Pictures from Iowa

Hi Everyone,
So Guess what? We have a car now....I guess they felt sorry for us. They're going to sell it once they get the new one that we're supposed to get. We are still going to try to use our bikes a lot though because we don't have very many miles.
Like I said I was going to do, I cut some hair, it was fun. I'm going to dye some hair tonight. Hmmmmmm, I think the hardest thing about being out here is when we teach people the gospel and feel the spirit with them and they aren't willing to do anything about it, they aren't willing to change their lives to accept it. We were listening to a talk by Elder Holland in the car yesterday that he gave recently to the new mission presidents who were called. He was talking about why missions aren't easier. We think, "The gospel is true, we believe in miracles" Why aren't people flocking to hear our message. He said, "the only fear we should have is the risk of getting pheumonia from being in the water too long from baptizing so many people". (for Elders obviously). But his answer was that "Salvation was never easy!" "Nothing about the gospel is easy, not missionary work, not retention. People don't want to do things that are hard. And the things that they need to change their lives in order to live the standards of the church are hard.
We had a funny experience with this lady who prayed for Hermana Hancock's body to be healed. She was just really really passionate when she was praying. Man, she was really getting into it. And after her prayer she asked if any of us were hurt and Hermana Hancock said she had a headache earlier so she threw her hands up to Hermana Hancock and started praying again for "every muscle, ever tissue, every joint, every fiber of her being"
...I wonder if it helped. Probable, that lady had a lot of faith. (She's American)
We were teaching this couple that's in the trailer park and after a couple of lessons the wife didn't seem to be really interested but her husband did so one of the times we taught him on the patio at night. A couple of days later we were walking on the street near there and somebody was "ppsssssss"ing us. I guess he had been in his car looking for us because he was afraid we would go by his house and his wife would yell at us. She tore up the Book of Mormon we gave them and all of the pamplets and that night we taught him she didn't let him into the house until 5 in the morning. She hasn't been making him any food or talking to him or anything. It's really sad, I guess she thinks we're out looking for husbands. But her husband is like 60. I hope she didn't hear anything about polygamy cause there are 3 of us...uhhhh, yeah. He's really spiritually in tune and he told us that he prayed about it and he knows it's true but if he were to be baptized his wife would tell all of his kids not to talk to him and they all listen to her. I think we're going to give him to the Elders here because we know she has a problem with us being women, but if the Elders go then we can find out if that's the only problem or if it has to do with the church as well.
This work is really hard but really awesome at the same time. I just want everyone to know how wonderful it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are having a Sisters Conference in Nauvoo this Thursday. It's going to be really fun. I'm excited because we get to go to the temple too! It's cool, the last time I was inside of it was for the open house 10 years ago. I don't know any of the English sisters very well so it will be fun to get to know them better.
Hermana Hepworth
PS it snowed for the first time here on Sunday. It was only for like 30 seconds nut still. I guess they usually have a lot of snow here by now.

Hermana Hepworth and new companion Hermana Hancock in Des Moines Iowa. Hermana Hepworth on her bike ready to go out and share the gospel.

Celebrating my birthday in July in Iowa

Service

Hi Everyone,
Not much time today, we've just been super busy spreading the gospel :) There are a lot more people walking around on the street here so it's really easy to talk to a lot of people during the day. It's kinda fun just talking to every single person you see and telling them about our unique message to the world.

Hermana Murphy has been telling EVERYONE that I cut hair and we're supposed to do 4 hours of service every week so our service is going to be me cutting hair. It's a good thing I like to do it!

We have a theme for this transfer, we're going to have faith in order for miracles to occur (cause we need a lot of miracles for certain things to happen) I looked in the index for the scriptures and it doesn't ever talk about miracles happening without speaking about faith in order to achieve them. I like this scripture in Mosiah 8:18 that says "God has provided a means that man (woman), through faith, might work mighty miracles; therefore (s)he becometh a great benefit to his/her fellow beings." It's a good one for missionary work because through our faith, miracles are geing brought to pass for the benefit of our fellow beings to come unto Christ. Also in my personal study I have found a really good scripture in Alma 48:8-9, When Amalickiah is preparing to go to war against the Nephities and this is what Moroni was doing to prepare the Nephites. They were "building walls of stone to encircle them about their cities and the borders of their lands; yea, all around about the land. And in their weakest fortifications he did place the greater number of men; and thus he did fortify and strengthen the land which was possessed by the Nephites.' The reason why I really like that scriputre is because this is what we need to be doing to ourselves to protect ourselves against Satan. He's going to attack the weakest parts and so we should strengthen those parts. There's so much symbolism in the Book of Mormon, I love it!

Well there's a lot more that needs to be said but not enought time. There's a giant trailer park here that is probably 97% Hispanic so we spend a lot of time there. There are some investigators that are trying to quit smoking and they're having a really hard time. There's a program we have in order to stop which includes using grapefruit juice, cinnimon toothpaste, mouthwash, and vitamin C tablets. I'm not really sure how they do it, it has something to do with changing the tastes in your mouth a lot. They haven't started it yet because they don't have all the stuff but they really want to quit. We decided to try to quite doing some habit that we have too. Hermanas Murphy and Hancock bit their nails, so they're going to stop that. I didn't really know what to do. I said I was going to stop popping my zits, which I now know how to say in Spanish. Well, on that note, I'm goinna to close.

Hermana Hepworth

PS How was Halloween? We didn't see any trick or treaters because we had to be indoors by 6 on Saturday.