So We're Dropping the Bass?

​Our old district leader blew up balloons
with his nose once,
so we wanted to try.
It's really not hard at all haha

I'll just go ahead and start with the title story today. Happy news, we still got to sing this week! Some new people came that like to sing so we're gonna keep doin it! New people means that we need to re-practice everything though, so we spent a bit of time learning the parts on some hymns. We have one Elder that

​Went for the double.

can sing tenor, but doesn't quite have the range for the bass part. We were discussing our options, and we decided that some of us sisters who have a range that goes a bit lower will just join with him on the tenor parts and we'd just skip the bass part. I was about to start plunking everyone's notes when I looked up for confirmation one more time and said, "So we're dropping the bass?" 100% unintentional. I didn't even realize how horrifically punn-y what I had just said was until a solid 5 seconds later.

In other news we're doing great! Tuesday night our zone leaders introduced us to a new investigator and she had us play bean-boozed. Blech. I swore when I played it last Christmas in Tofield and ate the throw up one I would never play again, yet there I was, chewin away on some canned dog food. She's super nice though! She kept saying she has faith, just not in God. In life. I asked her what that means and she said "ya know. Life." Oh right. Silly me haha She said we could come back and teach her about God though.

We went to lunch yesterday
with the Bearspaw and Lakewood sisters!
If you can remember 10 months ago
way back in MTC days
that's Sister Smith in the green!
My (Australian) MTC companion!
She's actually being transferred
to Tofield today :D
(Tofield's the best)

On Friday we went to stop by Ruben and saw her little sister Catherine again! CRAZINESS she's been attending the Christian camp that our investigator Dene's been working at all summer! I asked her if she knew Dene and apparently everyone goes by "camp names." So I had to show her a picture for her to recognize Dene, who she calls "Dreamer" haha It was fun.

We also got to see the less-active that said a few weeks ago that she doesn't "care." We taught her the Restoration and she said probably about 12 more times that she just doesn't care. It didn't have the same effect on me this time though. It still made me sad, but it just made me me want to care more. In her own words, she said that her heart is "hardened" to it. It just makes me think about how eventually "every knee shall bow" and "every tongue confess." And how Alma talked about how it's way better to choose to be humble than to be "compelled to be humble."

Saturday we went to the Whyte Ave booth for the last time, since it's out of our area now that Gateway has moved buildings for church. Sister Heredia and I talked to a guy named Rob who wants to learn and it turns out that he lives in the area that Sister Hill covers! I realize all of you probably don't remember Rob from Tofield, but I'll just say that it's incredibly ironic that now there's a Rob in our lives again.

​We got to make pupusas last Tuesday!!
They're El Salvadorian
and absolutely delicious.

So Mt. Pleasant is at 9 in the morning now and Gateway is at 1 in the afternoon, so we get to go to 6 hour of church on Sundays from here on out! I kind of actually loved it. Like a lot. There are such great people in both wards and I love getting to hear about the gospel, so I'm definitely looking forward to getting to go to both wards every Sunday now.

Let me catch you up on some peoples! Kim, from forever ago, the lady that we only got to meet with once then had to pass her over to the missionaries in her area, who I absolutely LOVED, is doing fabulous. She's on date and is still an absolutely incredible human being. She called us the other day and I asked her what she's most excited about being baptized and she said to have the gift of the Holy Ghost: "It just seems so wonderful to be filled with His light all the time." Melted my little heart. LRT success story right there. Also, Trudi, from back in the tri-pan days is on date as well!! We got to go to a lesson with her last night and watch it happen! Her Elders asked her to be baptized, she said yes, they gave her September 10th as a day to prepare for and she got right up, walked over to her calendar on the fridge and wrote it down! Street contacting success story!

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY. I could legitimately probably keep doing this for the rest of my life.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. I wish you could all have come and sat in on the lesson with Trudi last night. She and a lady in the ward are basically bffs now and they are the funniest people you'll ever meet. I don't even have any idea how to even attempt to convey how much we laughed. So this isn't really a funny for all of you, but just an acknowledgement of how insanely funny Trudi and Mary are.

I'm Feelin Twenty-Too

​Just some birffday swingin

It seems like every time someone would ask me my age and I had to say "19," they'd get a sly smile on their face and I could almost read their mind, "Heh. That's cute. You think you're an adult." WELL GUESS WHAT WORLD I'M TWENTY NOW. *channeling inner-Pinocchio-voice* "I'm a real adult!" So there.

In other news it's been a great week! Last Tuesday we were stopping by an investigator and she introduced us to her neighbor. It ended up that we didn't even get to teach our investigator because her mom called her inside, but we sat and talked to her neighbor for a long time. She expressed a lot of

​I woke up to a birthday tree on Sunday :D
I ate the most delicious cupcakes
of my life
for breakfast
that Sister Heredia made
from scratch.

desire to come closer to Christ, but I'm not sure she was convinced we're the ones that can help her do that. She said we could come back though, so back we will go! She was kind of contentious at first actually and was just googling random things about mormons and telling us everything she was reading, which weren't necessarily very positive-feel-good things. We talked and gave her mormon.org and she said she'd definitely check it out haha

This week might be
the last time we get to sing.
Transfers is makin stuff crazy.

We also went to stop by Ruben this week, and her sister answered the door. I thought it was Ruben though and started chatting up a storm with her and asked her if she had time for us to come in. She said "yeah sure" when Sister Heredia finally asked, "Is Ruben home?" I looked at her a bit shocked that she didn't recognize that we were already talking to Ruben and were about to have a lesson with her so I said, "This is Ruben." To which Ruben's sister said, "No, I'm Catherine." Dang it. In my defense, they look strikingly similar, have similar short blue-ish hair, talk the same, have the same mannerisms, but still. We've met with Ruben lots. I should know better. We taught Catherine anyways cause it turned out that Ruben wasn't even home. She's great and next time we'll go over I'll be real careful before I start dropping names.

​Temple selfie I forgot from last week

We've gotten to see several less-active that we haven't seen in a long time this week, so that's happy. With one, she's really struggling with all things church-y, so we've been struggling to know what to teach her to help her progress in the gospel. We finally decided to just take some time to talk about how awesome her family is, how awesome our families are and how much God must love us to give us such great people.

WHICH IS SO DANG TRUE. God loves us so he gives us families to learn how to recognize and understand that love. I love my family. Seriously. I love them. So dang much. They're flippin awesome. Even from a gazillion miles away they made sure to make me feel loved for my birthday. And every other day of the year. I'm glad I get to spend eternity with them :)

​We had a little shindig for the Elders
going home this transfer
after district meeting.

Listen. There a million more things I want to write about, but this is already getting lengthy. So here goes a crash course of some things I've learned this week: you can't drive a parked car (think about it), sometimes when we pray the answer is no (and that's ok!), the world is good (no matter how bad the news makes it seem), and we can choose to be happy regardless of situation/location/timing/influence (even if it seems like you can't).

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

It seriously rained so hard
that major road by our house flooded
and firemen had to blow up rafts
to rescue the cars that were stuck in the water.

P.S. Fun fact about Alberta summers: there are crazy thunderstorms that just show up whenever they feel like it. Literally almost at random. We've gotten several severe thunderstorms this week. It seriously rains so hard that I would reach down to up the speed the windshield wipers only to discover they're already going as fast as they can. We were just getting home in the middle of the worst part of one of the storms and we only had one umbrella in the car. I told Sister Heredia to take the umbrella and I would just run for it. 5 seconds into my 50-meter dash to our building, light flashed and thunder boomed literally exactly simultaneously. I screamed, my heavens I screamed and sprinted like I've never sprinted before in my life. Through the puddles across the grass, I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life. By the time I got to the building, I was so wet I had to change clothes. Later in the week, there was another storm that we had to run through to get to the building and I was wearing that same dang skirt, and I ended up having to change again because it got so wet. Again.

The video is me singing Families Are Forever when I was...not 20 haha It just seemed fitting for this week AND I'm eating ice cream.

Bonus ice cream picture

Be Happy Forever

10th Red Dot Day
​That's 10 fingers up there. Count em.

Summer time is great. Warm weather, lots of sunshine, but in a YSA ward it means that people are moving in and out all the time. We've lost dozens of members to moves in both wards the past few weeks. Thursday we helped Brittany move to the other side of the city. Sad day that she's not in our area anymore, so we don't get to teach her, but way happy that she's living in apartment instead of the camper she's been living in for the past several months. It's seriously crazy how much love we have the capacity for. I just want SO BAD for Brittany to be happy. And every other person that we get to see. And all of you. And the world.

​Sister Heredia made me t
he cutest breakfast
in the world
for my 10th red dot day :)

We saw Ruben again and she hadn't read the Book of Mormon, but felt so bad that she hadn't. We had had a great training in district meeting the day before about having short powerful lessons with people. We hit 'em with the Spirit, then we leave and they recognize that those good feelings were coming from learning about the gospel. We just read a few scriptures with her and asked her to finish the chapter. We gave her kind of a taste tester and she seemed pumped to go dig in. (Gross, that was so cheesy. I already regret typing it)

​Our district
(plus a couple photobombers) a
t the temple this morning

Our mission president has asked us to meet with all the members of our wards across the whole mission to share a message about a new pattern for missionary work that he's created: pray, look, speak, invite. It's been great to be able to meet with all the members we have so far. Every one of them has been so willing to let us come over and help engage them in missionary work. We're gonna see miracles. So we've been having the members practice talking to their friends about the gospel with us and some people just do not like practicing haha But when we open our mouths, the Lord fills them and they've been great sports.

​I got to see Sister Woolsey at the temple!
SO HAPPY

We had a great lesson with the less-active that said she doesn't "care" this week. All we talked about was the Atonement. We read Alma 7 where it talks about everything Christ went through for us and how much he must love us to be willing to do that. It was powerful and she I think she definitely felt the Spirit asking her to care again. Jinny sent me a speech a while back that said, "We should not use appeals to pride or even to a rational calculation of what is in one's best interest: heaven or hell. The best way - the only way - to persuade people to repent and come unto Christ is to get them - to get us - to think about what He has done for us and especially what He has suffered for us. That is how Christ does it."

​We got to go the Legislature building
for FHE yesterday :D

Remember George? Probably not, but that's ok. We met him at a bus stop months ago and then it turned out that he lives in the building right behind ours. We see him all the time, but have never been able to teach him, until Saturday! We were walking past his house (like we do literally every day) and he came out and said hi to us. We asked if he had time to sit and talk, he did, so we talked. And talked. Holy man does he know how to talk haha I'm convinced though that meeting with him hadn't worked out before now because God was waiting for Sister Heredia to get here. Every time she talked and bore her testimony, you could see how much he was feeling the Spirit. He called us after we left and thanked us for coming over and talked about how good and enlightened he felt. He's such a great man who just needs the gospel. We all do.

​Kayla (fantastic hair)
let us raid her raspberry bush.
We had about 3 times as many as
what you see by the end.

We were walking past a guy rummaging through some stuff in his car and his license plate was from Washington! I got excited and said I knew people that lived in Washington so we chatted about life in Seattle (which is where he was from). He wasn't even remotely interested in the gospel, but gosh dang it he was the nicest guy. As we were walking away and saying goodbye he said, "Bye! Be happy forever!" So there you go. I'm extending Mellick's wisdom to all of you.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. For Brittany's move, we had a member of the bishopric come help since he has a truck. We were on our way back to her camper from her apartment after dropping off the load of stuff and I saw a Harvey's (fast food burger place up here). Supposedly they have really good Nutella milkshakes, so I was sharing my thoughts with everyone. 10 minutes later I was still talking about ice cream - my favorite shake flavors, how McDonald's has such a quality cone, the frequency of my ice cream eating - and Brother Miller said, "Alright let's go get some ice cream. Who has the best stuff?" I was a bit confused and he said "You've been talking about ice cream so much I want some. Where we goin?" I'm sure you all think I'm just being funny when I talk about how much I love ice cream. I'm serious. I love ice cream. On our way to McDonald's (for the ice cream) I said that the two things I talk about most are Jesus and ice cream. Brittany even said she remembered that when we met for the first time I kept talking about ice cream. It's real.

The Magic Key

We tried to take a selfie with the rainbow.
Didn't work obviously but it was still cute.

I can't let another week go past without talking about President Pattison! President and Sister Manion are back in Texas doing "Larry and Gail Manion" things and President and Sister Pattison are here to run the Canada Edmonton Mission! It's been great! He's already gotten

HOLY INCREDIBLE RAINBOW.
THE PICTURE DOESN'T
DO IT JUSTICE.
 IT WAS SO BRIGHT. ​

some new ideas rolling and he is so pumped to be here. We got to meet him a couple weeks ago and he and his wife are so nice. They're gonna do great things for this mission and I'm excited to be a part of it :D

So our investigator from last week that we weren't sure how old she is, is 18! So we get to teach her :) We saw her again and everything we taught seemed like it was definitely making sense in her head, but she kept saying "I just don't think I'm ever gonna be religious." She wouldn't come right out and say that she didn't want us to come over again though, so I kind of just kept talking until in the end we had another appointment set up with her this week haha Also, she loves Pokemon Go. They haven't technically released it in Canada, but people are downloading it from some other sketchy server. Literally so many people are obsessed with it haha

We had a great lesson with one of our less-actives this week. Her house is always full of family and friends running around all over the place, so the lessons are always a little crazy. Her dad was home this week though and sat in with us. After we said the opening prayer he stood up and walked in to the kitchen, so we thought he was leaving (which would have been a bummer) but he just got up to ask everyone to go to another room so we could have a lesson :D It was great! We taught about families and it was seriously such a blessing to have him there. He had great testimony to add about how important the gospel is for families.

​The Alberta Games ​

On Saturday we volunteered at Alberta Games which is basically a huge provincial wide tournament of all the sports. All of em. Football, swimming, dancing, triathlons. We just monitored the bouncy houses that they had for the siblings of the kids in the Games, but it was so fun. The one I was in charge of was actually an obstacle course bouncy house and there were some kids that kept doing it over and over so I would have them race or I'd time them or we'd come up with extra stuff they had to do through the whole course (for example run it backwards). I never got to try it #skirtprobs but it seriously looked so fun. The Games were in a town in our area that we don't get to go to very often. We stopped by a less active that we'd never met on our way home and she is the sweetest! She's terrified of driving in the city and is the only employee at her work so she has to work the Sundays. She's gonna meet us halfway next week though and we'll have dinner together :)

​Our singing group this week :)

This last Sunday we dubbed as "miracle day" :D We stopped by a referral after church and she is so ready for the gospel. When we got there her mom said she was in the shower, we figured we were about to be sent away, but she invited us in and we played with their hedgehog until she got out of the shower. She was seriously so nice and said that she feels like something's missing in her life and that she thinks it's a relationship God. Well cool beans it's literally our job to try and make that happen :D We're meeting with her again next week.

​It was pouring
and our parking spot
was blocked
so we had to walk
two blocks
back to our apartment.
Don't worry
I had my handy dandy
umbrella in the car :)

Another Sunday miracle, a guy we met at the Whyte Ave booth last week asked us to bring him an Book of Mormon in Arabic this week. He already had one in English, but reading in native language would definitely be more fun. We got the book, but couldn't go back to the booth, so we gave it to the Elders to give to him. They said he's been reading the Book of Mormon in English and loves it! They invited him to church and HE CAME. They have an appointment with him this week :D

One more Sunday miracle, we'd been in contact with a former investigator but hadn't been able to set a time to meet with her. She randomly texted us during church and said we could come over that night. She lived in that same town that we almost never go to, so we booked it over there Sunday night and had a lesson with her. She learned for years back in high school, but never felt like she "knew" that she was supposed to get baptized. We had a really great lesson with her, but she's still weary of committing to take the lessons again. We said we'd give her a few days to think about it and she said, "Well, I'm pretty busy the rest of July, but I should totally be free starting August." Hmm. We're pretty sure she's gonna let us over again haha

So we had to put up a CO detector,
but we don't have a drill.
The mission office said
to just hammer a screwdriver
into the wall to make a hole.
We don't have a screw driver.
Or a hammer. S
o I hammered my pencil into the wall
with a frying pan.
This was the finished product
of my pencil.
But that CO detector
 is up there
and never comin down.
The video is just me
hammering with my frying pan.
When I told Brad
(the sassy one that called me
a lying piece of crap a few weeks ago haha)
about it he said
"What do you think this is?
Tangled?"

We also got to give talks on Sunday in Mt. Pleasant and neither of us really had much time to prepare a ton for them. They were great though and Sister Heredia is a rockstar (it was her first time giving a talk in English!). After church, a member came up to us and said that he had brought his friend to church who hadn't been to church in a long time and he said that our talks answered a lot of the concerns that he's been having with the church. Further evidence that the Lord makes happen what needs to happen, despite our human weaknesses getting in the way like not feeling prepared to give a talk.

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. We were walking out of one the church buildings as the Mandarin Elders were walking up to it with two other people with them. The thing is with this particular church building, not many people actually have keys to get in, there's just a particular way to *ahem* finagle your way in. The Elders asked if we had the key and we said no, cause well, we don't haha They didn't have a key either but were fully aware of the finagling that they could do to get in, they just didn't necessarily want the other two people to be aware. One Elder said, "Ok well I'll go try our key (code for I'll go finagle) and you guys stay here and get introduced." We politely chatted with these two people (one of them was named Pegasus, so I mean, that's incredible) when the Elder came back over and announced that the key didn't work. I gave him confused look and he said under his breath "Or I'm apparently not strong enough." He borrowed our key to try again and tried ehh, finagling, a little harder. He got it and came back over and said "you guys must have the magic key." I agreed and did my best to hold in my laughter until we had at least pulled out of the parking lot.

Hotel! Hotel! Hotel!

​Took temple pictures
while we waited for exchanges

Well we'll start with some good news, we found a couple new investigators​ this week which is way happy! One's a girl that just graduated high school and another is a girl who's actually still in high school so we probably won't be the ones that actually get to keep teaching her. But that's ok! As long as people are hearin the gospel I don't mind who teaches them haha The girl that just graduated high school was raised Islamic and when her mom came over by us, they argued in some other language for a bit and then she randomly reverted back to English and said, "Mom! We're talking about Islam! It's fine!" Soooo it'll be fun next time we go over I'm sure haha

This week we got to help at a booth on Whyte Ave which is a really famous street in Edmonton that has all kinds of shops and restaurants. On Saturday we got to stand in front of the church building and try and get people to talk to us. It's seriously so fun. Ironically, I went to this booth way back in the day in my third week on the mission but kind of hated it because I didn't really particularly like talking to strangers at that point. I've come a long ways because it's seriously one of my favorite things now. We had a white board that said "Where does your inspiration come from?" I forgot to take a picture of it, but we had people write their answers and there were lots of cute ones. One little girl wrote "EVERYTHING" and lots of people said some variation of their family.

In the midst of learning about family history work.
I was done learning about it
(we already talked about this)
so I entertained myself with selfies

Since Sister Heredia's a new missionary, we have an extra hour of study everyday. This week we got to study about using family history work in our missionary work. I've never really been very good at family history work, and I'd never really made any efforts to use it in my missionary work. PLUS the website we were using kept crashing and it took waaaay longer than it was supposed to to learn about family history work. I was pretty done with it by the time we left the library, and didn't really have any intentions to change much about how I did missionary work in regards to family history work.

BUT SISTER HEREDIA, the incredible missionary that she is found family history pass along cards and has been handing them out like candy. One of our investigators was trying to tell us she didn't really want to learn anymore, but Sister Heredia whipped out on the family history cards and started explaining it and our investigator's totally interested again. I've been sufficiently humbled and have officially jumped on the family history band-wagon haha

Exchangin back

We went on exchanges this week and every single appointment that I had planned fell through, but we saw some incredible miracles, I tell you what. Sister Arnold and I stopped by a girl that we hadn't had contact with in months and we have an appointment for next week. We stopped by a less-active I'd never met and her brother answered the door and wants to learn about the gospel. We jumped on the LRT for a bit and decided to have a two-person flash mob (cause Sister Arnold is a flipping incredible singer and I'd told her about all the flash mob adventures). It was seriously so fun!

​Sister Arnold and I got ice cream
of course.

One of our less-actives this week said she doesn't come to church because she "doesn't care." I wish I could accurately explain to all of you how much those words have affected me. Saying "I don't care" is saying "Oh. I don't get to have the Holy Ghost with me all the time? I don't care." "The Savior of the world, my older brother, suffered unspeakable anguish for me? I don't care." "My family won't be together forever?" "I won't get to go to the celestial kingdom?" "I can have all the feelings of guilt and shame in life go away?" I don't care.

Don't you ever not care. This is the most important thing EVER.

​We completely accidentally
perfectly matched haha

I care. Holy cats I care. I want to be able to get up to heaven someday and have Christ say "Well done." I have to care for that to happen. I want to be able to spend eternity with my family now and whatever future family Heavenly Father has for me. I have to care for that to happen. I want to have the happiness that God promised I can have. I have to care for that to happen. So care ok?

Peace and Blessings
Sister Hepworth

P.S. Sister Heredia has been teaching me some Spanish and it's been way fun! We were talking about how I need to know how to ask for help or something, so she said, "What would you say if you were in Mexico and someone was chasing you?" I don't know. "No, like, what would you say if you were running and needed someone to give a ride back to your hotel cause somebody was chasing you?" I don't know! "No really, what would you say?" I have no idea! "Just try!" I don't know, I'd just yell out 'Hotel! Hotel! Hotel!' She then laughed for about 2 solid minutes and said, "Never go to Mexico by yourself. You will be kidnapped."

I've since improved and the video is me introducing us as missionaries in Spanish :D