You Walked Didn't You?

​Someone dug a tunnel through a giant pile of snow haha

Happiest of happies: Sister Hollon and I are going to stay together another transfer!! :D So I don't remember if I've talked about this yet, but we're going to be a part of a travelling fireside! We and 8 other missionaries are going to be putting on a musical firesides through the whole month of February all over the city. Oh my goodness we are SO PUMPED. We've been practicing for a couple weeks and it is going to be absolutely incredible. Fun fact I'm breakin out my flute playin' again :D

On Wednesday we traded our car with the Coronation Park Elders for their bus passes just to kind of shake things up. We literally picked the worst day ever to be walking haha The wind was goin so hard. It was blowing off all the snow on rooftops and on the sidewalks and what have you. When we were walking against the wind with the snow blowing into our faces it literally felt like someone was throwing rocks at our face haha

​Sister Hollon hit 6 months
so we got some celebratory ice cream :D

We had forgotten to take our instruments home before trading and we didn't want to leave them in the cold car, so we asked the Elders to just run them home for us. Small problem, we don't know our address, but we gave them incredible directions and descriptions and figured it would be fine. They called us when they turned down the street for more descriptions about which house was ours. They had gotten out of the car with our instruments and started walking down the street looking at all the houses. While explaining that it's a yellow house with a brown gate and suchly things Elder Higham said said "Oh hang on sisters, we have to talk to the police." What.

Side note, our neighbor was arrested a couple weeks ago. Apparently the cops have been watching our house ever since haha

For the next five minutes we just heard random blurbs of the conversation. "We're just dropping some stuff off for our friends." "They don't know where they live." "Just a flute and a violin." "Missionaries." "We're on the phone with them, do you want to talk to them?" When we talked to the Elders later they said that when the cops asked what was in the cases and they said just instruments, the cops made them open up the cases so they could inspect them hahaha

​Sister McSweeney left her iPad
after one of the practices.
Dangerous thing to do.

The cops let them continue on and we kept trying to explain which house is ours. Unfortunately Elder Higham is colorblind and Elder Cheng doesn't have the best English. We would say "yellow" and Elder Higham would say "Elder Cheng which house is yellow?" They found a house that fit all the descriptors and tried to unlock the door. We explained that it was the gold key and Elder Higham said "Elder Cheng which key is gold?" We talked for another solid 5 minutes listening to them unsuccessfully trying to open the door. We tried to re-explain in every way we could think of to put the key in the keyhole, turn the key, and unlock the door while they kept trying to tell us none of the keys fit. At one point Sister Hollon tried to quietly say just to me "Does he not know how to use a key??" To which Elder Higham responded "YES I do know how to use a key, none of these work!"  We finally gave up and had them drop the instruments off at the church.

When we met to get our house key back from them they showed us a picture of the house they were trying to get into. Oh my. They tried to break into someone else's house. It's a cream house with a brown gate on the side 4 or 5 houses from the end of the block with some steps going up to the front door. All the same features of our house except that it's cream haha In all fairness cream and yellow would be really hard to distinguish if you were colorblind.

​District picture

Later that night, we were eating dinner with Sister White and she knew we were walking and didn't have our house key. She kind of held us hostage for a while until we could get ahold of the Elders to figure out how to get our key back. She is so sweet and was just worried that it was so cold and windy. She tried to convince that no one wanted to talk to us in this weather anyways haha She finally relented with driving us to the church so we could walk a little ways to our next appointment. She said to call her when we were done and if we still didn't have our car, she would come pick us up. Well the appointment finished and we just started walking home because we didn't want to inconvenience her.

A couple minutes into the walk she tried to call us, but we ignored it because we knew she would know that we were walking. We called her back at 9:40ish and she didn't even let us get out a hello or anything haha The conversation went like this:

White: How did you get home?
Us: Oh we're home safe and sound.
White: You walked didn't you?
Us: ...
White: You walked!!
Us: ...
White: Oh you bad girls.
Us: But we got our key back

We were laughing about it the next day and she said that she knew we walked the second we didn't answer the phone: "You saw it was me and just put that phone back down. 'We don't want to phone her right now. She'll know we're walking.'" Hahaha we're literally like bffs with Sister White. It's so great.

So missionary work and stuff, but this email is super long now haha Just know that I am alive and well and we have our car back ;D We also get to go street contacting with the new missionaries arriving today!

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth