December in Grand Forks

December 5^th:

Happy Monday!

We got our transfer calls yesterday, and I’m staying here in Canada!  Sister Jackson is being transferred though, and I will really miss working with her.  She has been so awesome, and I’ve learned a lot from her!  I’ll get to see her in four months though, so it’s not too long.  :)  My new companion will be Sister Olsen!  I was in a trio with her and Sister Lott for a little while in Green Bluff.  I got to know here there, and she is just the best!  I finished up her second half of training when she was with us then, and I’m so excited to serve with her again.  I will pick her up tomorrow on transfer day.

This week, we have been meeting with D___ and J___.  They had us over for dinner, and we have been teaching them.  It’s been great to meet with them, and share the gospel with them.  And we have also been meeting with K___ and having some great discussions with her.

It finally snowed up here, and holy smokes it’s beautiful up here when it snows!  The pine trees glisten and the river looks so pretty!

Love you all!

Sister Worthen. 

December 12^th:

Hello from up North!

I picked up Sister Olsen on Tuesday, and she’s great!  I’m really excited to serve with her.  It’s always fun to get a new companion because then you get a new perspective on the area.  She was taking pictures out the window on the whole 2 and a half hour drive up to our area in Canada.  :)  I took boulder pass on the way home so she could see how pretty it is.  It’s probably the last time we can drive through that pass until after winter.

We had a great lesson with K___ this week.  We read first Nephi with her.  She has a lot of faith, and she is coming to church next Sunday!  She made us lunch too, which was really good.  I love her and pray for her every day!

We also went with the McCulloughs to teach a man who is Arabic.  There was a bit of a language gap there, but hopefully he understood what we were teaching.  :)

This week we also did a lot of street contacting, and passed out a ton of cards and talked to everyone that we met.  We met a guy named R__ coming out of the dollar store, and he talked to us for a bit.  We set up a time to meet with him for later in the week.

We drove down to Spokane this week for some training, and while I was there I was able to see the transfer board to see where everyone was transferred.  That’s when I realized that I’m the “oldest” missionary in our zone, and the next one to go home.  I love serving with Sister Olsen though, because of her spirit and motivation!  I have that “I love my mission” attitude, and it’s been great!  We stayed overnight at the mission home since I had some more training the next morning.  When we woke up, we did yoga with Sister Dymock (President Dymock’s wife).  She is great, and we barely kept up.  :)  It took us 4 and a half hours to get home after the training though, because there was a huge snowstorm.  But we made it to our apartment safely.  Thank goodness for a good SUV to drive!

The elders were transferred out of this area, and we took over their work in addition to ours.  So we have been really busy, which is great!  Our district now just consists of us and Brother and Sister McCullough, but our area is huge geographically.  It’s nice to have the McCullough’s here with us, and I think we’ll be able to Skype from their place on Christmas day to talk to our families.

Have a great wee!

Love,

Sister Worthen

December 18

So, my nose hairs are freezing together!  We’ve had a couple of days where it was single digits for the high.  But the sun was shining, which is good.  :)  We also found out that when it’s 10 below zero, you can throw a cup of water high enough up in the air, and it will just about freeze by the time it hits the ground!

We taught K___ this week, and she is quitting smoking!  She’s doing great, and it’s been a blessing to teach her.

We had a bit of a miracle this week.  We have been trying to stop by Jordan, Sammy, and Tobias’s trailer to visit with them.  But we haven’t been able to find them home, and have been worried that they may have had to move.  We walked into the post office, and while we were in there Jordan and Sammy walked in!  We haven’t seen them in three weeks, and we found out they are living with a family across the street for a little while.  Now that we know where they are, we can visit with them.

We drove down to Spokane this week and we got to visit Rick and Mary!  They had us over for dinner.  If you remember, we were teaching them in Green Bluff and were baptized when I was serving there.  It was wonderful to see them again!  Rick surprised me with some wonderful news.  He received the Melchizedek priesthood the week before!!!  I am so proud of him and excited for him.  Before I left, I asked him for a blessing, and it was the best blessing ever.  Just simple and special!  That was special for me to receive a blessing from someone who I had the opportunity to teach and see baptized!  :)   While we were there, they texted my Dad a “Happy Birthday” for me since it was his birthday.

James and Ruth were sealed this week as well, in the Spokane temple.  James was baptized when I was in Cheney, and he started to date Ruth who was the Relief Society President in the student ward there.  They were married a little while ago, but were able to be sealed in the temple this week.  We got to go to the sealing, and it was awesome!  They looked so happy!  I’ve only been to a few sealings, and I learned a lot there.

Thanks Mom and Dad for the Christmas package!  They came this week, and the border guards let me take them across the border still wrapped and all.  :)

Merry Christmas almost!!!

Love,

Sister Worthen

We finally got snow here!

Below zero and cold!

Baking with Sister McCullough, D__ and Sister Olsen

More snow!

The Christmas tree and packages
that my family sent me.

Our awesome SUV that gets us where we need to go

The rivers are starting to ice over

With D___

We have a huge hairy spider living
under our stove.

I'm convinced it's having babies under there.

Someone who lives here told us that spiders
don't like the smell of chestnuts, so
we put a line of them around the stove
to keep the spider under there.  :)

Happy Late Thanksgiving from Sister Worthen!

Note from Mom and Dad:  It’s been a little while since we’ve updated Taya’s blog.  In a nutshell, she has enjoyed her area there that straddles the border with one part being in Canada, and the other part being in Washington.  They’ve had some success there.  Transfers are coming up this week, and her companion will need to be transferred back into the U.S. due to the 6 month restrictions on their passports.  So, Taya will at least be getting a new companion.  There is the chance the she will also be transferred, so we will just need to wait and see this week.  We’ve consolidated the last month or so of letters and information here in one blog entry:

October 24^th:

Hello everyone!

This has been a great week!  M___ got baptized this week.  She is L___’s daughter, and I love that little girl so much!  She was beaming and grinning from ear to ear. :)  She asked me to braid her hair and after she twirled around like a princess.   Sister Jackson (member) sewed her a blanket, and Hyrum gave a talk about the Holy Ghost and gave her the blanket.  You would have thought it was Christmas already!  M___ asked us to sit by her the entire time because she was nervous.  :)  M___ was truly a miracle.  We taught her the first discussion on October 13^th, put her on date for her baptism on the 14^th, and she was baptized three days later.  We got to see this beautiful family be converted to the gospel, and they have meant so much to me!  I truly love them with all my heart.  I wish they didn’t have to move to Spokane.  :(  But we have helped them pack, and called the Bishop, Relief Society President, and missionaries in the area they are moving to to have L___ and her family connect with them.  They all seemed very nice, and have already made plans to visit with the family.

October 31^st:

Happy Halloween everyone!  I got to see President and Sister Dymock this week.  They came up to the Grand Forks unit today!  They both spoke in sacrament meeting, and it was amazing!  They both bring the spirit in the meeting so strongly wherever they go.  I cried through the whole thing.  :)  Sister Dymock spoke on the power of the Atonement, and it was amazing.  They also stayed for potluck after church which was great!

The work has dropped off a bit this last week, so we are looking for ways to serve people.  We have done a ton of raking leaves, which has allowed us to talk to some people.  We’ve also done a lot of street contacting and just trying to talk to everyone.  I don’t always want to go out street contacting and tracting, but it always makes me feel better and happier as a missionary for some reason.  Weird how that works.  :)

November 1^st:

Holy Schnikies, it’s already November!  Time has been flying by for the most part, except for this week.  Sister Jackson came down with the stomach flu, and has been down sick for about three days this week.  I feel so bad for her.  But, by the end of the week she was doing better.  When your companion is sick, besides taking care of them, there’s not much more to do since you can’t go out to work.  I did a lot of studies, updated and color coded and organized both area books, hung new area maps on the walls, folded laundry, cleaned the entire apartment, made contact phone calls, did the weekly planning as best I could, and basically anything else I could think of to do while we stayed inside so Sister Jackson could get feeling better. 

We had zone training this week and drove down to Colville for the day for that.  The new Christmas initiative is amazing!  It’s 25 ways to become more like Christ in 25 days, and it’s all focused around service.  The video and media platform is called “Light the World”, and it is awesome!  We got new pass along cards too!  But we aren’t allowed to pass the cards or show the video until November 25^th when the church releases it.

We’ve also been doing a lot more raking of leaves around town again.  I think it really surprises people that we are willing to help for free!  We will be doing a lot of raking the next couple of days before the snow hits.  Hopefully it will allow us to talk to some more people.  We have had a couple of great conversation about the gospel with people because of it, and we have a return appointment next week to teach a lady that we raked leaves for!

November 8^th:

Hi everyone!  So, I think I’ll be fine if I never have to rake another leave in my life!  Or pine needles for that matter.  :)  We have a couple of new investigators though, which is good!  We’ve been teaching a lady named D___ who has had a lot of questions about the church.  I think we’ve been able to clear up a lot of questions for her.  Hopefully she will continue to progress.

November 15^th:

Hi everyone!  So, I guess this last Tuesday was election day in the states.  That day, we spent on the Canada side of the border here in Grand Forks.  We went street contacting and trying to visit contacts in our area book, but most people just wanted to talk to us about the elections once they found out we are from the states.  It looked like the bars were all full that night with people watching the election results.  And on a funny note, we ran into one guy who was totally drunk and told us the world was flat and that gravity didn’t exist.   :)  On the upside, we did get several part member family referrals from President Lundy this week, which was great!  Apparently Donald Trump is our new President in the States?  Hmmmm, maybe I’ll be fine staying in Canada for a little while.  :)

This week, Canada celebrated Canadian Remembrance Day, so the city had a parade.  This parade was different in that it was more quiet and respectful, with moments of silence within it.  We did get to sing “God Save The Queen”, which was a first for me.  :)  We also came into contact with a lady named K___ who the McCulloughs ran into.  We will meet with her on Wednesday to teach her.

November 29^th:

Happy late Thanksgiving to you all!  This week we have talked to so many people.  We are having a contest with the Elders to see who can pass out all of their “Light the World” Christmas cards first, and we each have 300 to pass out!  :)  People seem to be interested in the Christmas initiative though, but no new investigators because of it yet.  We’ll keep working on it though.

Thanks for all your letters, support, and prayers!

Love, Sister Worthen.

M___ at her baptism

Raking leaves around town

The boys in their new church clothes

With Amerjeet making samosa

Having a carmel apple with Sister Jackson

A Canadian dish called "poutine".  It's basically
french fries covered in gravy with
cheese curds.  Yeah, it's as gross
as it sounds.

At the Sheriff's office.  No reason.  Just
wanted to take a picture there.

Temple day in Spokane!

Cleaning the apartment

Our old bedframes.  We got new ones this week!