February 22, 2016

This week was great!! And it looks like you guys had a great time at Grandma and Grandpa's 50th Anniversary Party! I was looking at the pictures and just thinking Wow! Everyone looks so different I feel I don't know you guys anymore!! It is going to be SO incredibly weird going home!! Hopefully I'm not to different and weird for you guys as well!

Anyways, that's not for a while still so I am going to focus now. This week I got to go to Banff again but this time for exchanges!! The Lord knows me too well not to send me to Banff full time because it is pretty much like a constant vacation out in the mountains. The whole time I had a strong desire to go camping and shopping! There are a ton of little shops up there. It will definitely be a place I need to go back and have a real vacation at though:) We also had what is called a Beaver Tail, so delicious!! It is pretty much indian fry bread with nutella on it or any other toppings you want on it but a hundred times better!! The only problem with Banff is it is really expensive and there isn't a lot of missionary work stuff to do haha:) They do a lot of tracting and boy can I tell you how much I do not miss tracting! I am so grateful for our endless supply of people to teach and visit in this area that we don't even have time to tract!! Working with members is the way to go! There are always good stories from tracting though haha. We met a guy that talked to us on exhanges for half an hour and he had some dead animal on his head:) Funny stuff...

Saturday we went to go visit a girl in the hospital because the hospital is in our area and her mom thought she would like some company. They are members so we stopped by and figured out that the girl had been in a crazy car accident in January and broke both of her femurs and had half of her body paralyzed. It was a miracle story that she was even alive!! Crazy stuff!! But she was super sweet, only 18 years old. it was sad though because she was planning on playing basketball in college but that probably won't happen anymore... 

And Sunday was the best!!! We had stake conference this week so we didn't have to stay at church all day and we got a lot done!! We taught a lady the stop smoking program which is supposed to help you quit in 7 days so we are praying really hard that it will work!!! And because she is doing this we thought we would give something up for 7 days as well so we gave up sugar!! Do you know how hard that is on the mission?? Everyone feeds you sugar on the mission!! But we know quitting smoking will be a lot harder so we can sacrifice this for her:) And she has tons of support from her friends and family so I know she can do it!! And after she is done with the program we are going to start teaching her!! New investigator!!

We also stopped by at one of our potentials houses yesterday and she let us in. We played with the kids and Sister Allard was able to share a little message with her and set up a time next week to see her again!! Another new investigator!! THe white handbook is really right when it says Saturdays and Sundays are the best proselyting days but we have just never been able to proselyte on Sunday because we are in church all day. Who knew??

Life is good!! I am loving the work and it just seems to keep on picking up more and more the longer I am here!! I am not complaining!! Oh and I found another good talk you should read. It is called "His Grace is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox also on speeches.byu.edu. It changed my life!!!

I love you guys!! Stay beautiful and don't forget to smile!!

Love,

Sister Hatch

 "Have you been changed by grace?"- His Grace is Sufficient

Some sisters in the ward

The Blumel's

Doing some baking!