I hope you all have had a wonderful week :) I love and miss you all more than you could possibly imagine. 

I'm not gonna lie, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were super hard, because I was saying goodbye to so many people! My capacity to love has definitely grown since I came out on my mission! I never knew that I could love so many people so much!! :( ahh so sad.  I feel like I left a piece of my heart in Clareview. I was doing a pretty good job at holding it all in until transfer meeting on Wednesday. We were singing "O Canada," and it was so cheesy, and Sister Arnold was conducting, and I was just thinking about all of the people I said goodbye to, and how I'm only going to meet more and more people who I'm going to say goodbye to in the future, and so yeah. That's when it all came out. Dang it. :( it was sad. Sister Arnold was crying too, so that didn't help. 

{saying our goodbyes! The 4 of us have been serving together in the same zone since day one for me. :'( It was a bittersweet farewell!}

So anyways, I am now in Drayton Valley! Woot woot! It is so amazing! When I pictured Canada in my head before my mission, it was more like this. A lot of people live in cabins in the middle of the woods, it's been snowing a lot, people are WAY nicer, and it's just awesome. Our area is huge!! It takes about an hour to drive from one end to the other, and in Clareview it took maybe 15 minutes to drive from one end to the other! There's a lot of differences. I love it here though. I'm happy the Lord sent me here.

So cool miracle story time: The day before transfers, the Drayton Valley Sisters (Sister Priestley and Sister Torsak) received a phone call from a man named John, and basically he said this: "Hey! My name is John! My wife is a member, and I'm not. But I would really like to learn more about your church." BAM! So the next day we had transfers, Sister Priestley and I were put together, and the first thing we did was teach this man named John! He is amazing!! The Lord has prepared him in so many ways! It's awesome. We knocked on their door, and they invited us in right away. We all sat down and got to know each other. His wife Lisa seems to be a less active member, but that didn't stop her desire to share the gospel with her husband. I am so thankful that she did that! He told us that he feels like Joseph Smith, because he's been searching and searching, but every church seems to be missing something. But he said that this just feels right, and he believes that this is the church for him! It was amazing. I was like "Did that really just happen?" after we left. And it did! We are going to teach him this Thursday and invite him to be baptized fo sho!! I'm pretty excited if you can't tell. ;)

Now you know why I fell in love with this town right off the bat, but there's so much more about this area that is amazing! The members in our ward are awesome! They are all so eager to come to lessons with us, and to share the gospel with their friends. It's really cool to see. When we eat supper with the members, they ask us all about the people we are teaching, and try to find ways that they can help us. It is so great! It's no wonder other missionaries call Drayton Valley the promised land! 

{meow! I am now in the small small town of Drayton Valley! This is Rosalie.}

This week, I read a really cool devotional by Randall L Ridd, and I would like to share some of it with you :)

...

 The life of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, illustrates this point. Leo Tolstoy had a rocky youth. His parents died when he was about 13. Educated by his older brothers in the ways of alcohol, gambling, and promiscuity, Leo was less than diligent in his studies. At the age of 22, he began to feel that his life lacked real purpose, and he wrote in his journal, “I am living like a beast.” Two years later he wrote, “I am 24 years old and I still have done nothing.” Tolstoy’s dissatisfaction motivated him to begin a lifelong quest to find, mostly through trial and error, the purpose of his life—the why. Before he died at the age of 82, he concluded in his journal, “‘The whole meaning and joy of life,’ … lay in the search for perfection and understanding God’s will”—and, I would add, doing God’s will.

It has been said that “the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why” you were born. Because we have the gospel, we don’t have to spend our entire life trying to discover its purpose. Instead, we can focus on fulfilling that purpose.

In Matthew 5:48 we read, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

I think each of us has an innate yearning to improve. But because we all make mistakes, many of us are convinced that the goal of perfection is unattainable. And it would be if it weren’t for the Atonement. Our Savior’s sacrifice makes perfection possible: “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32; emphasis added).

Our Savior has given us the hope that inspires us to become like our Father in Heaven. You know, as Leo Tolstoy found, that there is joy in the journey to perfection. Great purpose comes into your life when you make it your quest to follow the will of the Lord.

Elder Tad R. Callister asked: “Why is it so critical to have a correct vision of this divine destiny of godliness of which the scriptures and other witnesses so clearly testify? Because with increased vision comes increased motivation.”

...

Okay, that's only some of it, but I really really enjoyed reading it. It's one of those talks that just makes you want to be a better servant of the Lord!! (Oh wow, I am such a missionary ;)) But it's awesome. And all of you are awesome. My testimony has really been strengthened on faith this week! I have had a few experiences where I've felt like I'm hanging on by a thread, but I have been doing my best to exercise my faith and believe that with God all things are possible. And guess what? It's working! I'm really thankful for the Lord, and I know that He is mindful of each and every one of us, and that he is in the details of our lives. I have been getting stronger and stronger every day. 

{This is Sister Priestley, my new companion, and she is awesome!}

I love you all :) Have a good week.

Sister Robinson