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