WARNING

WARNING" YOU'RE GONNA WANT TO GET OUT YOUR SCRIPTURES.  I haven't been able to teach our recent convert Skylar for a very long time.  2 months in fact.  So we've had this super awesome lesson planned for him and we were actually able to teach it.  There's a cool story in ALMA 47:1-19 about a man named Lehonti.  We read those scriptures with the Crossetts and talked about what Lehonti's downfall was.  I invite you all to read those scriptures and ponder what Lehonti's downfall was.  He should've not come down the mountain at all but stuck with what he first said in verse 6 because by coming down the mountain it is eventually "ministered poison by degrees" verse 18 and dies.  We compared that to how Satan tempts us.  He doesn't tempt us to go out and rob a bank but he gets us with small things and gradually works up to the bigger things.  We compared that to how Amalickiah (the bad guy) killed in ALMA 51:34.  Teanum puts "a javelin to his heart".  I think I scared sister Crassett to death when I pulled out a mini nerf gun and shot her with it.  This is how we should kill Satan.  We should get him out before he has any power over us.  Then came the fun part of the lesson, we acted it out.  Everybody was reluctant to do it and we heard some groans, "I don't want to act it out"  But  they did it anyway and it was REALLY fun!  Everyone was laughing and they all had a great time.  We asked them to read ALMA 47-51 as a family thoughout the week.  Sometimes as you read the war chapters it can be hard.  I know for me I've thought "When are these wars ever going to end?"  But in reality there are a lot of really cool things in the war chapters.  A lot of great comparisons between the wicked people and Satan.  I especially love ALMA 48: 8-9.  This is how we should prepare ourselves against Satan.

The rest of this week was kinda hard, mostly because from September 2-5 there's something in Mt Pleasant called the "Old Thresher Reunion".  Everyone has been at that this week.  We were able to do some service there this week taking tickets.  We met some interesting characters....
We were able to teach Tami and Matt this week.  We also have been plugging away teaching Kami and Seth.  We've taught him all of the commandments now and he doesn't seem to really have a problem with any of them. WooHoo!  We had a super fun lesson on following the prophet/apostles about commandments we've taught them found in the last conference Ensign, April 2011.  After we heard the Prophet's council Sister Lance read a scenario where Kami and Seth would have to decide whether they would choose to follow the Prophets's council or not.  They made the right choice everytime.  Even when I was "Satan" and tried to entice them with candy.  I asked Seth if he liked chocolate and he said no, he likes carmel.  I told him that's what I had (even though it wasn't) because believe it or not Satan lies sometimes.  If they went against the council they had to go to the right of the chair we had set up and we had lots of obstacles.  But if they followed the council the pathway was clear.  I forgot to mention they were blindfolded.  As their reward for Following the Prophet they got a great big candy bar.  We've been working with another parmember family.  The Mangolds, last Sunday we taught them and invited them to church and they actually came this week.  Paula is a less active member and her husband Scott is a nonmember and he needs to gain a testimony of Joseph Smith being a prophet.  He says when he prays about it he doesn't feel any different afterwards.
It's time for me to sign off now friends and family.
I welcome your questions and comments with open arms!  :)
Love
Hermana Jilyn Hepsworth
8515 Douglas Avenue  #19
Urbandale, Iowa    50322

PS Here are some picturesSister Rippenkroeger and I teaching Dr. Shulls a lesson about faith.

August 22, 2011

We have had the most amazing lesson planned for Dr. Shull....the problem is our appointments keep getting cnacelled.  We think it's Satan.  He does not want us to teach this lesson to Dr. Shull.

We taught Danielle and Ian last Monday.  Ian still hasn't read from the Book of Mormon so we had him pull it out and he said, "Alright, so how do you operate this bad boy?"  We taught them the Plan of Salvation.  I don't want to go into too many details...but he's got a lot of INTERESTING ideas.  We had Family Home Evening with the Rippenkroegers (returning to activity in the church!)  It was really interesting because they have a fella named Raz living with them.  He's had a hard life, ran into a lot of problems with the law and we think he has some mental problems as well.  I don't think I've ever had a lesson with so many cuss words in it before.  He was telling us how when he was 19 he was traveling from California to Wisconsis and on his way he was walking on a highway in Utah.  A man picked him up and took him through all the buildings on Temple Square and they spent the whole day doing things there.  At the end of the day the man offered for him to live with him and take care of him and he would help him change his life or he could take $100 and get out of the car and keep walking.  Raz decided to take the money and he never made it to Wisconsin.  He ended up committing a crime that landed him 25 years in prison.  Talk about a decision that could have changed his life.  He kept telling me he had a feeling I was related to this man that could have changed his life.  He doesn't know his name so I guess we'll never know.

We had an awesome lesson with Kami and Seth on the Word of Wisdom.  The best part was that before the appointment we had a meeting with our Branch mission leader, we had a little misunderstanding with his wife last week and she has been mad at us so we were hoping the Lord would touch her heart.  Well it turns out he did because she was a lot friendlier to us and Sister Dalton even had the impression to invite her to come to the appointment with Kami and Seth, which turned out to be amazing because Seth has no issues with the Word of Wisdom.  It's actually Kami, who is the member that has a problem with coffee and tea.  Sister Larose was able to relate SO well to Kami because those were the hardest things for her to give up whe she joined the church.  She still craves coffee but her desire is stronger to live the Word of Wisdom.  Another amazing thing is that Seth received an answer that he needs to be baptized!!!!!  It's so exciting, we've been praying so hard for that!  He wants to be baptized on his birthday.  October 1st.  That's conference weekend so we';ll probably do it in between sessions.

We helped Sister Sanchez teach her lesson to the Young Women on scripture study, she told a personal story and I'd like to share it with you.  "When do we have to read the scriptures everyday?"  I would answer their questions with another question.  "Do you have to eat everyday?"  "Yes, if we don't eat we'll die."  Well that's how it is with the scriptures.  We need to feel ourselves physically AND spiritually.  I really enjoyed that story, so I thought you would too!

Be sure and write and keep me in  touch with you.

Love you all
Hermana Jilyn Hepworth
8515 Douglas Avenue  #19
Urbandale, Iowa    50322

Lots of Weeds

August 10, 2011
 We still haven't been able to contact David and Stacy and I'm pretty upset about that because Stacy was starting to change her life and you could just tell she was happier and now she's avoiding us.  I've grown to love her so much so it makes me very sad!
Probably the coolest things that have happened this week...
We started talking  to this Hispanic lady in the park but it soon became apparent that she only wanted to bash.  Well bashing never brings the Spirit (who is the REAL teacher) so there's no point in it.  I wanted to tell her that we didn't want to argue with her, we could only invite her to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and decide for herselp if it was true or not.  Well, I didn't know the word for "argue" so I asked Sister Dalton but she didn't kinow either and so I just started saying it even though I didn't know how.  The most amazing thing happened.  I said the right work for "argue" in Spanish and I didn't know it.  It was pretty much a miracle.  That woman was very aggressive, she was up in our faces talking very, very loud. 

We have been teaching Kami and Seth for the past couple of weeks and it's been going pretty great!  At first we thought he was learning for Kami's sake, but we now think he's felt the Spirit in our lessons. (I know I have)  This last lesson we had with them I had the overwhelming feeling towards the end that he would be baptized and after the lesson, I found out that Sister Dalton had the same feeling at about the same time.

Probably the coolest thing that happened was our experience with Dr. Shull.  We have not been ablt to contact him for forever but it so happened that in the middle of last week we were driving to an appointment but Hermana Dalton had taken the wrong road so she had to turn and go down another one.  Well it so happened that we drive past Dr. Shull and he stopped and talked to us.  It turns out his daughter has been having chest pains so that's why we haven't been able to catch him.  We set an appointment and it was an AMAZING lesson.  We went by his Chiropractic office to teach him during his lunch break and we have been teaching him these past 4 months but had yet to invite him to be baptized.  I think it's because he has so much potential.  He's got great values and he's basically like a dry mormon so we didn't want to scare him off.  Well, the tim had come that we had to establish expectations and find out WHY he wants to learn from us.  The lesson was very spirit guided and we finally invited him to be baptized.  It went like this.  "IOf you found out the Book of Mormon was true and this church was true would you be baptized? ME  "Well I'd have to be!  Yeah"  We haven't met his wife yet so we told him we want to and he said he didn't know if she'd accept it and so we are praying really hard that he reads and prays and finds out that the Book of Mormon is true and talks to his wife about it and she has a soft heart.

I saw these sayings on churches around here and I thought they were funny.  "Friends, don't let frineds die without know Jesus."  "Forgive your enemies, it will mess with their minds."
Gotta go!
PS  We pulled a LOT of weeds this week FYI. I'm an expert at it now.

Hi Everyone,
Oh my goodness it is so hot and humid here! But I really don't mind. It's better than the bone chilling cold that makes you lose the feeling in your toes. I'd rather feel like I'm melting any day! And it does feel like you're melting!
We were able to meet with a less active girl, Stacy. She is so different. She's been changing so much...and for the better. She wants to come back to church and have God in her life. It's so amazing to see somebody go through that change. We talk to people all of the time and see the potential that they have, but so few live up to that potential because they don't want to change. So to actually see somebody making those changes brings such great joy to my life!
We had some lessons with Santos. She's been going through a lot of hard tings in her life right now. She told us that it seems like whenever she's trying to get closer to God it is when life seems to get harder. Is it any wonder why, when to get closer to our Heavenly Father is the last thing that Satan wants. He doesn't want us to be happy. Santos is making lots of progress, she just lost her job and so she told us she wasn't going to be able to make it to church this week because she had to make tamales to sell so she would have money. She had to make them on Sunday because she wouldn't have enough money to buy the meat for the tamales until then. So we thought she wouldn't be there...but something miraculous happened. She came to church! All on her own too, usually we call her in the morning to wake her up and she has to get a ride from the Arguetas but none of that happened and she just showed up! We were happy, she wants to get baptized but she's marred to a man in Guatemala and living with her not husband but she can't get a divorce for a couple of months.
We've been working with a less active, Sister Rippenkroeger and her daughter Debi. I love them so much!!! They're starting to return to activity and they just gave Sister Rippenkroeger a calling. It's like wha I was talking about before with Stacy. It's so awesome to see people take those steps to come back.
When we've been going to Nauvoo, we offer the people we talk to the opportunity to send the soundtrack of the music from the pageant to their nonmenber friends or if they themselves are nonmemberw we offer to have missionaries bring it to them. So we carry around forms for people to fill out for that and because it's so hot we've been fanning people with papers. It's fun, they like it! We were finally able to actually see the pageant this Saturday. The Parkers (members) drove up down to Nauvoo and we spent the night with them. It was really fun!!!
I told you about Mariah last week. Well...she dropped us :( It's really sad and it hasn't happened to me that much on my mission because the Hispanics are so nice they never drop you. You have to drop them if they're not progressing.
Kamrai (LA) brought her nonmember husband to a lesson again at the Lance's yesterday and they came with us to the Pioneer Day Broadcast from Salt Lake (even though it really wasn't about the pioneers like we had thought it was.)
Well, I love and miss you all! Write me a letter, it's my only line to the outside world:)
Plus it's my birthday next week.

Looking for the hand of the Lord

We had a really cool week! Remember the video I told you about last time by President Eyring? Well we've been asking the question each night to ourselves. "HOW DID WE SEE THE LORDS HAND IN THE WORK TODAY? " And we've been able to see lots of miracles. It's amazing, when we recognize the Lords hand in our lives it's almost as if He blesses us with even more. I was talking about it with Sister Dalton and she said, "Its like He's saying "Good job!" Here's some more." :) Here are some examples: We had an appointment with a less active girl named Stacy. She's awesome and super nice, really we love her to death...but she's never home for the appointments we make with her. Well, last MONDAY we had an appointment and she and her nonmember boyfriend (David) were actually home! They're actually the ones I talked about last week who we ran into at the gas station.
Okay, there's more:
TUESDAY: We've been working with another less active girl, Danielle. She's so awesome too but she's been offended at church and is apprehensive to come back. Well I don't rememeber if you remember me writing about an experience I had a couple of months ago about her and her non member boyfriend (Ian) I'll give a summary of it just to refresh your memory. We found Danielle's informantion and we decided to stop by and see her one day but her parents told us she had moved and gave us her new address. We didn't feel like we should see her at that moment (even though we had time) We had the impression later that night to go see her. What happened was she was at home and invited us in and 2 minutes later her boyfriend came home and we ended up teaching them. He told us that he was looking for a church to go to. End of that story. So months pass and we're able to visit with Danielle but not Ian...he's always working. The miracle on Tuesday was that they were both there that day and we watched the Restoration movie with them. (If you haven't seen it it's basically Joseph Smith's story searching for the true church.) Something cool that happened afterwards was we started talking about prophets and Ian told us he didn't like that word, "but you never know, something could change...I just watched that movie and something just changed", he said he hadn't read in the Book of Mormon before that but he said after watching the movie he felt "a stronger desire to read it." The Spirit was there really strong for that lesson.
WEDNESDAY was a day of finding people at home that I've been trying to meet for the past 3 months and was finally able to! The Mitchels: a less active family with an interesting story (I'll save that for another time" and a woman named Mariah the other Sisters had tracted into before I got here. It was just about time to go home that night but Sister Dalton said, "Who else can we go see?" I felt an impression that we needed to see this woman. We tried her and she was home and invited us back the next day!
THURSDAY I titled in my planner as "MIRACLE DAY" We taught a hispanic woman named Tomasa. We've been teaching her for a couple of weeks. We met her while doing service at a restaurant in town called Little Mexico. She told us that she's already been baptized before in another church and if that was okay. We taught her about the Priesthood and invited her to be baptized and she said yes :) She also invited herself to church (I hate it when that happens:)
Miriah was home for our appointment with her and she's got lots of potential! The Spririt was strong at the lesson, we have another appointment with her for Wednesday. I'll have to let you know what happens with that. When we went down to the pageant on FRIDAY, we got to talk to some Hispanics and they gave us a referral...amazing!
SATURDAY something interesting happened, we had some time at 6 pm and decided to see a referral the Lances (members) had given us. But when we got there it just didn't feel right. (even thought we knew she was home) So we went to dinner with a less active (Todd, the same one that told us to make pigs of ourselves) and he also finally admitted to us that he had been praying, when before he always told us "that's for me to know". We've been sending him texts morning and night to remind him to pray for the past 4 months. After that we decided to try the referral again. Susana is her name, but the Lnaces were outside (they're her neighbors) and they told us she wasn't home. They invited us in and as we were talking to them Sister Dalton and I both received revelation at the same time that the Lances's were the ones wo needed to invite Susana to learn.
We had a lesson with a less active named Kamrai on SUNDAY who has just moved into the area with her husband...who is a nonmember. We were supposed to meet with her at the Lances house and we did. What ended up being really cool was she unexpectedly brought her husband. We made an appointment with her for next week and he's going to come to that as well.
So many other amazing things happened to us this week and I'm so glad that we took the time each night to recognize how much the Lord has truly blessed us!
Love you All!!!!!!!

Nauvoo Pageant

July 11, 2011

Hi Everyone,

This week has gone by so fast!!!!!! A lot of it has been in the car, driving back and forth to Nauvoo to help with the pageant. We actually haven't seen the pageant yet. We talk to people who are playng 1840's games in the County Fair nearby the pageant grounds and then we leave right before the pageant starts. We'll be able to see it at least one time though :) The Arguetas (members) took Santos and Orlando (Investigators) to Nauvoo this last Saturday. They also went spontaneously to Carthage and miraculously made it in the nick of time for the last tour. They said they could feel the Spirit really strongly there and they had a really great experience. They want to go back again in a couple of weeks.

I watched an awesome video on Mormon messages. It's called "O Remember, Remember." by President Eyring. I encourage you all to watch it! He talks about when his children were small he would take time at the end of each day to review it and see how God had blessed him. He encouraged all of us to ask this question, "Did God send a message that was just for me?" As I've done this I have been able to recognize more fully how much God's hand is in our lives and in this work!

One of those miracles being that we drove up to a gas station and whose car happens to be on the other side but a family we've been trying for forever to get in contact with. Coincidence? I think not!

Funny things:
We were in the car talking about an investigator, I said "I don't know what to do about Lorenzo?" and then we heard a voice saying "Hello" (Hispanic accent) It was Lorenzo. I had pocket dialed him and he probably heard me..It's a good thing he doesn't speak English. Ooops!
"What do you think of when you hear the word prophet?" said Sister Dalton Brittney responded with "Money"
Hope you all have a great week!
Love
Hermana Hepworth

Happy 45h of July

July 5, 2011

Hi Everyone,
For the past month I was companions with Hermana Draney and Sister Whitbeck and we were going back and forth between carthage and Mt. Pleasant. Sister Whitbeck is English speaking only. We had our transfer meeting on Thursday and now Hermana Dalton is my companion in Mt. Pleasant and we're no longer going back and forth. But we sort of will be because we're helping out with the Nauvoo Pageant this month. We'll be going down there Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That means we're going down there today. It's the first night of the pageant tonight :) It goes until July 30th.
Hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July. Love all of you!

Hermana Hepworth