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