Letter from Spokane Mission President

June 21, 2019

Dear Brother and Sister Cannon,

I was pleased to welcome your daughter, Sister Cannon to the Washington Spokane Mission this week. I’m happy to report that she arrived safely. I had the privilege of meeting and associating with her the day of her arrival and note that it is evident that she comes with a great desire to serve Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Sister Cannon understands the role of the Holy Ghost in accomplishing the work here in the Washington Spokane Mission and has committed to live worthy of that power.

  

After prayerful consideration, I have called Sister Petersen to serve as Sister Cannon’s companion in the area. It is our objective to call only the best missionaries to serve as trainers and I believe that your daughter is in excellent training hands. We expect that your missionary will serve in this area for the next 6 to 12 weeks as she begins her mission.

  

                             

I have enclosed photographs of your missionary and assure you that Sister Thompson and I will love Sister Cannon. Our great desire is that her time here will further establish her on the path of righteousness, as well as bless the many people she will serve.

Attached are the new updated recommended guidelines we have for parents.  These guidelines are based on many years of accumulated missionary experience, especially those guidelines concerning personal contact with your missionary. Sister Cannon needs your good example. I sincerely request that you consider them for the benefit of your daughter and her fellow missionaries.

The mission has a Facebook page where you can see what is happening in the mission. Go to:       Washington Spokane Mission - President Thompson 2018-2021

You may send mail to your daughter at: 820 South Pines Rd, #101, Spokane Valley, WA  99206

                                                           

Sincerely,

  

Michael A. Thompson

Washington Spokane Mission President

 SUGGESTED GUIDELINES FOR PARENTS OF MISSIONARIES

v  Please write to your missionary weekly.  Missionaries still look for letters even though they get e-mail, so please don’t forget these.  They are so disappointed when they go to the mail and there is none for them.  Your encouragement is vital.

v  Please do not visit your missionary.  The after-effect usually creates homesickness and other distractions, as well as being unfair to the missionary’s companion. Please also discourage extended family from visiting.

v  Please do not call your missionary.  If an emergency arises, please call the mission office or the mission president.  The office phone number is 509-924-8932.  President Dymock’s number is 509-294-6804.

v  Updating Contact Information:  The Washington Spokane Mission (WSM) has an emergency preparedness plan. In the event we need to contact you for any reason, current information is required... The first response to any WSM emergency would be to use email to all missionary parents. If you don’t have email, then you would receive a phone call.  Please contact the mission to update your mailing address, your email address and/or phone number, or medical insurance coverage. The mission secretary can be reached by email at 2011565@ldschurch.org or call 509-924-8932.  Also, please notify us if there is a change in your Bishop or Branch President. We request you contact us with the name of the ward or branch and bishop’s full name, mailing address, phone number(s) and email if available.  This will allow us to keep our correspondence accurate and timely. 

v  Medical expenses:  Treatment of conditions existing prior to the mission must be paid for by the family.  Dental work, eyeglasses and hearing aids are not paid for by any Church funds. Any medical expenses occurring during the mission will be billed to your insurance as primary, and to the Missionary Medical Program as secondary. We trust you have received the information regarding this program.  If you have not, or if you have benefit questions, please call Missionary Medical at 1-800-777-1647.

v  Mail:  We want the missionaries to receive their mail as rapidly as possible.  You may, therefore, wish to send mail directly to their apartments.  This works well except when missionaries transfer, which occurs every 6 weeks.  You are always welcome to send their mail directly to this office.  Our address is:  820 South Pines Road Suite 101, Spokane Valley, WA 99206.  Be sure to include the first name of your missionary.  Missionaries love packages from home but they do get tired of candy.  Ingredients for simple, one pan meals make a nice change.

v  Picking up your missionary:  If you should decide to come to the mission field to pick up your missionary at the end of his or her mission, please notify the mission secretary at least 4 months in advance.  Flight arrangements are made three months before departure and once scheduled there is a $150 penalty for cancellation. You can reach her at the mission office by email at 2011565@ldschurch.org or by phone at 509-924-8932.  NOTE: Please do not visit other missionaries in the mission before or after you pick up your missionary.  A Church-wide policy discourages this practice.

Thank you for your cooperation

Spokane

June 13:  Welp it’s official... I’ve been reassigned to the states for at least 6 weeks. To be honest, I’m not really sure how to feel about it. Like I know it’s where a God needs me to be and I know it will be an incredible experience. But I don’t know, it’s just hard when you get your hopes up about something and then it just doesn’t turn out. But it’ll be ok... I know that. 

Anyways, I’m flying out next Wednesday. We fly out at 3:45. Oh yeah... I was reassigned to Spokane Washington. Which is actually Fielding’s hometown which is pretty cool except for he comes into the MTC the day I leave so I won’t see him or Robby or anybody who’s coming in that day because I’ll miss them all by 2 hours 👍🏼 I would have been Robby’s STL leader and I’m so sad I won’t see him or fielding but what’re you gonna do.

Honestly, the scariest part is that I won’t be speaking Portuguese hardly at all for 6 weeks so I’ll need dad and Andrew to help me practice on Pdays. 

Anyways, you can totally tell people about my reassignment but don’t tell everyone that I’m having a hard time with it bc I know that it really will be ok. And I already love Washington so I don’t want people thinking I’m super mad about it yanno? But if you and my sibs could just keep me in your prayers I would really appreciate it because it’s just kinda hard. 

June 19:  Hey! I just wanted to let you know that I made it to Spokane!

I couldn’t be happier everyone’s so nice

I’ll email you again on Monday

Love you!

The Spokane Word :)

Ola todas!

Welp! I'm excited to say that I've been temporarily reassigned to serve at least one transfer in Spokane, Washington! My VISA decided to take its dandy ol' time, but it's okay because the Lord has different plans for me. I've heard some pretty incredible things about Spokane too so I'm pumped! :)

I leave this Wednesday for Washington which is super exciting! Both of my companions Sister Scott and Sister Alton are coming with me to Spokane which is super rare because people don't usually get reassigned to the same place as their comps. We're all so pumped, the Lord needs all three of us in Spokane! 

Every week we have people come do a cleaning check on each of our residencies so me and my comps left them a little surprise fort dedicated to our new reassignment (see the pic below) :)

All of the Portugal missionaries got reassigned except for our Australian sisters!

     Sister Fjeldsted to New Hampshire

     Sister Berquist to Arizona

     Elder Matthews to New York

     Elder Ingram to Oregon

     and Sister Hart and Sister Sloper left for Portugal this morning! Watch out Portugal, you're about to receive two of the sweetest sisters I've ever met! Same with New Hampshire, Arizona, New York, and Oregon; all these places are about to become so blessed by my friends!

I'm so grateful for everyone in my zone and district! They're no joke the greatest people alive. I've hated all the goodbyes so far and I'm not excited for more goodbyes. We're already planning a group Lake Powell trip so watch out for the Portuguese!

Something exciting happened this week! The general first presidency sent out a message to all Portuguese speaker sister missionaries. They decided to change our missionary tags from saying "sister" to "Irma" which means sister in Portuguese. This is a super exciting change for two reasons: 1) it's so much more personal because it's a Portuguese name and 2) we all have 4 tags now instead of two :)

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

This week, I was studying up on humility this week in the Book of Mormon. In 1 Nephi, chapter 2, is probably the shortest verse in the entire book haha! But I chose to look into it a little bit more this week. It says,

"And my father [Lehi] dwelt in a tent".

For those of you who don't know this story, Nephi is talking about his father Lehi who chose to leave his home in Jerusalem with his family, leaving behind all of his inheritance and riches, to travel into the wilderness because the Lord commanded him to. We know that Lehi had been a very rich man while he lived in Jerusalem because in the next chapter, it says that he had left behind gold, silver, and all manner of riches. But he chose to leave it all and follow the Lord with faith. It's safe to assume that Lehi and his family had probably lived in a nice house/setting while in Jerusalem because of their wealth. This is where this verse becomes interesting... Lehi dwelt in a tent. He left his home, with his family, and chose to follow the Lord. And he went from the highest of living to probably the lowest of living because instead of dwelling in his home, he dwelt in a tent. It's simple, but this is an amazing example of humility. Materialistic things don't matter, following the Lord with faith and obedience is the most important thing. We must humble ourselves as Lehi did and follow the Lord with meekness without worrying about the cares and materialism of the world.

I love you all! Have a great week and be safe out there!

Irma Tayler Cannon:)

         

Week 5 in the MTC

OLA TODAS!

So there's a bit of an update on the VISA... me and all the other Portugal missionaries got our travel plans to Portugal. As of now, we're supposed to leave the MTC at 9 am exactly a week from today to PORTUGAL! However, that doesn't mean that we for sure have our visas yet so there's still a chance that we might get reassigned. If we get reassigned, we might actually stay in the MTC for another week or two so that's exciting. We might not know until the day before... it's kinda freaky lol. But whatever happens happens I guess... the Lord has a plan!

Our Romanian sisters left this week which was so sad, but we had 9 more Romanian missionaries come into the MTC which has been so fun!

My sweet sweet sweet Grandma sent me a box of like 50 cookies!! Me and my district have loved eating non-stop deserts this week haha!

This past week, me and my companions had the opportunity to Skype a family that lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They spoke no English, but we were able to communicate just fine in Portuguese:D

I'll tell you what... I know I say it every week but the gift of tongues is SO REALLL!

On Tuesday, Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the 12 Apostles came and spoke to the MTC. It was so awesome being visited by another General Authority. My favorite thing he said was that "perfection comes from the Grace of Christ... don't let the perfectionism of the world control your life." I love this because too often we try and conform to the world. We try and dress, talk, and act as the world wants us to to become "perfect." But the perfectionism of the world isn't the type of perfect we should be striving for. We should always strive to be perfect through Christ. Do your best to live a righteous life and obey the Lord's commandments, and allow the grace of Christ to make up the difference. 

Also, he reminded us to not look at ourselves too harshly. If we look at ourselves through the lense of the world we are striving for the world's idea of perfect. But if we look at ourselves through a spiritual mirror, we will see ourselves as God sees us. Because God doesn't look outward, He looks on  the heart.

The next time I email I might be in Portugal... or somewhere else... or still here haha. Who knows! 

I hope yal have a great week. Love you!!

Week 4 in the MTC

Hey everyone!!

Welp! 4 weeks down in the MTC and 2 more to go! Portuguese is surprising coming pretty quickly. Es muito muito bem! We've taught several lessons this past week and they've gone really well. We're technically supposed to fly to Portugal on June 17th but if our visas don't come in time we could be reassigned to another mission temporarily or just kept in the MTC for another week or two... who knows!! :D *fingers crossed *

This past week has been pretty crazy. One of my companions got a concussion last Sunday so we've been in and out of classes and our schedule has looked a little different. But honestly, it's given me lots of good time to bond with my comps and study the language and do some personal study. I've found some of my new favorite scriptures of all time... Doctrine and Covenants 101:16 is so amazing because it's all about relying on God and knowing that ALL things are in his hands.

We also had the opportunity to witness a priesthood healing blessing. We have the most amazing elders in our zone and they gave my companion the most amazing blessing of healing. I'll tell you what, the priesthood really is the power of God. I was so glad I got to witness that.

I've had some more friends enter the MTC this past week! Nathaniel Hatch and Andrew Hunsaker from BYU came in this week and so did Jack (KYLE) Norton from Iowa. It was so fun seeing my friends!

Ok, i'm gonna brag about my companions for a second... Sister Alton auditioned on the piano and played in front of over 100 missionaries this past week. She's honestly one of the most amazing musicians I've ever met. My other companion Sister Scott has been suffering from a serious concussion all week but she is still so happy, perky, and so fun to be around. She's even gone to class and taught lessons with us even though it's hard. My companions are seriously the best... I'm so luckily what the heck!

I had the opportunity to go to the temple again today. PLEASE GO TO THE TEMPLE IF YOU CAN! I know without a doubt that the temple is the House of God. 

Also, READ THE BOOK OF MORMON!! 1 Nephi Chapter 8 is about the Vision of the Tree of Life and it tells all about the Plan of Salvation. We read this chapter as a class this week and I learned new things once again even though I'd read it plenty of times before. Honestly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so good!

Also, go search #becauseHelives on lds.org and you'll find the most amazing video the Church just put out about Christ. It's totally worth watching.

Have a great week everyone! Love you all!

Sister Cannon:)