The Lost Files!!

(This is Amber's mom.)

While she was in the MTC, Sister Lewis lost her camera!  :(  She looked everywhere for it and submitted a report about her lost camera, but it was not found before she left the MTC.  I checked back with the MTC for the first couple of weeks after she left and we sent her a new camera.  But we were all devastated by the loss of the photos that had been on the old one.  There were videos of her and her sister before she left plus all of her photos from the MTC.  And she felt just awful about losing the camera and the expense of it all.

But a little over a month ago, I got a call from the MTC.  They had found the camera!  It had fallen behind one of the lost and found drawers and when they finally decided to fix the drawer to see why it couldn't shut, there was her camera!  I copied all her photos to my computer and sent the camera and SD card on to her so she could see and have those pictures, too.  Not to mention the camera, because it was a much better camera than the one we replaced it with.  And I have permission to post any and all of the photos on it!

This batch of photos were taken at her goodbye party, the night before she gave her final talk in church.

With Matt and Quinn.

Cousins!

Grandparents!  (who are now serving their own mission in New Zealand!)

Happy Remembrance Day!!!

Quote of the Week:

Sister Sandberg: "Sister Lewis, what song were we singing the other day? It was a Christmas song."

Me: (appalled) "We were singing a Christmas song?!"

Elder Hendrickson: "Was it 'I'll Be Home for Christmas'? Oh wait..."

Ouch!!!!!

Yesterday was a really special day for us!! Our investigator George* walked an hour in the snow to get to church. We were so happy. He's getting it. We've been teaching him and his two kids, Darren* (12) and Isaiah* (10). He's Born Again Christian, which is tough because every single one of his beliefs are different from ours.... It was a rocky beginning picking him up as an investigator. But since then, he's gone through a huge change of heart and he's a completely different person. He's excited to come to church again next week, so we'll see how it goes.

Also, almost every less active we're working with came to church yesterday. That was huge for us as well. There's a special spirit in sacrament meeting when you watch people you adore make the right, difficult choice like that.I was proud of them and felt blessed to be able to work so hard with them.

The Sunday school lesson was on missionary work--my favourite! The class got really involved, which was touching to see. I've been pretty aware since my mission began that a lot of members feel stressed and overwhelmed about doing missionary work. They've expressed that they feel guilty whenever we ask them about how it's going. I don't blame them--missionary work, on top of everything else that's busy about life, can be really hard. But I loved watching them get it a little bit yesterday. I mean, I know (first-hand!) how hard missionary work is! I get it! And when it wasn't 100% of my life, I wasn't the greatest member-missionary. I didn't understand my role and didn't have much of a desire to be involved in it. So at the end of this fantastic lesson, the teacher asked for last comments and I raised my hand. And this is sort of what I said.

One thing that was surprising to me when I first became a missionary was that it's rude to talk about when another missionary's going home. If you hate your companion, you remind them of how much longer they have on their missions. Seriously. It's a really touchy subject. No one wants to go home, and no one wants to be reminded of it. It's like a big tragedy. And I've seen so many RMs come home who do not want to be home. They miss their missions and they feel depressed because they wish they could be back. And it's like that for a reason. And it's not because we love getting up at 6:30 every morning. It's not because we enjoy talking to strangers about things they don't want to discuss. It's not because we love being rejected. It's not because we like not having any personal time. That's all really hard. The reason we love serving the Lord in this way is because we are promised "great joy" for doing this work.

It is more than a responsibility to do missionary work, as members of Christ's Church. It is a complete privilege. I remember so well the day that they made the age-change announcement, and I was so incredibly grateful that God would allow me to serve a mission, to serve Him and His children. It is a complete privilege to receive the blessings that come from missionary work. I feel honoured to be Christ's representative. I love being a missionary, but I also just love the work. I love being a missionary. I love the "great joy" that I receive from doing it, even though it's my responsibility. It is a privilege to offer my brothers and sisters something so eternally special.

I love you all. Have a great week.

Love,

Sister Lewis

Matching tights, matching boots

The St. John River

Elders havin fun with my camera while I slaved away yesterday....

Matching coats, matching tights (same patterns and brand), matching pencil skirts, matching little brown boots... Awkward

Matching cardigans, matching flower shirts, matching belts. We lose.

A Canadian Halloween!

Hey family and everyone else!

Today marks one year until my release date. I'm starting to freak out. I don't want this to end!!!!!

This week was a crazy one. It was kind of rough. But really great. I guess I haven't done the quote of the week for a while!

1. A man we stopped downtown one night: "Would you two ladies maybe want to get a drink with me?"

Sister Sandberg: (laughing) "We don't drink!"

Man: (looking sad) "I know. I just prowl the streets trying to corrupt religious preachers like you."

Then we stopped the next guy on the street...

2. Me: (blah blah blah, laughing, small talk) "So have you seen missionaries like us before?"

Guy: "Yes, but none as pretty!"

Sister Sandberg and I were kinda done with that street that night haha.

So Halloween was crazy this year! Missionaries can throw some pretty serious parties when they're locked up in their apartments on Halloween night.... not. Haha we had a glow stick dance party while blasting MoTab, worked in the area book, got prank called twice, pigged out on carameled popcorn that we made, and took ugly pictures. And the highlight of the night was cutting open glow sticks, pouring the contents into the back of the toilet, then flushing the toilet with the lights out and watching the water glow haha...... #bored.

We had the New Brunswick Zone Conference on Tuesday in Moncton. It was really great to be back in Moncton for a morning! I loved actually being oriented again. It was a spiritual conference and I left enriched. It was great to see all the missionaries again.

Also, just so everyone knows, I love my companion. Today is her 20th birthday. Happy birthday, Shishter Shandberg:)))

So I'm going to tell you that plantar fasciitis is the worst. I hate it. It's really been bothering me lately since I'm now in a walking area, which is fine. It's just hard to realize you have limits that you didn't have before. But I was reading an old journal entry last night that will be part of my spiritual thought for this e-mail. I had just written about how exhausted I was in every way--spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally. We had just had a really rough, tiring week (this was in September) and I was just done. But then I wrote about my the determination I felt despite all that, and I wrote "I've been running hard this week to serve God." I wrote about how when I wasn't able to run anymore, I would honestly crawl to do the work. And when I couldn't, I'd beg for God to give me the strength to continue to be His servant, because I love the work and I don't want to stop doing it.

So as I was reading this yesterday, I realized the horrible irony in it that I said I'd crawl if I couldn't run anymore.... Hahaha little did I know that I'd resort to crawling soon after that;) Dumb feet.

But I really do feel that way about the work. When I came out on my mission, I was by no means a "workaholic". I did the work I was asked to do, and I usually wasn't excited about it. I did it, and that was about it. And now I'm looking back at my entire mission so far. In a year, I will be home again. Less than two transfers and I'll be half-way done. And already I can see how much I have changed. I feel blessed that God has changed me from a girl with an okay-work ethic to a missionary with a deep determination to do His work the way He wants it done. I'm not an amazing missionary. I'm not this super-person who's good at everything. But He has changed me, and I have this deep, strong desire to do His will no matter what. I'm not going to lie, it's hard to ride my bike in the pitch dark while freezing rain and wind drench me, while my feet feel like they're going to fall off, and while no one wants to talk to me or hear me out. It's tough. And yet I'd rather be doing that than sitting in my apartment giving my feet a break.

And maybe I should give them a break someday soon haha, but I love that I don't want to. I love that I want to be out in the freezing cold, having doors slammed in my face, being made fun of, being rejected. I want to be walking around after the city's shut down and no one will answer the doors because it's "too late". I want to be going way out of my comfort zone talking to complete strangers about things they don't want to talk about. Because it's what God wants me to be doing, and I actually love it. I now see "Forget yourself and go to work" in a completely different way. I'm lost in it, and I want it to stay exactly this way for exactly another year. How great is my calling.

Love you all! Sorry if this sounded like I was complaining or something.... I swear I'm not, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. I am completely happy.

Love,

Sister Lewis

Don't have a lot of time to send the big e-mail today, so the pictures with long captions will have to suffice!

Last P-day.

 Elder Evanson behind me and Elder Campbell behind Sister Sandberg.

I was feeling dead sick, and sister Sandberg thought it would be funny to take a picture of me on the couch. Haha.

toe-warmers!

ISABELLE IS THE GREATEST RECENT CONVERT IN THE WORLD.

We had Stake Conference for the New Brunswick Stake over the weekend (which includes part of Maine). This sweet girl, Stephanie* (8), worships sister missionaries and wants to serve a mission so badly, so she asked for a picture with us:) Did we feel like celebrities? Why yes, yes we did.

I look a little scary in this one. But during the adult session of Stake Conference  on Friday night, we were having a REALLY spiritual, powerful, (and missionary-themed!) meeting. There were about 24 missionaries there total. President Spragg got up towards the end of this powerful conference and said, "Well, the First Presidency for this Stake Conference specifically asked for missionaries to attend, so I asked President Leavitt which missionaries we could hear from tonight, and he chose for us to hear from some sisters, so we'll be happy to have Sister Lewis and Sister Sandberg come up and bear their testimonies now." UMMM OK THANKS PRESIDENT LEAVITT. So we walked up and each bore our testimonies on missionary work. After we sat down, President Spragg spoke and we closed the session. Immediately afterwards, tons of members from across the stake came to us and thanked us for our testimonies, hugging us and telling us that hearing from us was the highlight of the meeting. Let me just say that it was incredibly humbling to have at least 10 families from Maine ask if the two of us could come be their sister missionaries (Maine only has elders right now). This couple has a particularly touching story, and he took us aside and told us his incredible conversion story which was so powerful. At the end he said, "You sisters keep being faithful. You keep being faithful. Because of 2 faithful missionaries, I know about my Saviour. Because of 2 faithful missionaries, I am sealed to my sweetheart forever." We all were touched and crying because I think at that moment, we were all reminded of the "divinity of this great and marvelous latter-day work." How great is my calling!

Hahahahaha trying on costumes at the Wilsons' * house last night for our ward Halloween party this Wednesday night. They thought I'd make a good Cleopatra.

Hahahahaaaaaaaa too funny too funny.

We checked the meal calendar where members sign up to feed us and saw that the elders signed us up for lunch with them today! Haha they've been preparing it for a long time, and we think it's mac and cheese with hotdogs.... Hahaha we're a little nervous.

C'est la vie.

I honestly don't even know what happened this week! Sister Sandberg and I can't remember anything. So this will be a great e-mail.

Isn't it weird that it's been more than a year since the age-change announcement that changed my life?! And now I'm 6 months into my mission in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Life is good.

Ready for an embarrassing story?

Last week after we e-mailed, Sister Sandberg and I walked home to grab some lunch. She was in the kitchen and I sat down on the couch and we were talking about how are families were doing. Then I saw an ab wheel sitting on the floor, so I thought I'd give it a shot since the last time I tried it was several months ago. I was rolling back on forth on it and realized that I was way better at it than last time I tried it! So I got really excited and started acting like an idiot on it, rolling back and forth as fast as I could, and then BAM face-planted it right into the ab wheel. I immediately jumped up and didn't say anything because Sister Sandberg was in the other room and didn't see me biff it. So I ran to the bathroom because I could taste the blood and saw that my tooth went through my lip! Not all the way through, but it was bad. So I was just going to wipe it off because dang it was embarrassing that I fell on an ab wheel because I was being a loser on it! So I felt with the blood, and it was still bleeding a little bit, but it was fine. And Sister Sandberg still didn't know. And then it started swelling and I had a fat lip all through Thanksgiving and had to tell everyone what happened. So I'll send a picture of it, although it is after the swelling went down a ton haha. I embarrass myself.

Recently Sister Sandberg and I have been asking ourselves why we're companions. We've been wondering why God wants the two of us serving in Fredericton together at this specific time--what it is He expects of us. I read this scripture in Helaman 10. In the scriptures, the prophet/missionary Nephi has just been falsely accused of murder, and has shown the people signs that he is a true prophet of God. He's walking home after he's been thrown into prison, after all the people in his city just tried to arrest him. And God tells him this:

"Blessed art thou, [Sister Lewis], for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments.

"And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will."

After this, he stops walking home and immediately returns to teach some more. I love the word "unwearyingness" here. The most fulfilling days on my mission are the ones that I work unwearyingly, when I work when my feet hurt, my body's tired, I'm hungry, and people won't even listen. Those days are the most important, because they're the ones that determine my faith. Either I move closer to God and work through the discouragement, or I choose to wrap up the day early and go give my body a break, because hey, I worked hard anyway, right?

We had one of those days this last week. Here, the hour between 8 and 9 PM is the hardest. It's already dark out, and the city shuts down. You can't knock because people are either asleep, won't answer the door because it feels later than it is, or will answer and be really grouchy that we're "knocking on the door at near midnight!" So Sister Sandberg and I found ourselves at the church at 8PM on aSunday night. The city was completely shut down, our plans and back-up plans had all fallen through, and we had absolutely no more ideas. It was at the point where if we just went home, we would only get there half an hour before curfew, so we wouldn't really be wasting time. It would've been so easy to go home and call it a night and get in bed a little earlier. And anyway, it would be good to get in bed a little earlier because we're always so exhausted from riding our bikes anyway.

But instead, we dropped to our knees and prayed. We told our Heavenly Father that we couldn't do our plans anymore, and that we still had an hour to work and had no idea what to do for it. We told Him that we weren't going to go home early, that we were going to work until the end. We asked Him for help knowing what could be effective at that time of day. Then we got up and got going, not knowing beforehand the things that we should do.

It would be nice to say we went out and happened to find someone who really needed the gospel who we would never have found if we hadn't been out working. It would be nice to say it was in that last hour that we were able to pull out a lot of numbers. But actually, we went out, and we did the most effective things we could, and we talked to about two people in that entire hour. That was the best we could do. We got to our apartment at 9 and prayed again to start planning.

But we worked with unwearyingness. And I know that we were blessed because of it. I went to sleep that night feeling "mighty in word and in deed".

I love you all. Have a great week.

Sister L

Ma lip.  I couldn't even close my lips all the way!

Thanksgiving--no proselyting allowed say what?!

Isabelle's Wall!  Isn't she the best Mormon?!

Bikin in the rain....No shame as a sister missionary.

We theorize that an Elder kissed the glass.