Thursday, June 21, 2012

Hey!

so it's been an exciting week for us, LOTS of service to do and so little time! You could say drayton valley is needy.... and i wouldn't disagree but i love the people so much and have made so many amazing friendships I'm going to miss serving them! Also news I've found a new great grandma! Sister Bondi has volunteered and has requested that i call her "GG" ha ha i wish i could send you pictures she's the cutetest 89 year old I've ever met and we have the same passion for the gospel! she used to live in Vancouver 2nd ward.... small world!

Any who this last week we received a referral from the elders in Fort St. John! I was so excited, I've been praying for a while that heavenly father would lead me and sister Jones to people that need our help! We stopped by a couple times, no answer.... and then we got a cell phone number.... still no answer! BUT even though i didn't leave a message they must have seen a new number on their call display and called us back Sunday afternoon! I answered and set up an appointment with Jamie Courchesne for that afternoon! We went over and she was so friendly telling us all about herself and her family! Her mother is a member who joined up in Fort St. John and so she's been told bits and pieces of church doctrine. she explained that she had a hard time with churches that had "silly" rules like not being able to take blood or to exchange a rice cracker for bread in the sacrament if you are a celiac (because she is) well.... her and sister Jones became great friends from then on! started swapping celiac recipes it was hilarious.... we taught her about God is our loving Heavenly Father and read the introduction to the Book of Mormon! she was so respectful and discussed it well and agreed to start reading in first nephi and set up an appointment with us for Tuesday to teach the restoration! o I'm just so happy to have the chance to meet people who have open hearts it's so wonderful!

At church this week Brother Musson returned from holidays and received the Aaron priesthood! it was so wonderful..... he's so great and strong in his scripture study! Sister Maria Tapsoba was at church as usual and received her temple recommend along with our other recent convert brother Strasbourg. they both have family names ready to take to the temple for the FIRST time on Saturday and I'm so excited for them! i wish so badly we were allowed to go! I found out Sunday that a recent convert of a year just went through the temple with his wife (the meadows) and received their endowment! they will be sealed to their two little girls in Vancouver July 4th and are so excited! i gotta tell ya even the roughest of people are children of God, we have oil patch workers here joining the church and making temple covenants it's so amazing!!!

well! last but not least we have two full time missionary couples from Edmonton now assigned to our branch. they will commute three times a week and be in the elders quorum presidency and in the branch presidency to strengthen and provide leadership! what an answer to prayers! i love seeing REAL changes for good when you really use the church leadership system and say you two cents worth :)

i love you all so much, i hope you're staying strong and using all the tools the gospel of Jesus Christ offers to bring you hope and happiness in this crazy world we live in!

i leave you with this quote from conference April 2012:

"Our doctrine is clear; we are to be positive and of good cheer. We emphasize our faith, not our fears. We rejoice in the Lord's assurance  that He will stand by us and give us guidance and direction. The Holy Ghost testifies to our hearts that we have a loving Father in Heaven, whose merciful plan for our redemption WILL be fulfilled in every aspect because for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ." -Elder Cook

Have a great week! cheers!

sister wotherspoon

Monday, April 16, 2012

14 Months out in the field toady!! Wahoo!! Can you believe it? That I've lasted this long hahaha i know, o the miracles of our heavenly father and thank you for all your support! The emails and pictures, letters and talks! I couldn't have made it here without your support!

Well this week was exciting! We had snowstorms for three days straight BUT because it's spring it's all gone now and I'm happy about that! Just when you thought you could put your winter stuff away.... everyone says to watch out for the may long weekend snow dump though, so much to look forward to! Any who! This week we had a ton of plans, back plans and plan C's get cancelled BUT we still managed to teach 19 lessons, half of those being with those investigating the church! The members are loving us and i really am feeling like a part of the branch now here in drayton valley! I just love serving with sister jones. She's such a great support and strength in the missionary work. She's so fun and the members upstairs always catch us hysterically laughing, because if we couldn't laugh at the crazy weird things that happen in the small oil rig town then we would go crazy! Bro Strausberg has been called as a new branch missionary and he was baptized in January! he's going strong and diving into preach my gospel! it will be nice to have the help. We got to do some service this week for some active members. The cressman's allowed us to come over, we took down Christmas lights, fed horses, picked up litter on their huge acreage and cleaned their home while cooking dinner . There are so many hard working members that are so over run with life! i feel fortunate to help. whenever i think of how to
help others i think what would my mom do? what would my mom appreciate? makes things easier!
District Meeting was this week! our zone leaders and president Campbell and his wife joined us for a lovely meeting on discussing the qualities that we must have to qualify to be missionaries. It was the usual discussion until we learned about hope..... it really struck me that we teach our investigators to act on faith A LOT but when do we instill in the them the confidence and expectation of the blessings that come as we live the gospel! the hope is really what, as the
Bookof Mormon teaches, keeps us sure and steadfast always abounding in good works! isn't that what we want for those in the church and newly joined! hope seems to be the answer to my never ending question "how can we keep people strong in the church". let's teach hope! let's teach them that the quality of their lives WILL improve and that all of god's promises will be given to them including eternal life if they are obedient! :) o that was so awesome, i love it when the holy
ghost is teaching the lesson :) We also got to help a family move out and clean their home while spending mornings and evenings reading the Book of Mormon with our investigators! Michael musson has set his baptismal date for may 28thand he told heavenly father in his prayer "I'm so excited! please help the missionaries to prepare me for this date"! so exciting! cam is doing well along with domi and we are excited to meet his wife who has recently returned from Africa!Nothing else too exciting! I'm just trying to enjoy the little things,like the baby animals, kittens and puppies that seem to be popping up everywhere. the sunshine. the moments our
investigators learn new truths and of course the opportunity to exercise and
stay strong for the last three and half months! Love you and miss you
all!! !keep the faith! sister wotherspoon

Wednesday, January 4, 2012


Happy New Year - 2012!

Well since this is "supposed" to be the last year before the end i thought i should make some good goals this year! We had some great talks in sacrament meeting yesterday on goal setting and i loved the acronym that Brother Carter used. He calls the SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. So that's what I'm going to do! I've decided that i want to eliminate fear and doubt from my thoughts and vocabulary, i want to read the Old Testament once and The Book of Mormon two more times by the end of my mission along with a conference talk weekly! My overall goal is inspired by my former companion Sister Hayes - "Love More, Eat Less" lol I really encourage you all to make personal goals for this year and include with it spiritual goals because this life is purely the time for us to prepare to meet our heavenly father and i love in Alma 5:11-13 where Alma explains the steps in order to be have a change of heart and be saved! As we exercise faith + humble ourselves + trust in God + and endure with faith to the end we will all be saved! As I've thought about what it means to be saved i don't think it means our final salvation only but that we can be saved from heart ache, misery, unnecessary trials and evil today, tomorrow and forever!

Well now that I've given a little spiritual insight I'll let you know how our week went. it wasn't too busy unfortunately so we took advantage of the wonderful positive weather and went tracting to find new people to teach because Neil has been out of town and Steven is still in Quebec. So! we had some great experiences and even had a couple people invite us back for return appointments. Unfortunately nobody was home or interested anymore when we returned but i really feel that's all we can do! We are showing heavenly father that we are willing to do the work and i know he'll bless us! One girl even texted us after we talked to her at the door because she wanted to know more but then her husband found out and she can't meet with us. I know there are people prepared and i desire soooo badly to be able to teach a family, i should add that to my goals.....

I loved the Christmas season but I'm really excited for normal life to kick in so that we can start visiting with people again and hopefully receive referrals from our members as they return to town!

The cold weather is on it's way, so much adventure in store!

I love you all and miss you so much!

Love Sister Wotherspoon

Monday, December 26, 2011





Happy Boxing Day Everyone!
Wow it's been such an exciting week! so much going on in the missionary world of Lacombe with all the wonderful Christmas events!
We didn't have a chance to teach a lot of lessons this week with people being super busy with Christmas but we were thankful to be able to be at the Live Nativity/ Creche display set up at the church. It was amazing! i have never seen a live nativity, with all the ward volunteering to be the many parts of the Christmas story and people bringing in their animals - sheep, donkey and goat! it was so well done with music, lighting and costumes. I'll attach pictures for everyone to see. on Tuesday we helped set up the creche in the gym for six hours. all the walls were covered with white fabric and tables were set up surrounded with Christmas trees and white lights with the 200 creche's set up. people from all over the communities came and enjoyed the show, the creches and some hot chocolate and apple cider with cookies after! i had a lot of great conversations with people and invited many to take the lessons. i didn't have any immediate luck but i know the community's prospect of the church has increased in respect :D
Christmas eve was exciting! we had our whole day set up with lessons and everybody cancelled.... so we decided to go and visit a little old lady in the lodge senior centre, sister silliker. who I've come to know really well,we went to visit her and she was stuck in her wheel chair needing to go to the hospital! so we got her to the emergency and they gave her strong pain killer shots for her new knee. it was intense and I'm so glad that we were there at the right time, she still tells us we were the angels that arrived right on time! we then came back and went caroling with ward members at another senior centre. it was so fun to sing all the songs and meet new people. we then went to a Christmas party at the bishop's and his family and headed home for the night!
Christmas day was AMAZING! we got to sleep in.... which was awesome! we went to church at 10am and had a wonderful program of commentary that included Jewish customs that they did at the time and musical numbers including one i got to sing in with the choir - Where shepherds lately knelt - it was beautiful! many of the members invited us over but with time constraints we opened presents at home.... had a great brunch with the cuff family that we live with and then headed off to talk to the family on skype! it was so great to see the family... it's been 7 months! we chatted and then headed off to Christmas dinner with the hill family, stopped at a couple other homes and then headed to bed exhausted.
one of my favourite Christmas presents this Christmas was stopping by our new convert's home - Anne - with her new husband Neil! i was so worried if he was actually interested in the gospel and if Anne would stay active. we hadn't heard from them in a week and when we stopped by they said they've been reading the book of mormon together, a chapter a day! that makes me so excited for the work here!
so many blessings to be grateful for. But most of all I'm grateful for the family and friends that have supported me so much throughout the past 10 months of my missionary service. i have good days and harder days but all in all I'm thankful for you guys who remind me of my purpose and pray for me! I love you and miss you! Seven months today I'll be home in surrey! hard to believe.... stay strong and keep the Christmas spirit with you all year long.
lots of love
sister wotherspoon