You want to see miracles? You just have to look!

[From Amanda's message Aug 26, 2013]


Hello!

This has been a wonderful week in Solvang. The Lord is blessing us with so much success. It's crazy. We are seeing miracles every day.

Okay here's a MILAGRO. There is this elderly woman from Mexico we've been teaching named Domitila. She has tuberculosis and is super sick and practically dying. She is so sweet but she's been really sad and lonely because she can't have visitors or leave the house because she's super contagious and has to wear a mask. We teach her outside her door while she's inside. Last week we brought some brothers from the ward to give her a blessing. We went by this week to see how she's doing and she didn't have her mask on. We were like, Domitila, where's your mask? She told us she was TUBERCULOSIS FREE. The doctor did a test and told her so. She was COMPLETELY HEALED. Can you believe it? We were freaking out. The sad part is, she didn't even realize the significance of the priesthood blessing. She was just like, yeah lots of people have been praying for me and God decided to heal me. She is so set in Catholicism. We ended up asking her what she would do if God told her there was a different church that was His church, if she had to choose between Jesus Christ and the Catholic church what she would do. She said she would stick with what her parents taught her. -_-  It made me think of when Jesus healed people. I wonder if they would have said it's because a lot of other people had been praying for them and they were going to be healed anyway. There's a verse in the Book of Mormon that says there were many miracles for those who were willing to look. Miracles have not ceased. Are we choosing to see the miracles in our everyday lives? If we do, we will find them.

Anyway. Things are going great here. The Bishop is awesome and getting all fired up about missionary work. He said in ward council to the auxiliary leaders that they have to get moving to keep up with the sisters. Haha. It's so funny because we know it's not us. The Lord is giving us success to help the members in this area have faith and make change. We've already gotten 3 awesome member referrals this past week. The Lord has really been preparing this area for all these changes. I love it.

The members here are so great and willing to help, there's just one problem. Carl, Dawn and Woody came to church on Sunday (oh P.S. they're doing great now and we're still teaching them) and lots of people said hi to them but nobody invited them to sit with them. In Relief Society we introduced Dawn to several sisters and they just said hi and ran away to go sit somewhere else. She ended up just sitting with us. We need to help the members see that there is plenty of missionary work to do right in front of them. Often times members think they need to go out and bring people in. The most important thing they can do is to take care of the people we already have, that's when the Lord blesses us with more.

We had a great YW/YM missionary activity on Wednesday! We've been planning it for about 3 weeks and it went really well. We gave them mission calls on Sunday and they all came dressed as missionaries and we gave them nametags. They separated to their classes where they were "called" to, and had a mini MTC experience. Then we had a TRC where they went with their companions and got to teach "investigators." It was super fun.

I love you!!!!! Thank you so much for your letters and kind words. Your support really helps and means so much.

Onward ever onward!
Hna. Cannon

The Lord loves us over here!

[From Amanda's message on Aug 19, 2013]


Hello!

Wow! Milagros este semana!

We really wanted to reach our goal this week of having 7 lessons with members present. By Saturday we had had 5, so we needed 2 more on Sunday. We had one scheduled with Carl, and we were praying for one more.

We ended up getting to have a lesson with a lady who's not a member but has been coming to church for a year! We're excited to work with her.

Then Carl cancelled so we went to visit them and see what's wrong.

Okay so Carl needed tons of help at his house cause he is disabled so we put together a service project for him! That was super fun. He loves the church so much and knows this is what he needs. His girlfriend told us yesterday that she's not ready for this right now though :( We hope he'll still want to learn in the meantime, but they said they'd talk about it.

We were a little sad after that but I remember the words of Elder Lynn G. Robbins who visited our mission. He said, "Success is to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." I told my companion, we still have a miracle scheduled for tonight!

So we called a member in our ward to see if she could come out with us, and she didn't answer. We talked about what we could do and we decided to pray for guidance. The second we finished the prayer the phone rang, the member called us back and said she could come out with us!

We didn't have an appointment but we went to visit a new family we've been teaching and ended up getting to have a great lesson with them. She told us after that she'd been feeling like she hadn't been contributing to the work and she'd been praying for an opportunity to help the missionaries. So we were an answer to each others prayers! And we were able to achieve our goal! Then she told us that she'd been praying for Spanish speaking sister missionaries in this area, because she thinks that will be just the thing to touch her husband’s heart. He is Peruvian and was taught by Spanish sisters before he was baptized. He's been less active for 20 years, but she is praying we will be able to touch his heart.

We were so grateful to the Lord for blessing us with these miracles. I wish I had time to tell you about them all. We've had a ton this week! We found 7 new investigators! The amount of teaching we've done this week was quadruple what the elders before us had been doing. They were working really hard and they were great missionaries. The difference is that the Lord wants everyone in the ward to think we're like these incredible all-star missionaries, so he is blessing us with tons of success and miracles and it's making everyone in the ward get super excited about missionary work. They are seeing all the success we are having and are trusting us. That is helping the work roll forth a lot in this area. It's so awesome. We're just being obedient, pleading with the Lord for miracles, and having faith. He is using us to help the ward members do missionary work. It's so exciting.

I love you!

One happy missionary,
Hna. Cannon

Pictures speak louder than words :)

Me and my compa! Her name is Hna. Millet from Taylorsville, UT. She graduated from Utah State and she taught kindergarten this past year.

This is the Ruiz family who I always talk about. I love them so much. This picture was taken my last night in Oxnard/Camarillo. The dad said toell your family hello and we love them even though we haven’t had the privilege of meeting them :)

Last day with the district. Love these elders!

Saying bye to the awesome people of the Oxnard 5th ward!

Amanda with Sister Corniea from American fork

Amanda looking like a cool Californian with a crush :)

Us four new sister missionaries got to speak in church yesterday and it was super fun!

So last week we got to visit this lady in a nursing home named Betty. She wasn’t very coherent, so we just held her hands and sang her a hymn. The whole room fell silent and stopped to listen. The spirit was so strong. Betty passed away 3 days later. We went to her funeral today and there was a beautiful service. One of the brothers of the ward shared a great message. He said, “There’s only 3 reasons to be sad today. 1) Because you didn’t know Betty well and wish you could have. 2) Because you did know her well and are sad to see her go because you’ll miss her. 3) Because you don’t know where she’s going.” Then he shared the plan of salvation and how Betty knew where she came from, why she’s here, and where she’s going. I love getting to share that message with people. It’s beautiful.

Ygnacio is a new investigator who’s awesome!! He is 17 and plays football for the local high school. He has such a sincere desire to follow Jesus Christ. His life has been really hard and he hasn’t made the best choices, but he wants to use the atonement in his life. He is definitely searching for truth. My companion and I love him so much and want to do everything to help him get good friends in the ward who will be good examples for him. It’s kind of hard in a small town cause everyone knows each other already. It can be kind of hard for the youth to suddenly reach out to people they’ve known for 10 years. But we’re working on that and trying to help them see how important it is. We’re planning a huge missionary night for the youth in a couple weeks and we’re super excited!

I love you!
Hna. Cannon

Laboring in the Vineyard!

Hello!
I am in the coolest place ever! I will try to send as many pictures as I can. We are in a city called Solvang, it is a Danish town!!!!! It was colonized by Danes hundreds of years ago. It has windmills and delicious pastries! It is super touristy and tons of people come here on vacation. It is such a fun little place. It's also BEAUTIFUL. We see ostriches and llamas! There are tons of ranches and it seems like every house has

We see all these beautiful places that are all rustic and stuff and then all the sudden we see a palm tree and we're like, we're in California?? This is such a unique place. I love it.
So they had 3 English elders here, and they pulled them out and put in 4 hermanas! So we had to divide the area ourselves. We got here and everyone was white and we were like, uh.. Pres. Castro? Did you mean to do this? But we're starting to find Spanish pockets of people who've never been taught before because there's never been Spanish missionaries. So it looks like we'll mostly be doing English but teach Spanish when we can find them. And I really feel like we're meant to be here. It's helping the work.

Whitewashing is kind of crazy but my companion, Hna. Millet from Taylorsville, is super good at directions and figuring things out. Plus we have the two other hermanas so we're all just figuring it out together. At church yesterday the ward was SO excited about all the sisters. Everyone wanted to meet us and people were shedding tears left and right. I was like whoa, talk about a good reception. Everyone started getting all excited about missionary work and bearing their testimonies on it.

This ward has such an awesome mission plan! They are on top of it. They have all these awesome goals, we just have to help implement them. Things here are way more organized than my last ward. (I love my last area so much too though! They both have strengths and weaknesses).

WE FOUND THE MOST AMAZING INVESTIGATORS THIS WEEK. Slash, they found us. Carl called and was like, I know about the church and am ready to commit. We met with him and his son Woody (10 yrs.) and Carl said he wants to get baptized! He said he's living with his girlfriend, but they want to get married! He wants her to be a part of this too. They all 3 came to church on Sunday and loved it! We had an awesome lesson with them in the home of these awesome members who were like perfect. They did such a good job of befriending them. They are so golden!!! We were like - wow. This area is blessed.

Awesome ward, fantastic bishop and mission leader, great district, super fun and exciting area, amazingly prepared and on-top-of-things companion. Couldn't ask for more! I am happy as a clam.

Love you!
Hna. Cannon

New area: Solvang, settled by Danes hundreds of years ago

Laboring in the vineyard :)

Whitewashing sisters: Hna Tokailangi (from Hawaii), Hna Wright (from Hawaii, she was trained by my trainer right before me).  Amanda, and sister Millet (from Taylorsville). Hna. Tokailangi and Hna. Millet are waiting for their visas to Argentina.