Letters from Canada: This week....

Well, not every week is quite my favorite one, that's for sure! We saw miracles happen this week though, and we like to focus on those. Our French-speaking investigator Edith Veilleux* (the mother of Evangeline and Eustace) is on date for baptism on October 19. It's going to be a lot of work until that point, but we are excited.

Happy birthday to Ty Rosser, Ricky Larsen, and my big cousin Cameron!!! October is a big month for my family, eh?!

I know there have gotta be six 19-year-old girls left in Utah by now or something, but just in case, here's some advice for those who are preparing to serve missions:

Being a 19-year-old Sister missionary is hard. Not everyone's going to trust you and your insights because you are so young. Sometimes you'll feel a little lost in a mission full of Elders when not all of them like having Sister missionaries around. Not everything will be perfect--very few things are, and hardly anyone is. But this week I really learned my lesson that even though the adversary wants us to feel unneeded and useless at times, we can be powerful. The Lord qualifies those whom He calls.

A few days after we opened Riverview for Sisters, the Elders picked up a family of investigators--a single mom (Edith) with 5 children between the ages of 3 months and 15. The girls were baptized about two months later and the Elders continued to teach Edith, taking a third priesthood member with them every time they visited her. Edith is very shy, and has had an incredibly difficult life (and was part of a genocide in her home country). She has a hard time trusting people and opening up, so the Elders were finding it difficult to help her progress. One day, we picked up her good friend and neighbour, Violet*, as an investigator. Violet asked to be taught by us with Edith, and the Elders eventually gave us Edith as an investigator. We taught Violet, who is confident and talkative, with Edith and Elder Call. With all the people there, it was difficult to really understand Edith's perspective and to get her to open up. And so Sister Nelson and I this week decided we needed to make Edith a priority. On Thursday we had a lesson with her--just her. It was the first one we had with her alone. The first part of the lesson was rocky as she dealt with her children, but they eventually fell asleep and the Spirit was welcomed into the lesson. We, as Sisters, were able to reach Edith's heart, and she bore powerful testimony to us that she knows God is her Father and the she loves Him and Jesus Christ. She opened up so well that we were really able to reach her heart and assess her needs. We were able to commit her to baptism.

The Elders had done an amazing job of teaching her. They taught her all the lessons, they helped her get to church. Most importantly, they helped her develop her faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement. The Elders are strong, talented missionaries, and sometimes God needs His Sister missionaries to come help others of His daughters come unto Christ fully. There are things Elders can do, and there are also things Sisters can do.

Anyway, back to my missionary life. This morning I studied the Plan of Salvation in my personal study--particularly Our Life on Earth. When I was reading about it from Preach My Gospel, it hit me that I have been developing a strong testimony of trials over the last 5 years or so. After going through a particularly difficult time in my first 2 years of middle school, I had an experience in my seminary class that showed me one of the reasons I had to go through such a hard trial, and I realized that part of my purpose in life was to help other people when they had to go through similar trials. And now on my mission, I find that I'm doing that even more--helping investigators through their trials and concerns because I went through the same ones.

Not only would I be a considerably less effective missionary without those trials, but I would not have been molded more into the type of person God wants me to become. In Jeremiah 18, we learn of the importance of being a refined vessel--or tool--of Heavenly Father's. The potter tries to mold the clay into a vessel that is not "marred," but rather "good." When we let our trials change us, refine us, and make us "[seem] good to the potter," that is when Heavenly Father can work miracles through us. When we are an unclean or a broken vessel (Isaiah 52:11), we are hindering God's work because He cannot work powerfully through broken vessels. In other words, if we are hard-hearted and stubborn, if we do not let our God remold us and change us, if we don't let our trials refine us, we are keeping miracles from being performed. When we call on the healing power of the Atonement of Christ, we can overcome our marred and our broken parts. God will change us into the vessels--the servants--He needs us to be.

I love you all. Be soft-hearted vessels. God is progressing His work through you.

Love,

Sister Lewis

FALL!

I have a good senior companion, because she always pushes me out of my comfort zone to do things I don't always want to do <3 talking to people, knocking doors, etc....

We got to go to the temple again!!! We went with a member who invited us, and we did everything to get permission to go. And then I left my tag in Riverview. So I borrowed Sister Nelson's. Hers was an Elders' tag that only clips on pockets. I was really sad.