O Canada

For those of you who are unaware, July 1st was Canada Day! Basically Canada's equivalent to the 4th of July haha They have parades and fireworks and everything! I'm so excited about our Canada Day festivities that I have to talk about it first, I can't even get my mind to think about anything else that happened this week. July 1st fell on Friday, so our usual Friday singing took on a very Canadian theme. We jumped on the LRT and flash mobbed O Canada
(it was decided that it was my turn to start everyone off for the flash mob and I'll just let you know that it's absolutely horrifying the first couple times, but I got over it and am very at ease with singing a couple notes solo at random strangers now haha)

​Our Canada Day selfie

So the legislature building in the city is Alberta's equivalent to a state capital building since Edmonton is the capital of Alberta. The province always hosts lots of awesome Canada Day activities at the legislature, so there are always lots of people there all day. We were talking about this as we were flash mobbing the LRT and eventually talk turned into deciding we should go up to the legislature and find a corner to stand and sing at passer-bys. Just for some general good-hearted Canadian patriotism and nice exposure for the nice mormon missionaries.

​Our mobbers this week :D

We sang all the way there and stood in random stairwells for a bit with nice acoustics and sang at people walking through the LRT station. We eventually made our way up to the legislature building and there was a huge concert going on that completely filled your ears. There was no way that we could just stand somewhere and hope to be heard over an entire sound system of guitars and drums. My heavens we had come to the legislature to sing, so we were determined to sing. We decided to ask if we could just jump on the stage with the concert and sing, cause why not? We asked, they said no, but to check with a smaller stage just around the corner.

​Sister Hill happened to be
at the legislature
when we were there
so we had them sing with us.
HAPPY

The other stage had a dance group, but their show was almost finished. Sister McSweeney and I went and asked the lady in charge of the program for that stage if we could sing before the next act started and she was like, "Sure! Why not? That sounds fun!" So we jumped up there and sang O Canada, to Canada. It was seriously so flipping awesome. People stood and sang along and seemed pleased so I'm gonna go ahead and classify it as a success. Now lots of people have seen the nice mormon missionaries who love Canada.

We had a lot of really good lessons this week. Amy, our new investigator from last week is willing to work towards September 10th as the day to be baptized, so we're pretty pumped about it :D We asked her to say the closing prayer at the end of the lesson and she said something along the lines of thanking God for bringing us into her lives, "not in a timely manner, but in a time that matters." GAH My little heart melted.

​We planted herb pots
(Canadians pronounce the "h")
at a Relief Society activity
and my basil
and Sister Heredia's cilantro
are growing quite nicely. 

In another lesson, Sister Heredia made a comment that has literally changed my perspective on life. "We're the ones that make life difficult." At first I thought, "Nuh uh. Not all the time. Sometimes God gives us trials." But then I thought to myself again, "But we're the ones that make them difficult. If we just learn the lesson God wants us to or just trust God that it's gonna work out, it's not really difficult anymore." Holy cats I seriously love it.

A less-active that we haven't seen in literally two months finally let us over again Sunday night and that was an intense lesson. All Sister Heredia and I could even think to say to all the things she was telling us about was to testify of how much God loves her. It seems like she didn't know if she believed that anymore, and I don't know that she's ever really understood how true that is. God loves us no matter what. Period. That's it. You don't earn His love and there's no way you could ever disqualify yourself from it. He loves us. So. Dang. Much. Regardless of what we do or don't do. President Uchtdorf: "This is the paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; yet we are everything to God."

​Some members
are out of town for a bit
and asked us
to check on their garden
 every once in a while
which means we
spent almost 2 hours
weeding the other day
because we may or may not
had forgotten to check on it
haha

Yesterday Sister Heredia and I were studying about how it's our responsibility as missionaries to try and share the gospel with everyone. There's a scripture that says to declare the word with the "sound of a trump." I've always wondered why a trumpet is so often used as the symbolism and there was another scripture that talked about how we're the trumps declaring the Savior's coming. Like, right before kings walk into the room and people blow those weird vuvuzela lookin things. We're literally announcing the Savior's entrance. I was explaining my thoughts to Sister Heredia and she said, "Of course it's a trumpet! No one cares about clarinets, all low and you can barely hear them. They hear the trumpets and turn there heads to see what's happening!" Listen all you clarinet players reading this, I do love you, but it's so true! I was in band, I know! The ratio of trumpet solos to clarinet solos is drastically in the trumpets' favor. We've said "no one cares about clarinets" over and over this week to get us pumped up to go talk to people haha

So go trump! (eheheh)

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

​Happy 'Merica Day.

P.S. On Canada Day, we were in bed before fireworks started happening. Lucky for me it takes me a million years to fall asleep, so when they started going off I could hear the bangs. I tried to resist getting up, but let's be real...fireworks. I peeked out our bedroom window and then ran out to our balcony to watch for a bit. I ran back into our room and yelled out all excited, "Sister!" Sister Heredia yelled out with a much more panicked than excited "WHAT?!" and started trying to sit up or at least turn over to see what I was making such a fuss about. I felt a little bad that I'd made her so panicked, but it was pretty funny to watch her kind of flail around while she was trying to figure out what was going on haha I just pointed to the window and said,

"Fireworks!" So we sat on her bad and watched the display. I do have to admit it was a bit underwhelming compared to 4th of July fireworks, but fireworks are fireworks and I loved them :D

This is Sister McSweeney explaining to everyone what we're doin

And then this is us singing :D At the end I'm running up to the microphone to wish everyone a "Happy Canada Day!"

​Ummmmm hi. My companion is basically a chef.