It's a Ho King Thing!

HELLOOOOO lovely people!!

So yes, transfers happened this week and "I have a feeling we're not in Taber anymore"

Betty Moline and Barb Pierson

The Roberts family

Zuidhof's-- I already miss them A TON!! like it's ridiculous

Good ole Mother and Father Tanner. I wouldn't let just anyone do this to me...
but they are the exception.

The Andersons. Aka Grandma and Grandpa Canada.
Did I mention that he made me a rocking chair? cool hey?

Ma girl Amber Jensen

ALEXIS KNIGHT!

Sister Robison

Sister Poll

Elder Misiluki

Saying bye to Sister Sims... sad day

Sister Lane! She's replacing me in Taber... they got another redhead :)

Elder Rodriguez

Got to see ma girl Sister Taylor at transfers

Elder Henry-- served around him for a year of my mission. so that's chill.

So Sister Burnside is in my zone now. Is this the best day of my life? You betcha.

SISTER HO CHING!!! or should I say Sister Ho King? ;)

Waterton

Jen Crowson-- my fav

Just a couple sisters that I came out with all at the transfer station

Ha nope, not even in the slightest. So I got transferred up to Fish Creek in Calgary. I'm pretty sure it's the Southwest. But my new comp is Sister Ho Ching (hence the Ho King... that's our companionship name)-- She's from American Samoa. Ya, there is an American Samoa and an Un-American Samoa... who knew?!? But she's great. She's been out for almost 8 months and she's just adorable!! We're serving in a YSA ward up here as well as a family ward. Lemme just say that being back in YSA has got to be like the weirdest transition ever. We had a ward talent show for the YSA ward on Friday and there was a room full of young people my age and I'm just awkward and don't know how to talk to people my own age... but give me an old lady and I can talk for forever!! Ha but it's all good. Our area is pretty big cause of the YSA ward-- we cover the whole stake :) yippee skippee.

But really I'm seriously so stoked about life right now. There is a TON of potential here and we're just so so excited to go out and find people to teach! We did have one investigator in our YSA come and watch conference with us and she's awesome. She is super involved in her own church but is wanting to learn more from us. So that was pretty fun. We also picked up a new gator this week. He is 18 and just has so many questions and it's awesome. We taught him the Plan of Salvation this last time and after watching conference I was just like "go watch the first session and it'll answer all your questions."

WASN'T CONFERENCE JUST THE BEST THING OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE?!? Cause it was for me. There was literally a talk directed towards investigators-- it was awesome!! Literally all the talks were just so good. Like all my questions got answered in the first session... and then it just got better and better from there. So much about the Plan of Salvation, the Godhead-- especially the Holy Ghost and not being fearful... ya know my favorite scripture D&C 6:36-- totally applies :)

I just love the spirit that comes from conference, it went by wayyyyy too fast. Can't wait to get the conference edition of the Ensign-- ha cause us missionaries got to wait for that and can't pull out a handy dandy phone and look it up. But ya, it was awesome. It's always good to remember that God's "work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." GOD WANTS US BACK!!! Hard times happen but Heavenly Father wants all of His children to make it home. 

Also, wasn't it just the best thing to be able to hear from President Monson?!? I love that man. He truly is called of God. He just keeps fulfilling his calling all the way to the end. 

One other thing that I especially enjoyed was how many times we heard the phrase/scriptures line upon line, precept upon precept... and brighter and brighter until the perfect day. That's what life is all about. Learning one step at a time, God wants us to learn but He's going to give us what we can handle when we can handle it. He's perfect. And as we strive to follow the Savior and "walk with Him" then one day... way way in the future we'll be able to be perfect too.

Our spirits are high and I am just so happy to be a missionary right now. We're also starting to share the new Easter message with people now-- if you haven't seen it go and watch it right now!! #PrinceofPeace don't you just love that word peace?!? Peace is exactly how I would describe the Savior and how you feel when you have Him in your life. There's so many people who don't have that peace in their life and I get to be out here 24/7 trying to bring people that peace. It's awesome!!

Ha sorry if you got bored but I'm just excited.

Life is good. God is good. Abby and Mom are in NYC. Pumped for Easter.

Love you lots!! Have a great week :)

Scripture of the week: John 3:16-- For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Quote of the week: (from conference yesterday) "TAKE THE MISSIONARIES SERIOUSLY!" -Joaquin E. Costa

LOVE YOU!!

Sister King 

2 new INFESTIGATORS

Hello lovely family!

So seriously get ready for the craziest story ever. The subject was not a typo... let's just say that this week the saying "goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite" took on a whole new meaning.... Ha kind of a gross story, just warning you. But it turned out pretty cool.

She has an obsession with Elvis.

We woke up and there was this random poster outside of our apartment. We aren't complaining though.
 #yoda #yodalicious

So. On Tuesday literally ALL of our appointments fell through. It was pretty hard. So we decided that we would stop by this less active that we had been trying to meet with for a while. She was home, so we went in and met with her and shared a little message with her. While we were in there we noticed that there were these little red bugs crawling ALL OVER our legs... so gross. They were literally all over the apartment as well. So we made our visit a quick one then scurried on out of there. From her apartment to the car we were shaking out all of our clothes to make sure we didn't have any of the bugs with us, cause I was fairly certain that they were bed bugs... unfortunately I was correct... We talked with Sister Miles on the phone and she had us immediately go and wash all of our clothes and shower and everything just to be safe. So we did.

Waiting in the Laundromat

A bedbug :(

When you find out you have bed bugs so you take your second shower of the day and kick Satan in the boat and choose to be happy instead of upset about that fact that your place is now infested with bed bugs :)

Next day we woke up and Sister Barlow had a couple bites on her leg. Oh no... So we talked to Sister Miles and we had to wash all of our bedding and our clothes. We had to go to the laundromat and ended up spending lots of our day there. We were in the back studying our scriptures when all of a sudden we both got this craving for pizza.. Super weird, right? 

Luckily there was a Little Caesars right next to the laundromat, so that's where we headed. When we came back into the laundromat there were 2 guys in the front eating pizza as well-- they said that we should just join them. So we did. Long story short,  we ended up teaching them the first lesson. They have been trying to find a church that they want to go to and have just been exploring their options. PERFECT right? So we were like "that's literally what we do. just teach people about our church." So we ended up setting up a return appointment with them and we actually met with them on Thursday!! How neat is that? Their name's are Jody and Ammon and they're roommates. We call them our infestigators... too good right? So that was super cool because the day was starting out to be super crumby but apparently,  it was bed bugs that had to get us to find these two.  Ha as for the whole bug situation, our whole house and car are being fumigated tomorrow. Ha so that is just dandy. But It'll be great, the bugs will be gone.

This is Yee and Meow. They own the laundromat that we went to.
Got to know them real well cause we were there almost the whole day :)

Ha anyway... wasn't conference just the best thing of your entire life?!? I seriously loved it so much! Literally loved every single talk, but I think that the one that really stood out to me the most was President Nelson's. Men are that they might have joy. It's so true. I feel like just being on the mission I have really seen how life can be pretty hard sometimes, but it makes it so much harder when you don't choose to be happy. Choosing to be happy sounds so simple but it's so dang hard. When we focus on the Savior we will be able to find that happiness that we are looking for-- even when times are difficult. He also mentioned that us missionaries aren't out here just to make our number in the church bigger-- we are out here to bring more joy to the world. I have the biggest testimony of that. Seeing someone embrace the gospel is great but it's that happiness that they have which makes it totally worth it.

We watched priesthood session during our dinner at Sister Leonard's house. We had this yummy Indian food.

Our lovely zone

Our lovely zone

I just loved conference a lot and there is too much to say about it. I'm so grateful that we have a living prophet and apostles on the earth today. 

Love you all very much!! Hope you all enjoyed conference as much as I did. And remember, don't let the bed bugs bite :)

Scripture of the week: Romans 8:37 We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Quote of the week: "He is perfectly positioned to lift us and give us the strength we need to endure our afflictions. We have only to ask." - Elder Oaks

Have a fantastic week!! And good luck to Kathryn and Trevor :)

Sister King

"Last door, 4th floor"

Hello hello!!

So it's Monday again... crazy how fast Monday's come.

But anyway, first things first. The subject line-- this was my favorite pun from this week. There is this super cute old lady in our ward named Sister Longbotham (not to be confused with Longbottom from Harry Potter) but there is this less active guy named Rex who is pretty much wanting to marry her... but for her there is no rex-ual attraction... ha I laughed too hard at that one.

Linda is adorable and made me this super cute vase :)

The world's largest shower-- it's like 2 by 2...

Just a cute little house we found this week

Ok so these "car2go"s are all over the place here. I don't know if that is just a Canada thing or if it's in the states...

downtown 

In case you are ever wondering what fun things are going on in Calgary, this is the information board!

I forgot to mention how cute Sister Francis is. Somehow it came up that Grandma King always had
lemon drops and how I loved them... she gave me a bag before I left Lethbridge.

But anywayyyyy this week was pretty good. We didn't have the car so there was lots and lots of walking. It also just so happens that it was the coldest week thus far on my mission. YAY. But no it was actually super fun. Accomplishment of the week; it was HORRIBLE weather on Wednesday-- super rainy and cold, and yet we were still out and about doing things. We walked 15 kilometers. So even though it was a long and wet day we still felt like we had given it our all. When you get home at the end of the day and you can't keep your eyes open, that's when you know that you worked hard :)

So ya, this week was definitely us finding the tender mercies cause it was pretty rough... But hey, we met some very VERY interesting people while we were out tracting and street contacting. On Tuesday we were just having a super slow day, honestly just wanted the day to be over and we were just sitting on the bus when this little girl named Betty came and sat next to me. She was just super cute and had the most energy and I just loved her. I felt like that was the Lord just giving me one little confidence boost to get through the rest of the day, and it totally worked. That day I helped Sister Barlow give away her first Book of Mormon while out on her mission. That was pretty sick and she was super excited about that! Going along with the bus tender mercies we made it a point this week to try to talk to more people on the bus and just make them feel good. We aren't allowed to proselyte on the busses unless they ask about it, but we have been trying super hard for people to just feel uplifted after talking to us. And when we got to our stop the bus driver talked to us before we got off and said that he was listening to us talk to people and he just wanted to tell us to keep smiling because we really are making a difference in people's lives. So again, the Lord coming in clutch with the confidence boosts!

So we have started this fun game where we see who can give away the most pass along cards/ BOMs/ pamphlets and whoever wins at the end of the week the other person owes them a treat. So that has been a fun motivation for us both to just talk to literally everybody! We have been killing the street contacts this week! It's been pretty awesome.

We met with this less active in our ward-- that was also super interesting. The first thing that she says to us when we walked in was "I'm looking at 2-10 years in prison and I'm totally content with that." Ha so that goes to show you what an odd meeting that was. Don't worry I think she'll be fine.

We had some good lessons this week with Linda and Dara. Linda is on date for October 8 and Dara is on date for October 15! So we're pretty excited for what we got going on. They are both super adorable and you can see the difference in them from the first time I met with them to now... it's incredible!

Lastly, WASN'T WOMEN'S CONFERENCE LIKE THE BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD?!?! I seriously just ate the whole thing up, it was so good. Leave it to President Uchtdorf man! His talk was amazing! All the talks were great but I especially liked his. When he talked about going to the "last door, 4th floor." Never has a little statement like that been so relatable. It just makes me feel like pressing on even when it's hard because eventually you will find that person that is so ready to meet with you. I'm so pumped for conference this week you have no idea!!!

Anyway, this upcoming week is going to be great. We're just going out and finding more people to teach :)

Love you all and hope that you have a fantastic week!

Quote of the week: "If you're going to serve others or worship the Lord, you're the happiest and most effective when you do it with all the joy and energy you have."

Scripture of the week: D&C 123:17-- Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.

-Sister King :)

HELLO FROM LETHBRIDGE!

HELLO FROM LETHBRIDGE!

Not gonna lie,  this week has been pretty rough and not very many exciting things happened during the week. Both me and Sister Blake had really, really bad colds.  Like to the point where we were coughing and sneezing more than we weren't... that was pretty hard because our work is starting to calm down a little so we felt like we should be doing so many more things but we just couldn't cause we were sick. But on the plus side we are feeling so much better now and this week can only be better! :)

We ate with this super cute family the other night.

Tuesday we had a few lessons but like I said those were kinda rough because of the sickness... also our super awesome investigator dropped us that day. So that was just pretty rough all around. 

Wednesday was about the same as Tuesday.  Our other solid investigator decided to go back to her Catholic religion. It's really hard to see someone who was progressing so much and found so much joy in the gospel just not want to take that step towards baptism. Luckily we got to meet with the lady we found in the hospital that we put on date. Her health is getting a little better but I don't think that she will be quite ready to be baptized on the original date that we set, but she is still progressing which is great! 

Thursday was awesome because we got to have interviews with President. Have I mentioned how awesome President Miles is? Cause for real he literally answered all the questions that I had going into the meeting and I didn't have to say anything. It was great, coming out of that I felt loads better! That carried over to Friday.

The spanish elders "porcupined" our car for April fools... pretty solid.

We ate with this awesome family that had a recording studio in their house so obviously we had to try it out!

Friday was so stressful but so great! The zone leaders got us a referral.  They played basketball with this kid and his friends were going on missions so he was wondering why. Super awesome for us! The stressful part was that we had to get a girl to come with us so that we could teach. We called literally everybody we could think of and no one could come! The very last girl that we called (like 15 minutes before we were supposed to be there) ended up being able to come! The Lord answers prayers!! So we went to that lesson and the Zone leaders were there and they were doing exchanges with the APs... so it was Me, Sister Blake, The Zone leaders and one of the APs... talk about intimidation! And then we walked in and there were actually 2 nonmembers there and 2 friends. So there was about 10 of us in one room teaching the first lesson. It ended up going really well and we picked up 2 new investigators! YAY! Then we got a call from an unknown number and it just so happened to be the Simmonds family from my home ward in Provo. I got to meet up with them and that was just so much fun!

GENERAL CONFERENCE IS THE BEST TIME OF THE YEAR!!

Holy smokes, I loved conference so much! I seriously got so much out of every single talk! It's the most I have ever gotten out of a conference. One thing that I particularly loved was Elder Holland, ha he just always brings it! The Lord really is happy that we are trying our best and even just wanting to be better. Sometimes on the mission it is especially hard to keep this in mind because there are so many things that you want to improve on and it can be overwhelming at times, but it was so great to hear what Elder Holland had to say.

One other thing that I really loved was the talk about rescuing. I want to challenge you all to look around and see if there is someone who needs saving... it can be so easy. And don't delay!! Just do it!

Anyway, the end of the week definitely evened out the crumby week that we had and our spirits are high again and we are ready to work.

The church is true and we have a living prophet on the earth today. I love this gospel so much, it makes me so happy and listening to the servants of the Lord is seriously just the best.

Love you all so much and have a fantastic week! Remember what you learned in conference!

Sister King