10-05-2015

Happy October everyone!

I hope that you have had a great and wonderful week. I hope that you were able to watch and enjoy General Conference. I enjoyed conference and am thankful for the inspired council we received. As Elder Rudolph put it, "We were spiritually destroyed by the spirit."

As a missionary this was the first time I did not watch all the sessions at the church. The Women's General Broadcast I watched at the P's. They couldn't get the English transmission to go through. So we left with Sister P to go watch it at her apartment. We had 3 other members join us. It was fun.  Saturday I actually watched conference from my apartment. Sister T. woke up at 3 that morning puking and didn't stop really until 9. She couldn't move from off the "couch/bed". I called the P's to see if they had anything and to let them know we weren't going to make it to the church. Sister P came up armed with Essential Oil things and Elder P gave her a blessing. Then between them and the Elders someone talked to Pres. Patrick and got permission for us to watch conference from our apartment. So the P's brought up their iPhone and I watched conference while Sister T. slept. (The P's live below us and their WiFi comes into our apartment and out into the parking lot.) 

Good news is she was feeling much better by Sunday and we were able to go to the church. They had the English transmission going in the gym. So we watched conference with a couple of other members on the TV and we pulled in the comfy couches and pulled up chairs for our feet to watch. John and the P's brought lunch for us, which was really sweet of them.  All in all it was a great conference.

I would like to share apart of my ponderizing scripture. It comes from 2 Ne. 2:2 "thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain." When we trust in God we will be blessed. He sees the bigger picture. Any trial he gives us is to bless us and make us stronger and into the people that we can become. He sees our full potential. 

I hope that you all have a wonderful week. Just a heads up my next 2 p-days will be on Tuesday due to Canadian Thanksgiving and then Zone Conference the next week. We will get to have a sleep over in Quebec. On the 18th we will be going for Stake Conference and then the next day is Zone Conference with the Elder Golden of the 70's. That should be exciting.

Oh and my other exciting news is I will be going to Quebec City for training on Thursday because the Sister Missionaries get to be temple workers for the Open House. :) I'm pretty stoked about that! 

Have a great week! Sister Gardner

9-28-2015

Hello Everyone! I hope that you have had a wonderful week. This week was a fairly good week for us. We had a really great lesson at our DA this week with the Burger`s. We had a potential investigator come. Personally I don`t think they needed Sister T. or I. It was such a powerful lesson and really the Burger`s took over and taught Mellie. It has been so cool to watch them become member missionaries. 

Lou`s Memorial went very well. Ida the day before gave Sister T. and I necklaces that were Lou`s and she gave Sister P some bracelets. We were able to wear them for the service. The full time missionaries sang Hallelujah words adapted to Lou. I also took part in singing “I Know My Redeemer Lives.” The first verse was in French and Sister T. sang. The second verse Sister Mac sang in Spanish. I sang the third verse in English and then the congregation joined us for the last verse in French. Lou was fluent in all 3 languages. 

Saturday night was transfer calls. No one in my district is changing. This will be the first time that I will have my companion for more than 2 transfers. :) We did change zones. So now it will take 3 hours to drive to Zone Conference vs. 2 hours. It will be fun to see Quebec City.

Can you believe the Zone Leaders forgot to call us!! We texted them to ask if we could have our calls before we went in to watch the Women`s General Broadcast and then they called. 

Today was a crazy and fun day. We had a district adventure. We went hiking to Mont Orford. It is also a ski resort. It seemed really small to me compared to the ones in Utah. We also went Geo-caching (not sure how that is spelled), and to a Cathedral where we had the opportunity to listen to a Gregorian chant (I think that is what it`s called). It was a lot of fun! 

I hope you all have a good week!

Sister Gardner

September 21, 2015

Hello everyone! I hope that your week is finding you well. Life here continues to go.

Sister T. and I had the opportunity to sing for Lee's (Sara's baby) funeral. We sang “I Feel My Savior's Love.” It went very well. I saw several tears shed. Elder P gave a talk on the Plan of Salvation and used the scriptures that Elder R and I gave him. It was a great talk! The Bishop gave his closing remarks and they were powerful as well! 

Well they say that death comes in three's. Our Beautiful Lou has returned back to her Heavenly Father. So if all of you could keep her Family in your prayers I would appreciate that! 

I am so grateful for the Plan of Salvation or my favorite name for it is Plan of Happiness. This plan was made for us so that we could reach our goal of becoming like our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and return to live with them. Christ came to Earth so that he could perform the Atonement and take upon him the pains, trials, and sins of the world. He did this because he loves us so much!!! He wants to help us. All we have to do is ask.

I'm also even more grateful for the second part of his life, his resurrection. Because of this resurrection we all will have the same opportunity and we will be able to live again. This life isn't just the end. In fact death is more of a beginning. The life that awaits us will be so glorious and wonderful. I'm so thankful that I have this knowledge and can help others come to this same knowledge. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Sister Gardner 

Pics: Our last picture with Lou at her Pizza Party, Progression of the Temple, and my District

09-14-15

Hello everyone! I hope that you have had a great and wonderful week. This week has been interesting.

First off I would like to ask you to keep some families in your prayers this week. We received word that Sister A's sister passed away last Thursday. I know they will be struggling so any prayer will help. I would also like you to pray for the Star Family, but more focused on Sara. She is our less active. Her 1 month old baby died Saturday night. It's just crazy to think because we were there Saturday morning and Lee seemed fine. So please keep them in your prayers as well! 

This week we've been able to work more with some of our members and help them become member missionaries. It's been amazing to see them grow. We've been using Preach My Gospel with them and helping them adapt it to them. We role play with them. Their testimonies are so powerful. I know as they catch this vision and start to incorporate it, they will be on fire! I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to watch and be apart of this.  

Funny story for the week. Every Friday we have weekly planning. We decided to take advantage of the nice weather and plan on our balcony. We kept going in and out of the apartment to grab things or change because it was getting hot. The last time I came out I shut the door so that all the hot air wouldn't go into our apartment. We finished our planning and when we went to go back inside we realized the security bar had fallen and we were locked out. I don't know how it fell or when it fell. It didn't fall immediately after I shut the door and I didn't shut the door very hard. So we were stuck. Sister T. and I got a pretty good laugh at ourselves and luckily we had our phone. So we started calling some members to come rescue us. We finally got a hold of Sister B and she came to the rescue. But to come to our rescue she had to buzz in to a random apartment and then go to the back because only our back door was unlocked. But good news she was able to come and buzz into number 3 and the lady was so nice. When we were on our way back up from saying thanks and goodbye to the B's we went and thanked her. I still don't know how the bar fell. After we got back up I tested the security bar to see if it would fall when I slammed the door. I did it 3 different times and all the 3 times the bar didn't move. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Keep being the amazing people that you are!

Sister Gardner 

Happy Labor Day

Happy Labor Day everyone! I hope that you were able to do something fun and exciting. It was a great day here. We had some awesome lessons and went apple picking with the Burger Clan. It was Sister T's first time picking apples so it was fun to share this experience with her. 

I don't have a lot of time so I'm copying and pasting what I wrote to President Patrick this week. It sums up the amazing experiences I've had this week.

Hello President! I hope this week has found you well. Thanks for the update on Sister A. That's so exciting for her and her family! 

This week has been a good week. Sister T. and I had a cool experience with weekly planning. We created our own 5-5-5 list. They are active members that we want to focus on and help them become member missionaries. We said a prayer asking if this was even a good idea and if it was to help us to know who to focus on. After the prayer we both felt good about it and so we started to write down names. We had 5 names in common come up and so those were the families we decided to focus on. So then we said another prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for the inspiration and also asked what we needed to share and how to help each family. Then we started planning and making goals for them. All of the names have a goal with a specific section in Preach My Gospel to go along with. It's just amazing how the spirit works. Sister T. or I would say something and the other one would say they thought that too. It was cool and I'm looking forward to seeing the members and helping them with this.

Last night we had our first taste of what it will be like. We went to the Best Family for dinner and shared with them what we had planned. We also told them about our experience with planning. Sister Best was surprised and felt touched. She told us that she really felt like we needed to come and see them this week, but she wasn't sure why. Our visit with them and what we told them confirmed her prompting to have us over. It was cool. 

Another cool experience we had was we made a Book Of Mormon challenge for the Burger Families (Mama. Papa, all the sons and their wives). It didn't start out as a family challenge. It all started with how do we help our investigator  May, she is the wife of one of the sons. One thing lead to another and we both felt like we should give the family a challenge. It's a simple challenge and we're doing it with them. It's to read 1 chapter a day. We presented it to them yesterday and they all enthusiastically accepted. It was awesome! 

People keep asking us if we are wasting our time and shouldn't we be trying to contact more? I'm not saying that those things aren't important, but right now Sister T. and I feel like we need to help the members. We've tried contacting and it wasn't very effective. We can still talk to people when we encounter them and try to reach our goal of giving away 3 cards a week and 1 Book of Mormon (which we gave away yesterday while we were with the Bergeron Families!) a week. For now I am going to focus on the members, of course not forgetting the investigators and less actives we are working with. 

I hope you all have an awesome week. Keep being amazing!

Love, Sister Gardner 

P.S. I forgot to mention who was in the pictures from last week. The first was of members cooking the corn. The 2nd was Sister T. and Sister H and her daughter. Sister H is the one who knows Zaq Brinkerhoff.