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