December 3rd, 2013

Hey fam,

Everything is going great here in good old Calgary!  We're picking up a new investigator today, her name is Mary Marcelin and she gave us a call the other day saying that she wants to quit smoking because she scanned a stop smoking poster or called the number at the bottom and said she'd be interested in trying it.  Can't wait to meet her and help her out.  Oh and we got Christmas all figured out.   We're going to the Stevens family and Sister Stevens is originally a Montrealer and apparently knows Dawn Ross, so tell her she says hi!  I'll try and find out her full name so I'll get it to you for next week.  I'll probably put my package under their tree and open it on Christmas day.  Me and Elder Averett are doing good.  

 

Everything is going good. we have a lot of potential investigators who are pretty close to becoming investigators and there's a ward Christmas party and a lot of members are bringing their friends.  Also there is a person that we do service for who found us someone who might be interested, and another area who handed off an investigator for us so we just need to contact him.  Marima is also hopefully coming back this week and so we'll probably pick her back up soon because she's been gone for a while.  We've also been utilizing our ward missionaries more often and the Lord seems to be blessing us because of it.

 

Too bad the missionaries in our ward have no one they're teaching because our ward seems to be a goldmine for investigators.  I remember when Nancy joined the church and the black lady from Botswana, I won't try spelling her name.  But that was when Elder Holm and Elder Bernier were serving and seemed to know how to find investigators in the area.  Elder Blank was also really good at picking the ward up and talking with everyone he came in contact with.  I remember it was him and that Australian Elder McLain who found Nancy.

Well that's about all that happened that was new and exciting for this week. Hope I'll have many other stories to tell for next week :)

Love you guys!

Elder Gagnon

November 25th, 2013

Hey family,

Everything is great here in the Bow Valley ward.  This is now my 4th transfer here in the ward and it's great because the ward is so great.  Ever since we've baptised Chee Wee the ward has trusted us more with their friends which is good because now there's more unity between us. This past Sunday our ward mission leader told us he had to meet with the bishop so he put us in charge of gospel principles like 1 min before class started and it was on the Sabbath day and it went really well.  The ward mission leader and a bunch of other people came up to us and told us that it was a really great lesson and were suprised we hadn't prepared for it.  It was a lot of fun.  My companion told me he'd probably not do too well in teaching the doctrine so I just had him bear his testimony at certain parts while I taught the whole lesson.  I never thought I was that good of a teacher though.  It was funny, because I've been so nit picky about the way I teach and to have all that at the end of a lesson felt good.

Oh and my new companion is Elder Averett.  He's from Arizona and has been out for 3 months. His first area was Cranston in South Calgary. It was cool because his first name is Sturling and it reminded me of a small town near Lethbridge called the same name and made me miss the south a little bit, but I love it here in Calgary.  The work is a lot of fun.   Anyway, I gave Elder Renshaw a big huge before he left and he told me how much he's going to miss this mission.  I remember as he was packing, he wept a bit about how it was all over.  It was a sad day.  We did get a whole bunch of pics together before he left though. I'll send them to you. Oh and I'm not sure when Chee Wee is going to the temple, but he'll let me know.

We also got another call from Jorgina telling us that she wants to take the lessons again.  So we'll be meeting with her again which is nice because we lost contact with her for a while.

Well that's about all for this week!

Love you guys!

Elder Justin Gagnon

November 19th, 2013

 

 

District Activity

                                                   
                                                     Saying good-bye to Elder Renshaw

 

 

Hey fam,

Yea I don't think I'll need the new scriptures, I read the feedback on them and looked at my comps new scriptures and it didn't look that exciting.  Oh well, maybe the next addition will have more stuff and be actually worth while.  But the ones I got right now are great.  I made some scripture boxes for them a couple of months ago with a bunch of mission and church memorabilia on it.  I'll see if I can send some pics of it next week.  My comp Elder Renshaw is pretty dead right now, he arrives home on Thursday and he's super excited but sad at the same time.  He loved the mission and is planning on visiting in the summer.  Just the other day we went to his final interview with President and after on our way back he wanted to see some of the memories of specific areas in Calgary.  I'll send you some pics of us and our final memories together. It was fun serving with him and we're probably going to miss each other.  We worked though and managed to find a lot of people to teach.

Oh and big news, Chee Wee is planning on going to the temple pretty soon to start doing baptisms for the dead and he wants me to go with him as a witness.   He's progressed so well in the gospel and has been reading the Book Of Mormon every day and has the Aaronic priesthood now.  We've also been working with a recent convert named Gram Padler and he's been a member for about three months but never got prepped to receive the priesthood in the YSA ward he was in and so we prepped him and now he has it and will eventually go and do baptisms as well. We also found this one investigator whose name is Kate and is going to UOC.   But we'll have to pass her off because she's YSA, but she's solid, she really likes what we teach and is pretty ready.  We're going to teach her on Friday and hand her off to the sisters of the YSA ward.  We had to do this to a lot of people and hand them off but it's alright because we're getting a lot of investigators handed to us as well.

About Christmas, I just picked up some socks not too long ago and they seem to be pretty sturdy so I think I'll be good for socks.  Maybe a tie or two would be nice, not sure what else I would like.  When I got to the apartment there were a bunch of study materials, so I think I'll be good for studying.  Oh, did Heather come back from Mountainview yet?  If so, I think she has a bunch of books that I aquired from the members in Cardston.

Well that's all for this week.

Love you guys,

Elder Gagnon

November 13th, 2013

Hey family,

Everything is going great here in Calgary!  I'm so sorry to hear about what is going on in the Philippines.  I'll keep Chris in my prayers and also his future wife too.  Me and Brother Deranciang (one of our ward missionaries) have been praying for each other at the moment because we both have people we know in the Philippines, even though I don't really know Minerva, I still think of them a lot, so that's one more thing I will keep in my prayers.

That's so exciting that Jay got called to be the stake president.  I knew he'd get called to that calling. Too bad no one is serving in Champion anymore, I would have somehow got a hold of the missionaries there and told them to tell the people there about that.  It's funny, so far every Mormon I've seen from Champion knows about Jay.   I'll see if I can get a hold of the Shultz family from Magrath and tell them about that.  Oh and was Brother Shultz at the funeral for Jay's dad?   Just curious.

The weeks have gone a bit slow the past little while because we've had quite a bit of investigators falling through with their appointments but we still try to be patient with them because patience is pretty key in missionary work.  Chee Wee also got the priesthood a couple weeks ago but I'm not sure if I told you that at all.  We also picked up an investigator we had to hand off too East Calgary who actually found us because he took our parking spot at our apartment complex and so I left him a pass along card saying this is the missionaries spot and if you're ever interested in LDS teachings call our #.   But that was like 2 months ago and he called back this past week and we taught him the 1st lesson.  He said he'd love to attend church so we got him hooked up with the East Stake YSA.  We still haven't heard anything from Marima in a while but we're hoping to start teaching her soon again. We've also been trying a new finding tactic where we're posting stop smoking flyers in our area and so far just by posting them we've managed to find a couple people intrigued at what we were doing so we managed to get some people's contact info, so hopefully we'll be picking up a couple new investigators.

As far as Christmas goes,  I heard that the new scriptures came out a while ago and I've been reading my companion's for awhile and I would like a set, if that's ok.  I would just like the triple combination and the Bible to be separate and in blue if that's possible.  But if it's not, then the black is good and if I can get them in miniature size that would be good as well.  I think that's the size just smaller than your quad combo.  But if you can't find them separate in that size then the regular size is good.   So.... first choice: mini, separate, and blue. Second: mini separate and black,  and last:  separate regular size lue or black (blue is better though).  If you can find them in blue get them, but only in regular and small sizes.

Well can't wait to here from you guys next week.

 Love you guys!

 Elder Justin Gagnon

November 4th, 2013

Hey family!

Everything in Calgary is doing well.  We got a new ward mission leader because our old one moved out to the Panorama ward, but our new one seems like he'll bring some new things to the table.  We also developed a new ward mission plan where we give all the ward missionaries assignments to visit families of the ward and help them develop a family mission plan.   Instead of just us doing all that stuff we also got ward missionaries out there as well and so far we got one family who we're going to meet with their friend this Friday.  We also got another guy who we're meeting with this Tuesday. His name is Terry and he's a referral from one of the less actives we're working with.  He seems super open and hopefully we can get him progressing as soon as possible.  Our investigator Marima also just out of no where went to Edmonton for 2 weeks, so that was a bit of a downer, but hopefully we'll pick her back up soon because she's a solid investigator.

So the next little bit we need to focus on finding because that's something we've been really struggling with. We still haven't been able to get in contact with the man who scanned our flyer but we keep trying. We've also been trying to talk to more people every day and working with families and their missionary work.

That's cool that youth conference was in Quebec City. I know the church is even smaller there than in Montreal, I think all they have is one ward and one branch out there.  In Calgary the church is really big.  I was suprised that Montreal got a temple first though.

Oh and speaking of temples, just this past Saturday we went to the Calgary temple to do some temple cleaning and it was super cool.  The celestial room looks like the one from back home and it's nothing like the Cardston temple.  But it was still really cool cleaning it though. There are a lot of pictures in the rooms of Waterton and Chief Mountain down in the south, which was pretty cool.  I would still like to go there for a session though because I heard that there's a new temple video and I haven't seen it yet.  Have you seen it yet?  I heard it's pretty cool.

Well that's all for this week and can't wait to hear from you next week.

Love Elder Justin Gagnon.

October 28th, 2013 - Happy Halloween!

Hey Family,

I had a feeling that President Jarvis would get released pretty soon because he's been in that calling for a long time. We're still trying to get to see his mother and law but she's super busy and it's hard to catch her.  But we'll keep working with her because she's super nice so we'll see what we can do when we start inviting her to keep commitments.  We actually just picked up a family the other day and they seem super solid.  The mother is super nice.  She's a non-practicing Muslim from Africa and she speaks a bit of french because she lived in Quebec City for a little while. She has one 15 year old son and I can see them both joining the church in the near future.

We also got a huge dump of snow the other day...It was crazy!  In the morning it was super nice out and it was actually raining a bit and then it started snowing and didn't stop all day. We walked though that day and it's always nice to be out of the car and meeting all kinds of people throughout the day. That's how we met Chee Wee actually, we just street contacted into him.  It's funny because I always remind him of that day and he always tells me how crazy it was.

Oh and the members are feeding us really well in this area, we actually have a member that calls members of the ward to feed us and fills our calenders with meeting members of the ward and helping them with their missionary work. Of course there are the occasional few who don't want anything to do with missionary work but we just keep inviteing them. So far we have one solid family that help the whole stake out with missionary work.  Arbour Lake ward actually baptized a family because of this family in our ward which was exciting to hear.   But overall the work here is moving along and this other member helped us out with this cool finding tool that we actually found one man with it but we just need to get back to him.  The tool we used though was a flyer that we placed all over our area and it has a scanning code on it and when they scan it it brings them straight to our phone number and calls us.  So we got a call from a man named Matthew and he told us he'd be interested in our message.  We're also going to start making another flyer that has our stop smoking program on it so we can help people and maybe find some new investigators.

Well that's about it for this week!

 

Love you guys!

Elder Justin Gagnon

October 21st, 2013 - Almost one year in the mission!

Hey family,

Well I haven't hit a year yet, in three days I will though. Me and my companion (Elder Renshaw) plan on burning a shirt though since I'm hitting a year. There are a couple of shirts that the past missionaries left here, so we'll burn one of those. I'll see if I can get a video of it and get one of the members of the ward to send it to you guys. Elder Renshaw is great though, we have a lot of fun together but we still work hard.  Oh we were also told to go to down town Calgary to teach a French man the other day but I found out that his English was super good so we handed him off to the Calgary 5th ward Elders. He is so ready to be a member though and this is the second time we had to hand off a super solid investigator. Oh well, he's in good hands though and I'm sure he'll be baptized  pretty soon I think.  Catherine sent us a message on the phone and told us she didn't want anything to do with the church anymore and that she'll be saved by grace.  That's too bad, but I hope she'll find her way back some day.  Georgina is doing well, but I'm not sure how far she'll go because she hasn't been very good about keeping appointments lately.  But we are picking up a new investigator tomorrow,  his name is Terry and he seems to be very open minded which is good.  So hopefully we'll see some progress with him.  The district leader calling though is nothing too special, I just have a bit more responsibilities like gathering numbers and sending them to the Zone leaders and preparing weekly trainings. Oh and for your talk, one thing I like doing when I teach about sacrament is going over the sacrament prayer. One thing I found out in personal study one time was trying to read the sacrament prayer in the first person. It makes it really personal when you read it that way and I get more out of it when I think of it that way. Try it out and tell me how it goes. That's something cool you can add in your talk. Oh and our apartment is nothing special.  It's just like any old apartment but I'll send some pics next week of it. Oh and have I told you that it's right across the street from the McMann stadium and so some nights are a little crazy when there are football games and stuff happening. That's about it for this week. Can't wait too hear from you next week!

Love you guys

Elder Justin Gagnon