Called to Serve: Slurpee's... Chili... and a Shiny New Car;)

This has been a busy week! :)

Every year the church sponsors a city-wide food drive for the food banks here in Calgary, and every stake is assigned to run it in their boundaries. So on monday we ran around passing out bags and flyers for the food drive for like 2 hours!! And then on Saturday we spent another 3 hours driving around and picking the bags of food up that people set out on their porches! :) It was SO fun! We went with a couple in our wards bishopric, the Fairbanks (remember the name- i love them), and were able to get A LOT done! Then on Sunday they announced that the food drive collected over 200,000 kg of food!! I couldn't believe how generous people were even with the economy being really poor right now in Alberta.

This week we also had our Zone Conference! :)

That was a ton of fun especially because... WE GOT A NEW CAR!
And when I say new... I mean... NEW! Like, there were only 40 km on the car when we got it because that's how far it took to get to us from the dealership! NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW!

It's a 2016 Nissan Rogue, and I have never felt this spoiled before in my life! (which is saying something...) It's been a HUGE blessing, especially because now we have a way of listening to music in the car! haha! Our other car apparently was one of the very oldest cars in the mission, so when the mission bought some new cars, we got one! Talk about moving up the food chain! :)

We love it, and are soooo grateful for it! We joke about how it's the nicest car either of us will be driving for quite some time now...

Also, Zone Conference was a totally nerve wrecking experience because Sister Miles asked me to be the accompanist for the meeting! It's funny. No matter how many times you tell people you can't play piano... no body ever believes you...

But thanks to the ultimate grace of my Father in Heaven I was able to play the songs they chose! Not only that, but was also able to accompany a musical number that we picked 20 minutes before the meeting started!! I definitely give all the credit of being able to pull that off to my very loving Heavenly Father! WHoo!

Yesterday we had ward conference, and our investigator who is scheduled to be baptized this Sunday never showed up! I was really really disappointed by that and started to get a little down on myself, which I really try to avoid because I know I'm doing my best. But, nonetheless, I found myself feeling frustrated and discouraged by it. It hung over me the rest of the day even as we were able to meet up with our investigator later and find out why he didn't come, and then had a lesson with him.

But at the end of the day, as Sister Ence and I were filling out our key indicators and discussing the day, I had the realization of how many things I was able to learned from our meetings, and how well our lesson went with Emanuel after church, and how sweet the members were who had us over for dinner. I was filled with gratitude as I could feel the pessimism melt away, and the joy of counting my blessing come back into my life. It's so amazing to me that all it takes to be happy in life is simple gratitude and acknowledgement of the Lord's hand in our lives.

I am so grateful for a Savior who can always turn what seems like a bad day into a an amazing one.

It's been a good week and I know we'll keep seeing miracles as we focus on the good, and never let the imperfections of life get us down.

It's my prayer that you will all do the same!

Much love,

Sister Dobyns:)

p.s. Follow @alexwilliams on insta

(I promised I would include that haha)