On this weeks' episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale was brave and drove clear to Galloway for the Musical Fireside, Exchanges were a Dream, The Sisters learned that everything is about God's timing, and things ended out more than okay.
Hello My Friends!
I can't believe how fast time goes. Monday's are the best because I get the chance to write to all of you and I get to grocery shop and all of that other good stuff. I'll be honest, I'm glad that this last week is over, if only because it means that we get to try again and continue working towards being better missionaries in this Ohio Land.
But really, let's just talk about the good things. First, this week had such a remarkable miracle. On Monday night last week while we were planning, I felt like we needed to go contacting on Moore Street. This was pretty funny, because the fact of the matter is that I feel like knocking doors is in general an ineffective use of missionary time and often leads to few results. Planting seeds is so important, but when you have a whole garden to take care of already, it's hard to justify spending a ton of time knocking doors. So, I suggested to Sister Brown that we go and knock on Moore Street and she couldn't decide if she felt like it was a prompting from the spirit or not, but said that we could try it. I knew that it had to be a prompting, because I would never just suggest knocking. When we got to Moore Street on Tuesday evening, we knocked on one door and met a very nice girl who wasn't particularly interested in learning more about the church. We asked if she knew anyone else around who might be interested in a message about Jesus Christ and she pointed to a house across the street and her next door neighbor. We knocked the next few houses and as we were walking towards one of the houses that she had pointed at, Sister Brown waved at an older gentleman in the backyard. Surprisingly he walked up to the fence and started talking to us, and then invited us to come share more of our message with him. I cannot even get over how specific the timing needed to be for that particular interaction to work out. If we hadn't talked in the car for a few minutes about what ways we wanted to approach the doors and what tools we wanted to use, we might not have met Dennis at all. And I also don't know what would have happened if we hadn't happened to catch him outside in his yard. Who knows if he would have answered his door? I thought that we remarkable. And built my confidence in myself that Heavenly Father knows what he's doing.
We had interviews with President and Sister Daines this week as well. That was such a wonderful experience. I just love them both so much and it was brilliant to be able to receive counsel from them for our area, our companionship, and myself. I don't know if I could be a missionary without a Mission President and his wife. They are just such warm and loving people. And it was wonderful to be able to hear from them that as long as I'm doing my best with training that is all the Lord expects of me. I needed that particular reinforcement from a lot of directions (shout out to Mom and Scott who also sent the same message). Clearly Heavenly Father wanted to make sure that I knew that he accepts my efforts.
Another lovely wonderful thing this week was exchanges. I really love the Sister Training Leaders who are over our area and it was so nice to be able to talk to someone who has trained and just see what advice she had regarding the process. It was also fun to be with Sister Meecham again, because the last time she came I was so nervous to be in charge of the area and now that's just my life. We got to to go an exercise park by our house for morning schedule, and it will be even more fun to go there when the different challenges aren't frosted over. When Sister Ogletree and Sister Brown came back to Delaware we all went to lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings (which kind of just made me miss the lost boys, but whatever) and had an awesome conversation about the gospel with our waitress. I love that I'm starting to have relationships with lots of the missionaries.
Friday I had my first ever kind of tricky companionship inventory, but I'm grateful for the solutions that we were able to reach with each other and the ways that we're going to grow as we work over the hiccups in our companionship. We wrote letters for one of our investigators who is in Michigan this week and she was tickled. Karen is among the sweetest of human beings here in Delaware. She lifts my spirits so much when we go and see her.
The final awesome thing of the week was getting to sing in the missionary choir for the fireside. I love singing and I don't know why I let myself forget that. It was seriously the best idea ever to go to choir, even if it meant having to drive on Ohio freeways with a gps that doesn't always give the world's most reliable directions (we fondly refer to him as Elder Garmon).
Well, I love you all. I hope you know that you are amazing and that I think of you often (in a non-distracted fashion). The church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you.
Love,
Jessica
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