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