Letters from Canada: Cette fille est sur le feu. [This girl is "on fire".]

I don't really know if "sur le feu" is a real French term... I basically just directly translated that..... Mais c'est vrai en englais.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE SISTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 has become my favourite age on my mission:)

Quote of the week:

Elder Widdup (DL)--after asking me to recite this week's scripture in French: "Ok, that was really good, Sister Lewis. There were a few words here and there, but people will really be able to feel the Spirit from what you're saying.

Me: -.-

This was an amazing week!

Two Fridays ago, on the 7th, the zone leaders challenged every area in the zone to invite 20 people to learn about the gospel that day. The mission's contacts have gone down (http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/64352/Pass-along-cards-personalized-printable-pass-along-cards.html - read that entire article) in the winter months because it's been a lot harder to find people out (and the ones who are out in several feet of snow are all crazy, right?:)). Plus Friday is our day that's packed with meetings, so we only had about an hour of finding scheduled in, and it's really difficult to find that many people in an hour. So when Sister Olson and I got the text challenging us to do that, our hearts sank a little because we didn't know if we could make it. But we wanted to. In fact, we became determined to reach 20 contacts that day.

It required a lot of sacrifice. Shorter meals, rearranging plans, giving other things up to have more finding time scheduled. We were speed walking everywhere, talking to ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE we saw. It was hard. It got awkward at times. It stretched us. But we ended up exceeding 20 contacts.

And we got home that night and felt so good. We had just pushed ourselves beyond what we thought our limits were. So we decided to do the same thing the next day. Sunday night, we had this new-found determination and did everything we could to reach our goals. And there were a lot of them that seemed really out of reach that we reached anyway because we had faith and did EVERYTHING in our power to reach those goals.

Monday we met every single one of our goals, and exceeded in a few of them. And we continued to work like that and realized Saturday afternoon that we had reached all of our weekly goals early, and that the week could end right then and we would have a successful week. We continued to push ourselves and reach our goals. This week, we reported some of the best numbers I've ever seen. We hit or exceeded all of our goals. We ended up talking to 228 people instead of the 150 we set the goal for.

This work is addictive. Seriously. Reaching the goals is one thing, but it's another to watch so many people I love develop a faith in Jesus Christ. Yesterday, we had 4 investigators at church and 3 less-actives we've been working with. It was an overwhelming experience to see all those people I have prayed for, planned for, and worked for where they were supposed to be.

Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven!!!

Love,

Sister Lewis