Listen Differently

Hello world! It's been another incredible week so I'll try and tell you all about without making this the longest email ever haha

Found a lake driving out to exchanges

We had some exchanges this week! I stayed in Belmead with Sister Demillard after being here for only a week, but we survived! We only had to flip about a dozen U-turns because I'd turned the wrong way or the road ended so I'd say it was a success haha We had so much fun. Just about all of our appointments fell through, but they just opened our time to talk to people we wouldn't have been able to otherwise! Including a member who moved to Edmonton a few weeks ago and had been looking for how to come to church and a new investigator we met on her doorstep!

Exchanges with Sister Demillard

Our zone training meeting was awesome. President Pattison has so many incredible insights and ideas he has to be called from God to be here leading the mission. A lot of the initiatives he wants to get rolling are going to push missionaries and church members in new ways they're definitely not used to, but they're going to work miracles for the progression of the mission (heh that rhymed).

I got to meet our investigator Angie for the first time this week. She is the sweetest. She loves the Book of Mormon and wants to be baptized on November 12th! We also started teaching her friend Shane who was pretty uninterested at first, but is now also reading the Book of Mormon and praying about baptism. They're seriously so nice.

Trudi's baptism!

Saturday was a flippin INCREDIBLE day. We got to go back to my old zone to go to Trudi's baptism!! It was so sweet to be able to be there for her. When she walked in after changing into her jumpsuit I waved to her while he were practicing the musical number for her and she cheers-ed me with her mini can of Coke haha Before her baptism, Sister Schatmeier and I were walking around the building

THE HILLYERS

and I ran into the Hillyers! The Hillyers are way back from my Tofield days. President Hillyer is the branch president and he and his whole family were there for someone else's baptism that day. I LOVE THE HILLYERS. It took every ounce of my being to not run down the hallway and hug-tackle them I was so happy. I also happened to run into another lady from Tofield just yesterday!

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Baaaaahhhhh I love Tofield so much ️ After the baptism we met Charlene, who is also so dang sweet. Sister Hill actually found her on the bus a couple weeks ago and she ended up living in our area. She came to a family home evening with us and some members of the ward last night and she loved it! We walked with her to the couple's house and it was fun to be able to spend some time just getting to know her. She is so so sweet.

I loved the women's broadcast! President Uchtdorf said something interesting about listening differently instead of listening harder when we feel like we can't hear the Spirit. He also quoted Little Prince (I think) and said that "Anything essential is invisible to the eyes." Which made me think about all the things we do with our eyes closed. When we give someone a hug, we close our eyes. When we pray, we close our eyes. When people meditate, they close their eyes. Some things can only be understood with our eyes closed. "If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." Alma 32:21

To one year

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. Our story is courtesy of Sister Schatmeier this week: I also have story to tell which I'd like to entitle, The Skirts and the Case of the Hidden IHOP. On a beautiful autumn afternoon late in the month of September, The Skirts, S. Hepworth and S. Schatmeier, found themselves in need of an oil change for their vehicle. After dropping off their automobile into the hands of capable experts, The Skirts were

Sister Shatmeier's the cutest
and got me my favorite things
and deemed me 100% Canadian beef
seeing as I've been on my mission for ONE WHOLE YEAR

trying to find a suitable activity to fill the necessary time slot. Suddenly, S. Schatmeier remembered passing by a sign advertising the restaurant IHOP on their way in to the vehicle service station, KalTire. Having been told for the entirety of the mission experience that there was just a single IHOP location in the south of Edmonton, this sign created feelings of perplexity and disbelief within the two humble sisters.

After a little discussion they decided to investigate.

Upon arriving at the cite of the afore advertised IHOP, The Skirts discovered that this was indeed a genuine International House of Pancakes, newly opened on the West End. As The Skirts were in the midst of a fascinating conversation, they didn't realize the implications of actually walking inside this place of business and were quite shocked as they were promptly seated at an eight person table.

There were only two of them.

And they had already eaten a generous lunch.

After being greeted by a lovely waitress who supplied the two sisters with glasses of cold, refreshing water, The Skirts decided to try to make the best of this unexpected, and more than a little awkward situation. Although still filled from their previous meal, The Skirts concurred that ordering an ice cream sundae would be more acceptable than rudely exiting the building five minutes after entering and accepting a table and drinks. A constant and insatiable craving for ice cream on the part of both sisters provided an additional support to this course of action. The waitress returned after a few minutes of allowing the sisters time to (pretend to) inspect the menu and asked if we had reached a decision. Still somewhat overcome with the shock of this entire scenario, S. Schatmeier accidentally interrupted her dear companion in the midst of ordering ice cream and made an inquiry, "What are some of your favorites??" to which the friendly young woman responded with a few recommendations and stepped away to allow The Skirts more time. Understandably confused, S. Hepworth asked S. Schatmeier, "Oh, do you think you're going to get pancakes?" "Nope." "Then why--" at which point both sisters couldn't hold in their laughter anymore and spent a jolly couple of moments reveling in how ridiculous this little venture has become. It took a few minutes to regain the composure expected of two representatives of Christ, at which time The Skirts shared a delectable and creamy dessert and exited, having only spent five Canadian dollars. Upon exiting, The Skirts talked to an older couple, also patrons of the wonderful breakfast establishment, who remarked in passing on the singularity of the sisters walking in to just order dessert. Feeling justifiably embarrassed, but suitably proud, the sisters decided there was only one course of action left to them.

They took a picture to commemorate the occasion.

The conclusion of this tale is a happy one :) Feeling physically satisfied and having had their curiosity sated as to the existence of a second IHOP within the boundaries of their assigned area, The Skirts walked back to retrieve their vehicle and continue the work of salvation.

The ihop picture

The Skirts

Saying goodbye
 to the little smiley face guy
on the light attached to our apartment building.
 He was my favorite.

MY HEAVENS THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO TALK ABOUT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START

First off, I'm now in Belmead which is on the west end of the city with Sister Schatmeier! Holy man I forgot what regular wards are like haha Sacrament meeting has a significantly greater amount of babies and noise in general. I love it! This ward is great and there are so many wonderful people that we're teaching!
Fun fact about our area, West Edmonton Mall (used to be biggest mall in the world) is in our area. Missionaries are only allowed to go once on their mission, except us haha

My first time going to the mall with our homies
Amarra and Alyssa :D

We casually stopped in for a potty break yesterday. It has a water park, an amusement park, an ice skating rink, a movie theatre, a giant pirate ship, a sea lion show twice a day, 2 mini golf courses, a laser light thingy, a wild west style shooting thingy, a hotel, a bowling alley, 2 food courts and just about every store you could possibly imagine all under one roof.

​Walking to family home evening
 with Jennay, Anneka, and Kade

There's a whole family of teenage kids who'll be baptized on the 8th of next month. They're such fun kids! And they love church so it's perfect. We walked with them to another member's house for family home evening last night. The ward has been awesome in making sure they feel super welcomed and involved in as much as possible. It's awesome!

There's also Anthony! He is such a rockstar. He just looked up religion online cause he wanted to find God, found mormon.org, requested a Book of Mormon and now he'll be baptized soon as well! He didn't get to come to church on Sunday since a couple of ribs were out of place and he had to go to the hospital, but he still wants to see us twice this week! I'm so excited to watch his love for the gospel keep growing.

We got to help out with a food drive!

Our investigator Chrissy is awesome as well! We went over and read the Book of Mormon with her and she is just so ready for the gospel. We talked about having freedom to make our own choices is so important and she soaked it up. The Relief Society president in Belmead is like bffs with the Relief Society president in Tofield so we bonded over our love for Tofield haha

We went to stop by some homies, but they didn't answer, so we got in our car to figure out where to go next. One of the sisters of the homies we were stopping by had just gotten home and came over to our car to invite us inside. She said "I saw the skirts and knew it was the sister missionaries." We affectionately refer to ourselves as The Skirts now.

Listen, if I tried to tell you all the stuff that's gone down in the last week, I'd be here all day. Just know that I'm happy and healthy and love this work SO DANG MUCH. Sister Schatmeier and I talked for a long time about how there are all these crazy cool things the deeper you dig into the gospel, but that all you need is faith, repentance, covenants,  the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Seriously. You want a happy life? You want to be with your family forever? You want to understand how loved you are and know how to love others? Faith, repentance, covenants, the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. That's seriously it.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

​The kicking President picture

P.S. I got to see all of my companions (except Sister Smith ) I've had at some point this past week which was THE BEST. Sister Hill and I were both at a meeting on Thursday and sat next to each other for the picture everyone at the meeting took together. We took a nice and normal one, but of course you have to have a silly one. I never know what to do in silly pictures. I threw my feet on Sister Hill and ended up kicking President Pattison who was on the other side of Sister Hill. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Then they told us to move around again and they'd take another so Sister Hill threw her feet up on me and then realized she had to kind of lean on President Pattison and tried to figure out how to sit up without leaning on him. It was a good time.

​

Saying goodbye to Brad! (The sassy one that called me a lying piece of crap that one time)

​So Mt. Pleasant YSA is named after a cemetery. Had to take a Mt. Pleasant farewell picture.

Saying goodbye to sweet sweet Kayla. Imma miss her.

​George and Daniel (the investigator and lost sheep that ended up living up in the building behind us) had us over for dinner on our last night.

​All of our lives packed into one tiny little car. Notice Harold in Sister Heredia's hands and my burritos on the middle console. They are both mine and I will not let others have them, so they came with me.

Our First Selfie

Our Last Selfie

​Saw a lady with her hood up, offered to help, she ended up being a less-active who hasn't been to church in years. Also, it randomly poured for like 5 minutes with we were jump starting her car. She said, "This'll be a fun storyfor you guys! You helped a random lady in the rain who ended being an inactive!" Haha She's not wrong.

#yegmormon

First things first! NEWS. Sister Heredia and I are BOTH being transferred! Kind of crazy. Seeing as we both have to pack now our to do list for the day is about a mile long. MOST EXCITING OF ALL: Sister Heredia is going down to Red Deer to serve as a Spanish speaking missionary!! HOLY CATS LITERALLY SO PUMPED. We were running around/laying on the floor/rave dancing/screaming all this morning we are so excited. Tomorrow morning we'll both be heading out to new companions, new areas, new life. So weird. 

Our last week as companions has been absolutely incredible though. We got to see our recent convert Jenna (who actually isn't technically recent as of next week) in Gateway last Tuesday night and we found out it was her birthday the next day so we ran and got her chocolate and balloons real quick. We had a great lesson with her about "small and simple things" like reading our scriptures and praying. She said she loves praying and has some awesome experiences with the Book of Mormon. I just love her :D

We got a new investigator literally 6 weeks ago that we haven't been able to see again until last Wednesday. When we sat down, she was sitting with us at the kitchen table. Then her brother sat down as well. Then her mom and sister turned off the tv to listen. Then her friend came and sat down next to her. So we taught the whole house. It was a pretty crazy lesson. They spent a lot of the time making fun of us, but when we talked about the First Vision, they couldn't help but shut up and listen. It was pretty incredible really.

Alright Saturday. Probably the craziest, busiest, funnest (not a word) day of my mission. We PACKED our day with as much goodness as we possibly could since people were gonna be following us all day. Literally all day. We had someone new every hour. We helped Dene move in the morning and had to finish studying afterwards. We also got together with the missionaries we sing with and invited a bunch of members to go sing with us. SO FUN. Then we got to go to the Whyte Ave booth and we talked to a million and a half people. (We actually got a new investigator, but I'll talk about that in a second). We went and helped out at a community garden, had dinner, then went to a member's house to help with her garden. We tried to see a bunch of people that night, no one was home. BUT it was still good! We saw so many miracles that day. I'm sure Heavenly Father was thinking, "ya know, this is an important day. Let's give 'em a whole bunch of people who wanna hear the gospel." Thanks man. There were a couple of girls who followed us around for a bit to record us. One video is posted already on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1u8tHeIlVQ&feature=youtu.be The other won't be done until October. All the other pictures and videos people took of us are still out there! Search through #yegmormon and we'll be there! Feel free to share that video all over the place though ;D

Yesterday was an incredible day as well! We met with that new investigator from the Whyte Ave booth. He's from Brazil and has been waiting very patiently (literally for years) to know what God wants him to do. He had awesome questions and is reading the Book of Mormon! Later that night we saw Kemi and I just love her guts. I'm gonna miss her a ton. We saw the girl from Wednesday again and it was just her this time. She's a lot more attentive and receptive when the rest of her family's not making fun of us. She even made us cupcakes! :D We also ran into another investigator that we tried to pass over to the Elders and had an impromptu lesson with him. He knows he needs to change, and that we can help him do that, but won't make the time to do it. 

Alright I need to wrap up, we seriously have so much we need to do today. I love the gospel. I love feeling how happy it makes me. I love the Book of Mormon. I love ice cream. I love sunshine and the color blue and music and all of you.

Peace and Blessings

Sister Hepworth

P.S. Sister Heredia has been reading the war chapters in the Book of Mormon. She's been saying for weeks that it's like a movie in her head. To help with knowing how to pronounce words and the likes in English, she listens to recordings and reads along. The other day, she got to the part where one of the good guys names Teancum dies. She pulled out her headphones, gave me big puppy dog eyes and said, "TEANCUM! Teancum's dead! They killed him! I love Teancum! Why couldn't he have waited until morning to sneak attack?! Not Teancum! I'm in love with Teancum! I AM SO SAD." It was quite traumatically hilarious.

Picture Overload

I have no idea what order they're in, but lots are just goodbye pictures with Kemi, Caitlyn, and my favorite people from the Ronald McDonald House. There's one where we were helping out at an Institute BBQ; we cooked like 500 hot dogs. One is of our district. One is singing on Monday. 

113 days to Christmas

Hakuna Matata

We got to go on exchanges this week! I went to the Lakewood sisters' area with Sister Robinson and Sister Hereida stayed in our area with Sister Christensen. They have an investigator that doesn't speak much English, so they use Google translate to translate key phrases into Swahili. We were planning on teaching him the word of wisdom, so we were looking up "no alcohol" and "no drugs" which is "hakuna pombe" and "hakuna dawa." Sister Robinson said, "Oh, hakuna must mean no." Then alllll kinds of wheels started turning in my head. Hakuna, no, hakuna, matata, HAKUNA MATATA. It literally means "no worries" in Swahili! We put it into Google translate and everything! Very sneaky Disney.

Exchanges

The rest of the exchange was great! We met and taught so many great people! They're seeing all kinds of incredible miracles and it was cool to be a part of it for a day.

DENE'S BACK. She's been gone all summer and we finally got to see her this week! I was seriously so happy when I saw her. She opened the door and I almost exploded. She's been working out at a Christian camp for troubled youth and she had some incredible experiences out there. She's had such a crazy life, I really admire her for how much trust she's put in God and how she's trying to help other people find that too. We're actually helping her move this Saturday, so we're not sure how much we'll actually get to teach her depending on where she moves.

Broke out the hot chocolate and hats. Winter is coming.

We also got to see Kemi again this week. We read the introduction to The Book of Mormon with her and had an awesome discussion about how we have to have church in our hearts the 6 days of the week that we don't go to church. She has so much faith too. She just got her patriarchal blessing on Sunday! Life's good.

On Wednesday we helped the ladies in the nursing home we help at make cookies. They're all so funny. We got to sit and visit with one lady afterwards named Julia and she is just the sweetest lady. She seemed so excited that we wanted to just sit and listen to her. A lot of times that's all people need is someone to listen to them.

The second picture I meant to send last week.

This Saturday our mission is doing a day in the life of a missionary kind of thing. We're gonna have people follow us around all day taking pictures of us and posting them on social media with #yegmormon So if you wanna see what I'm doin up here follow the hashtag and Sister Heredia and I will show up somewhere haha We have one member who has a pretty well-known YouTube channel that's going to be with us all day and film it to make a movie! If you do find a picture of me and want to tag me or repost it that'd be awesome so more people can see the #yegmormon (YEG is the Edmonton airport code)

Found Waldo!

Also depending on time today, I have another "letter" that I might be sending, but since these are all actually going on a blog it's really gonna be more like a blogpost. Just of some thoughts I've been thinking and want to share.

Stay happy homies. Even when you don't wanna, do it anyways.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. Singing this week, a guy walked past with his arm in a sling. One of the Elders called out to him and asked what happened. The guy said "I got hit by a truck." Literally every single one of us, and there were 8 of us, simultaneously gasped so hard. It was like we were on a soap opera or something hahaha