08/22/16 Group Email

Hey fam! 

Well another week come and gone. We had a lot of excitement with our little Rama! On Saturday, we had our picnic and EVERYONE was there. It was sooo much fun. We went down to this river campsite and ate tons of food and played sports all day. It was so fun. I love my little Canadian Spanish family :) Then yesterday, a youth in our ward got his mission call! As I was sitting there, I looked around the tiny living room and saw alllll these members that I love so much. We were all squished in this little room and it was sooo hot, but I have never felt so much love. It went silent as he opened his call and then he read Argentina and everyone started screaming and hugging each other! It was one of the best moments of my mission. Sooo much love. I sure do love our little Spanish Branch.

So last week were sitting outiside the chapel having a lesson with Alex, when I notice that Hermana Amaller is staring at someone off in the distance. Alex asks "what the heck are you looking at?" And so I turn around and I see the back of this guy standing on the sidewalk... I recognize him from somewhere, but I can't remember where. Then out of nowhere, I scream "Spencer!" he turns around and starts walking toward us and I get up and start walking toward him. He was the investigator of the the sisters I lived with A YEAR AGO when I was in the area. I had only met him once, in passing. He had a baptismal date, but for some reason it fell through and the sisters lost contact with him. He was so excited to see us and we exchanged numbers and the sisters have already had a couple lessons with him. It was the coolest miracle ever! The spirit was so strong! What are the odds that he would be right there, in that moment, and that I would remember his name?! It was amazing. (all the while Alex was there watching us who doesnt' speak a word of English.. he was so confused hahah) it was quite the miracle!

So the twins... yeah. I was so excited last week because they committed to baptism. Well, they took themselves off date and we haven't been able to meet with them :( we have faith though! But it was quite the blow when we found out. Missionary work is so good, but man sometimes it can be hard when they don't choose the right!

Alex is doing good! He is progressing. We had a really good lesson with him and some Colombian people in our ward. I had the overwhelming feeling to talk to him about his future kids and wife.. Before I brought it up I said in my mind "okay God, help me with what I need to say!" and it all went really well! He really started thinking about what he would want for his future family and he said "I want them to grow up in this church. And I want to marry a girl who's a member of this church" It was sooo cool! So now we're working with that. He is soooo close to baptism.. so so close! He just has to take that leap of faith! We have been working so hard with him and I've learned SO much as we have studied and prepared for his lessons. But overall, he's slowly progressing and he'll get to the waters of baptism someday!

I love being here! I love being a missionary and wouldn't trade this time for anything. Thanks for your support! Love you all!


Hermana Dean

08/22/16 Pictures

Miguel Pompa got his call and he's going to Argentina! It was so fun to watch him open it! The entire Rama was there all squished in this little house. It was so fun! Definitely a moment I'll never forget

 

Cena with the familia Pavon and Pompa

 Gabby Trevino  

 

 Hermana Irma gave me cute shoes from Peru!

 

 

Leslie Gomez

 

 There's been the prettiest sunsets lately 

 

 

Hermana Suzy Molina from Ecuador

08/15/16 Group Email

Hi everybody! What a good week!
So we have been teaching these adorable twin sisters, Maria Fernanada y Maria Jose. They are considered the investigators of the Evergreen Sisters in our zone, because that is where they are going to church, but we have been team teaching them because Maria Fernanda is deaf and the Evergreen Sisters both can do sign language. So, the lessons go with us teaching Maria Jose with the Aunt and Uncle (in Spanish), while the other Sisters teach Maria Fernanda in ASL (American Sign Language). It has been quite the experience! The Spirit is always sooo strong in our lessons and it is INCREDIBLE to see them teach in sign language. The twins are so sweet and we are all such good friends! Our lesson last week, we were in the middle of teaching when the Sisters leaned over and said "We just invited Maria Fernanda to be baptized and she said yes" my mouth dropped! I was like "are you serious?! Just now?!" so then we invited Maria Jose, and she said yes! it was so cool!! They are so prepared and are loving learning. We are praying that everything works out with them getting baptized, but they are pretty golden. It has been such an incredible experience and no matter what language we are speaking, the Spirit works the exact same.


Another cool experience we had. So we've been teaching this lady in our ward who just needs some extra help. We were teaching her about the Plan of Salvation and she started pouring out her heart and soul to us about all this stuff that has happened, and it was deep stuff! And here we are, 20 year old girls, and have no idea what to tell her. She finishes talking and I swear God was speaking to her, through us. It was incredible. I finished speaking, said "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen." and I literally felt something leave my body and my voice went from a different tone, back to how I usually sound. Hopefully that makes sense, but it was an amazing experience! Both Hermana Amaller and I felt it. The Spirit is so strong with us while we are teaching and I have such a strong testimony that we are saying the words that God would have us say.


Yesterday I was studying about God and His characteristics and I came across the three words, Omnipresent, Omniscient and Omnipotent. I wasn't quite sure what those words meant, so I looked them up in the awesome study guide and learned the significance of each one..
Omnipresent: The power to be present in all things, all the time
Omniscient: The power to know all things
Omnipotent: The power to posses all power
For our dinner message, we shared those three definitions and said "This Being who is with us all the time, knows all things and has the power to do anything, put us here on this Earth. And of alllll the things he could have done, he put us here in our specific families. Families are so important! God could've given us anything, and he gave us our families."
So to all of you, be sure to treasure your family! Family is so important!


Love you all, have a good week!
Hermana Dean

08/15/16 Pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Temple trip  

 

 

 

 

 

 
The twins Maria Fernanda y Jose (From Spain)

 

 

 

*Mama Lola

08/08/16 Group Email

Hi!
Another great week up here in Calgary. A couple miracles we saw.. So we were without a car for a couple days. Which was TOUGH. Our area is huge, so it was quite the process to bus and take the train everywhere. But it was good! We were able to meet and contact a lot of people. A couple Latinos, which we ended up seeing some super far away and had to follow them a couple blocks until we could find the perfect time to contact them. It is quite the game trying find these Spanish people. But one of the miracles was as we picked up our car, we saw this Latino from across the parking lot, dressed up in worker clothes, totally eyeing us. My bomb comp then yells, in Spanish "Do you speak Spanish?" He says Si and comes over and we start talking. His name was Oscar from El Salvador and he told us he'd been to some Mormon churches before and had investigated the church. He said "actually, I worked on your car and I saw your "I'm a Mormon" cards and it made me start to think about the church." So that was pretty cool! And right then and there, for whatever reason, we started talking about Jesus and how he got baptized and we brought up the Priesthood and everything. It was a short little lesson and we gave him a card and he told us he would call us if he was interested, but it was definitely a neat miracle! We knew that having to fix our car would turn out alright?
Before we had gotten our car back we were on the train and out of nowhere, this man starts yelling at us for choosing to serve our missions in Calgary.. it was so random and we just ignored him, but there were TONS of people on the train watching and we immediately got the prompting to get off. So we got up and left and waited for the next train. While we were waiting we decided it had been for a reason and that we were going to find someone to teach on the next train. Well we get on and start looking up and down the isles, and both of us fix our eyes on this guy sitting up at the front. We go and sit behind him, start talking and end up giving him a Book of Mormon! It was cool! He was from Nigeria and was 19 and about to go off to University. It was pretty amazing to see the spirit tell both Hermana Amaller and I that he was the one we needed to contact.
We went downtown to the Latin Expo and met TONS of latinos. It was great! Calgary is the cutest city and has soooo much culture. We hung out by the food stands and were able to strike up some good conversations with the spanish people selling food. We also had our friend Dany with us, which was awesome because she got to see what we do as Missionaries. It was a blast!


Well I love this work. I'm so happy here and wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now! Love you all!


Con amor,
Hermana Dean

08/08/16 Pictures

Karaoke with the family Trevino.. sooo Mexican hahah it was fun! 

We went downtown with a potential, Dany. We went down to the Latino Expo and it was SO fun. We got to talk to a lot of Latinos and we ate suuuch yummy food

 

 

 

 

 

 

Driving home from Okotoks there was a crazy dark storm, we saw sooo much lightning! 

08/02/16 Group Email

Hey fam!
What a good week.. seriously we are seeing the miracles every single day out here! A couple of the highlights that happened -


So the other day we decided we were going to find the Unimarket.. the store were only every single latino person in calgary shops. So we go and find it and as we are walking in, we see two guys in the parking lot. We start talking to them, both from Colombia. One of them was heading out of the country, but the other one, Luis Roberto, told us he had met missionaries before, but they never contacted him. So we got his info, shot him a text, set up an appointment and had a lesson! We taught in the whole first lesson and he is sooo interest! Sadly, he works out of the city for 20 days, then back here for 20 days, and he just left. But he said he would read the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets we left him! Super cool miracle and goes to show, talk to everyone!


We headed downtown one afternoon and were so ready to contact everyone we met. We saw three big miracles. We were walking and out of nowhere we see this HUGE group of... LATINOS. There were probably 40 of them. So we join their group and start chatting with them hahah they were exchange students and were from Mexico. They were sooo excited to talk to us because they didn't understand any English! Sadly, the group leader kind of got mad at us because they were under 18, but they were all super cool and we got to introduce the church! We kept on walking, literally turning at each corner that the spirit told us to turn at, and end up seeing Andres. Andres is 17 from Colombia and works at a hot dog stand. We had met him a couple weeks ago and he was super nice. We got to talk to him, gave him a book of mormon and testified right there to him. He was so interested and even said "you know, i would like to serve a mission someday too!" It was sooo cool and he said he would love to meet with us! Good potential! The third huge miracle.. As we were leaving Andres' hot dog stand, I see a man in a neon yellow shirt with construction boots on and instantly know that he is Latino. We walk over there and are talking in Spanish (my comp and I). I start contacting him, in English just to be safe, and he doesn't understand me.. then he asks, in spanish "wait do you speak Spanish?" ahhh it was the coolest thing ever! I was like, "Heck yeah I speak Spanish!" and we gave him a book of mormon and got his info.. ahhh it was amazing!! Literally the Lord puts Spanish people right in front of us, it's crazy! We are so blessed!


We were driving up from our meeting and I felt that we should go down to fish creek park.. That wasn't our original plan, but the spirit was pretty strong. So we go down there and park in the parking lot and see this old man sitting in his car next to us. I instantly knew that we were there for him. We get out and go over and turns out his family lives in Utah and that he has gone to church a few times! We got a really good convo going and we found out his wife is really really really sick.. He told us somebody takes care of her and he is able to go out to the park to think a couple times a week. He was so sad. I thought he was going to cry. We were able to testify of the Plan of Salvation and tell him that his wife will be healed someday. It was as really cool tender mercy and we both testified really strongly of what we know to be true. We also met a recent convert of one month as we were walking along the path, which was really cool!


Well I love it here! We went out to the mountains yesterday and it is so beautiful. Oh yeah.. soo I have slept walked every single night for the past 14 days and it's really annoying and I almost left the apartment last night beacuse of what I was dreaming about.. and I wake up so tired. So feel free to pray that Hermana Dean can stay in her bed the whole night, that would be greatly apprecaited! haha love you all!


Xoxo
Hermana Dean