Chinese Kung Fu

​11 months later...

We'll start with some last week updates I suppose haha Well we lost four investigators. One we decided to stop trying to see because she would never let us in, so we're gonna give her a break. Another wants to just hang out with us and won't let us talk about the gospel, so we're giving her a break for a while as well. The other two moved. It's actually way way sad. Their family kind of fell apart (and by kind of I mean it's real bad) in just a couple days and now we're probably never going to see them again. We don't have their numbers (they don't have any) and they didn't know their new address yet. I think it's probably one of those cases where we just planted some seeds. The one was seriously so ready for the gospel. Missionaries will find her again someday. I know it.

​This is Sister Purnell! :D
She's the one that picked us up
for p-day last week.
She's called to be a church photographer,
so we hiked all over her property
having a photoshoot.
She also took us to a
cute little village
that had in ice cream shop,
so I mean, of course
we got some ice cream.

Happy news though, we finally got to meet with the Spanish lady all the way back from Canada Day! Sister Heredia taught solo cause, well, I don't speak Spanish haha I knew what she was generally talking about for the most part, but from what Sister Heredia told me and what Lucy tried to tell me in her limited English, it went really well haha So we won't be the ones to actually teach her, we need to get her passed over to the Spanish-speaking missionaries in her area of the city, but she is just SO READY. Lucy said (well I should say told Sister Heredia haha) that she's always been curious about mormons and has heard the name Joseph Smith a million times and has wanted to know who he is for a long time. Sister Heredia is an absolute rockstar and is gonna rock this area when I leave.

So to go along with our sudden decrease of investigators, we've put a bit of an emphasis on finding new ones haha So we went for some good old-fashioned door knocking! Ya know, I have to admit. It's one of my least favorite things in the entire world, so I've been avoiding it like the plague. We had zone conference this week though and President Pattison said, "You should be tracting at least once a week. It's good for the soul." Oi. So we did. And we met some super nice people :) None particularly interested in us or the gospel, but my heavens this world has some insanely good people in it.

Some of my homies at zone conference :)
So they're all pretty short.
They were standing on their tip-toes
and I crouched down to take this picture.
The first one we took,
I was literally like a foot taller than all of them.

Speaking of zone conference, I loved it. Seriously loved it so much. Sister Heredia and I went home ready to WORK. President Pattison is such an awesome guy. He was leading his training and someone made a comment and he got a big grin on his face, raised his eyebrows all impressed and said, "That's cool!" Typing this out I realize that this is the most random story to explain how awesome he is. He was writing our answers to one of his questions on the board and he changed the wording one of the answers the Elders gave and said "I don't know how to spell that so I'm gonna write this." He's seriously just great haha

One of the less-actives missionaries have been meeting with for years randomly texted us on Sunday and said she didn't want to meet anymore. We asked if we could just come say bye to her and she said no, we asked what happened to change her mind, and we haven't heard from her since. I've been meeting with her for almost six months now, and it hurt my little heart that someone I've come to love so much just kind of slammed the door. Looking back at the past few lessons we've had with her, it's not entirely out of the blue. She's the one that's been saying for weeks that she "doesn't care." It's still pretty heart-breaking though.

​Just playin with one of my birthday presents :)

BUT HEY. Life is still good and the gospel is true. And there's someone out there that does want to meet with us! We just have to find her! This is just Satan trying to get us down cause something GREAT is coming. I can feel it. I don't remember what the song is or who sings it or if these are even the right words, but there's a song that says something along the lines of: "It's always darkest before the dawn." I have faith in "good things to come" like Elder Holland talks about all the time.

I really seriously just absolutely love this gospel. Every time I read the Book of Mormon, it makes sense. I think a lot of my testimony is in how much sense it makes. Seriously just this morning I was reading about Alma telling his son Corianton about the spirit world and judgement and resurrection and justice and mercy and it just makes so much sense. There's literally no other way I could possibly think of to make it all work.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. The same Elder from Hong Kong in last week's story is the highlight of this week again haha We were eating lunch at zone conference and he called out to Sister Heredia and I. He said, "Look! Chinese kung fu!" Then he threw the plastic knife he had in his hand across the room. He also held the same knife up for the picture of our zone at zone conference. Another exciting tid-bit from zone conference, one of the sisters' that was serving the lunch is literally a clown. Like, her job is literally to be a clown. So she went around teaching people to juggle and cracking all these jokes. On top of it all she's from London (and proud of it), so she has a British accent :D Best clown ever.

P.P.S. Alright one more. We were eating dinner at a member's house and talking about he weird cultural habits that surround mormon dating. One in particular was that people don't know if they're dating until they've had what is affectionately named the DTR (Define the Relationship). One of the member's was venting rather passionately how everyone else in the world generally knows whether or not they're in a relationship. "Hey are you guys dating?" "I don't know we haven't had the talk yet." We laughed for quite a while haha