Cat Hair and Miracles!

Hello everyone! Hope your week has been great! Our weeks been crazy busy but awesome! We went on exchanges to Saskatoon and on my exchange with Sister Brooksby, we went to this lady's house and she has this cat....well, she was telling us about her last house and how the landlord thought there was something evil in the basement... So she said her cat was always mean and attacked people all the time. It was being nice though so it kept jumping onto my lap, so I finally let it stay there because Sister Brooksby is allergic and it kept trying to get to her lap buuttt, it started to shed....allll over me...but not just on my dress.... No no... In my braids as well. So when we were done, I was covered from head to foot cat hair.... Yuck!!!! Anyways, after that we went to this person's house and it turned out to be someone else, who said the person we were looking for was in the house across the street. So we knocked and actually had a good lesson with her! It was great! The next day, we had a couple of other lessons to go to and then we went street contacting. Sister Brooksby had to take a call so I started talking to people and ended up talking to this guy and his family, who said we could meet with them! It was great! After our exchanges, we drove back to Regina, which is about a 3 hour drive, but it is beautiful!! Just outside of Regina are rolling hills and cows and trees and wild flowers, it was awesome. It made me think a lot about home!

On Saturday, we went to do service for someone and she ended up wanting to learn more about the gospel, so we invited her to church, and she came!! It was awesome, and she said she really loved it! We're so excited for her. Also good news, Selena back in Bergland will finally be baptized soon!! I'm so excited for her!! She has been waiting for almost 2 years now!

I don't have many other adventures to tell other than cleaning out our vacuum this morning... Yuck...

But I do have a little something I'd like you to ponder this week. It's 3 Nephi 14:1-5, 7-8. I did a study on this the other day and I thought of something I'd never realized before. A mote is a speck, as in a speck of dust. And of course a beam, is much larger. When we remove our beam, our pride, our anger, our whatever it is, then will we see clearly our brothers mote. In the scriptures, it warns that we will be judged how we judge others. So something I did is make a list of what makes up the beam in our eye? Or sometimes in my case the whole tree   I then made a plan to bit by bit, remove it, so that I can have the clearness to see and judge righteously instead of presuming I know why someone is acting a certain way or why they feel or say what they do. I invite you all to do the same! Figure out what makes your beam and make a plan to remove it. The next part is even simpler. "Ask and it shall be given unto you." We always assume that it's talking about prayer in this scripture, but this morning, I realized sometimes it's not. When we feel like someone is angry at us or when someone meant to do something against us, instead of returning with anger and judgment in our heart, we need to ask. Ask the Lord first to fill your heart with charity, then ask the person what's wrong, how can we fix it so we are solid again. I know that as we go about fixing things with charity instead of judgements, we will be much happier in this life and it will help us solve a lot more than if we do it with anger. I hope you all have a wonderful week, love you!

Sister Talbot 

Taking a trip to the Caribean

 Hello everyone! How was your week? Mine was good! We went to a Caribbean parade, which was really fun. Sister McDonald, our favorite member here, is from Jamaica, so she was making costumes for the parade and we got to help her. Lots of work sure goes into those so shout out to all the performers from around the world that have to make their cultural costumes!! 

  It's been a busy week! We have seen lots of miracles lately. We've had some people accept our offers for service, one being this really nice guy Mike. He's 80 years old and he live with his son Al. They have a garden in their backyard that needed weeding so we happily accepted (and accomplished) the task! As most of you know, I have a large fear of spiders and most (all) bugs....if you don't think Heavenly Father loves His children, ask me how many bugs I saw  not many... Until we got in the car and about halfway home, I looked in the rear view mirror to see what was making my head itch...only to see a daddy long leg spider crawling in my hair  I reacted better than I usually do but I was very scared to say the least. Anyways, for helping him, Mike said that we can take some things from his garden, since we can't accept money.

      So this week has been kind of a summer throwback for me! We've had beet greens, rhubarb crisp, and cherries right off the tree! Mike's so nice!!

(Quick side story about the rhubarb: so when we were pulling weeds I noticed his rhubarb was getting really big and would soon be going to seed if it wasn't cut. So I asked him for a knife to cut it. He gave me a little razor which was okay, but I needed a bigger knife to cut it better. So I happened to see these two guys over the fence across the alley way. So me being the missionary I am, I called out to them and asked if one of them had a knife. He was kind enough to give me a nice big pocket knife that looked like a giant's antique razor but it worked!  So I cut the rhubarb and then we went across the alley and knocked on his camp trailer to give it back to him. Sketchy? Probably...but it's fine, we're still here ) 

But back to Mike. We gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet to read and he said he felt really good about it when he read it. When we talked more about it, he was asking us about the church and told us how when he was younger he stayed at a B&B owned my a "Mormon lady" and she was super nice, he said. He likes to read so we gave him the Book of Mormon, and he said he would read it! 

   Jumping forward in our long week to yesterday, we got to with the elders to some people we are teaching, so that Trish could get a blessing. Her and Caulden were in a car accident, and everything is okay, but she's a little shaken and hurt. The spirit was so strong in her blessing, it was amazing. After that, we went tracting and found this girl who is really interested in the gospel. We are so excited to teach her!!

     As this week has gone on, I have realized a lot about myself and about the way Heavenly Father wants us to grow. He didn't mean for us to smooth on over through life to the Celestial Kingdom. It's supposed to be tough! We have to get some dirt under our nails, scrape our knees, bruise our egos, etc. Sometimes, that's really hard and we can't just get over it. But we are expected to try. We can't just sit down on a rock and say it's too hard to keep going. We have to stop, get on our knees and ask the Savior to put some breath back in our lungs and some strength in our hearts. When life gets hard, we have to keep going and endure to the end. In the talk I quoted last week, "Secrets to Success", the guy said something I find really powerful. To paraphrase he said that if you want to succeed, you have to sacrifice. Heavenly Father sacrificed His Only Begotten Son for us to succeed in this life and achieve our goal of living with Him again. So what are you going to sacrifice to become who you are meant to be? I know you can do this! I know that because I have had times on my mission where I felt like I couldn, until I sacrificed whatever I had to in order to set my whole heart in the Savior's hands. Trust Him, dust yourself off, and keep going because the Light at the end of your tunnel of trials is the blessings Heavenly Father has in store for you. Jesus Christ is standing by you at every step. He loves you and He will never let you fail. 

I know God lives and that His Son is our Savior and our Redeemer. I know He loves us and He will always make a way for us to be happy and succeed. I love you all and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Pictures:

1.-2.: The Parade

3.We took some pictures in the field behind our apartment building

4.Elder Heath sat in water so Elder Cobb tried to help dry it lol

5.Sister McDonald's kids, Isaiah and Maddi were in the parade!

6.I made rhubarb crisp!!!

Did You Know we're delusional?

Hello everyone! Soooo this week was pretty good! We were told by an atheist that we are delusional and that we need to see the light instead of believing in religion....hehe..ummmm thanks for trying sir? ANYWAYS, we've met some great people this week. This one guy answered the door, and was on his phone, but he talked to us, and he was a little weird, but nice. He just went off about the wrongs of the world and what not, but then his 80-year old dad comes out and wants to ask us a question. So he asked if we do any gardening as part of the service we offered. We said we did. So he tells us to come around back and look at his garden, so we do, and we talk to them for a little while, and he said that since we can't take money, he will let us take some stuff from his garden, like rhubarb! Which reminds me, mom, send me your rhubarb crisp recipe please lol anyways, super nice guys. Altogether this week, we found some really nice people! We had a huge lightning storm too which was awesome!!! I got some cool pics and a couple videos. Also, I have 30 mosquito bites........30!!! WHAT THE HECK!!!! 

This week was zone conference and it was so good, everything was exactly what I needed to hear. P.S if y'all want some good talks to read, read some byu speeches! They're so good!! I also highly reccomend the talk "The Candle of the Lord", it's good too! This week I heard a talk call the Secrets to Success and I would just like to share something from it. There's one part where the speaker is talking about a guy who goes to a guru and asks him how to make money, so the guru tells him to come back the next day, so he does, and the guru takes him out in the ocean to a point where they can stand, but it's still deep, then takes the guy and holds him underwater, until the guy starts to panic and scratch and wants to come up, so the guru pulls him up. He says, "what did you want to do while you were under the water" And the guy says "Breathe"! Then the guru says, "Exactly! So if you want to succeed, as much as you want to breathe, then you will be successful!" And so it is with the Gospel! If you want to progress and come closer to the Savior as much as you want to breathe, then you will!! I know that Jesus Christ lives and that He loves you all. I am so grateful for all of you and I hope you have a wonderful week! 

I love you all and I will talk to you soon! 

p.s., enjoy the meme and the rest of the pictures (We bought matching dresses for Zone Conference lol true friends!!)