Wow. All I can say is WOW!

Please tell me you all watched that incredible MTC Broadcast yesterday!!!!! If you haven't already, please watch it this coming week. Do it for FHE or something! It was incredible. Every member of the church needs to see that. WOW. The lowering of the missionary age was a huge change, only naturally to be succeeded by new and improved ways of doing missionary work. These are things that have been put into practice for a while, it's in Preach My Gospel, and now they had this wonderful broadcast to get all the members in on it! That is how missionary work needs to be.

I just want to bare my testimony to all of you about the power you have as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every single one of us has the responsibility to invite others to Christ, whether they are already members or not. Once we are converted, it is our responsibility to strengthen our brethren (Luke 22:32). Sharing the gospel is an act of faith. When you are in the service of God, He is obligated to help you. I see this all the time in my mission. When we purify ourselves, deepen our personal conversion, and ask in faith for the Lord to help us share the gospel, He always blesses us with His spirit to know how to do it. Full-time missionaries are no different than any member of the church. Each one of you can do this. We all need to work together in doing this work! Mom, Dad, Cassie, Wade, Sarah, Cali, and any other wonderful family members and friends: will you each exercise your faith by praying tonight, with real intent, that the Lord will use you as an instrument in sharing His gospel? I promise you that if you exercise your faith, the Lord will bless you with these opportunities. We just need to open our mouths, be good examples, be good friends and neighbors, be good disciples of Jesus Christ. I'm sure you are all already doing great things to help this work roll forth, but every one of us can always do a little better. I love you all so much and the Lord will help you in doing His work!

Also, we got to go to the temple this week! So basically we've been on a huge spiritual high. I LOVE the temple. I want to help everyone be able to enter the temple some day and make those covenants. It all starts with us helping people grow in faith, repent, and then be baptized and confirmed. That is our role in helping them get there.

We have an AMAZING district this transfer. We had such a good district meeting last week, I love how unified we are. It's another awesome example of how when we all work together in doing this work, we see miracles!

So many good lessons this week. Victor and Teresa have previously been kind of on the fence, and yesterday they said they want to come to our church and feel for themselves if it is true. Victor even said he thinks God probably sent us to them so that they could her this message. Wow. I love seeing hearts change. Lupe has previously been hesitant and kind of scared to change. We helped her see that if she makes the change first, her family will follow her good example. We told her we'd like her to be a member of Jesus Christ's church, and we want her family, in their own time, to follow her. She said that is what she wants, and she agreed to come on a church tour with us this week, and she is even going to invite a few friends to hear our message. Wow.

Too many stories to tell. This work is amazing. We can all take part in it and help each other out! We are all brothers and sisters, we need to work together in strengthening each other so that all of us can return home to live with our loving Heavenly Father. We can be one giant eternal family! Temple work, missionary work, it is all God's work of binding together dispensations. This is it. I love it. I love being a missionary.

I love you all so much! Thank you for your wonderful examples of spreading the gospel!
Hna. Cannon

Fourth transfer! Same area!

Hello!!! Hey!! Hi!

Okay so I am super pumped right now. Hna. Corniea and I are staying together in the same area for another transfer! So I will finish up training her. I'm so excited! She's fresh and full of ideas for the ward. We've had a lot of great ideas this past week but didn't know how long we'd be here to implement them. But we're staying! I'm super excited.

Oh and we're only taking a half P-day today so we're rushing like CRAZY to get everything done by 1:00. We do the half P-day because we're going to the temple in LA this week!!!!! Cause we get to go for our birthday. I'm SO excited. I can't even tell you. So. Excited.

Okay! So this week has been fantastic. I love goals! Love them! We set some really high goals this week. It was intense. And they went really well! At the end of the week, we didn't quite meet all of our goals. We still wanted to get 3 more lessons with a member present, and 3 referrals contacted. But, those were both goals that are kind of out of our control and up to the members. But we did do everything we could to achieve them, and we still taught a lot of lessons with members. And we met or exceeded all the rest of our goals! So we got to have the peace of knowing we did the very best we could even though we didn't quite achieve every goal. But that's what this week is for! I love this new perspective. We've been learning a lot lately about having the eye of faith. We're trying to visualize all of our investigators in white. We can help them meet their goals too! It's gonna happen. I'm stoked.

So we had dinner with these amazing members this week. They have this perfect little home in the middle of an orchard! They're a young couple with two little angel daughters. The meal was nutritious and delicious. They pray together as a family every night before their dad has to go to work (because he works graveyard shifts). They have pictures of Christ on the walls and family home evening chart. And the mom was teaching her little daughters (2 and 4) about missionary work while we were there. I was amazed! We see so many broken home and it is just sad sometimes. This family was such an awesome example of how basing your family's foundation on the teaching of Jesus Christ makes the biggest difference in the home. My testimony of that = higher than ever!

My companion is hilarious and I love her. I love that we both want to work hard, set high goals, and have fun while doing it. Missionary work is the best! It all starts with having that eye of faith, and having the vision of what you want to accomplish.

Loveyousomuchyouareallamazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hna. Cannon

Homemade Tamales!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had exchanges this week! It was AWESOME! As always. The sister training leaders are SOOOO good! I always learn so much from them. Hna. Palafox is so bold, direct, loves her mission and lives every moment to the fullest, humble, loving, relaxed and calm yet diligent, focuses outward. I loved learning from her example. I have so much to improve upon. I never realized until now how important the power of example is. I learned from that exchange that the best way to teach is to be what you want them to learn. She taught me that to teach you must be teachable. That was a great lesson to me. I am amazed that the sister training leaders are always so respectful and loving towards us, and seem to learn as much from the exchange as we do. How is it they do that when they are already so experienced and know so much? It is because they come in an attitude of love and humility. That is how to be a good leader. On my last two exchanges the traveling sisters have emphasized to me the importance of being a good leader. I know the Lord has blessed me with some natural talents that it is my responsibility to develop. I need to learn to teach by example. I want to be so much better than I am and I know the Lord has given me this time to train as an opportunity to grow more. I have grown a lot this transfer, but I know I can do much better.

I tried handmade, authentic tamales for the first time this week. THEY ARE THE BEST THING EVER. Aka I have found my favorite Mexican food. It makes me want to say to all the other tamales I've tried at restaurants and stuff, "WHO do you think you are calling yourself a tamale??" They are SO much better when a sweet old grandma from Mexico makes them. YUM.

So May was really hot, and June so far has been really cloudy, go figure. I guess that happens every year and everyone hear calls it June Gloom. It's awesome! I love it all cloudy and perfect weather and not hot when we walk all day.

So, a favor to ask. If any of you wonderful family members have the desire to get me a birthday present (which would be so incredibly kind of you and you do not have to!) I would love the mormon messages DVD to share with people to give spiritual thoughts. I would also love any other teaching aids: things that help explain things we teach. I already have good ones for the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation - but other things would be great. For example, one missionary has this card that shows really well how the Book of Mormon was written here and the Bible in the middle east and how we came to have them today. So maybe you could google "missionary teaching aids" and print out for me whatever looks useful? That would be awesome. And if you can think of anything else that is helpful when explaining gospel things, or any activities that would be good for FHE, just anything else you think would be helpful - I would love it. Also, we would love some good music! Some CDs I've borrowed from the elders that I've loved are anything by The Lower Lights - they do AWESOME hymn arrangements. Also this CD called Nearer - I love that one. I wish I could remember who it's by, but it has Mormon hymns on it. And if there's anything else you can find that's good, missionary-appropriate music that would be fun to listen to I would love it! It helps so much to have while we drive and helps make the days a lot more fun! Also EFY music is great to - if you have any I could borrow that would be great! Again, totally don't have to, but if you want to, that is what will be helpful. :) Long story short: teaching aids and music. :)

About the pictures: 1) A random one of my companion and I, if I haven't told you yet - Hna. Corniea from American Fork, 2) an awesome street sign that was in the area I went on exchanges to.

Love you! Hope you have a great week!
Hna. Cannon

Vida's comments: This is the #2 Amanda described above. For those of you who don't know Spanish, I believe Si Se Puede means Yes,  You Can! Or maybe it means IF you can...

Vida's comments: Just heard that Sister Corniea's family is in Rob Cannon's ward in American Fork!

You know what's awesome? Being a missionary!

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I'm going to apologize in advance. I feel as though this is going to be a really long letter. It's just that so many amazing things happened this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll try to be brief.

Okay, so this week basically exemplified all that is wonderful about being a missionary. There were so many tender mercies and moments that made me step back and say, "Wow. This is why I'm a missionary." First is about Juan. He's the investigator who's married to a member. We found out he's on parole right now so he can't get baptized for 3 years, but we're still working with him. On Monday we didn't have an appointment but we were in the area so we decided to stop by. We ended up having such an awesome lesson where the spirit was very strong. He told us he is so glad we came today because he was feeling really depressed and having such a hard time. He said he was so grateful we came over and brought the spirit into his home. He said that is what he needs most right now.

Second story: Hna. Ruiz (Esmeralda's mom) bore her testimony in Relief Society. She talked about how she'd left the church for a while and didn't know if she'd ever come back. She said her life was dark and her family was struggling - her situation seemed hopeless. Then she pointed to us and said it was because of two sister missionaries that didn't give up on us, that loved us and always visited even when we were busy, and gave us the push we needed. Because of those sisters I am here today, and I am never going to leave again. Then she proceeded to bare her testimony of missionary work.

Third story: We were trying to contact a referral but they weren't home. While walking back to the car this white lady was waving at us and we were like, "white people live in this neighborhood?" Haha, we'd never seen one before. She ended up being a member and an RM and told us about how she's been trying to share the gospel with her next door neighbor. Their daughters (age 7) are friends and her daughter, Penny, has been inviting her to primary. The member, Marny, said she wants to fellowship them more but it's hard because she doesn't speak Spanish. So she said to her daughter Penny, "Do you want to go next door with the missionaries and invite your friends to church? You can do it, be brave." 7-year-old Penny quickly agreed and we went and talked to them. I thought it was so cool that she's already instilling the spirit of missionary work in her 7-year-old daughter. It was awesome. Oh, and the member, Marny, ended up being Taylor Day's cousin! Just in case any of you reading this know her, she's a friend of mine from BYU. Cool!

Fourth story: We were having dinner with a member and after words she was telling us how grateful she is to have us in her home, and that whenever we need food to come straight there, and even if they're busy they will always make time for us. She said, "I know I am serving God when I give you food. Because for us, you represent the greatest joy of our lives. What is so precious to us and has been the greatest blessing. Las quiero mucho." We also got to teach her how to use the familysearch.org and now she can do all the temple work for her family! I am SO glad they made us learn how to do that before our missions. It is such a useful skill that people really need help with!

Fifth story (I know there's a lot, hope you don't mind!): We were teaching our last lesson with Jenny - we taught with the elders there to transition her from us to them (which was a little sad but it went really well). One of the elders asked her a question about faith and her desire to progress. She started to say, and then a couple of tears rolled down her cheeks as she explained that it was seeing how much faith the missionaries have. How we give everything for this gospel. It inspires her to want to change her life so she too, can develop that level of faith. Her words were so touching and inspiring and motivating.

All of those happened in one week! Sorry if that was way too much to read, but I just wanted to tell you about it. All of those experiences were just so... I don't know the word. They really helped us refocus on a strong sense of purpose, why it is that we're out here. We were able to see a lot of fruits from the work that we do. It was so rewarding, because sometimes you work and work and work and it doesn't seem like anything's happening. But this week was incredible. Being a missionary is amazing. Every hard day is completely worth it for weeks like this.

In other news, Hna. Corniea and I are having a lot of fun working with members! My first two transfers most of the time we just tracted - which can be effective but sometimes it seems like you're not getting anywhere. We're trying a lot of new things like having FHE's with members and investigators, working with visiting teaching to less active sisters, and teaching the Young Women about missionary work. A lot of these are probably no-brainers, but they're things I hadn't learned before. So Hna. Corniea, both being still fairly new, are trying to figure things out and be more creative. It's much more fun and seems to be more effective. We're really excited!

I love study time in the morning, and I feel like the Lord is just enlightening my mind so much. I thought to myself, "I'm so grateful to know the truth! I'm so glad I was raised in the church and understand all this stuff." And then I got this overwhelming feeling that I need to continually increase my abilities as a teacher so I can help people come to know these truths as well. I hope I can help enlighten people's minds and help them to feel hungry for the gospel just as I feel. That's what we do, and it's great, but we need to continually work to be more effective teachers.

Short story long, THIS WEEK WAS AWESOME. Being a missionary is incredible. I love it. There's nothing better I could be doing.

I love you so much! I hope you are having an awesome week too!
Hna. Cannon