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!

March 26, 2012

Hi!

You shouldn't be that concerned about my leg...it's just the same normal thing that I've been dealing with since high school, it just got aggravated from all the walking we were doing up these steep hills, and was getting swollen. Didn't go to the doctor, since he was just going to tell me to keep it elevated, with heat, like I was already doing. It's back to it's normal pain levels now, and it's doing just fine.

We did get to go to the YW broadcast. It was really enjoyable; my favorite talk was Sister Dalton's, focusing on the temple.

I'm glad you were able to mostly enjoy your spring break; hope everything goes well with the new doctor. Good luck with work this coming week; I'm sure all your kids have missed you this week.

Well...you asked what we had for dinner. It was fast Sunday for us, I guess it probably was for you too? Anyways...we had a really early dinner (lunch) of baked spaghetti; it was pretty good. Then we were tracting in a member's apartment complex around the time she got home from choir practice and she invited us in for some made-from-scratch hot chocolate for dinner. It was probably the best hot chocolate I've ever had....It was like drinking right out of Willy Wonka's river...

We had a really busy week this week. Lots of appointments with less active members, and a few with our investigators. It seems crazy that we're already going into week four of the transfer; it feels like I just got here! I love how busy we are though. I've probably said it every email so far but it's SO NICE to be doing more than just foundation work or clean up work again! It'd be even nicer if through all our contacting we've been doing we actually found some people that were interested in becoming investigators, but there here somewhere! =)

A lot of our time this week has been spent focusing on old referrals that were never able to be contacted....so it's pretty much been like tracting from the knocking on doors where no one is home aspect, but I personally like it much better, because at least I know who to ask for that might be interested when some one answers the door.

I also had to go to leadership training this past week...not really exciting, since I was already frustrated enough with how the scheduling had gone with it......there was this lengthy debate between my district leader and the zone leaders on whether or not I was supposed to be going or not (since I'm guess I'm "technically" a trainer, but I was never actually called as a trainer by President, and was never actually trained to be a trainer and all sorts of other ridiculous nonesense revolving around the question of whether I'm "officially" a trainer or not.........a roll of the eyes would be approperiate here...) so we only found out the day before "for-sure" that I actually WAS supposed to go and so THEN, last minute, we had to disrupt the plans of the other two sisters that were going because Sister Chudleigh couldn't very well just hang out in Redmond by herself half the day.........

We're really excited for general conference coming up. We've been inviting a lot of people to it, and our theme for all our lessons this week is pretty much going to be following the prophet and encouaging everyone we meet with to watch it. Also this week we're having Interviews with President. Should be an exciting week!

Well...that's all I can think of in terms of updates from this week. Hope you're all having a great day! Love you!

-Sister Holdsworth

March 19, 2012

Hello everyone, you can all stop laughing at me now: Sister Chudleigh and I are now the proud drivers of a delightful car. All the walking the week and a half before we got the car really screwed up my leg, so even with the car we've been really limited on what we can get around to do so it's still really frustrating in that respect, but at least we CAN get to our appointments still.

Well...the highlight of this past week was that we got to go do baptisms for the dead with three of our recent converts in the ward. They each had a really spectacular time being at the temple for the first time; Sister Chudleigh and I definitely feel blessed to have been allowed to go with them. It's not an opportunity that many missionaries get.

It was pretty neat being there with the Pritchetts especially. We were all there on time, at 7, but the youth group before us thought they had the bapistry reserved until 7:30...so we didn't get down there until 8! But Jacob took the time to walk around the grounds, and then took his wife Tiffany around to look at all the statues with him. I think it was a really good experience to help them visualize their sealing next year. =)

We had a few good lessons with our investigators and we had a lot of successful lessons with recent converts and less active members this week, but it felt like the majority of time this week was spent inside elevating my leg. Super frustrating: I finally feel like I'm in an area with tons of work for us to do RIGHT NOW and I'm stuck inside!!! :P Bah!! Sister Chudleigh and I have gotten to know each other really well, at least. Her family is also very passionate about Disneyland. She got to work at Disneyworld last summer; she told me they're doing a whole expansion to fantasy land there, with castles for Ariel, Snow White and Belle. Sounds pretty neat.

Anyways...sorry I don't have more to update you about. This week was pretty boring for the most part. My leg feels better after it's been elevated for a few hours, but if I try to hobble around for longer than an hour or so it starts swelling up again. We'll see what happens. I might be going to the doctors later today, or I might just keep resting and let it heal on it's own........guess I just needed a lesson in patience or something.

Anyways...hope you enjoy your spring break!!

Love you all!

Sister Holdsworth

March 12, 2012

(just a little note before Heather's letter, I was really missing Heather this past week so I sent an email to the Missionary Mom email group. A kind church member who lives in the Everett Mission found out where Heather was and told me...I also learned that Heather is in a bike area....Heather doesn't ride a bike?!)

Hi!

Well...you apparently already know I'm in Redmond.

My new companion is Sister Chudleigh. She is from Utah; oldest of four. There's a new training program for new missionaries put out by the Church that lasts 12 weeks instead of 6, so I'm finishing her training, as her first trainer went home last transfer. I really love Sister Chudleigh; she's super sweet and motivated to do amazing things here in Redmond. She is also very passionate about all things Disney; she worked on the Soaring over California ride at Disneyworld last summer. She's close to graduating at BYU-I after her mission; she's been studying Humanities and wants to become a museum curator.

And anyways, thank you so much: I'm really SO glad you're all having a good time. It's bad enough having all the Elders making fun of me; glad Chaffey ward and all my family can join in, too. But thanks. I'm glad you're all enjoying making fun of me so much. (I'm not really making fun of Heather, I am just laughing a lot!)

So, on that note, I have a lot of things I need to buy today to be able to ride a bike (bike shorts, reflectors, etc.) so I'm probably just going to put it all on my wells fargo account. Next week can you check my balance and send it to me, just to check that I've been keeping track of everything right? Thank you.

'Glad Jon had a good average this season with bowling. When does the next league start up? Look forward to getting his letter.

Also; I'm glad to hear that all of you are enjoying your video games "together." I hope Mario Party is as good as the last one. It's time to get some new minigames (hopefully none like the monkeys though). Congratulations on finishing the yearbook.

Yes, the Bothell stake did get a new stake presidency my first week with Sister McAllister. I'm in the Redmond stake now...

Four new sisters arrived last week.

Things are pretty good here in Redmond. We had three investigators baptized last transfer (I'm glad I got to go to all of their baptisms because Sister McAllister was my companion) and they're all super amazing. One is a senior in high school, Kierra (we are now teaching her father, Ben, who we're pretty excited about), and a couple, Jacob and Tiffany (they have three kids, all under 6). Yesterday, Jacob was ordained as a Priest, which was super spectacular. He was completely excited about it!! =D

This week, we got special permission from President Wilson to go to the temple with all three of them to do baptisms for the dead. That NEVER happens!!!!!!!! Usually you can only get permission, MAYBE if your recent convert is receiving their endowment or being sealed......so, needless to say, Sister Chudleigh and I have been dancing around like crazy we're so excited to be able to go. We're suspecting it's because THREE recent converts are going isntead of just one, but we're not asking questions, that's for sure!

I did get the Rose Parade book; it was very nice. I appreciate being able to see pictures of what's going on with you. We were quite jealous of the sunshine. Sorry I haven't been able to send any photos in awhile; my last area didn't have anywhere with instant photo printing. If we can find somewhere here I'll send you some, though!

Have a good week! Hope your back gets feeling better soon!

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

March 5, 2012

Hi! Glad you were finally able to make it to Disneyland. I don't think Sister McAllister believes me as much that my family practically lives at Disneyland as much as my other companions have...

Good news for transfers: I'm being transferred out of Woodinville 3rd! I've been feeling really positive that I'm getting transferred, but 2-transfer stints in a single area are getting really rare for sisters (President has said he wants to keep us in areas longer, and 6 months seems to be the new average) so I thought that I was just going crazy....but nope! Off to somewhere else! I'll have the update next week of where I am and who I'm with. We have one newer sister named Sister Hepworth...I think we should be companions so that we can confuse everyone! (I don't know HOW many times I've been called "Sister Holdstrom" or "Sister Hollingsworth" or SOMETHING other than "Holdsworth." I didn't ever think I had a difficult name until I came out on my mission. If I already confuse people, might as well just completely throw them for a loop! haha)

On pet hair: everyone in Washington has pets, it seems like. It's very rare to find a family that doesn't, and since the weather is so bad up here, most of the pets are indoors. And most of the pets aren't very well-trained about what "lie down" means. There are tons of houses that we come out covered in pet hair. Sometimes we use lint rollers, but most of the time we just know we're headed to another house with another pet, so we just give up.

The play sounds like it was fun. Glad to hear that the drama program at LOHS is still going strong. One of the laurels we're teaching the lessons to is looking into going to a fine arts school for theater, and she's hoping she can get into BYU's musical theater program. We went to YW/YM a few weeks ago and they were doing some improv comedy (like Who's Line games) and she did a great job performing. I think BYU would be perfect for her, so I hope she gets accepted!

This past week went really good. We've strated having shorter but more frequent lessons with Bruce. He fasted yesterday for help to quitting smoking, and by the time Church was over he'd made it a full 24 hours cold-turkey. He's made a few attempts before this one; his longest was five days with a nicotine patch. I think the fast really helped him though; plus he got a priesthood blessing for help the night before. He seemed to be doing okay at Church. It'll be sad to not be able to teach him more, but he's definitely got a really solid testimony; he's doing so great, I'm not worried about him at all!

We also had our sister's luncheon ("sisters training" as we now call it, I guess some Elders were complaining that they don't get an "Elder's BBQ") on Tuesday this past week. It was really great to see all the sisters that left today (Sister Taua and Sister Beckstrand, two of my companions in Everson, and also Sister Northrup and Sister Felt, who I wish I had gotten to be companions with). We had some great training about how defending the family unit is part of our purpose of helping people come closer to Christ. It went perfectly with my talk from last Sunday.

Then, Saturday night we got to go back to Sister McAllister's old area for the baptism of a couple she taught. I actually got to teach them twice while I was on exchanges in their area, so I was really happy to see their baptism as well! =) Originally, just the wife was going to be baptized, and her husband was going to be baptized later in the month, but he decided he could give up coffee faster and sooner than he thought, so he moved up his baptismal date as well! They have three small kids; Jacob, the husband, and I were talking afterwards about how excited he is to be able to be sealed as a family next year, and how much he's looking forward to being able to baptize his own kids in a few years. It was just a whole week themed about eternal families, and eternal families to-be! So awesome!

I felt like I should put Grandma Donna on the prayer roll when I was at the temple two weeks ago; sorry to hear she's not doing well right now. I'll keep making sure to include her and everybody else in my prayers.

Did Dad get an iPad too, or does he share with Jon? Are you one of those snazzy High Priest Group Leaders that use their iPad during ward council meetings? In the Woodinville 3rd ward, I feel so out of touch, because we're practically the only ones in the entire room that pull out our physical scriptures during the Bishop's opening spiritual thought; everybody else just brings it up on their iPads or whathaveyou.

I hope Rod's birthday dinner was good, too; happy birthday!

Love you all! See you next week from somewhere new!

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

February 27, 2012

Hello!

I'm happy to report that Bruce is doing much better. He had to cancel our lesson this past week, but he was better by Sunday, and able to come to Church. He said he's really missed it these past two weeks! We missed him too!! Glad you don't have any cavities.

I hope (haha Deanna's topic was "hope") your talk went well. Good to hear Monique did a good job. Sister McAllister and I spoke on topics from the worldwide leadership training broadcast in sacrament meeting this week. I talked about why we want real growth, or continual conversion, in the Church, and Sister McAllister talked about how we achieve real growth. The ward didn't seem too attentive during either of our talks, and we were a little worried that maybe our talks were a little too substantive (but, they are pretty deep topics if you really want to get at the topic, and not just fluff......and during the week we really felt like a fluff sacrament meeting by the Sisters would be counterproductive.......) but we both got rave reviews from the Bishopric, saying they thought it was exactly what the ward needed to hear, and a lot of members told us they really loved our talks, so I guess we weren't too heavy handed after all.

Hope you enjoy leap day at Disneyland. We're celebrating leap day by doing service for one of our favorite sisters in the ward. Should be fun.

This past week was alright. We're starting up a few new programs in our ward. We've assigned the ward missionaries to teach member missionary lessons to a few members of ward council/auxiliary presidencies. One of the sisters wasn't able to go out last minute, so her companion asked us to go with her. The lesson went well, I thought. So that was good to see. We've also decided ourselves to teach the lessons to the priests and laurels (and their families) individually as sort of a mission prep activity. So far, we've taught the first lesson to one of the priests and one of the laurels...it's been really great, so far! They both have really seemed to enjoy it. I've been getting really anxious with how few teaching apointments we actually get here, in a given week; this is so much more productive than knocking on empty houses or getting kicked out of apartment complexes*!!!

So...nothing that will really show results anytime soon, probably, as far as getting referrals and actually teaching investigators, but at least I'm hoping that this will lay a good foundation for missionaries to work with in the future. But I guess I can't complain, other than I feel like no one warned me that you're always in your hardest area.

Nothing really funny happened this week......Wednesday was kind of crazy. The sister that drove before I got here scratched up one of the doors pretty bad (apparently she drove up against a concrete pillar? while she was going forward??? I don't even know...) and our driving coordinator called us and told us to take the car to Everett to get it repaired...so in the middle of our knocking empty doors we got to take a little jaunt to Everett...we got a Chevy Malibu temporarily...I miss my Corolla...but anyways...we forgot our apartment keys at the car shop, but luckily Sister McAllister needed to use the restroom, so we didn't drive very far before I realized "Hey wait....we're going back to our same apartment...we need our keys!!" (Usually, when you get a new car, that means you're getting a new apartment too!!)

Then we needed to go on an adventure to Kirkland to find Sister McAllister's coat that she forgot when we went there for zone conference a few weeks ago (apparently Elders struggle when it comes to finding the only black trench coat on the only coat rack in the only stake center.........). You're SUPPOSED to tell your district leader when you're leaving the area, and since we'd already planned on going to Kirkland and talked to the zone leaders about it, we remembered to text Elder Powell....and then we remembered to send him a text, "Oh...by the way. We went to Everett earlier, too." We thought that was pretty funny. It's hard to remember your district leader when you've gotten permission straight from the mission office...........that's our excuse and we're sticking to it!

Then, our GPS died on the way home. We'd specifically charged it the day before and everything so that it'd be ready to go to Kirkland and back, but we hadn't known to factor our Everett adventure in as well......so that made things a little exciting. We stopped outside a liquor store (unintentionally...it was just the first parking lot we came too, but we thought it just made the whole situation even more ridiculous) and said a prayer that we could get the GPS to turn back on long enough to write the directions down....Thankfully, we were able to! The GPS will usually only stay on for a few seconds if it's out of juice, but we got all the directions and the second we were done it shut off. Woohoo! Prayer! Yay! So we made it home safe.......after only a few wrong turns and such. What an exciting adventure it was.

Anyways...I think that's everything from me. Good luck at Team Physical Therapy this week!

Love you! Bye!

Sister Holdsworth

*We did, at least, get all but two of the apartments tracted before we got kicked out...and one of those two was the apartment of the employee that kicked us out.

February 20, 2012

Hello!

Glad to hear Jon is doing well with driving still.

The temple trip was pretty good. Some Elders we had to give a ride to made everything around our temple session frustrating, but what can you do. I got to see Sister Beckstrand and Sister Niu at Deseret book (they had just finished their session, and we'd gotten there early). Everson is doing so good! Chris and Joe have set their wedding date for July 21, so Chirs will be able to be baptized July 22! So excited for them!

I bought two CDs at Deseret book, the D&C/Church History DVD set and a new journal. Sister McAllister and I have quite enjoyed having new music, including the one you sent us. Thanks for taking care of my medication, too!

One of Sister McAllister's investigators in her last area was baptized on Valentines' Day, so we got to go to that. It was pretty great! Very grateful we didn't have to go tracting on Valentines Day evening!

Thursday we found out Bruce had to have a second series of root canals. He had all nine of his teeth pulled two weeks ago so that he could get dentures, but apparently the student surgeon he had do it broke his teeth, so parts of the roots were still in his gums! He's been in so much pain, the poor guy! So we weren't able to have a lesson with him this past week, needless to say. He hasn't been to church in two weeks either, because of this, but hopefully he's officially on the mend now...

Saturday we had our lesson with Tiem and Lin (the Vietnamese couple). They're doing great! Tiem has been reading the Book of Mormon, and he told us "It is marvelous!" He also told Sister McAllister and I that we have Christ in our countenances. Pretty cool compliment to come from one of your investigators!! Just need to find Tiem a new job so that he can come to church Sundays (his boss refuses to change his schedule).

We had two surprise part-member-families come to Church yesterday; that was pretty exciting! We'd been trying to find a good time to visit one of them, and the other we'd made plans to stop by later that night since we didn't know anything about them (other than that they weren't interested in 2010). It was great! We got an appointment with one of them to do service later today, and the other family seemed to feel comfortable enough that I think they'll come again next week. Good things are finally happening in Woodinville! Woohoo!

Say "HI!" back to Monique! It sounds like she enjoyed her mission!

Good luck to Mom on her talk next week. I hope it goes well. Sister McAllister and I have both been asked to speak next week on talks that were given in the world wide leadership training broadcast (Elder Ballard's discussion panel and President Utchdorf's talk). Everyone seems to assume the missionaries get to go to that; good thing it's on lds.org! Sister McAllister is going to speak on how we have "real growth" in the Church, and I'm speaking on why we want "real growth." Should be good; I'm excited to speak.

I did enjoy all the Valentines that I got from all the family. Sister McAllister and I have stashed the large M&M bags in the middle console of our car and we "get" to munch on them as our reward for tracting as much as we have to. Thankfully we should have less time to spend doing that, since we've got lots of appointments this week for service. Lots of them with less-active members too; should be fun!

Well, that's about all the excitement from Woodinville. Not much going on, but the work is starting to pick up at least.

Love you!!

Sister Holdsworth

February 15

HI, writing on Wednesday this week because we will be attending the Seattle Temple later today so P-day was not on Monday.

Congrautlations to Jon on getting his Duty to God! Hopefully everything went well on the CAHSEE. I'm sure it did! Keep up the good work driving, too. Hopefully this week you have better weather to practice more.

Mom's lesson from Relief Society sounds great! I'm glad you got good feedback on it. I think I would enjoy a lesson set up like that.

A few weeks ago we were finally able to get a member that can speak Vietnamese to come translate for the Vietnamese couple we're teaching. We found out that the couple acually has been reading the Book of Mormon, and the husband, at least, feels like it is the Word of God. The member that was with us speaks only conversational Vietnamese, and so she thought she was going to have a hard time with the religious language but the Spirit definitley helped her be able to help us answer their questions in a way they could understand. Our investigators were really able to feel the Spirit strongly, too, and they told us they could tell we were messengers from God. That was a pretty spiritiual experience we had in the past few weeks.

Things are great with Sister McAllister. We get along really well. We have been ejoying all the treats in te Valentines Day package; thank you for sending that. No snow this week; though I guess they're expecting another dump sometime later in the season? I hope not!

We didn't get to go to the worldwide training, but I watched a few clips from it on mormon.org/lds.org time yesterday, and they discussed it in ward council. It sounds like it was really encouraging. I liked the clips about reactivation I was able to find.

We've got a lot of appointments (by a lot I mean more than usual) for the coming week that I'm pretty excited about. We just really need our members to rally around missionary work and to trust us with their friends.........we're working on it, though. We aren't giving up. Just a lot of fruitless tracting, it seems like. They'll get it eventually.

I'm definitely looking forward to going to the temple later today; it seems like it's been forever since I've been able to go.

Well, we need to go get lunch and then head out for the temple.

I Love you and I miss you!

Sister Holdsworth

February 6, 2012

Hi. Glad to hear the Giants won. I've heard it was an exciting game.

The break the fast sounds like it was fun.

Glad Jon has been practicing math and driving. I hope the test goes well this week. Hopefully he keeps getting better at driving too. Sounds like he's doing good though.

Good luch with your upcoming talks and Relief Society lessons. I'm sure they'll be great.

This past week I've mostly been studying from the Book of Mormon and the Old Testament. Things are going great with Sister McAllister. The sun has been out the past three days. It has seemed warmer, but apparently it's supposed to cool down again. We did not take any pictures in the snow, I know you'll be disappointed. 30 hours of tracting in the snow is memorable enough without needing pictures of the ridiculous mess. I'm very jealous of Provo.

Sister Bennett will probably tell you she ran into me again at stake conference.

It was good to hear about Jon bearing his testimony.

Sister McAllister and I were both very interested to learn about the new construction going on at BYU...and Sister Beck's devotional sounded like it was probably really good, which was probably why you actually sent us that bit of the Church news haha.

Talk to you next week, I suppose! I look forward to the package! Thank you! Sister McAllister is not allergic to chocolate, so she'll actually be able to help me eat everything you send! =)

Love you!

Sister Holdsworth

January 30, 2012

Hi Mom,

Sorry you've had such crazy weather. It's been in the 20s-30s this week, but the snow is all gone, thank goodness. One of the main roads is flooded, so that makes things a little inconvenient, but we can get around it fine.

It's been awhile since you've sent me anything from the Forget Me Not talk. I enjoyed the quotes, thank you.

Tell Michell congratulations for me!! I'm very excited for her. :D

I did get Aunt Annette's package. It was great! I loved seeing all the pictures from the two weddings. I haven't had time to write many of my birthday thank you's, but they'll all get out within the next two weeks or so (hoping). I'm really being truthful when I say we don't have a lot of time for letters.........

I'll be sure to keep Jon's test in mind all next week. Good luck to him.

My new companion is Sister McAllister. She's been out 5 months; Woodinville is her second area. She graduated from BYU with her degree in civil engineering and started grad school at BYU before she felt like she should come on her mission. She's really great to be around. We actually have some mutual friends at BYU; pretty funny. She's originally from Ohio, and has an older brother and sister, and a younger brother.

We had some pretty neat experiences though. We taught Bruce about the Word of Wisdom. He already had set his own date to quit smoking before we taught him about it, and he seems even more prepared to quit now that we've talked about the Word of Wisdom. We asked him if he would set a goal date to quit coffee and tea and he said, "Sure--how about tonight?"

Then, later, he was on his way to a meeting for his parole and he asked one of our members for a bottle of water. He said they always serve coffee at his meetings, and he expalined "The Spirit told me I should ask you for a bottle of water so that I can have something to drink tonight!"

Bruce is super excited for his baptism. He's doing so good!!

We also had one of the less active families we've been working with lately come to church for the first time today. The ward members were really excited to see them; I think they appreciated the warm, enthusastic welcome they received.

We have a few really promising-sounding referrals that we're hoping to start working with soon. It's been tricky getting a hold of them, but we're not giving up on them yet.

Anyways, I guess that's our week in a nutshell...See you next week!

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

January 23, 2012

I'm glad Mom is excited to hear about what happened this past week (lots of snow in the Everett area). I don't know if I have much to tell, but it was a week to remember from my mission, to say the least.

We aren't "not allowed to go out," we are not allowed to stay IN when there is snow, just like any other day as a missionary. The only difference is we aren't allowed to drive if there is snow or ice on the roads, which there was plenty of. So, that meant we spent about six hours a day tracting, which--in a mission which virutally never tracts, because it's so tremendously, painfully ineffective--was very discouraging and humbling and frustrating for many missionaries, including us.

So...yep. A lot of walking. A lot of tracting. I think I more than doubled the total amount of time I've spent tracting on my mission in the last week. No new investigators. Not even any potential investigators. You'd think that much tracting, at least a lot of people would be HOME...and there were tons of people home....they were just EXTRA grumpy to see us, because aside from the usual "Hey, you're a missionary and you're knocking on my door, go away" we got the "Hey, we're already STUCK HERE IN OUR OWN HOUSE, and you're a missionary and you're knocking on my door, go away."

A few people on the first day were really impressed that we were out knocking doors despite the weather, but as the novelty of the snow wore off, so did their appreciation for our dedication...even if they weren't interested.

Our mood wasn't hindered by the weather, though...we were actually pretty positive and hopeful for most of the day, each day, until it got to nighttime and we "got" to evaluate the work we'd done that day and we had nothing to show for any of it (other than nearly sprained ankles, of course).

It's just been a really frustrating/weird transfer for both of us. Over the past six weeks, our teaching pool has dwindled to two so-so/flaky investigators, and one really, super solid investigator, so needless to say, we needed to spend a lot of time finding last week either way...

I think the main frustration was that this was SUPPOSED to be our first week back to being fully functional after a two week hiatus for injury(Sister Alberts)/illness(myself)..............You'd think we could have just knocked it down to a one week hiatus, and could've just gotten sick/injured during the same week, but no...I literally got sick the DAY the doctor gave Sister Alberts the all-clear to get back to work.

On Monday night there was a little bit of a break in the snow, so we were able to go on exchanges with the sisters in Redmond. Sister Taua's trainee had to go home for her health, so Sister Taua was spending the last few weeks of the transfer with them too...so I got to go around with Sister Taua and Sister Northrup both for the day, while Sister Alberts stayed with Sister Northrup's trainee, Sister McAllister, in our area. It was REALLY great to see Sister Taua agian =) She and Sister Northrup are both going home in March; I'll miss them a lot. Sister Taua is applying to BYU though; she wants to do one of the vocal or piano programs, so we'll get to see each other soon.

Tuesday night we drove back, but by then the roads had become way more icy in Woodinville than they were in Redmond. Had we known that, we would have stayed in Redmond for a second night....but we made it to Woodinville safe; all five of us ended up staying the night in our tiny apartment, though. It made for a really cool companionship study in the morning, that's for sure! They stayed in our area and helped us tract (more) the next morning, and then they were able to make it back to Redmond in the afternoon.

Transfers are tomorrow. Sister Alberts is being transferred; I'm staying here. So, guess you'll get to hear about my new companion next week.

Thanks for sharing about the devotional this past Tuesday. President Wilson has given some limited approval for speeches.byu.edu if we have a specific devotional we want to print off and read, so I've been reading a few old devotionals from Elder Holland. I kind of miss being able to listen to the devotionals every week. This past one sounds good, though, maybe in a few weeks I'll see if they have the transcript up.

I'm really glad that the Manwaring's daughter told you she'd like you as a leader at girls' camp. I'm sure that really did brighten your day! =)

Love,

Sister Holdsworth

January 16, 2012

I am glad Mom had such a fun week. The concert sounds like it was lots of fun. Glad you were able to get to go up on stage like you wanted.

That's quite a lot of missionaries out from Chaffey ward. Sounds like a good sacrament meeting. Julia just wrote me and told me that our roommate Anna is on a mission now in Flordia.

We don't stay in for snow. Church got cancelled, which made our day a little more hectic, since we're not allowed to drive in the snow either, so we're pretty much regulated to walking-distance, or we have to get member rides. We set up a ride to dinner, but they decided it would be more convenient to pick us up four hours early.....and then they kind of expected us to stay at their house and let them host us...so I asked if I could wash the inside of their widows. At least we got to do some service yesterday, if we didn't get much else done.

Glad you got to go to the temple. We're hoping for a temple trip next month but we won't know for sure for a few more weeks. It's up to the temple president when the missionaries get to go.

Good luck to Jon with his driving lesson. Hope all goes well and that he drives safe.

This past week we had a really good lesson with Bruce. We read the quote from Joseph Smith about the Book of Mormon being the most correct of any book and all went around and bore our testimonies of the Book of Mormon. Bruce wanted to go first, since he has such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon. Then his land-lady (who's a member of our ward) bore her testimony, then me, then Sister Alberts. Then Bruce asked if he could go again, since he said his "testimony changed and grew while we talked." It's been really great to watch all the changes Bruce has gone through since I've gotten here. The Spirit is working really strongly on him, and he's completely open to the Spirit's influence.

I want to say thank you for paying for my mission. I never expected to come on a mission, so I never thought I had much need to plan for one, but I appreciate being able to drop everything and go, not having to worry about the expenses. I'm really gald to be here.

Talk to you next week,

Sister Holdsworth

Happy Birthday to Me!

Hello; thank you for all of the birthday wishes. I got Mom and Grandma's packages; I enjoyed them this morning, thank you. I also got the cards from the Tiltons; thank you very much for thinking of me on my birthday! I'm sure Annette's package is on it's way too; I really appreciated her letter.

I'm glad the Rose Parade was fun and that you were able to enjoy some good weather for it. Glad to hear Oregon won. I heard from our checker at the grocery store this morning that Alabama and LSU are playing in the championship tonight. That should be a good game.

Yes. Sister Bennett came up to us at Church on Sunday. It was kind of weird. But she gave both Sister Alberts and I hugs from you.

You did mention that Eddie's son was in Woodinville (or now taht I think about it maybe Grandma did in one of her cards...). There are three wards in the city of Woodinville. Maybe Eddie's kids are in our ward; who knows!? Maybe we'll meet them.

Your lesson sounds like it was good. I hope you're enjoying teaching Relief Society. We didn't go to our Relief Society (Sister Albert's has been really sick all week, so we left church early) so I don't know what our lesson was on.

This week was mostly spent inside. We did get a few lessons in at the start of the week, but for the past few days we've been inside trying to get Sister Alberts healthy again. I did a lot of reading from past issues of the Ensign...read a lot about the Law of Moses in the Old Testament...colored a few pictures from the Friend...caught up on a lot of letters I needed to write...caught up in my journaling a little bit...One of our investigators dropped.

Nothing all that fun planned for today. We'll probably meet for chair soccer like always since Sister Alberts is really going crazy being stuck in the apartment. We're only allowed to meet up with our district on p-days; Sister Beckstrand (she shares Heather's birthday) is on the exact opposite end of the mission. Unless one or both of us get transferred this transfer somewhere closer to each other we probably won't see each other until after my mission (she goes home in March). President Wilson did text me "happy birthday" this morning, so that was nice.

Congratulations to Jon on getting his drivers' permit. Hope everything goes well with driver's ed!!

Didn't read much from the Conference issue. There was a really good article on faith, hope and charity from one of the seventy that I enjoyed in one of the Ensigns I read; it was about how hope has a more important role than we give it credit for. He said that hope is an essential aspect of faith, and that without hope we wouldn't be able to even develop or comprehend faith.

I love you, thanks again for all the birthday wishes,

Sister Holdsworth

January 2, 2012

Hello!

We were in at 6 pm on New Year's Eve. We didn't do much. Planned for Sunday....sat around and talked...we decided we were allowed to go to bed early, since we weren't doing anything, so that was our favorite part. Usually when we're in early for holidays, they'll give us an assignment to read a talk or something, but nothing for New Years Eve or Christmas Eve....Sounds like both our New Years were pretty uneventful.

Sounds like it was a good game (BYU vs. Tulsa). Oh...and you might like to know: Mark Wilson is in our ward. Haven't met him personally yet though...our ward is HUGE...Sister Alberts doesn't even know everyone, and she's been here six months! It's ridiculous!

Congratulations to Michelle!!! Anyways, that's great to hear! Woohoo!

Sounds like Disneyland for 24 hours would be pretty fun. Are they going to have special characters out for it too?

Yes, I agree: Church history is pretty easy to learn. I think it'd be great if we spent a few years studying Church history like we spent the past two studying out of Gospel Principles.

We have church at 1 now. Sounds like you had a good sacrament meeting though. Ours was mostly about temporal welfare. And kids screaming in sacrament meeting. It was interesting.

I probably read 2-3 conference talks a week in my personal study. This week I read Elder Cook's and re-read Elder Anderson's. Right now I'm in Exodus in the Old Testament, and Jacob in the Book of Mormon. I'm reading the Old Testament for fun, and reading the Book of Mormon studying the Christlike attributes listed in PMG. I love my personal study time. Wish we got more of it.

We haven't gotten our January Ensign yet, but I'm sure it'll be great.

Good luck winning the HGTV Dream Home!

Good luck to Jon starting driver's ed. Don't crash Pepe (my car). Sister Albert's 17 year old brother has wrecked her car twice in the past two weeks.....just sayin'. ;) I'm sure Jon will do great though!

Have fun at the Rose Parade...I heard from one of our members it's Oregon and Wisconsin right? Should be a good game too. Who are/were you rooting for? Who's in the other BCS bowls? How did Utah do in the Pac 12 (that's still weird...)? I've heard rumors we've been invited to the Big East???

Thanks for sending the birthday package. I look forward to getting it! =)

This past week was much better than the week before. People actually wanted to talk to us now that Christmas was over... this is a pretty great ward, and we've got some really good work going on. ANYWAYS, that's about all the time I've got...I'll talk to you later!

Love you!

Sister Heather Holdsworth