Never Be Weary of Good Works

Wow there are so so SO many things that happened this week that I could honestly take hours to write about! BUT unfortunately I do not have time for that! So here is my BRIEF sum up! (Keep in mind this is the brief version) 

Monday:

• Love of my life Kaylan Bae McKelvie came to visit from Calgary!! Oh man, words literally cannot describe how happy I was to see her<3 We grabbed lunch with her and Stuart and then when our dinner cancelled, we grabbed dinner with them! :D And as if the gift of seeing my best friend wasn't enough, she invited her non-member friend from lethbridge to dinner with us too! Who we are now planning on teaching!!:D plentiful miracles! 
• We did service for our Investigator Mike and his wife Kathy! We helped them with some yard work and plant their garden- And when Mike went inside for a minute to make some lemonade, Kathy told us that Mike is making so much progress, and explained to his dad was a priesthood blessing was this week, and shared his amazing story, and asked if he would want one!!! WHAT?? so awesome!!! 

Tuesday: 

• We had Zone Conference and it was soo incredible! I felt the spirit so strongly the whole way through, and it just excited me even more to be a good missionary! I loved it so much! And while we were there they made a few announcements:
  1- P-day will now be held on TUESDAY starting next week! That will be a little weird of an adjustment, but not too big of a deal- so just a heads up when I don't e-mail next monday, I'm not dead. Just wait til tueday haha:)
  2- Our mission will finally be getting the infamous Teewee boxes in July! (So grateful I'll only be around for a month of those!)
  3- Once a week we will be required to park our cars and walk or bike for the day! We are super pumped about that one!:D We've been looking for an excuse to ride our bikes more so it should be good! 
• We had a dinner appointment that was super awesome! The couple was so excited about missionary work, and coming out with us and things! And we have seen so many other members start to feel the same way! :D Hooray! 

Wednesday:

• We went to the yw activity and got to meet lots of the girls that don't come out to church. And once they had talked with us for a little they realized how normal we are, and agreed to see us again!:D 

Thursday:

• We had a lesson with a recent convert out on the grass in front of the church, and right as we were saying the closing prayer it started to trickle a little bit. But as soon as we started walking towards our cars it just started down pouring!!! #perfecttimiming! Mini miracles all around! 
• We met with our new ward mission leader, and assistant ward mission leader, and they are SO amazing! They have already helped us out sooo much! i know there are going to be so many miracles in this ward because of them! 
• We had an amazing lesson with Mike again! And talked about all the miracles that he has seen in his lifetime, and how that has been God working with him. He agreed to give God at least 1 minute of every day- and then to build on that once he begins to recognize God answering him. And believe it or not that was such a miraculous commitment for him to make! 

Friday: 

• We went to the food bank to fill out a volunteer form and the lady that was helping us with it starting asking us questions about what we do as missionaries, and what Mormons can and can't do- It was so amazing! We didn't even have to keep the conversation going because she was just so excited to ask us more questions! Then she had to run because someone called for her, but we are going to see her again next week when we start volunteering there weekly! 
• We went to a ysa variety show and Maegan came and met a bunch of members of our ward, and made a lot of friends!! So that is SUPER exciting because now she wants to come out to more activities! Huzzah! 

Saturday:

• We helped with a move for a few hours- and it was suuuper hot! But it went pretty quick so that was good:) 
• We packed up our entire lives! because we are moving tomorrow!!! YAY! But wow... who knew it takes so much STUFF just to survive... 
• We went to the mall for dinner and ran into sooo many members! i love it when they come up to us and visit for a while. Instead of having dinner by ourselves we were able to meet 3 different couples that were just visiting lethbridge for the day- So cool!
• We also wrote our talks for sunday! 

Sunday: Man oh man alive, what a day! 

• Long story short... we were RUNNING! a million miles an hour from 8:00-5:00! 
• We had our coordination meeting in our family ward, and ran straight to our ysa ward council. we left that early to make it to our family ward council, which we left early to make it to our ysa sacrament meeting. we left early from ysa sunday school to make it to family ward sacrament, where we both spoke on member missionary work (sister melville did AMAZING) and then we had several members come up to us afterwards and give us referrals!!! They also asked us to sing in sacrament meeting soon, and kept telling us over and over how much they loved us and were excited to work with us!!!! SO WONDERFUL! Wow! While we were in sunday school we got a text from the ym pres asking if we could teach the lesson today so we did that, and it went great! and then we couldn't get out of the church building for an hour after church got out because so many members wanted to talk to us about things they need help with or would like! Seriously guys it was the most jammed packed 8 hours of my life!!! My brain never stopped running the entire time! So we came home and took a 20 minute breather instead of having our lunch earlier in the day, and then went back out for the rest of the night- 
• Then when we looked back over our dinner calendar we realized we had 3 different less actives we have been trying to meet with sign up to feed us!!! 

....Phew! okay, I think that's just about everything! So as you can see, the miracles literally never end when you are working hard and doing what you should! 

I am so so grateful to be here at this time and to be here with Sister Melville! It has felt so good to be able to just work really really hard again after struggling for a few weeks. 

I love being a missionary more than anything else I have ever done! 

I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity that I have, and the time that I have left to keep working hard! 

I love you all! i hope you are doing well! 

please let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you! 

have a great week!!! :D 

Love, 

Sister Dobyns

Our whole lives are packed up sitting in our family room right now CANT WAIT TO MOVE! 

Us when we remembered that we never take any pictures! 

Shout out to my Bae! Kaylan Mckelvie! Love of my life! best day of my life! 

So soary (sorry)

Sorry lamest weekyl ever because we have TONS of things to do today and I got a little distracted with school stuff with my time! 

But! it's been an amazing week! We found A new investigator family though tracting this week! so that was literally miraculous! 

i lOVE sister melville with all my heart! 

and things just keep getting better here! 

Love you all so much! 

*ps Shout out to my mom for her birthday this week! LOVE YOU*

saying goodbye to sister hansen! I will miss reading Isaiah with her every week! she's moved to cardston!

Sunshine and Lollipops!

What a great week! 

Last pday we got to hang out at the park again, but this time our whole zone came:) that was tons of fun as we all played sports, and just played in the sun! It felt so good to just enjoy being outside again! It had been SO long since I actually ENJOYED being outside! haha:) 

Then on Tuesday we got transfer calls and found out that Sister Barlow was getting transferred to Calgary! we were both a little sad, but I know she is going to have a blast there:) 

So my new companion is Sister Melville! Fun fact: she was trained by my MTC companion! So that's pretty fun!!! We served around each other for 3 months back when I was in the SE of Calgary training Sister Ence! So it was awesome to already know each other a little bit! 

Fun Fact #2: I totally called that Sister Melville was going to be my companion when I was looking at this picture from last August and realized that I had been companions with everyone in the picture except for her! next day... bam! I was right. Haha so that's pretty cool!! 

(Sister Ence, Atkinson, Frandsen, and Melville!)

So Thursday was transfers, and I had to say goodbye to Sister Frandsen again:( she got transferred to Brooks! (middle of no where) So I won't be able to see her again until we go home most likely! 

Friday and Saturday were great, we just planned our guts out, and I told her everything about the area, and she got to meet a lot of people, and it was awesome:)
And then Sunday! Happy Mothers Day:) 

What an awesome day of the year! 

After our 7 1/2 hours of church meetings we got to Skype our families!!! And that was obviously the highlight:) 

it's really impossible to put into words how much that call meant to me, and how much I love my family, so just trust me. It was amazing, and I love them:) 

And the rest of the night went well too! 

But I am loving everything so much right now! Sister Melville is just the happiest little spirit you will ever meet! If can think of any bad situation or circumstance, don't worry, Sister Melville can see the good in it! And that is so good for me! I I'm hoping that a little bit of that sunshine rubs off over the next several weeks:D 

But that's pretty much it!
I love you all so so dearly!
I miss you, and pray for you, and think of you often. 

I hope your weeks are wonderful and inspired:)
I have felt such a refreshing sense of the world lately and I'm not ready to give it up!
Miracles are coming so I'll let you know how they go! :) 

So much love!
Sister Dobyns:D 

One last pday together<3

Skype with the Fam:) 

Mother's day gift from my Baby Sister Ence<3

I love to see the temple AGAIN

Well It's been a good, very busy week! 
We had soo many appointments this week, it was awesome! 

Probably my favorite feeling is knowing that everything you do, you have to do quickly and efficiently because you have somewhere else to be. And we had that for like 3 straight days!! Partly because poor Sister Barlow was sick for a day and a half, so we had to reschedule everything that we had planned for those days in the rest of the week! 

But this thursdays is transfers!!! We aren't anticipating any changes with us, but We'll letcha know next week! 

And of course we're pumped for mothers day this weekend! It's so hard to accept that it will be our last skype call, but we're excited to chat with our families as always:) 

On wednesday we got to go to the temple again!!!
I KNOW RIGHT! 

But it was a special trip our mission got to do! So all the missionaries in the south part of our mission went on wednesday and the north went on tuesday. 

That was of course an amazing time!
It is so powerful to be in the temple with the entire session just PACKED with missionaries. i don't think you could ever get better than that! (Besides maybe a session full of Apostles...) 

I just sat and pondered about everything in life in the Celestial room for a long time, and then we got to have lunch all together after too! 

This week has been CRAZY as far as the weather goes... 

We got to PLUS 29C for 2 days!!! I remember when it was minus 29C.... 

And then the next day it just starting pouring rain out of nowhere!!
So Sister Barlow and I had a good time running like crazy people through the rain, and sitting in our appointments literally dripping wet! 

But that's about it! No crazy stories to really tell this week! just an overall grand time:)

Love you all, 

I'll make up for the lame email with pictures:) 

Love, 

Sister Dobyns:) 

Sister Barlow

Sister Frandsen

Just me:) 

The Sisters:) 

our beautiful pday last week! 

Sunny and beautiful!! 

other side of the temple:) 

I tripped on the sidewalk last Monday and scraped my knees like a toddler... 

now i remember why they cry so much:P 

So grateful for each of you ❤

Well, this has been quite the fun e-mailing day! So much exciting news from so many people that I love! Thank you all for your e-mails and please always remember that if I don't respond to you immediately, I am super sorry, I just have limited time to respond to everyone!! But I thoroughly appreciate and enjoy your emails:) 

Okay so this week was good:) We had an awesome district meeting that was all about following the spirit and really being God' instrument. That has always been my goal, but I am really focusing on it more than ever right now:) 

We had another lesson with our investigator Mike, and holy cow, IT WAS AMAZING! I felt prompted that we needed to have some members of our ward come to our next lesson which was the Plan of Salvation, but I wasn't sure who to invite! The people we knew know him weren't available, but then when we went to our supper a few days before our lesson we found out that couple knew them pretty well too! So we invited them to join us and they were thrilled to come! And everything just worked out so perfectly! The spirit was SO strong, and by the end of the lesson literally everybody was crying- including mike. We testified of God's love for him, and invited him to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and pray with his wife this week and really ask if what we taught that night was true. And for the first time, Mike didn't just shrug off the commitment and say he wouldn't promise anything. He thought about it, and said yes! So we are so so happy about that! So as always, I am really looking forward to seeing them again:):):) 

I also got to see 2 members from my last ward this week! Stuart and Cody! That was the best! Stuart was coming down for his graduation so he stopped by to say hi and update me on all the priddis homies, and then Cody just happened to be at my ward on sunday! I gave a talk this week and just randomly saw him sitting out in the congregation and just about died! But thankfully I was able to keep my cool until after the meeting when we got to talk for a bit! 

Then this week I got an e-mail from my convert back from the beginning of my mission- we talked for a bit and then he said something that just hit me really hard. I've heard it before, but for some reason today it just really hit home. He said "keep up the great work, keep doing what you're doing! You have -- days to miss home but you have the rest of your life to miss your mission." 

But how true is that! whoo. I love love love love my mission- and I know I am going to miss it for the rest of my life. But thankfully, I have come to understand that being a missionary doesn't have to end. I may have to take off my name tag someday, but I don't have to take Christ's name off of my heart. 

So don't mind me- I'm just going to focus on that, and not on the end of anything else. 

Sorry, that was probably a really trunky sounding e-mail, but I promise it's just the opposite:) 

I love you each so so much!
have a fabulous week!
Much love!
Sister Dobyns:) 

Our sweet RC's Brother and SIster Thompson celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary:) 

President Gedleman(mission presidency) had the 2 zones here in lethbridge get together at his house last:) 

My Bae! And sort of Sister Robison in there