Canada Week 16: There is always HOPE!

Hello everyone!  Another week has come and gone.  This week we were completely centered on Christ, like every week, but with Christmas it seemed to be a more prevalent focus for everyone.  We were able to visit some of our ward members and talk about ways they could come closer to Christ and how they could be more Christlike themselves for others.  We were also able to meet and read the Book of Mormon with our recent converts.  I love doing this!  Not only do they engage in studying the Book of Mormon, but we are able to answer their questions and we all learn from one another.

I hope everyone had a WONDERFUL Christmas!  My companion and I went to 3 different supper appointments Christmas Eve with 3 fun families from our wards.  It was a little crazy figuring it all out but God is so Good and it all worked out.  The appointments were all back to back with time in between to get to each one.  It is so amazing to feel loved and appreciated by others especially when it feels like our efforts aren't going anywhere sometimes.

I wanted to share a couple cool miracles we were able to be a part of this week --

1- We were doing studies and received a call from an unknown number.  We answered and it was a lady we met on the train a couple months ago.  She wanted to meet and learn more about the Bible.  She was out of our area so we ended up passing her to some other sisters.  We didn't get to go to the lesson but we heard it went well and that she wants to work towards baptism!  Even though we weren't able to go teach her it was still a wonderful miracle!

2- We got invited to attend the baptism for a lady the Elders in our zone had been teaching.  We ended up meeting her son who is YSA age and invited him to church.  He is awesome and wants to come and we are so pumped!  Hopefully we will begin teaching him soon. 

God works in small and simple ways.  We rarely get to see the "fruits of our labors" and often feel like our efforts go unnoticed, but I know they never go unnoticed by God.  Every ounce of effort we put forth on our part is making a difference for those around us.  It goes back to the knowledge we have that God just wants us to do our best.  He doesn't expect us to be perfect.  This has been a hard thing for me to learn and I know I will continue to learn this my whole life.  We are all progressing humans!

My companion and I spoke in church yesterday about hope through the atonement of Christ.  Such a beautiful topic!  I thought they couldn't have provided us with a better one this time of the year.  While preparing for my talk I was reminded that hope fills the dark voids in our lives.  Hope builds faith and exercising faith in things builds hope - they go hand in hand.  It states in Moroni 7:42  "Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope."  What greater reason to hope than the Atonement of Jesus Christ which is the sacrifice that makes eternal life attainable!  It is the gift that turns guilt into peace, despair into hope and gives us second chances!  I, being the human being that I am, sometimes feel out of reach of the atonement - that I am not worthy or worth saving.  This is NOT TRUE!  This is what Satan wants us to believe.  It is so difficult to overpower the adversary.  This has been especially true for me on my mission.  This has been so much harder than I could have ever imagined but so worth it and hope helps me hang on.  There is a quote I love that reads, "If you are hanging on by a thread, make sure it is the hem of His garment."  Hope and the atonement allow us to hang onto His garment when life gets tough.  I am so grateful for a merciful Savior who loved me enough to take upon Him my sins, hardships and everything else.  I am so grateful that I have a Savior who suffered EVERY POSSIBLE situation and feeling I could ever encounter in this life - all so we could have the gift of agency.  I hope we can all choose to have HOPE and JOY.  I am so grateful I had the opportunity to speak and learn more about hope and share it with others.  After the meeting we were mingling with the students in our ward and a girl who just moved in came up to us and thanked us for the messages that we shared.  She said she really needed to hear our words and also appreciated that we shared them with our testimonies.

I want to share my simple testimony on the power of hope and the atonement.  I am so grateful that God created a perfect plan that gives us the opportunity to try again every day, every minute, all the time!  He is so merciful and loving and I am sooooo grateful for Him!  I hope this week we can all find a reason to be grateful for our Savior and His sacrifice He made for ALL of us!

Love Sister Merrill

GOD IS GOOD!

Merry Christmas!!!

Canada Week 15: Be still and know that I am God

Hello!  Missions are roller coasters...ups and downs...yet so full of blessings and miracles and fun!  I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas season!  This is my favorite time of year because I love the focus on Christ - He truly is the reason for the season! :)

God has allowed for me to experience some really low lows, but He has also blessed me with many highs and miracles.  He never lets us suffer and go through trials without keeping His promises.  One of my favorite scriptures is John 14:18, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." God allows us to experience hardships and trials because He sees the bigger picture.  He uses those experiences to shape us into the person that He sees we can become.  He promises that He won't leave us comfortless or alone.  I know this to be true and I could not be more grateful for my Savior and for the comfort and strength I receive from Him.  One thing I have been thinking about is how our Savior is the ultimate healer.  Even thought He could take away our pains and afflictions, most of the time He doesn't take anything away 100% - He shoulders it with us.  Matthew 11:29 says, "take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls."  The things we feel and go through in life give us experience and mold us into what God needs us to become.  And when the road we are on is rough He teaches us and "will take the burden upon Himself" and help us through!

This past week was really fun!  Tuesday we were blessed to go Christmas caroling around the hospital to help brighten the day of others experiencing hard times during the holidays.  We had some people request for us to visit their family members so we did.  I am so grateful for opportunities like this to share love and joy with others!  We were able to get permission to go sing in the children and infant units as well and that was one of the biggest tender mercies I have received.  Children hold such a special place in my heart - they always have!  They were so cute and they loved hearing the songs.  It was such an awesome opportunity!  On Wednesday we had a couple lessons fall through and an almost 2 hour bus ride home - yet God blessed us with an opportunity to meet a couple new people and to have a lesson with someone we are teaching over face time.  The highs ALWAYS seem to outweigh the lows!  That night we had 5 girls come stay with us making it 7 in total.  It was crazy - and 1 bathroom for 7 girls was a fun adventure!  Missions are so full of random fun adventures!  Thursday we had our Christmas mission zone conference and it was SOOOO FUN!!!  At the church we were able to visit many different rooms with things to do.  One room focused on mental health and realizing God is taking care of us and that we have a Savior who walks with us and understands our struggles and hardships.  Another room we got to play games and get to know all the missionaries better.  We also had a white elephant gift exchange, a wonderful lunch and a big talent show!  It really was SO MUCH FUN!  Friday we got to go Christmas caroling again - this time at an old folks home where we volunteer.  People are THE BEST!  I love getting to love and serve everyone around me!

The title of my email this week has been on my mind A LOT lately - "Be still and know that I am God."  I have gone through more hard things these past few months than I ever could have imagined for myself.  The biggest lesson I have learned is to be still and know that God is taking care of me.  I don't and won't always understand how or why He does things the way that He does, but I know I can be still and trust Him with all my heart.  He has never ever failed me and I know He never will.  This thought has been a repeated impression I have had from God.  I have felt Him give me big spiritual hugs and strength.  The peace He has brought to my heart overwhelms me with joy and I couldn't be more grateful.  I came across a quote that I love this week by Cheko Okazaki that reads, " The Spirit of Christ is not a luxury to be enjoyed only when we achieve an ideal environment. It is the essential transforming power that can lift and strengthen us amid the trials of real life, even when our situations are far from perfect." I know that CHRIST'S POWER IS ALWAYS THERE FOR US!

I want to bear my testimony of my Savior this Christmas week.  He is my rock and my salvation. He is my light and my best friend.  He is my favorite leader and my favorite teacher and I believe with my whole heart that He can heal any and everything we lay at his feet.  He will carry us through our hard times.  He will cheer us on during the good times and will walk with us always.  I hope we can all find some way to come closer to our Savior as we celebrate Christmas this year.  Always remember all that He has given to you and be grateful.  I love you all so much!  MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Love, Sister Sydnee Merrill

God is Good

& Canada is Cold

New warm mittens! 

CHRISTMAS ZONE CONFERENCE

 

Sister Merrill's District Dance

Napoleon Dynamite

Vote for (President) Cowley

Sister Jensen & Sister Merrill

LRT Laughs

IT'S COLD - It's fine......

YSA White Elephant Gift

Canada Week 14: Lewis and Clark: Sister Missionary edition

Hello beautiful Children of God!  I hope everyone is doing swell!  This was quite the adventurous and story filled week!

I'll begin by explaining the title to my email.  We had the distance we can drive during the month reduced so we bused everywhere the whole week!  I know what you're all thinking -- busing is great for missionaries - what a great way to contact people!  While this is true, the area my companion and I cover is HUGE and the transit system in Edmonton doesn't have any bus routes that go from point A to point B.  The routes go from point A to B to C to D to E and so forth.  Each bus is assigned a number and route, except that there could be 5 different buses with the same number doing the same route in different orders.  Let's just say it took us over 3 hours to get home from a service when it shouldn't have taken more than an hour.  Busing fills up most of our days now and provides most of our adventures and stories we have. 

Here are some of our adventures:

*We met a guy asking for money and drugs.  We tried to steer clear of him but he somehow he wound up by us 3 different times.  During the second contact with him, he told us he lives in a penthouse with 100 rooms by himself and breakfast, lunch and supper are served everyday.  The third and last encounter we had was him telling us he has blue eyes (he had brown) and proceeded to blink over and over.  Then he closed them and pushed on them with his fingers and then he was shaking and rolling his eyes like crazy and then he walked away......Just say no to drugs people!

*We met a guy who has 127 pairs of shoes that have cost him thousands of dollars.  He has a single pair that cost him well over $2000 and he bought them a couple sizes too big and nailed the shoe box to the wall. He also buys shoes for his little sister who is 3 and now has more pairs of shoes than he does.

*A lady bashed us at a bus stop and said that we have nothing more we can give her and that if she were to die right then and there she would go straight to heaven no matter what she had done and that my companion and I wouldn't make it!

*We walked home across and over a highway more than once......it was so frigid!!!

*We missed a bus and the next one didn't come for 40 minutes so we learned a dance for our Christmas Zone Conference in a bus stop box :)

There are so many more adventures but those are just some of the highlights of the week.  Despite the craziness, we were also able to see so many miracles!!!  God is so GOOD!!!  We were headed to a lesson and were debating to switch buses to get there.  We decided at the last minute we would so we went and jumped onto a crowded bus.  It was on this bus I noticed a guy sitting down - he looked vaguely familiar and then it hit me!  I met this guy - his name is Max - on the LRT my first transfer in the mission.  We got his number but he never responded so we dropped him.  I went over to him and asked if his name was Max and he said yeah and that he thought I looked familiar.  It turns out he got a new phone and lost our number so he asked for it again!  I was so amazed at how good God was in that very moment.  The odds of me seeing him ever again were slim to none but miracles still exist folks!

We also witnessed another crazy miracle this past week.  My companion and I were both feeling discouraged because we aren't teaching many people right now nor have the people we have found and contacted progressed or been very interested.  Then this random guy messaged me on Facebook - he saw that I was an LDS missionary and wanted to know how he could learn more about the church.  Sister Jensen and I responded and we taught him last Wednesday over video chat.  We are now working on getting in touch with missionaries where he lives to get more of his questions answered!  God sure showed us :)

The last small miracle I wanted to mention happened just a couple days ago.  We were at the bus hub at the mall waiting for our bus and it was SO COLD.  It was -18 and windy so it felt more like -23!  All the sudden this bus honked at us - we wondered if we were in the way or something and then then he honked again and motioned for us to come get onto his bus.  We went over and told him this wasn't our bus and then he said to just get on and warm up.  So we did and then he asked us to tell him who Jesus is and we had a little lesson right there on a bus while waiting for ours!  I immediately told the driver that Jesus is my strength!  Never has that ever been more true than on my mission.  My Savior has carried me more than once and given me the strength to keep going when I didn't think I could.  It was an awesome and CRAZY miracle for us!

A lot of my studies this past were focused around God's hand in our lives.  His miracles and tender mercies are EVERYWHERE.  Here are some quotes and things I really liked and wanted to share.  David A. Bednar said, "The Lord's tender mercies are the very personal and individualized blessings, strength, protection, assurances, guidance, loving-kindness, consolation, support and spiritual gifts which we receive from and because of and through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Truly the Lord suits His mercies according to the conditions of the children of men."  I LOVE THIS QUOTE!  One of the greatest things I have done on my mission is to write in a tender mercy journal everyday.  I have the mindset to look for God each day.  I look for and find how His hand is in my life and then I write them down.  This has helped me to open my eyes and realize He is always there even when I don't feel like He is.  I have thought a lot about the saying, "give it all to God."  This is easier said then done that is FOR SURE.  But the more I have thought about it the more I have come to realize that it takes faith.  Faith that the Lord has prepared the way.  Faith that He will carry us through.  Faith that He understands and can help us not become too overwhelmed.  There is another quote by Henry B. Eyring I found this week and loved.  He said, "We may have to pray with FAITH to know what we are to do and we must pray with DETERMINATION to obey, but we can know what to do and be sure that the way has been prepared for us by the Lord." 

My challenge for everyone this week is for you to ask yourselves who Jesus Christ is to you.  An activity my companion and I have loved doing with families - especially this time of year - is to write down all the names they know Christ is known for like Prince of Peace, Counselor, Advocate, Teacher etc... and to pick one that sticks out to them.  After choosing one name, come up with a way to implement that into your life - especially during this Christmas season!

To close, I just want to bear my testimony on the Lords hand in our lives.  He is SO AWARE OF US!  Just when we think He has forgotten us and we start to think He has run out of ideas and help us, He shows up and shows us what He can do!  He is so good!  The miracles I have been able to witness this past week were definitely a mood and testimony booster and I am so grateful He loves me enough to show me His tender mercies💕

I hope everyone has a splendid week!  Love and miss you all!!
Love, Sister Merrill

It's not just cold - it's frigid!!!

Seriously - it's getting cold

Still cold

Still smiling :)

Figuring out the city bus system

lunch on the go

Oh so cold!

Still thriving....

Kind of...brrrrr....

It's fine ... everything is just fine

YSA fun!

Shopping fun!

Sister Merrill and Sister Jensen sure love each other!

Cute new warm PJ's!

Sisters in their new PJ's by their Christmas trees!

GOD IS SO GOOD!!!

Canada Week 13: news, neWS, NEWS

I received my transfer call last week and I get to stay in Whitemud and Woodbend! :)  I also get to stay with my cute greenie Sister Jensen and finish her missionary training!  It has been weird not being in a tripan but we are adjusting.

This week was interesting.  Like I have said before, nothing is more constant than change....ANDDD more change occurred.  I have been learning to embrace change and be okay with learning to go with the flow.  God knows what He is doing.  He sees the eternal picture and all things are for our good.  As hard as a lot of life's lessons can be to learn, they are always what we need.

One of my favorite scriptures is in D&C 84:88, " And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."

God has definitely sent angels to bear me up through a lot of the hard times - and just when I think I have been forgotten, left alone or have gone too far off the path, He whips a 180 on me and shows me so many miracles and blessings.  I don't know how to express my gratitude most of the time.  I just know that my Savior has been a rock for me and I take Him and my knowledge for granted.

Here are some fun things from this last week:

- Last Tuesday we got to teach primary day girls about missionary work and about a day in the life of a missionary and it was SO FUN to see their faces light up as they asked questions.  The younger generation has such a light about them.  It makes me excited to see what is going to happen in the future!

- We went caroling with my zone!  HOW FUN IS IT TO GO SING CHRISTMAS CAROLS TO PEOPLE!!!!  Christmas is such an amazing time of year especially with the new Light the World video!  I was sad to say Goodbye to a lot of missionaries and half of my zone this past week.  I know my life has been blessed because I met them.

- We helped a lady clean her home and food storage.  She sent us home with a TON of food so we divided it up and gave it to the other missionaries.

- Our YSA Ward Christmas party was Friday night and we had a person we found come!  His name is Michael and he is A W E S O M E!  He is from the Czech Republic and we really hope we can start teaching him :)

A few things I have learned from my studies this week have been that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion.  I have been studying it with a student manual and my eyes have been opened!  Ezra Taft Benson stated once about how to approach studying the scriptures.  He said, "If they saw our day and chose those things which would be of greatest worth to us, is not that how we should study the Book of Mormon?  We should constantly ask ourselves why did the Lord inspire them to include this is His record?  What lessons can I learn to help me live in this day and age?"  I challenge all of us to approach our studies with the mindset of why what we are reading was written and to really look for lessons learned that can be applied to our life situations.

This email has been all over the place...I want to say thank you for the support and prayers.  It is sometimes really hard to notice the difference we as missionaries are making and I let myself question and get discouraged.  Knowing that I have people back home cheering me on and heaven cheering me on I know that I can continue on as I turn to my Savior and learn to fully trust in Him.  Faith is crucial more so in today's world than ever before.  Another thing I love to study is Moroni Chapter 7.  We can't have faith without hope and we can't have hope without faith.

I pray that life is well for everyone back home and that you always have a prayer in your heart :)  Remember to look for God!  He is always there even when we think we are forgotten!

Love, Sister Merrill

O Canada!

Sister Merrill & Sister Jensen

Goodbye Sister Neff!

It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas!

Goodbye Sister Smith!

Shaw! :)