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