Hello Remarkable Humans,
I decided to send one of those lovely "send the e-mail to everyone" e-mails this week. I'll try to write the rest of you back individually as well. Time flies during e-mail time. It's super ridiculous.
In the last week I have survived my second Ohio snowstorm without being converted into a Popsicle (thought I may have discovered that my cute ankle boots aren't really for snow), experienced my first zone training, and checked the air box (what we call our mail box) to find just that...air. Snail mail would be absolutely appreciated for those of you who have a spare moment. (Side note, I was wrong last week when I said that they can forward parcel packages. They can't. They can forward priority packages and first class packages). I know that I'm weird in this way, but things get worse for me as I go longer without hearing from people. I know that other missionaries have the opposite problem, but we always knew that I was probably going to be a little different from the norm.
With each day I am falling more and more in love with Delaware and the people here. We are currently teaching a handful of people. This is such a blessing because our evenings (when it's coldest) are spent inside the homes of wonderful people, which is preferable to the alternative of trying to contact outside at night when no one wants to open their door to the cold, let alone to two young adults wearing heavy winter coats and black name tags. I am in awe of the capacity that Heavenly Father gives me to love and teach these people as he would have me do, rather than leaving me to rely on those skills that I have previously developed. I am beyond grateful for the skills that I developed before getting out here, but I know that the Lord has magnified them on many occasions to help me be more effective.
Sister Hibbert is awesome. I know that she really was always meant to be my trainer. We have such a great companionship and I'm grateful that we feel comfortable enough with each other to share those things that we're having a hard time with and then lift one another up. I'm impressed by the fact that no matter where our conversation starts (family, friends, musicals, Doctor Who) we always loop back to the gospel. This is funniest late at night (that is to say any time after 10:25) as we are trying to finish up journal writing and go to sleep. We just always have more to say to each other and often just have to make ourselves stop talking so we can wake up the next day as slightly coherent human beings who will be able to be focused missionaries by 8:00 for personal study.
We got to volunteer at the Delaware Historical Society this week, which was super fun. It was a little weird when Ralph had us get on computers to attach images to the documentation about each artifact, but it was also really cool. I loved seeing the pictures and wondering what the stories were behind each item. While we were there the other volunteers were busy identifying an army uniform that ended up being from the Spanish American War. I thought that Dad would have loved to see that and all of the other things that they have from different time periods.
We can do family history for a few hours a week, so if any of you would like to find me stories to type into Family Search that would be great. I finally got Grandmother connected to her parents on my chart which felt like a major success. We are probably going to try to meet with our ward family history specialist so we can get an intro into how to actually do family history work. It would be cool to know enough to actually get things done. Dad, do you remember which family history site had the information about the writers and what not? I would really like to look at that again.
Today we have a Zone Activity. It should be fun, but it does mean that a large chunk (try four hours) of our P-day has been commandeered by missionary pirates in the name of what sounds like Fear Factor Games and Bowling. So that will be good. It's not like I wanted a nap today or anything :). It honestly really will be good to have a chance to get to know the missionaries in our Zone in a more casual setting. We also have exchanges tomorrow. It seems pretty likely that I'll be going up to Marion for twenty-fourish hours as Sister Hibbert is the designated Delaware driver.
I want to hear about what is happening in everyone's lives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I need to know what is going on in people's lives. Like I said earlier, I'm a weird one and I get more homesick and less focused as I don't hear from people. I believe in snail-mail! And I believe in all of you :)
I hope everything is going great at home, with work, and with those people you get to associate with. I love you all!
The Church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you.
Love,
Sister Cale
P.S. If you want something kind of nifty to think about go and find the chapter in 3 Nephi where the people start to reason away the signs that they saw that were in preparation for Christ's birth. I think it's really interesting that the only thing that we can't reason away is a personal witness of the truth of the gospel. All the signs in the world will amount to nothing sooner or later if we don't have a personal knowledge.
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