Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone!!

So crazy it's almost Christmas haha. Its blazing hot over here just like last year. :D So its weird and not feeling like 100% Christmas but still an amazing time of year. When we talk to people in the street they've been seeming more willing to listen about Christ so maybe that's thanks to the Christmas spirit. :) 

This week has been crazy! First it was Hermana Maxfield's birthday so we celebrated that a little which was super fun. I made her a delicious breakfast of pancakes and an omelet and everyone we visited that day knew it was her birthday and gave us tooooonssss of food haha so it was fun. It was a great day. And the lessons we had that day we're really great too. We actually got to teach Matias's brother, who isn't a member and had a really powerful lesson about Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. We shared experiences about how we had felt his presence and power in our lives and it was really cool. I shared about how I've found strength in him during hard times and it's actually in the middle of those times that I get to know him more.

Fabiola's getting baptized this week so we're super excited about that. She's just amazing. All we did was teach haha. She found US. She's the one that came to church all by herself and that's how we met her. She's a inspiration. 

Love you guys so much! Enjoy some pics XD

 1. Delicious gluten free dairy free made by the lovely Hermana Young. We had a zone activity with all the sisters from our zone last pday. Good times XD

2. The sisters from my zone LAS CONDES

 

3. Hermana Maxfield's birthdayyyyyyy!

 

4. Ran into Nena and Ettiene from Ñuñoa on Saturday at a Christmas concert! So good to see them. We would visit them all the time in Ñuñoa and would always share messages about missionary work and how amazing our missions have been for us in our lives hoping that he would make the decision to serve. So then I saw him there and he told me he just decided to go on a mission and just put his papers in!!! So that was AMAZING. :) 

 

Love you guys! Have the best Christmas ever!

Hermana Cannon 

Some pics :)

From Sarah's letter dated Dec 9, 2015


1. Ignacia got baptized this week! Hermana Maxfield and I taught her so we got to see her baptism even though she got baptized in another ward. Those elders are the APs. She got baptized in their ward. 

2. We had to say goodbye to Adrian last night because he got a got in another city and is moving today. :( But he is excited to meet the missionaries over there and get baptized over there. He bore his testimony on Sunday after a "psst you should go up there" from me haha. Everyone was really touched by his testmiony and his conversion and were still talking to us about it two days later. He's changed a lot and we're really sad to see him go, but happy that he found a good job and exciting to see how he progresses in the new ward. 

 

 

 

We found 4 new investigators this week and each one was a miracle. 

I have never felt closer to my Savior than I do now. He truly is my Savior. He is life. He is the solution. I love the simplicity of the gospel. I hope I can proudly proclaim the rest of my life the testimony I've gained that he is my Savior and this is his restored church. He is the answer.

All my love,

Hermana Cannon

Transfers!

From Sarah's message dated Dec 1, 2015

Hey fam! :)

Good news!! We got transfer calls today and Hermana Maxfield and I will be staying together another transfer yayyy!!!!!!!!!!! We were soooooo excited when they told us we'd be staying together haha. Now we get to be together for her birthday, and Christmas, and New Years!! Plus Adrian and Fabiola are scheduled to be baptized at the beginning of January so that would've been sad if one of us didn't get to be there for that. So yeah! We're happyyy!! :D

Okay so miraclessssssssssss

This Sunday was stake conference and this way happy super bubbly girl comes up to us and just introduces herself and said she was an old investgator of a set of missionaries that used to be in our ward and that now she was ready to get baptized! haha so crazy!!!! So we're super excited to start teaching her this week :D Her name's Jamie. 

Okay so then we had a really awesome lesson with this guy named Christian. We met him on the street last week and had our first lesson with him yesterday. He seemed super nice and friendly so we were excited to teach him. Then as the lesson gets going we realize that he seemed to only want to meet with us to prove us wrong. He talked for a reallllly long time about lots of different things about different churches and how he believed that no one really knew what they were talking about. We listened as carefully as we could and I was just praying the entire time that the spirit would let me know what to say. I prayed that God would give us charity and let that love come across through our eyes and our tone so that he'd be able to feel it and know how much God loves him. After a while he stopped talking and when the spirit told me it was time, I bore my testimony. I told him about how the spirit works and how through it we can learn the truth. I told him about how I went through a time in my life where I didn't really have faith either, and was tempted and considering to just give up my faith... but at the end of the day I couldn't deny what I had felt. My heart knew things that my mind couldn't explain and that's why I was here on a mission. I had felt way too many times the love of God, the power of the priesthood in a father's blessing, the miraculous one-on-one communication I get with God through the Book of Mormon, the sensation of being redeemed through Christ's Atonement, and the glimpse of hope in the future that I get from having sacred experiences in the temple. These things are true and my heart knows it. 

By the end of the lesson he was soooo different! We had marked a couple chapters in his Book of Mormon to read and before we got the chance to schedule the next appointment with him he said he would love it if we could meet again next week. 

So that was amazing!! :) I'm learning more and more everyday the power of prayer and the importance of the spirit. It really is only through the spirit that we are converted. It overrides our doubts. Sometimes we are still left with questions, but also a newfound security. 

I love the spirit. :) 

Love you guys lotssss!! :) Have an amazing week!

Hermana Cannon II    

1. Me with a cute pineapple turkey made by the Traverso family who had us over for Thanksgiving :D

2. We have a CHRISTMAS TREE! And that's hermana Maxfield's cute face.

I'm thankful for MIRACLES :D

Okay so miracles!! 

Oh yeah also HAPPY THANKSGIVING this week!!! haha. Its not celebrated here in Chile obviously hah but luckily we have an awesome family in our ward who spent time in the states and understand Thanksgiving who invited us over for dinner that day. They told us on Sunday they already bought the turkey so I guess it'll just be super awesome! haha. We're excited. Plus they invited a non member and a less active member so we're even MORE excited! haha. It'll be great. Also today we had a Thanksgiving zone activity which was super fun. :) It was the first zone activity of my whole mission because my other mission president didn't allow them haha. It was super fun! :)

Anyways. Miracles! Remember Fabiola? Well she just accepted a baptismal date! That lesson was so incredibly amazing. The spirit was soooo strong. She started describing a feeling she had been having and she asked us if we had those feelings too or if she was just crazy haha. We said OF COURSE we've felt that before and we taught her about how to recognize the spirit. Then we taught her about the gift of the holy ghost and how she will be able to receive it when she is baptized. Then she just said, "about that... when can I do it?? Do I have to wait a few months or something??" And then my heart basically just exploded and I told her that Hermana Maxfield and I had actually been thinking and praying about her and we felt that she would be prepared to be baptized January 2 and then we invited her to be baptized that day and she said yes! New year new life. It was sooo amazing. Her testimony is incredible and will just deepen every day as she reads and searches The Book of Mormon. 

Sooo amazing. 

Then today we ran into Adrian on the way over here to write you guys haha and we just got talking and all the sudden came up with this amazing plan where he is going to talk to his brother about the church, give him a Book of Mormon, then he will get back together with his wife and they can get married and then they can both get baptized together with Adrian and then go to the temple and get sealed! So that is our plan now haha. After saying all that Adrian was just like, man, that would be such a dream for me. Then he said he would talk to his brother so hopefully something amazing comes out of that! We're excited. :) 

Okay so I just love you guys soooooo much. Next week I'll be starting my second to last transfer which is CRAZY. Soooo crazy. Time is just flying as always but I am soooo happy. So life is good. :) I hope you guys are all happy tooooo! I pray for that soo much. I hope you can feel my prayers. :) I love you guys so so much. Have an amazing week! :)

Hermana Cannon II 

1. The best zone ever!

 

 

2. Our district

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. District again

 

 

 

4. Hermana Young and the weirdest gluten free pasta you will ever meet. She takes care of me :D

 

 

Charity :D

Sooooo this was the best week ever!!! :) 

Adrian finally accepted a baptismal date! Miracle time. We weren't even planning on teaching him that day but the other appointment we had fell through and for some reason we just both felt like we should go visit him. Idk if I mentioned this before but he lives in our same apartment building, so we just took the elevator up to the 9th floor and rang his doorbell. He came out, and we went downstairs to the lobby for the lesson since he was home alone. Hermana Maxfield and I talked before and decided this was the moment to try, yet again, and see if he was ready to accept a baptismal date. We asked him what baptism meant for him and he said it was a renovation, a restart. He talked about the life he had before he met the missionaries and how he needed to put it all behind him and start over. He told us about how when he met the missionaries in the elevator so many months ago, he was in the middle of a pretty big conflict with some people and was actually planning on doing some things he would've regretted. But since he started recieving the lessons, he changed his mindset. He's changed a lot. Even more than I realized. He said he no longer has bad thoughts. He no longer drinks. He has since given up coffee even though he doesn't completely understand the why behind it. He has been praying for support from his family and really wants at least one of them to join the church with him so he doesn't have to do this alone because he has every intention of enduring, and realizes that it will be hard once the missionaries leave. But he wants to. That's why he was putting off a baptismal date--he had been trying to talk to his family about it but just hadn't found quite the right opportunity yet since they live a couple hours away. After that the spirit changed the date we had already planned to extend to him which was november 28, and my companion asked him if he would be willing to be baptized January 1st of 2016. My gut reaction was like whatttttt?!?! haha because who knows if I'll still be in this sector by then. But then I let the spirit work in me and I realized it was kind of perfect. It would be a new year, new beginning, fresh start, clean slate. Plus then that would give his family time to hopefully learn and accept the gospel in their city, and give him more time to really get comfortable in this ward and make some good friends who can support him through this. 

That was the last lesson of the day and when we got home and I just threw myself on the ground and just laid their for a while with a GIANT smile on my face and Hermana Maxfield and I took turns saying "I can't believe it......." "finallyyyyyyy" haha. I was SO happy. I'm STILL on a cloud about it just writing this haha. Seeing that change in him was so sacred to us. The series of events of how he met the missionaries flashed through my head, the experience he had with them, with Hermana Vega and I, and then finally with Hermana Maxfield and I. I saw a replay of his progress and just sat there marveling at how far he's come. I felt the whisper of the Spirit teach me once again that God loves his children and truly does have a plan for each one of us. He puts things and people in our path for a reason and as we strive to be sensitive to the Spirit and follow his promptings, he will usually teach us why. That's true for all of us-- not just missionaries. Miracles can happen every day if we just look for them and ask God to let us be part of them. We'll find ourselves seeing people through His eyes, which makes us suddenly aware of the lense we've been wearing that was put on us by the world and all its unrealistic standards and false definitions of beauty, success, love, happiness, etc. We stop classifying people and begin loving them. Love being an action word. We start finding ways to communicate that love in ways that are more fool-proof than words like giving service, time, listening, understanding, ministering, sacrificing, and so much more. We can read about Christ and pattern the way we communicate love after His. And if for any reason we get scared or nervous to show that love, we can remember what it says in Moroni 7-- "charity never faileth" because it's true. 

My Savior. :) Loving him more and more everyday. And all of you. :) 

Have the best week ever. Fill it up with charity. :) 

xoxo

Hermana Cannon    

Pics from last week that I couldn't send haha:

1. Me opening the awesome halloween package y'all sent me :D I downed that bag of candy corn sooooooo fast 

 

2. Me and guitar reunited AT LAST. Happiest week of my liiiiiife
 

 

Falling With Styyyyyle

Hellllooooooo!! :)

So it's been a pretty great week. We found some new investigators on the street who have all accepted to receive the discussions so we're excited about that. :) I love breaking social norms haha. People on the street think we're strangers but little do they know we're siblings :D

Speaking of family and the human race.... this week I've been studying a lot about the fall of Adam and Eve, the mortal existence, and our need for a Savior. I learned again that there are two things that we cannot overcome alone... sin and death. So when we talk about salvation, that is what we are being saved from--sin and death. Thanks to Jesus Christ we can LIVE again. After we die. Be resurrected. That is how we overcome death. He will make possible for us what would otherwise be impossible without him. 

Then there's sin. We have all sinned. But Him--never--which is why he has the power to forgive us, if we live his gospel. Those are his conditions. Faith, Repentance, Baptism in his name by his authority, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. That's it, and we are saved. He will forgive us and we will overcome our sins. Again, making possible that which would otherwise be impossible without him. 

I think before my mission I sometimes would let myself get angry or frustrated by my questions and things I didn't understand, that I wouldn't just let myself accept the simplicity of the gospel. But now I have. :) I feel like I've reconnected with the faith I had as a child, even with all the knowledge and questions I still have. It's pretty amazing. It feels like the fear of free falling mixed with the constant reminder that I have a working parachute. That fear is actually dispelled when I remember Christ. He truly is the light and the life of the world. 

As for the work and lessons and stuff, we've had some really interesting experience this week! haha 

So we taught this man who after being raised in a Catholic family has now stopped believing in God. His reliance on physical evidence and scientific proof has prevented him from having a relationship with his Father in Heaven which was pretty sad to hear about. He rejected our testimonies and there was really nothing we could do for him. Nothing we said would make him sit and think until we asked him why he didn't want to believe. He didn't really have an answer to that one. I still really liked talking to him though because he was really upfront and honest with us about what he believed. My favorite part was at the end of the lesson when he opened up enough to ask us what we thought of him and his beliefs and way of life. I told him I thought he was missing the purpose of his life and his divine potential as a child of God. He thought that was interesting and from the look in his eyes I could tell that was the first time he had ever realized that not believing in God might actually be closing doors instead of opening them. But then after a moment he returned to his same doubts and we all ended up agreeing that it would be better not to make a return appointment. But we let him know that we would still be there for him and that he could call us if he ever changed his mind. 

It was a pretty intense experience. But also a landmark for me in my spiritual progress. I came out from that lesson undented which probably wouldn't have been the case before my mission. But I'm different now and Christ is the reason. :)

Love you all lots and lots. :)

Hermana Cannon II       

            

1. So Leonardo is an investigator from my first area, Nunoa, who I taught with Hermana Andersen. He got baptized on Saturday and President gave us permission to go back to Nunoa for the baptism even though I'm not in that area anymore! It was magic. 

 

 

2. My companion with her old companion, who is now in Nunoa. :)

 

 

3. I got to see Paola again while I was in Nunoa! Hopefully you remember her haha. She got baptized in Februrary. We hugged and she cried.  

Milagros :) from Sept 29th

Hey everyone!!

Lots of miracles this week!! First of all, Hernan got baptized on Sunday which was just beautiful. When he came up out of the water he wiped the water off his chest and said "estoy limpio" (I'm clean) with the happiest smile ever. He's about 55 and says even though he would've liked to learn about the gospel earlier in his life, he's happy to be able to start a new phase of life now. He has a lot ahead of him and is just full of faith and hope. He was a miracle from the start.

Adrian came to the baptism which was sooooo good for him. He's been receiving missionaries for about 6 months but had never seen a baptism because Hernan's baptism was the first one that had happened in this ward in a year. We tried to set a baptismal date with him last week but he said he wasn't ready to commit. But after the baptism we were talking about Hernan receiving the priesthood and Adrian said, "so does that mean he could baptize me?" we've seen so much progress in him it's so amazing!!! He's awesome. 

Joselin, another investigator, also came and asked us after about what do the girls wear when they get baptized?? Another sign of progression! The baptism was just so beautiful and full of the spirit. We had 2 musical numbers and the talks were just really humble and focused on Christ.

We're also teaching  a man named Ruben. Not sure if I've told you about him before but anyway he's been investigating the church for 2 years and would be baptized right now but he can't because his girlfriend doesn't want to marry him. But every time we meet with him he says he just wants to endure to the end because he believes in miracles and that one day his girlfriend will marry him. They've been together 12 years already. She just doesn't believe in marriage. But we are hoping to talk to her this week about her beliefs and see if we can help them with that. So please pray for them! Ruben and Amada. Seeing them get married would be SUCH  a huge miracle. I believe it can happen!! We just gotta pray lots and lots and follow the spirit lots and lots and the rest is up to them and God. 

Also teaching a girl named Ignacia. She was raised Catholic but said she never really felt the spirit there. Last week she wanted to know how to receive revelation so we gave her a talk by Richard G. Scott called "Agency and Answers: Receiving Revelation" and then the next time we met with her she said she had received her answer and wanted to be baptized. She's 21 years old and her spiritual independancy is so inspiring. She only lives in our sector Monday-Friday though so she'll have to get baptized in the ward she lives in on the weekends. 

We keep having experiences everyday that remind me that this is God's work. I LOVE being a missionaryyyyyyyyy. This is the happiest transfer ever haha. Just praying as hard as we can so that all this progress we've seen can keep going. :)

Love you all so much and am constantly thinking and praying for you!

xoxo

Hermana Cannon II 

1. Hernan's baptism! :)

 

 

2. Me and my comp at the doctor for her foot probs. Yeah she has a boot now haha. pobrecita.