder Austin, and Elder Stringam went with Elder Ajeman. On exchanges, Elder Austin and I had a dinner with a part member family, the mom is an active member of the ward, but her 11 year old daughter was never baptized because she'd never gotten permission from her less active dad. The parents are divorced, but the dad still lives close by, and discourages his kids from going to church. The daughter, Amelia Kelbert, lives with her mom, and goes to church quite often. Well she's finally gotten permission from her dad to be baptized, so now we're getting to teach her! She knows quite a bit about the church already because she's pretty much grown up in it. She's on date for February 19th! It's pretty soon, but we've already got a lot of appointments scheduled out with them so that she can be prepared to be baptized by that date. We're excited for her!

We had exchanges with the Calgary West Elders too, and I went with Elder MacJanet. We had a good time, and contacted some strong potentials! We went out snow shoveling in the morning because we'd gotten a pretty good dumping the night before. We were trying to help whoever we could. We met a guy named Gian who really appreciated the help. We talked with him a little about what we do as missionaries, and he said that we could come over next Saturday to share a message with him! He has a belief in God, and a great love for his family, but he doesn't really associate himself with any religion. He seemed very willing to listen though!

We also went out tracting a lot this week, and found a street that was not very nice. At one of the doors we knocked, an older guy came out and told us that every one who went to our church deserved to be in prison, and then was yelling at us to get off his porch. We kinda just stood there and stared at him. At first I thought he was joking, but I guess he was serious. We tried to talk with him a little, but he wouldn't listen to us at all. I feel so bad for those people. The gospel brings such great blessings into our lives, and some people's hearts are just so hard, that they won't even give it a chance. Many of the other doors we knocked on were super nice though, and we found some people that might be willing to have us over again.

Those were pretty much the highlights of this week. We've still been doing a lot of personal finding, and have been trying to work with the members as well.

Spiritual thought time!

I read Alma 5 in my personal study recently, and I just love this chapter. It really calls each of us to do a self reflection of where we're at in our lives. I love verses 12-14

12 And according to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart. Behold I say unto you that this is all true.
13 And behold, he preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved.
14 And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?

Haven't we all experienced a change of heart through Jesus Christ? This change of heart should change the way that we live our lives. It causes us to repent when we make mistakes, and try harder to be disciples of our Savior. These are great questions to reflect on in our lives.

Love ya'll! Hope it's warmer where you are!

Love,

Elder Moffitt