September 26, 2011

Sounds like you had a fun week! Glad to get a good update from Dad finally! I'm sure they did win just for Michelle. Too bad about LOHS, though.

Do you remember me mentioning Sister Beckstrand being my temporary companion between Sister Townsend and Sister Blackburn? Well...we're official companions now! We were both ecstatic to get the news!

Sister Beckstrand and I get along great! She is from Heber, UT. Oldest of 4 kids. Her dad works on carpentry (pulpits, sacrament tables, etc.) for the Church's buildings. Recently he worked on refurbishing a room in the Palmyra temple. Sounds pretty neat! She is a beautiful photographer. Our Church is in front of a very big, open space (rare in Washington!) and so last night we went so she could take pictures of the sunset. It was very stunning! Very fun. We're really excited for the way the work is going in Everson; we're really looking forward to helping it progress and helping the ward meet it's potential when it comes to missionary work. I love our companionship studies; we both really study hard during our personal studies, so when we're sharing what we've learned it usually takes the full hour haha...but we learn a lot from each other! =)

Who is senior companion doesn't matter at all. If you were to ask the Elders in Chaffey ward now they might tell you differently, but that's just the difference between sisters and elders. Sister Beckstrand is senior; she's been out for as long as Sister Taua (13 months, they were MTC companions) but that doesn't mean that you're senior always based on seniority, or on being in the area longer......it's just whoever President decides should be senior and who should be junior. We're missionary companions. That's our philosophy anyways.

That's silly that your Relief Society is keeping the books until Christmas! It's such a great book! I guess they're trying to save on the budget??? Sister Beck's talk Saturday was basically a summary of the main points of Daughters in My Kingdom. I really enjoyed her talk. I really liked how she talked about how the discipleship of women was lost during the Apostasy, and how we need to increase our faith to become the rightful disciples we are as Relief Society sisters. It made me think of D&C 25. I also liked how she emphasized the eternal perspective of Relief Society--focusing on helping families be sealed in the temple.

I also really enjoyed the quote from Sister Allred: "Don't be limited in your views of your neighbor's virtues"

President Utchdorf's talk was my favorite though; it seems like it was everyone's favorite! His testimony of God's love for His children was very touching.

It really made me more excited for Conference this weekend! We'll be watching it in our building; I'm really looking forward to it. While it might be like the Super Bowl for Mormons everywhere....it's REALLY the Super Bowl for missionaries.

Yesterday at church we taught the gospel principles class on the chapter about eternal families. One of our members brought a coworker to church and he really participated and asked some very good questions. We asked him if he'd like to meet with us, and he said not yet, but he did say he enjoyed church and would like to come again, so that's still sounding pretty promising! We had another investigator come...but we're wanting to transition her to the YSA ward (she graduated from high school in June and one of the other girls in the ward she knows has moved closer to town and will be going there as well, so it seems like a good time to hand her over). No Chris or Erik* though! We just saw Erik on Saturday. We have a lesson tonight...we'll have to discuss this with him!

We were also asked to come into senior primary for a little bit and talk about preparing for our missions and the blessings of serving a mission. Our primary is very small...only about five or six boys in senior primary, but they were very well behaved and participated very well.

I'll try and remember to make a copy of my talk from last week when I can. It was very stressful to have to hand write the whole thing...I wasted so much paper with all my drafting for it...

Last night we had dinner with our previous ward mission leader and his family. We had soup and garlic bread and whoopie pies (kind of like cookie sandwiches....they were quite delicious). It was very fun.

This past week we had two investigator lessons and six less active lessons.

I'm doing pretty good of keeping up with my journal. There's a few days from last transfer I need to finish, but so far I've been doing well with this transfer. (I was getting towards the end of my last journal and wasn't going to have room for my conference notes, so I just decided to make the transition at the beginning of this transfer.)

I haven't gotten the package yet. I'm sure it will be soon. Thank you for sending it! (Also, Sister Taua didn't wear makeup, so I didn't give her one of the makeup wipes, but Sister Beckstrand is enjoying them and she says thank you! Sister Taua says that she really appreciates that you always thought of her, too, when you sent me a package!)

Anyways, I think that's all the exciting news from this week...Have a good one!

I love you!
Sister Heather Holdsworth