Can I Give You Guys a Hug?

Throwback to Tofield and Roni, we've been going back and forth for a few weeks talking about Christmas and today she said "only 40 just like Noah" hahaha So just so you all know, it's only 40 days until Christmas. Sister Van Vleet and I were talking about decorating for Christmas, and I mentioned that there was already a Christmas tree in the apartment. I pulled it out and plugged it in just to show her, and it hasn't been put away. Christmas lights are also on our shopping list today.

We've had an awesome week! We went on exchanges with Drayton Valley and Sister Schatmeier came in to Belmead with me! We both agreed it was the least exchange feeling exchange we've ever had haha It was fun to have her back for a day though! We saw Chrissy and she still has some worries about being baptized, so she wants to wait a bit. She sill totally wants to be baptized and wants to come to church, we just need to help her build her faith and trust in the Lord.

Sister Van Vleet and I were doin some good ol' fashioned door knocking one night and the first several doors, no one was home. We knocked on one house, they turned the porch light on, looked out the window and saw it was us, and turned the light off. Also it was raining. I was feelin a little less than excited about the night ahead of us. The next house though, the girl that answered the door told us she had just recently been discovering God and wanted to find more positive things to fill her life. AWESOME SAUCE that we like to do! Turns out she didn't even live there, so she doesn't usually answer the door and she was sick so double reason not to answer the door. We got her number and before we left she said "Can I give you guys a hug?" I felt loads better after that :D

Another incredible door knocking experience from the week! A super nice lady answered the door who had wanted to come closer to God her whole life and decided to do something about it when she was nine! We talked to her about how great God is and read from the Book of Mormon with her. She wasn't interested in learning more, but before we left she said, "Can I pray with you?" Ummmm yes please! She said a very sweet prayer asking Heavenly Father to bless us. 

This Friday was Remembrance Day which is Canada's version of Veteran's Day. We went to a really cool service at the mall where they had a bunch of armed forces marching all over the place. There were also about 12 bagpipes and a drum line. My heavens it made me miss my high school bang days. I talked to one of the drummer's afterwards and he said I could join their drum line anytime. At one point a minister from a church got up and gave a really insightful speech on war. I wish I could have a transcript of the whole speech it was seriously so good, but my favorite part was when he said to remember that, "Our enemy is not our fellow man, but the forces of darkness."

So the library is being overrun with children and there are a million things we want to do today so thus ends this week's email haha

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. Last night at family home evening we played a game where we were blind-folded and had to go find things in the kitchen and take them back to the Relief Society room. I don't even remember what the message was behind the game, but Sister Van Vleet and I went hard. There's a video I'll attach in another email :D

I have no idea what order the pictures are in, but enjoy. I'll let you decipher what's what.

So this is only the last minute and a half of the whole adventure. We were supposed to find a bunch of different things including one of my name tags hidden in a "metal container"

Neighbourhood Watch

​I don't really have any words for this one

Where does time even go? I cannot believe that it's already been a week. Cannot. Don't tell Sister Van Vleet. She doesn't like to talk about time passing with home just being a few weeks away haha

I wish I could just show you our calendar so you could see how crazy our life has been lately. We've been blessed with so many wonderful people in our lives. We went back over to a family's house we'd tracted into last week and taught the Restoration. At the end we asked the mom if she knew anyone who needed to hear this message about God's love and she said, "Yeah, my husband!" So next time we go over, we'll have the whole family!

​All our homies at Family Home Evening

One lady we're teaching knows the Bible better than anyone I've ever met in my life. She literally just reads the Bible. All day. It's incredible. We'll be talking about something and she'll drop some reference to a Psalm or the middle of Deuteronomy or 1 Corinthians. It's the coolest thing ever. We gave her a book with the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price because she wants all the scripture she can get. 

The member we have come to her lessons is the greatest member missionary I've ever met in my life. She literally does our work for us. She'll get in contact with our investigators, set up lessons with them at her house, and then invite us over. She gave one of our investigators a ride to church and texted us afterwards telling us all about the talk they had driving home where she told our investigator how important it is for her to get baptized. My heavens I love it. 

Exchanges

Seriously so fun!

Exchanges this week were so fun. Sister Fisher came to Belmead with me and we seriously saw so many miracles in one day it would blow your mind. Adam's probably the miracliest miracle though. He was walking his dog and we talked to him for a long time, taught him about God and the Book of Mormon, got his address to meet again and he is now an investigator! We met with him yesterday and he's seriously awesome. He's never really had religion in his life before, but he's so open to learn about it. We're way excited to see how he continues to progress in the gospel. Another miracle is that while we were tracting a super nice girl from Poland let us in, and it was Sister Fisher's first time EVER being let in to someone's house.

​We stopped in 7-11 to use the washroom
(again, gotta use the Canadiadn words,
I'm in Canada)
and the cashiers told us when we walked in
that if we turned out shirts inside out
we'd get a FREE medium Slurpee.
You know I'm down for that. 

We've had a lot of opportunities to talk to new people this week and it's been awesome. Our next week is filling up with people who are willing to let us talk to them which is seriously just the best. We met a super nice Jehovah's Witness a few days ago who let us in right away. We had an awesome discussion about our beliefs versus their beliefs, our missionary work versus their witnessing. She wasn't interested at all, but just so dang nice. I'm excited for the day when random strangers knock on my door and I get to be nice to them. We're compiling a list of people who are nice to us that we're going to go Christmas carol to next month. 

Once again, life is good, the sun is shining, the gospel is true, goldfish are delicious. 

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

​My funny pose
was just to copy the pose President Pattison
always does.
Funny picture or not.

P.S. We were walking around a neighbourhood, as we so often do, and some homeboy came up behind us and said "Hey I'm with Neighbourhood (Gotta spell it like a Canadian, I'm in Canada) Watch..." and then he looked down at our name tags, got all red and said "Oh...uhh..." You better watch out for those crazy sister missionaries. They'll getchya. We'll even offer to rake your leaves for you. Disgraceful. Don't worry, we left him with our card and an invitation to learn about Jesus haha

P.P.S. 47 days until Christmas!

SHE'S BACK

SISTER VAN VLEET IS BACK. LITERALLY THE HAPPIEST OF THE HAPPIES. When President called and told me I gasped for a solid 5 seconds. It's pretty crazy since she's going home the end of this transfer and we've already been companions for two transfers BUT THAT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER. SO. HAPPY.

​We carved a pumpkin for Halloween :D 

This week has been awesome! I run into the same dilemma every week of not know where to start and not knowing which stories to include haha We've been working hard and are seeing some cool miracles! We've been tracting several times this week and people actually let us in! It's incredible! One lady in particular said she'd actually met with missionaries a long time ago and already had a Book of Mormon. We had a great discussion about the Restoration and she said she wanted to see more support from the Bible, so we gave her lots. We're excited to see her again this week. 

​The sisters in Red Deer found this sign
and took a picture
according to how they thought
I would have taken a picture.
I Approve.

Chrissy blows my mind. I just love her to death. Crazy things are goin' down for her right now, but she just loves her kids and everyone around her so much. In figuring out what to do moving forward, she is constantly thinking about how it affects everyone else. We had a powerful lesson with her on Sunday. My heart just explodes with love for her. The love I feel for her and the love I know Heavenly Father feels for her. We literally just got a text from her as I was typing this out that is just full of how much faith she has. She's the best. 

We got to sing with the primary kids for the primary program in Belmead this Sunday. They asked us to come up and sing along to "We'll Bring the World His Truth." I've sung that song a million times, but it's never felt so real before. I am the Lord's missionary, bringing the world His truth. Every day I'm reminded of just how true it is as I live it, as I study it, as I see the difference it makes in people's lives. 

​Our last seflie.
Obviously it had to be a temple selfie.

I love being here. I said to Sister Van Vleet this morning, I wish everyone could just come up here and I could just keep being a missionary but still get to see and hang out with everybody but still get to teach people. *sigh* If only.

Opposites are real. In order to understand that God is real, we have to understand that Satan is real. If Satan is real, then God has to be real. We've seen that so much this week. In people's lives, in the scriptures, it's everywhere. Even Joseph Smith. Before he had his vision of the "pillar of light" he was engulfed in a "thick darkness." It's a perfect contrast. Satan is darkness. God is light. When we go through hard things and understand how real the adversary is it just sets us up to understand how real God's love is. "The greater our sorrow, the greater our capacity to feel joy."

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

​The tri-pan reunited! Only for a couple minutes, but still! :D

P.S. Basically every second Sister Van Vleet and I spend together could qualify for this part of my letters, but I'll go with the picture from the top. Sister Van Vleet was getting all settled and unpacked when she couldn't open the bottom drawer of the desk. She had already opened it before and put things in there, but for whatever reason, she couldn't get it open. We both tried everything we could think of to get that drawer open. She was shoving knives in the cracks to try and get rid of something that might be jamming it.

​Went to a super cute/mildly famous bakery in our area
and Sister Van Vleet had her first macaroon!

We both tried propping both feet against the desk and yanking as hard as we could. We tried gently opening it. We tried just shaking it around. We couldn't get it. We decided our next option was to prop the desk on its side to see if maybe something would just magically fall into place. It didn't work, so when I grabbed the desk to put it back down, my finger touched the little metal piece that was locking the drawers. You barely have to touch it and the drawers open right up. A solid 30 minuets later, we put the desk back in its place and she finished unpacking.

​Ring Pops as an anti-trunky for Sister Van Vleet since she goes home in 5 weeks.

​And ice cream of course.

Bonus picture, she also tried to bring her stuff from the car to the house in a grocery cart someone left in front of our house. She may have run into the house a few times.

Our Hearts are Full

Well another week has gone through a time warp. A whole transfer really. A whole entire transfer is gone in what literally felt like a blink of an eye. One transfer of being with Sister Schatmeier in Belmead and she's leaving! We got the call from president this morning. It was super unlikely that she would have left, but at the same time we both kind of knew she was going. I can't say who's coming here, but let's just say I am PUMPED LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE

Also, ANTHONY GOT BAPTIZED. So insanely ridiculously happy. One of his friends from Clagary came up and the ward was so excited! On Sunday we went in to the priesthood opening exercises to be there for him to get the priesthood! They had him stand up and introduce himself  one last time and he said something along the lines of, "Hey. I'm Anthony. New member. Just got baptized yesterday." I don't know why that made me so happy but I had to hold in a squeal I was literally so happy.

We also met with Chrissy this week and her life is getting turned upside down right now. We had a great talk with her though and she knows God will help her. She just never ceases to amaze me with how much faith she has and how much she loves her kids and wants the best for them.

On Sunday I was seriously just the happiest person. I sat down to the Coronation Park ward sacrament meeting and just felt excited about LIFE. Anthony was just confirmed and received the priesthood. Our meal calendar for the month of November was almost full (that doesn't happen). AND it was the primary program for Coronation Park. I literally said to Sister Schatmeier, that I wanted to go run around outside waving my arms around screaming I was just a giant ball of happiness. I couldn't figure out how to put into words how happy I was until we sang the sacrament hymn. The last lines of the last verse were, "We love thee, Lord; our hearts are full." PERFECT DESCRIPTION. The whole last verse has kind of become my theme song for life:

As now we praise thy name with song,
The blessings of this day
Will linger in our thankful hearts,
And silently we pray
For courage to accept thy will,
To listen and obey.
We love thee, Lord; our hearts are full.
We’ll walk thy chosen way.

I finished the Book of Mormon again this week and as always it was incredible. When I got to Moroni's promise at the end though, I had a new thought about it. If Joseph Smith made this whole church up, he wrote the Book of Mormon willy nilly and is just trying to scam us all, he's literally the worst scam artist in the history of the world. It says very clearly, take this to God when you read this. Ask him what he thinks. If someone made it all up, he wouldn't tell the readers to take it to God. Then God would just say "not true!" and his evil plot would be foiled. So take it to God. He'll tell you what's right and what's wrong.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. There's a restaurant in the city called Soda Jerks that has a famous burger called Doris. If you eat Doris, you get a free t-shirt. Doris consists of bacon grilled cheese sandwiches for buns, a fried egg, three beef patties and all the regular lettuce, tomato, and onion fixings, more slices of bacon and like 4 slices of cheese. I wanted the shirt obviously, so I ate Doris. My oh my, I wanted to die. I was pretty confident all morning that I would eat it all, and even when they were bringing it out, I was positive I would eat it all. I ended up with four bites left and the waitress took pity on me and just gave me the shirt. I'm running out of time to email. There's so much more to the story, but there ya go haha

If You Want To

We saw a half-built
abandoned snowman,
so we went and gave him a head.
He's Sister Schatmeier's first snowman!!

One of the other benefits of being in a family ward again is all the old people. Babies and old people are in rather short supply in YSA haha We had dinner with a super cute old lady in the ward and she was throwing out all these great little one-liner phrases that I lost track of there were so many. She also was giving us some pretty solid life advice. At one point she said, "You can do anything you want. If you want to." You are so right Sister Mazurek.

In other news Anthony passed his interview!! He'll be baptized this Saturday and is seriously pumped. So is the ward. The ward just loves him. There was a ward pot luck that he couldn't make it to because he was visiting his grandma in the hospital and SO many people asked us where he was. We taught him about the Book of Mormon last Wednesday and every time I get to share my testimony with people about the Book of Mormon I can feel it getting deeper and deeper.

​We were walking
to an appointment and a kid asked,
"Mom what's on that snowman?"
In a pretty miffed tone she said,
"A cucumber."

Another fun part of Wednesday, we're getting an app for our iPads that is basically going to eliminate all paperwork. We spent a while getting all trained for it and it'll take a while to get all the information inputted, but it's going to be so unbelievably efficient.

I got to go on exchanges with Sister Rasmussen this week. My heavens she is an absolutely incredible missionary. She's finished with her mission in just a couple weeks. It's hard to imagine going home someday. It almost doesn't feel real haha We saw so many incredible miracles though! We found a new family for her area and talked to a man named Mario. To introduce himself he said, "I'll let you guess my name. Do you know Nintendo 64? My brother's name is Luigi." He wants to hear about the gospel and is meeting with them later this week! He had about a million jokes he had to tell us, so we stood there talking to him for a solid half hour. It was fun haha

​Exchanges!

There were two instances this week that we had about 10 minutes to teach the Restoration. So stressful, but my heavens so fun. I almost wish it were that way every time. It forces you to teach really clearly and simply, but you still have to make sure they understand and that you can teach by the Spirit so it can testify of the things you share. It was the best.

With President Pattison's emphasis on finding, the mission as a whole, and our area specifically has been seeing some incredible miracles. The Lord is definitely preparing his elect to hear the message of the Restoration. There's a girl from months ago that I gave a pass-along card to that's meeting with missionaries now and is getting baptized next month. We got a new investigator just yesterday; she let us in right away and was so down for us to come back on Friday. So many missionaries have shared experiences of going to one last door, talking to one last person, and they accept an invitation. Holy cats I love being a missionary. 

Sister Smith came in to the city to go to the temple,
so we got to have lunch with her!

We had a powerful lesson with Chrissy yesterday. She kind of bore her testimony of how she knows that she needs to follow Christ. She is an incredible woman who has been through so so so much. My heart felt like it was going to burst listening to her talk. I just love her so much. I just love being a missionary so much. I know I say it all the time, but I couldn't possibly say it enough times to accurately convey to all of you just how much I love it. 

Hey! You can do anything you want to! You just have to want to! 

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

​My selfie with Des
I ran into her on Saturday!
When I saw her and her sister,
we all half-screamed and ran for a hug
haha Tofield!

P.S. At family home evening last night we and Charlene were the last ones to get there, so we had to take what seats we could get. There was one big couch that Elder Moline was sitting on with space for the three of us, so Charlene sat next to him. Someone jokingly said, "Oh, you better watch out for him." So he teasingly scooted a little closer to her. She squealed like you wouldn't believe and scooted faster than I've ever seen someone couch scoot over to the other end of the couch. We sat between her and Elder Moline, but he got up at one point, so we had a musical chairs kind of thing and ended up spreading out on the couch so he couldn't sit again. There was just enough space for him to squeeze on the end of the couch by Charlene, so he squeezed in right next to her. She literally screamed and practically jumped on top of Sister Schatmeier. He decided to sit on the couch on the other side of the room haha

P.P.S. I ran into the Woodruff family from Tofield on Saturday :D Have I mentioned before how much I love Tofield?

​

​Shout out to Sister McSweeney and her forehead thing haha Also, please note that Sister Schatmeier and I perfectly match. Totally unplanned. #unity