December 26, 2011

Hello! It was good to hear all the family yesterday. I'm glad you're all doing well; sounds like you had a fun Christmas. I hope Grandma enjoyed Church with you all yesterday.

Mission Christmas was kind of hectic. I heard from Sister Wilson around 10pm the night before that our district leader was supposed to have gotten me the music for a Silent Night piano-organ-flute piece........so we had a slightly frantic time trying to find a flute last minute. I only got to practice for about 15 minutes (by myself without any of the accompaniments!) before the program started, but it all worked out. Half the congregation couldn't hear me competing with the organ anyways...it worked out pretty well, all things considered. Several missionaries sang and read the birth of Christ story from the Bible...President and Sister Wilson talked a little bit. One of the wards in Bothell spent their ward Christmas party stuffing stockings for all the missionaries in the mission, so we also got those. It was really kind and thoughtful of them. Then we went to the mission office to pick up all our Christmas packages.

I like the snowmen sheets; they're quite cute.

Sister Alberts and I are starting to feel the pain of having two and a half days "off" from missionary work though. We've pretty much been doing nothing since 6pm Christmas Eve......No proselyting on Christmas Eve or Christmas up here. No one in Washington wants their Christmas celebrations interrupted to hear a message about Christ. One more p-day to go through.........All the missionaries we've talked to have just talked Christmas up like it's the most fabulous thing ever on your mission..............We just were bums the past two days....it feels SOOOOOOOOO blah..............I'm really REALLY grateful I only have to have one Christmas on my mission.

Christmas dinner was ham.

I have been really blessed to have a really good string of good companions. I love being with Sister Alberts. She and I spent the bulk of our bum-time the past two days talking. It's been really great to get to know her better, especially since we suspect we'll only be companions this transfer (she's been here in Woodinville almost six months, as long as I was in Everson).

Well.......I think that's about it from me .........I'll look forward to hearing from you next week!

Love,

Sister Heather Holdsworth

December 19, 2011

Hello everyone!

Today I am writing you from Woodinville, Washington. I'm serving here in the Woodinville 3rd Ward, with Sister Alberts. She is one of 9 children from Missouri (around Springfield, she says). She is a twin. Her birthday was on Tuesday, she turned 22....she's worked as a roofer for the past few years....hm...anything else you'd like to know about her? She's very fun; we get along really well. She and her last companion were the first sisters to serve in our ward, 5 months ago, so it still feels pretty new to us. The ward/area reminds me a lot of Chaffey ward. It's the exact polar opposite of Everson in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways it's the same.......I really like it here though...we actually have more resturants than just one, little, out in the boondocks Subway =D and there's actually STREET LIGHTS!!!! In our OWN area!!! =O

It's weird being in the southern part of the mission. We actually see other missionaries =O The Elders from Woodinville 2nd ward actually live in our area; they're on bikes, so we see them occasionally going to and from their home to their area.

So far the majority of the ward seems very friendly to missionaries (well...SISTER missionaries....)

We have some pretty neat investigators. Sarah is a single mom of four kids...she's super nice! Their dad (he and Sarah have seperated, but he's still pretty involved with the kids) wants to start coming to Church with them when the time changes in January. Bruce is going through a hard time right now, but he seems realy motivated to meet with us and prepare to be baptized. Scott is married to an inactive member of our ward, and he's also really trying hard to get his life on the right track. Tiem is from Vietnam and the sisters have been teaching him and his wife Lin English for the past couple of weeks. Our last meeting with them, Tiem has progressed with English enough that we were actually able to have a gospel discussion about the Holy Ghost with him. He's a really neat guy. Lin understands less of English than he does, but they say they practice all the time when we're not there. It's great!

This past week we also had a miracle referral! Lora just moved to Woodinville from Bothell, where she was learning from some Elders. She seems really excited to keep learning. We stopped by at a busy time, but we have an appointment with her for tomorrow, so it should be fantastic!

This past week we also got to go caroling with the Young Women from our ward. That was pretty fun.

Next week we have church at 10 for an hour/hour and a half, then on the first we switch to 1pm church. (Our investigators are very excited for the change, since now church meets at 9am...haha).

Love you!

Sister Heather Holdsworth

December 12, 2011

Hello, glad to hear from you all!

Well...transfer calls took forever this morning...don't know why, but we finally got the official word that I'm leaving Everson! =D Sister Beckstrand and Sister Niu will both be staying. We thought for sure that the number of sisters would be evening out, but one extra sister is actually going home early because she's sick....that means four are coming in, and two are leaving, so we'll be at 21 sisters...so there will still be a triship somewhere! There will be one more sisters' area opening, most likely in the Mt. Vernon stake, we suspect. I kind of want to open a new area...at least, I think I'd prefer to stay in the north end of the mission.

Other than that, we don't know anything. We'll find out tomorrow at transfers, same as usual.

I'm also glad to hear that the Living Nativity was a hit. The Arlington stake decided to do a nativity festival this year, and we got to see it when I was down there with Sister Beckstrand last Friday. It was really well done (there was this one, really cute snowman nativity that made me think of you! Unfortunately, none of the nativities were up for sale, otherwise I totally would have gotten it!). In the Relief Society room, they had it set up all with pictures from Christ's life from His birth to His resurrection that was INCREDIBLE!

So, probably the most exciting part of exchanges last Friday was going to the living nativity and being able to see Amber (she was baptized in June while I was there)!! She was volunteering at in the kid's "dress up" room. That was really nice to be able to catch up with her. =)

Sister Beckstrand and I were in Arlington with Sister Anderson. She joined the church 2 years ago (she's 21), and she is from Sandy, UT. We mostly spent the day inviting people to the nativity festival they're having. We got to have dinner with Bishop Vaughan (he the branch president while I was there) and his family; that was really nice to catch up with them as well.

Well....I actually think that might be everything for now. Talk to you later! I'm looking forward to calling you on Christmas!! =)

Love,
Sister Heather Holdsworth

December 5, 2011

Hello! Glad to hear you all survived the windstorm.

I'm glad you got my photos.

Dad said the Choir was great. I'm glad you both liked it. Have fun participating in the living nativity. Our stake isn't really doing anything....well...they had a community breakfast that we didn't hear about until the night before...(maybe they were doing it for just the immediate community around the stake center...) but I might be transferred somewhere I'll get to participate in something like that. We're having a Christmas devotional for the mission the Wednesday before Christmas. I told Sister Wilson I'd love to play if she can find me a flute. She hasn't said anything yet, but it's two weeks away, so she still might ask me to play something.

Glad to hear Jon did so great last week at bowling! Good job, Jon!

We were allowed to watch the First Presidency Devotional in members' homes if we didn't have investigators to take to the stake center. We watched with two cute old ladies in our ward--our favorite people. It was really good. We had dinner with them before hand and then talked about it afterward. My favorite was probably President Utchdorf's talk, for his Jenga analogy. I learned that I need to be patient with learning line upon line and look for daily blessings, not just for the ones I've been promised in my future.

This past week I really enjoyed reading President Eyring's talk from the Priesthood session. I liked how he emphasized that love is the most important leadership attribute you can develop. During mormon.org time, I also enjoyed watching the El Salvador temple dedication video (https://lds.org/youth/video/temple-blessings-in-el-salvador?lang=eng). It's a good one!

We got the two packages addressed to the three of us. We all love our scarves! Sister Niu has been wanting to buy a black one, and I've been wanting a blue one, and Sister Beckstrand's favorite color is purple (don't know if she's been thinking about buying more scarves though) so they were all perfect! All my companions have really appreciated how much you think of them. We liked your clever notes on the soap and whatnot, too. I haven't gotten the Deseret Book or Kohls packages yet, though. They might be holding them until transfers, since it's only next week. I don't know when they start the mail hold though (they hold our mail a few days before transfers and give it to us at the mission office in case we DO get transferred and the mail doesn't get to us before hand.....it's kind of fun when you get a lot of mail all in one day).

This past week has been pretty great. Chris' knee surgery went great; she's well on the mend, and attributes it ALL to the blessing she received, which is wonderful! We also had five of our focus families/less actives we've been working with regularly at church on Sunday! No investigators (hey, Chris just had her knee replaced!!) but that more than made up for it. Fast and testimony meeting was pretty good. Probably the best one since I've been up here. In a lot of ways I'm going to miss this area, I think.

ALSO recently been allowed to do sisters exchanges again! (they were taken away for a few transfers because President wanted to figure out how we could have 24 hour exchanges instead of just a few hours) and we're exchanging later tonight...and we have dinner with our Bishop in about 15 minutes...and we have a lesson at 7:30......and our WHOLE week is like that. We've been working SO HARD....and we're SO EXCITED to see it paying off this week. It's going to be SO AWESOME...but Sister Beckstrand and I are both just kind of..."AHHH! WE DON'T REMEMBER HOW TO BE THIS BUSY!"

Anyways...we had our first exchange last Friday. Sister Anderson came to Everson from Arlington with Sister Niu and I and Sister Beckstrand went to Arlington to be with Sister Everett. She's been put in charge of the exchanges for our grouping of sisters' areas. Tonight Sister Everett is coming up here to be with me until tomorrow night and then on Friday Sister Niu will be here with her. That means Friday I get to go back down to Arlington.....which.......something ELSE......REALLY EXCITING...................


THE ARMAR BRANCH* IS NOW A SINGLES WARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woohooo!!!

as of TODAY! It's SUPER exciting. and SUPER cool. Their branch president has been trying so hard to get them to be a ward...and now they are! We suspect he's been called as Bishop, but we don't know for sure until tonight when we see Sister Everett and Sister Anderson. So that'll be fun to hear! =D

Anyways...times' up, as usual.

Love you all!
Sister Heather Holdsworth