October 10,2017 Email :D

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

What?! Has Sister Van Valkenburg lost her marbles?! Nope! Thanksgiving here in Canada is October 9th. Weird. I know. I kept getting freaked out with people celebrating Thanksgiving...thinking I missed the whole months of October and November! Haha! Time really is flying by though! I hit my halfway mark on Saturday...that was really weird! We celebrated by going to KFC...a little piece of home. But KFC here in Canada has just completely messed up because they don't have BISCUITS!!!!!! That's literally the main reason we decided to go to KFC!!! We were sorely disappointed. :( But it's okay!! :) 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we have been sharing a fun message with members about happiness and gratitude. We have been singing a lot and sang "Count your Blessings" with the accompanying scripture:

D&C 78:17-19 

17 Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;

18 And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.

19 And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.

 Isn't that such a gem?! Another gem from this week was something that Sister Giles shared in her talk on Sunday! I was supposed to speak, but because I was already singing, I was asked to speak next week instead! She gave her talk on seeking happiness and finding the good in life. She shared a really sweet quote: "happiness is like a butterfly. If we chase it, it will allude us. But if we sit and enjoy the beauty around us, it will come and sit on our shoulder." Something along those lines. It's so true, though! As we chase after things, they may float away. But there are so many miracles and beautiful things that surround us every single day!! Got has given us so much!! "He has showed us how to be happy, we just need to follow." -Sister Giles

We had Zone Conference this last week as well! President Wong is so hilarious!! He told us again the analogy of the turkey. There was a meeting of all the turkeys, teaching them how to fly! They went to the meeting, learned to fly (it was amazing!!!) and then they all walked out of the meeting. He keeps telling us two things: 

1) Don't be a turkey! President Wong told us that if we are caught being turkeys that he will order a special name tag for us that instead of "Sister Van Valkenburg" says "Turkey Van Valkenburg" Nobody will know the difference on the street, he said! And he will make us wear it for a whole transfer!! No bueno!! I promised I wouldn't be a turkey! I might be out of the loop though, because he told me (in front of the whole zone) that I especially couldn't be a turkey because they might be able to fit it on my name tag XD

2) chop chop!! (He had every language spoken in our zone come up and say "chop chop" at the same time in their language.Trying to prove a point here: We need to be urgent!)

Something I also loved about Zone Conference: There was an analogy given about running track. When running a lap in track, you have checkpoints of where you want to be at certain points of your run. 'at 20 seconds I want to be here, and 40: here' etc. The Elder giving the training said that at each checkpoint, you need to course correct. If you haven't reached your desired time, you know that you need to make it up before the next checkpoint. It's like that with our personal goals. As we set goals for ourselves, we need to make checkpoints and re-evaluate at every turn! We don't give up if we haven't been able to reach our desired goal at our checkpoint, but we refocus and push harder! It was really cool to hear! :) 

Oh! Like I said, I have been singing a lot! The night before Zone Conference at like 10:00 we got a phone call from Elder Deppe (District Leader) "Sisters! We need your help!" They asked us to do a musical number for Zone Conference! Elder Deppe and I ended up singing a duet of "Joseph Smith's first prayer" to the tune of "If you could High to Kolob" It was beautiful! I got a video of it so I'll show it....in about 9 months XD I also sang a duet with Elder Deppe in church Sunday. It's called "Because He Lives" It's BEAUTIFUL!! We will sing it next Sunday as well at a stake fireside. I'll see if I can get a video of that as well. 

Quote of the week from my Bishop: "Duct tape your face to the grindstone!" Haha he went on to talk about how that's why we have companions: To help with the duct tape. Oh man XD

We went bowling as a zone for p-day last week! Here is a shot of the sisters! We are just missing one companionship.

Most of the zone is here in this pic!
​And a nice personality shot! From left to right: Elder Deppe, me, Elder Mathews, Sister Bak, and Sister Hatch

 Thanksgiving dinner was spent with our sweet investigator Donna (in pic) and her miracle daughter I've written about, Tianna. Here's a pic of the spread! Donna is a raw food chef, and the pumpkin pie pictured is raw. It was actually pretty good!

I found a big gun thingie at a military base here! ....that's about all I know...but is was cool!