Sister Heredia

Sister Heredia, and I.
We even both wore stripes on the first day we met each other.
Inspired I tell you.

I shan't say a thing until I tell the world how awesome Sister Heredia is! She's my new companion and is seriously blow-your-mind amazing. She was born in Lima Peru, but her family moved to Montreal when she was 4. SO SHE'S TRI-LINGUAL. Spanish, French and English. I love when return missionaries that served in South American countries find out she speaks Spanish cause then they go off into a conversation in Spanish and I attempt to follow along, with my limited knowledge of the Spanish language haha Same thing with anyone who speaks French, but my follow-along skills are severely lacking with French. We're workin on it haha

Our district picture from last week. 

I don't even know where to start in attempting to give a sufficient run-down of life the past week. Wednesday, I dropped off Sister Van Vleet (who's in Cherry Grove now which is 3 and a half hours outside the city) and picked up Sister Heredia. Miracle of miracles, on Sister Heredia's first day we got a new investigator! Her name's Amy and she's great. We'll see her again tomorrow and we're way excited about it.

Sister Heredia's first day we get a new investigator and her first week of singing we flash mob the LRT again! Holy cats I had forgotten how fun it is. I had to sing the tenor part this week since we're a bit lacking in male voices, but I loved it. We had a talk before with all the missionaries on what to do if you find yourself on the train and everyone else is off or if you find yourself off the train and everyone else is on.

Her first LRT ride and there wasn't a soul haha

Sister Heredia and I had only ridden the train once before Friday, so she was thinking people lose each other on the train all the time, but all was well and no one was lost haha I MET A LADY FROM TOFIELD ON THE TRAIN. I cannot even begin to explain how excited I was. She's been less-active for a really long time, but wants Nearer My God to Thee sung at her funeral which happens to be the song we sang on the train. She's even been to Gridley people! I seriously loved that lady so much it felt like my heart was going to burst. Missions do crazy things to your heart strings man.

After we got off the train, we just stood in the station for a bit and kept singing. We wanted to record our singing, so we stopped a guy, handed him an iPad and sang to him. Oh my. When we stopped singing, Sister McSweeney looked at me and said, "That was the angels." The guy was on the verge of tears while we sang and asked if there's a church we sing at that he could come listen again. Well yes sir, please do come.

One of our less-actives mom's had been the hospital for about a week so we went and visited her and her mom and took her some fresh azaleas. Apparently I bought the kind that you can eventually plant (I'm sorry Mom I still don't know much about flowers and stuff) instead of the "these are just pretty to look at" kind, but they like to garden so it'll be fine haha They're from Chile so almost the whole time they were talking to Sister Heredia in Spanish and I loved it! It made them way happy, it made Sister Heredia way happy, so I was way happy :D

First picture with Sister Heredia
and last picture with
President and Sister Manion

Saturday night, President and Sister Manion were having a "farewell" of sorts fireside since they're leaving on Friday, but we were only allowed to go if we brought either an investigator or less-active with us. We tried so hard to get someone to come with us. We even had someone coming at one point, but they couldn't come at the last minute. I was pretty disappointed that we didn't get to go, but life went on and the church is still true haha When Alma and Amulek are watching all those people be burnt and Amulek's stressed about it and asks Alma, "Suppose they will burn us also?" Alma says, "Be it according to the will of the Lord." Holy faith man. If Alma can have enough faith in God that he's willing to be thrown into a pit of fire, I can be fine with not going to a fireside.

Generation picture:)
I finally got to see Sister Hill
again 6 months later
WAY HAPPY

Yesterday we were standing in line at Pita Pit when the guy behind us in line asked what ward we were in. This is usually a guaranteed way to know when the person talking to you is a member haha He bought our pitas for us and then sat and talked to us about his life for a while. All these super sad things have been happening for a long time, but he has so much faith it would blow your mind. He definitely has the Alma mindset of "be it according to the will of the Lord." He just completely trusts that God's gonna take care of him. Round #2 of Sister Hepworth's heart on the verge of bursting because there is so much love. I just want that guy to be so happy. I want that lady on the train to be so happy. I want my family to be so happy. I WANT THE WORLD TO BE HAPPY.

So I hope you're happy :)

We got to go out to out to the country for dinner this week so here's a video of the country's beauty.

Red Dot Day #9 "
Whooooooooa we're halfway there.
WhoooooOOOA livin' on a prayer"

One more story too cause I forgot I promised to include it. So at a ward pot luck on Sunday, some homeboy was picking these little things off of the trees and throwing them at people all sneaky like. Well one of them hit a guy named Brad. I don't know how to accurately explain Brad he is the sassiest human in the history of the universe, but he's insanely funny about it haha So the little thingie hit Brad and he saw that I happened to be looking at him and starting accusing me of throwing thingie. I DIDN'T THROW THE THINGIE. Brad and I had an exchange about whether or not I threw the thingie until he eventually said, "You lying fat piece of crap." I exclaimed "BRADLEY." And he said "Oh my. That escalated." Hahaha I told him I was telling my mom he called me names and he said "You promise?" I did and here we are. Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. This is to truly emphasize how truly awesome Sister Heredia is. We were meeting some missionaries at the church, but got there a bit early. No problem, we just started walking down the street to go talk to everyone. We walked past this guy with his hat over his eyes, headphones on, looking at the ground. As we walked past, we looked at each other and made the "No you talk to him" face. We both stopped a couple feet past and agreed we had to go back and talk to him. I was planning in my head how to get this guy to talk to us (headphones are the worst and people usually refuse to talk when they have them in) when Sister Heredia just stuck her hand out, right under his nose so he had to see it, and said, "Hi! I'm Sister Heredia!" Well, we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd come check church out this week.

So I guess I'll start with some news. President Manion called yesterday for transfers and Sister Van Vleet is leaving, probably out to the middle of nowhere in this great province of Alberta that has plenty of "in the middle of nowhere" areas haha I'll be staying here to train a new sister! I'm pretty freaked out about it, but Heavenly Father and I had a long talk last night and we're gonna make it work. I just want to make sure that I can help her love missionary work. CAUSE IT'S THE GREATEST.

Otherwise it's been a pretty solid week. We did a ton of service on Wednesday, as we always do and I love it. I'm sure I've explained it before, but we get to go to the Ronald McDonald House and make sandwiches for all the families at the hospital that need lunch. These aren't your regular 'ol Kraft singles and a piece of ham thrown in between two pieces of bread sandwiches though. They're literally gourmet sandwiches. We make a special spread every week and a bakery donates all this fresh bread and they've literally hired a chef to write sandwich "recipes" for us with fancy stuff like sprouts and fresh peppers. We've named Wednesday "Sandwich Day." Sandwich Day is always a good day.

Thursday was the last district meeting of the transfer. It's been a good dictrict. We made one the Elders where a headband with two Canadian flags coming off the top and a lea the whole meeting since he goes home tomorrow haha Our district leader also had this awesome game of hot and cold related to listening to the Spirit. In the end we ended up with like 5 dozen powdered donuts so it was a great district meeting haha

This is Kim :D

After district meeting, we booked it across the city to meet a lady named Kim that Sister Van met on the LRT a couple weeks ago. Oh my heavens I love Kim. We talked about what our purpose is as missionaries, and how much the gospel will bless her life and how much God loves her and she SOAKED IT UP. She had already read several chapters of the Book of Mormon that Sister Van had given her and said that "Nephi had to learn some important lessons that I felt like I've had to learn too." Long story short, she's on date to be baptized on August 27th just from that first meeting with her and I'm PUMPED. Since she doesn't live in our area another set of sisters gets to teach her, but she's gonna be great.

​Our crew this week for singing.
Who knows what it'll be
this week with transfers.

Singing was great this week! I'll send a video in a bit of Sister McSweeney and I singing :) Afterwards a member took us out to Olive Garden. Way happy. We had bread sticks comin out our ears.

Dene leaves for the rest of the summer today. She's going to be working at a Christian youth camp until the end of August, so we won't see her again for a while. We had a lesson with her about the plan of salvation on Saturday and she had lots of questions and/or concerns. They way we understand the Fall and agency and grace and works and the Atonement is a lot different than a lot of the rest of Christendom. It was actually really fun to have to really think about what I believe and how it works.

​Our last lesson with Dene.
For a while at least.

I came out of that lesson with such an appreciation for the plan that Heavenly Father has for us. It's so loving and merciful, but it's also pretty logical. The way things work make sense. He's a smart guy.

We also got to volunteer at a Mennonite Thrift Store for several hours on Saturday. We went at the same time as the sisters from Bearspaw and it was a ton of fun. All we did really was make sure the clothes were tidy on the racks, but that just meant we had several hours to peruse haha

​Our photo-bombed selfie with Kemi

Sunday was great! We showed Kemi that picture from last week of us holding the sign that says "Jesus loves you," and she ended up posting it on her facebook haha We also got to have a lesson with her later about patriarchal blessings and she's meeting with the bishop this week to start thinking about when to get it. We always have so much fun with Kemi. We just laugh our guts out every time. Somehow the phrase "If it's yellow, let it mellow" came up and what it means and she seriously thought it was so funny. She said it about 40 more times before we left.

​Ice cream of the week at Kaitlyn's house for dinner

Well everybody, Sister Van leaves me tomorrow and I get a brand spankin' new missionary. It's gonna be a crazy week let me tell you. Sister Van and I had a long talk last night about how everything we experience, good or bad, is because God has a lesson he wants us to learn from it. There's something I need to learn about being a trainer, there's something I need to learn about being in Canada as a missionary, there's something I need to learn about being the youngest of seven kids, there's something I need to learn from my mission president now and the new one I'll be getting soon, there's something I need to learn about my love for ice cream (well, probably). Think about it. Think about whatever situation you're in whether it's good or bad and think "What am I supposed to learn from this?" It's just all about learning what He wants us to.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

​Our tire had a screw in it,
so we enlisted the help of some members
to change it for us.
Funny enough,
I'd been to the car place that we had fix the tire.
On my very first day with Sister Hill
almost 9 months ago!
Weeeeeird.

P.S. Miracle and funny story combined this week. Sister Van Vleet needed to take her international driver's permit in to the mission office so they could get a copy of it, but after about 2 minutes of looking, we realized it was thoroughly lost. She tore apart the apartment, going through every piece of paper in existence trying to find her permit. She was standing in our room about to give up when I opened up a little side closet that we keep almost nothing in. Lo and behold it wasn't there, cause we don't keep stuff in there, but when Sister Van kind of hung her head she looked down, into the garbage, where, sitting atop a pile of plastic wrappers, WAS HER PERMIT. We both just gasped and it was like slow-motion as she reached in there and pulled it out. Now see, when Sister Van gets excited about things, her voices increases a few decibels and gets significantly squeakier. She held it our in front of her in her special excited voice said, "It was in the garbage?! WHAT ELSE IS IN THE GARBAGE?!" She then proceeded to dump the plastic wrappers and rummage through them to make sure she hadn't lost the crown jewels in there or anything.

P.P.S. I don't know why I am somehow the designated selfie taker. Literally every time.

An Elder that sings with us every week is going home Thursday (the same one we made wear the flag headband actually haha) so Sister McSweeney and I sang Homeward Bound. Lots of memories with this song.

 

Jasper

So I'm just gonna go ahead and bombard you all with pictures. These are only the ones I took on my iPad. There are about a gazillion more between all of us that you might see someday haha

On the drive up courtesy of Sister Robinson

Jasper Park Lodge

Yeah we're just cute

We picked up a hitchhiker and ended up teaching her the Restoration and giving her a Book of Mormon haha

Athabasca Falls

The homeboy that ran the skytram we rode and some random lady that wanted to be in our picture

Athabasca Falls again

Mt. Edith Cavell. Pause the video at like 9 seconds and look for the glacier in between the mountains. It's the largest glacier in North America!

So this one, I'm reading a plaque at Athabasca Falls. Every single plaque was equally dramatic. I decided to read it with my best attempt to be as cool as the crocodile hunter.

Really? Is it that bad that we're in the street?

So I'm sitting in the car on the way to Jasper typing this on my iPad, I'm probably gonna run out of patience in not too long haha

I'll just caption pictures and call 'er good.

On Wednesday we got to volunteer at a huge gymnastics event. The top gymnasts from all over Canada came to Edmonton for olympic qualifiers. I seriously should have been a gymnast. They do THE coolest stuff. Literally. There's a guy floating next to my head cause he's jumping on this ginormous trampoline and is probably like 20 feet on the air. There were 12 year old kids that had more muscle than I could ever dream of having man.

MIRACLE STORY. Sister Van and I were stopping by a less-active we'd never met, but we saw George, the guy with the sunglasses, pulled over with his hood up. We don't know anything about cars but we offered to help and tried to give him a jumpstart. Our cord ended up iterally melting, so we called the zone leaders to have them come help (again, we don't know anything about cars). While we waited for the elders, we taught George about the Book of Mormon and he took a copy and said he'd come to church on Sunday so we were pretty pumped. When the elders showed up we had them go knock on some doors to get some water cause it was a bit toasty outside. The lady that answered her door ended up becoming a new investigator cause the elders taught her about the atonement while she grabbed water and she's already been taught again since then. We tinkered with George's car for a while (when I say we I mean everyone else had their heads in the hood while I went and picked a nice little bouquet of wildflowers, cause I still didn't know anything about cars) when a 16 year old kid named Chridon walked past who we stopped and taught and is now another new investigator. (Cool side note, Chirdon grew up Muslim but is Christian and has even gone on a mission/volunteer trip to Mexico) Turns out George's battery needed new bolts, so we ran to Canadian Tire (which is basically the Canadian equivalent of Ace Hardware). While we were gone the elders taught George again and put him on date to be baptized on July 9th! WAY HAPPY. We came back with the bolts and Chris (red shirt in the back) showed up with his huge truck and gave George a jump start. We gave him a Book of Mormon as well. We still haven't met the less-active haha

A girl in our ward's mom just had her gallbladder out a few days ago, so she's kind of couch-bound for a while. The girl had to be at school/work all day and the rest of her family is actually in California right now for the Argentina vs. Chile game, so she asked us to go spend the morning with her mom so she wasn't by herself all day. Fabiola (the momma) is from a Chile and her accent is super thick so she's seriously so fun to talk to. I ended up painting her toenails and she painted flowers on my fingernails for me. 

Yesterday we picked up Sister Morris and Lee and took them to Mucho Burrito
which is probably the only place in Canada that has Jarritos haha

We had a Skype lesson with Kemi on Sunday since she's in Manitoba visiting her boyfriend. Skype lessons are weird, but the Spirit works even through cyberspace. We read Alma 36 which is all about Alma's conversion story WHICH IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE CHAPTERS, so it was a good lesson haha

Currently on our way to Jasper. We've been on the road since 5 this morning and we've already seen a moose everybody. A moose. It's gonna be a good day.

Alright we've reached the point where I'm not willing to type much more. Elder Holland quote in honor of seeing mountains today, "What was gentle in the lowlands of initial loyalty becomes deeply strenuous and very demanding at the summit of true discipleship."

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. Robyn and Jon got married two weeks and a bit ago. We'd been patiently waiting to text them to make sure they were home from their honeymoon just to see how they were and the likes, so we hadn't seen or talked to them in a while. On our way to church, we went down the wrong road and ended up going past their apartment. When Sister Van realized this she said "THAT'S THEIR APARTMENT. Do you think I can see them??" So she slowed way down and tried to look through the windows. I was feelin a bit stalker-y so I made her drive away after she announced she thought she could see Jon haha Later that day we were heading to church again and lo and behold Robyn and Jon were riding down the street on their longboards. Sister Van got so excited she gasped, laid on the horn, screamed as we drove past, pulled the car over, jumped out with the car still running to run over to them. I turned off the car, closed her door and joined them as they were laughing about how annoyed they had gotten cause they thought that someone was just honking at them for riding in the street.