May 14, 2012

Yesterday was Mother's Day, so, we were able to enjoy a telephone conversation with our cute missionary!

Hi! Hasn't been very long since we've talked, so I don't know that I have much to report today....

 

Yesterday was a lot of work for me....woke up a couple of times during the night in a lot of pain, and still in a lot of pain this morning. Today's going to be another long day since we need to be out and about again to get groceries and such....we don't have any appointments after dinner though, so that's at least some time I can be resting...Hopefully the doctor will be willing to take some xrays tomorrow so we can figure out what's wrong (with my knee, at least).

 

I'm glad Jolie was able to come for a few days. I'm sure the 1000 cranes are beautiful! I hope you can get to be a Thursday's hero...that would be really fun.

I'm also glad that your treatments are almost over; I hope the doctors are right that you'll start feeling better soon. I'm sure the kids at Hermosa enjoyed seeing you some this past week. Glad the yearbook turned out well! =)

 

Hm..well...I don't really know what else to say since we talked yesterday. Loved hearing from all of you yesterday! Love you and miss you!

 

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

May 7, 2012

Hi! Sorry you haven't been feeling too good. 

I'm glad Dad got to spend some time in Utah. It's sad to hear about Grandma Donna, but it's good that he got to visit with everyone.

 

I got Grandma's card. Got a chance to write her a quick note back this morning, so hopefully she'll get that soon. Glad to hear that Jon and Karley and everyone else are being as helpful as they can. I sure appreciate it since there's not a whole lot I can do from here.

 

This week was pretty rough, lots of pain this week, especially yesterday. Don't know if fasting had anything to do with that or not. It's really frustrating being in so much pain all the time; but it's even more frustrating feeling like I physically can't give the same 100% I've gotten used to on my mission. It's been a hard week, let's just say that. I don't know how much Sister Wilson has been updating you or not. I've talked with our area medical advisor and he's not really sure what to do with me. For now, he had me make an appointment with a neurologist for mid-June and we'll see what he says. The medical advisor thinks it could be any number of things and it'll depend on how much testing I need to do what'll need to happen.

 

We had an okay week missionary work-wise. We had some really productive lessons with our investigators. One, Honey, is legally blind, and Saturday we were able to introduce her to a couple in our ward that the husband and wife are both legally blind. They have already gone above and beyond to fellowship Honey and have offered to help familiarize her with resources that will be helpful to her (she only began losing her sight in January of this year). It's so great to have such natural fellowshippers!

 

We also had a great lesson with our investigator Nick. His wife was baptized in March, but he's still not sure about a few things. We talked with him about the interview questions and qualifications for baptism and really were able to see how we can help fill in a few gaps for him. We have another lesson with him later tongiht; I'm really looking forward to it.

 

We only had three cancellations this week, which was so helpful! Very grateful for that.

 

Another highlight of the week was that we got to go to the temple on Saturday! One of Sister Hone's recent converts went to the temple to receive her endowments. It was very exciting! I'm very grateful I got to go to the temple last week!!

 

Anyways...I think that's about everything!

 

I love you and I miss you! You're all in my prayers!!! can't wait to talk to you next Sunday!

 

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

April 30, 2012

Hi!

 

It was great to talk to you on Friday! 

I look forward to getting Grandma's letter. I've really appreciated of all the letters she sent me during my mission!

 

Congratulations to Jon bowling yesterday. Good job for him reading the Old Testament! I'm sure that dinner will be great.

 

The Fantasmic event also sounds great. I'm jealous. But I'm still looking forward to the Halloween party! That will be fun too!

 

Our weekend was pretty slow. Saturday was a day of no one being home. We did however get a lesson with Honey, our newest investigator. She definitely believes the Lord has lead her to be searching for truth right now, and I think she believes that we may have the right answers for her questions. We get to have another lesson with her Tuesday, along with service. We'll either get to paint her trailer or weed her garden: should be fun!

 

Yesterday was okay. Same as most of the week: most of our appointments cancelled, but one stuck. That just seemed to be the theme of the week: cancelled appointments left and right. I guess I should count my blessings that at least we HAVE appointments TO get cancelled...but that'd be really nice if we'd actually be able to meet with all the people that we plan to during the week!!

 

Anyways...other highlights from this week.........It's hard to think of any. It was a pretty bland week. =( Sister Hone is the sister in charge of exchanges in this part of the mission, so she went on exchanges twice this past week. Sister Morgan and I got to spend a day with Sister Saxton (from Colorado) and a day with Sister Alberts. It was fun being companions with her again for a day. She's had another niece/nephew born since she was my companion, and she found out that her twin is expecting her second baby and is due just a few weeks before Sister Alberts goes home...how exciting!

 

For the most part the weather was pretty good last week...it started getting cloudy agian towards the end of the week. Don't ever know the forecast ourselves, but we're always hoping for sun, rather than clouds!

Oh...we got to teach Young Women's yesterday! that was fun! We did a lesson on how to set SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely). I think the girls enjoyed it: we had one of the girls tape an index card to the front of her face while she tried to work her way towards her "goal" of reaching the chalkboard, so that she could see side-to-side, or "in the moment" she was in right then, but she couldn't look directly at the goal she was working towards. Then we talked about how SMART goals try to minimize the things that block us from our goals, and what other things we might need to "get out of our face" (like disobedience, if we're striving towards the temple, or sleeping in, if we're striving towards being on time to seminary).

 

Yep. I think that's about all the updates I have for you.

 

Hope today is a good day for you! Keep having a positive attitude, even thought it's hard. I love you!!! and I miss you!

 

-Sister Holdsworth

April 23, 2012

Hello!

 

I hope you're doing okay this morning; glad you were able to make it to sacrament meeting yesterday. I'm glad that you were able to call last week too, even if it wasn't with good news. I'm glad you feel like you're being blessed for me serving a mission....I hope that you are.... I'm very glad that you weren't actually having an autopsy done! haha! (Jonathan got "autopsy" confused with "biopsy") Thank you for keeping me updated on what is going on with you. I hope the surgery isn't too painful this week, and that it helps!

 

I'm also very glad and appreciative that it sounds like the ward is stepping up to help out. Do you know if you're going to be able to keep working at Hermosa? I'm glad you've been getting cards from the students. I know that everyone at the school must miss having their favorite librarian.

 

I got Jon's birthday card in the mail today....hopefully it gets there in time =/ I was thrown off all week on what day it was and didn't realized until yesterday that I probably should have already sent it.

 

 

This week has been great in Lynnwood. My companions are Sister Hone (from St. George, Utah) and Sister Morgan (from Indiana). This is Sister Hone's last transfer and Sister Morgan's second transfer. Sister Hone and I have wanted to be companions our whole missions, and we'd just about given up hope of ever being companions....we were both shocked on Tuesday!! But we're loving serving together; and Sister Morgan is quite enjoyable to be around as well! =) We've been pretty busy this week, and we have tons of appointments for next week.

 

The highlight of this past week was finding a new investigator! Her name is Honey. Sister Hone served in this area at the start of her mission, and when she first met Honey tracting Honey said that she really loved her church but would go to our church if the sisters went with her. Well...obviously Honey didn't come an investigator then...but when we stopped by last week she told us that she'd actually been praying about her church a few months ago and had started to feel like it wasn't right.....so now she's not attending it at all! Now she's super open to hearing about the gospel. She's also legally blind, and there is a couple that just recently moved into our ward that both the husband and the wife are legally blind....I don't think that's a coincidence!! So we're really excited about her.

 

The ward welcomed me with a ward party on Friday...not really. The young women in the ward put on a Cafe Rio style dinner, followed by a cake auction to raise money for girls camp. The desserts the girls made were really impressive, and a lot of them went for a good price! The highest bid was from our Bishop for $70 for some homemade eclairs.

I can't really think of anything that I need. More sleep maybe? Haha. I think you'd have a hard time mailing that to me though....if you find out how, you could make millions though...so there's an idea.  

 

Anyways....hope you're doing okay. I love you and I miss you. Can't wait until mother's day!

 

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

April 16, 2012

Hello

This morning when we came to email, the computers shut down in the middle of reading your emails. So, I read your first email about Sister Stumpf getting transferred.....but I didn't get to read the second one, so we were very concerned for a moment! That makes a lot more sense about Sister Stumpf NOT getting transferred and knowing her companion already. She's being trained right now (which means, with the new training program the missionary department has come out with, that you already know that the trainee and trainer will stay together for at least two transfers) so we were very concerned for Sister Stumpf and Sister Miller (her trainer) and what would have happened that Sister Stumpf was getting transferred!! Glad to know nothing bad has happened. That's unfortunate they're becoming a bike area though! =(

Well...we found out on Thursday that Sister Chudleigh is TRAINING! Her third transfer! So that means that I'm being transferred...where to, we don't know, so you'll just have to find out next week. It's kind of weird being transferred after just 6 weeks in an area, but I'm excited; I'm thinking this next area will probably be my last. With this new sister coming in we'll be up to 22 sisters, which means a new area is opening! I was thinking I wouldn't be one of the sisters to "whitewash" the new area, (because we heard through the grapevine that President had told Sister Miller the new area was going to be a bike area) but now, I'm thinking maybe that rumor morphed from MV1 BECOMMING a bike area...so maybe I will get to whitewash! That'd be exciting. I don't think there's an area that I wouldn't like to go to, though.

Anyways...so Sister Chudleigh was getting all prepared, mentally, to get back on bike, but then we got a call this morning from the APs that her trainee has a health issue that she can't ride a bike either....so for now, the Redmond 1st area is still a car area. I feel bad for Mt. Vernon 1st if that's the reason they're becoming a bike area...but Redmond really has way too many hills to sensibly be a bike area to begin with....in my opinion.

Thanks for asking about how teaching went this week. This past week we had a lot of appointments set up with potential new investigators....but they all fell through. Most of them rescheduled for next week though, which will be good for the new sister's first week. We weren't able to teach Ed, because he's still recovering from his phenomena, which means they'll probably have to push his baptismal date back a week or two (hopefully still within the next transfer though so that I can come back to visit for it!).

We DID however, find a new investigator yesterday! =D FINALLY!!!! The Spanish Elders left us a voice mail during church that they had a member approach them and tell them about his wife/girlfriend, Katie. Apparently she's been asking him a lot of questions about the church so we went over that afternoon and talked to her. She said that she's had a lot of people she knows give her anti-Mormon literature, and she has a hard time believing that actual people believe some of the stuff she's read that we beleive, so she wants to talk to someone that actually IS Mormon, other than ther husband/boyfriend....well, what a great reason to meet with missionaries! =) Based on our conversation with her yesterday, I'd say she's super prepared to receieve the gospel. I'm sad that I won't be able to teach her again, but I am quite relieved to not be leaving Sister Chudleigh with just ONE lone investigator (that is kind of out of commission for the time being).

Anyways, hope you're all having a good week! Love you! Miss you!

Sister Holdsworth

April 9, 2012

Hello,

Thank you, Mom, for the Easter package! I especially like the notecards. Sister Chudleigh was really appreciative, too. When I got the family letter, at first I wondered what in the world you could be sending me that was so thick, but I really enjoyed piecing the letters together. Thanks everyone for writing! =) (The Tilton side of the family sat down together and wrote letters...each of us wrote one sentence then passed along the paper so each letter had a different sentence from a different family member)

I did receive the $$ from Grandma. Tell her thank you for me; I'm hoping we'll have some time later today for me to catch up on responding to all my letters so I'll be able to write her back myself.

Our mission president has given us permission to play board games at members homes, so our district was playing ticket to ride together at a member's home in Sammamish. This is why my letter is later today than normal. I won once on the Germany edition, and then lost just barely on the Europe edition. The members also fed us leftover ham and potatoes from their Easter dinner for lunch. It was really generous of them.

Mom said she was hoping for an eventful email....I'm not sure how eventful it will be since we barly did anything this past week. >P

We had one lesson this past Monday with our investigator, Ed. Then he went in for his heart surgery on Wednesday...he survived! Yay! We still have an investigator! but then he got phenomena. Boo. He's home now from the hospital, but still recovering.

Other than that, we were inside. I've already been super weak this transfer from how bad my joints and muscles are doing, but then I came down with some sort of weird stomach bug. I think I cycled through about 10 different sets of symptoms Monday and Tuesday before it finally settled on just a general "blllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah." feeling Wednesday through Sunday. I tried going out to try to make Sister Chudleigh happy on Saturday but I only lasted about 20 minutes...We made it to sacrament meeting Sunday.... I'm feeling loads better today though! Finally!!!!!! I mostly just tried to sleep all week...not that that was very successful, since my muscles twitching kept me from being able to fall asleep the majority of the time.

I don't know how much you've talked with Sister Wilson, but this is why she wants me to see the neurologist. My muscles have twitched for as long as I can remember (Sister Chudleigh says this isn't normal...I just always thought it was: that every one's muscles would just randomly twitch...maybe that's why no one's ever figured out my joint pain? It never occur ed to me that my muscles were abnormal too!?) but they've been twitching a lot strongly and more often, and I have a hard time falling asleep with all the twitching nonsense going on. I've never really slept well, but these past 5 months or so have been especially sleepless.

I made an appointment for tomorrow to get a referral from Dr. Call (main mission doctor) for the neurologist. Hopefully I can get that all taken care of this week since while one side would argue that I just got to Redmond, of course I'm not getting transferred, I'm thinking the APs probably want their car back........so I might get transferred next week. I really feel like I can't even guess one way or the other, so we'll just have to find out.

Let's see...while I'm updating you on all my medical ailments, I might as well throw in that the skin on my arms has gotten really bad again...but we all know there's nothing anyone can do for that either sooooooooo...whatever.

This just might be one of the most boring emails I've sent so far....blah blah blah...I'm 22 and I feel like a 60 year old woman...just go find me a cane and a grey wig! blah blah blah...what else is new...

Anyways...

Oh! I forgot! This IS exciting news!! My roommate Allison Mills has received her mission call.......................to the SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA mission!!! (This is the mission where we live) She reports to the MTC July 11th. She didn't say she was serving Spanish, so I'm assuming she's English.

So...yeah...I guess we should end on a happy note.

Love you all! Miss you!

Sister Holdsworth

April 2, 2012

Hello!

Congrautulations to Jon for passing the CAHSEE!!! =) He improved his score by a lot! That's so great!! =)

Well, we had an interesting week this past week..........we're down to one investigator, Ed, but instead of thinking about the investigators that are no longer investigating (or are now meeting with the Elders in the area they actually live in, finally) we are trying to focus on the positive. Ed accepted a baptismal date for April 28th and he loved conference yesterday afternoon!

Unfortunatly, Ed has a lot of health problems, so he's actually going in for a heart procedure where they are going to stop his heart and try to restart it......he's received a blessing and HE says he feels calm going into it...but we're worried...we've just been praying and praying to FIND new investigators, and instead they're dropping like flies! We REALLY hope and pray Ed doesn't, if the procedure doesn't go well!!!

We also had interviews with President and Sister Wilson this past week...it was SO LONG. We usually just do interviews by district (6-8 missionaries) but because they couldn't do interviews Saturday because of conference we had two districts....so about 32 interviews needed to take place...PLUS instruction from President and Sister Wilson...we started at 2:30 and Sister Chudleigh and I left at 8...and they STILL weren't done!

We watched conference at the stake center. I really enjoyed Elder Eyring's talk about faith in adversity. I also really liked hearing the three seventy all together yesterday afternoon, Elder Wilson, Elder Evans and Elder Pieper. Their talks seemed to all flow together really well for me, even though they were on kind of different topics. A lot of the talks, like Elder Scott's and Elder Packer's I feel I'll orobably like a lot more after I'm able to read them...a lot of the talks seemed a lot less straightforward this time than the last few conferences, but may be that's just me, so I'm looking forward to actually be able to study them fully.

Hope all goes well with the doctors you're seeing this week! I hope work isn't making it much worse.

Love you,

Sister Holdsworth!