The Week of Uncertainty

This week on Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale was officially made
Queen of the Easter Eggs (they even gave her a framed certificate),
the Sisters' area book went on a jaunt to Mansfield rather than coming
home from Zone Training Meeting putting the Sisters quite behind in
terms of record entering, Sister Cale went to Worthington on exchanges
and Sister Brown stayed behind, First Friday was hilarious, the 4th of
July was perfection in terms of what a missionary holiday should be,
and Sister Cale spent the whole week in suspense of whether or not she
would be transferred.

Hey Guys,

How's it going? So I'm sorry that this e-mail is coming on Wednesday
when you were expecting it on Monday. They told us as Zone Training
Meeting last Wednesday that now that we have iPads that we will always
e-mail on p-day no matter what, because our key indicators are
submitted automatically anyway now. I'm sorry that I didn't get to
tell you that was happening. It was one of those unfortunate
circumstances where it would have been more convenient if we had known
sooner, but it didn't happen, so that's where we're at. We also found
out at said Zone Training Meeting that we no longer have a time limit
for communicating home either. We are permitted to e-mail all the day
long on p-day...until 6 PM when p-day is technically over. So cool.

Monday night on our way to our dinner appointment we got in the
slightest of car accidents. A dear gentleman backed into our car...at
a light. He was very nice about it and we weren't hurt and the front
bumper of the car was just ever so slightly popped out. No big deal.
At the suggestion of Sister Burthwick, who we were supposed to have
dinner with (we had texted her to tell her that we would be late) we
gave him a Book of Mormon and a mormon.org card. Find everywhere,
right?

That night we got to teach Sister McFarland's seven year old
granddaughter the first lesson. Teaching Jada served as a good
reminder that teaching simply is much harder than I think. It made me
think back to when I got to teach the nine and ten year olds in
primary. I probably need to get back to the place where I teach like
that more often.

There was a lot of record inputting this last week. In some ways I
felt like I was back to being an office worker. I'm growing in
gratitude for the Area Book Planner App because I know it's going to
help us as missionaries be more focused on our purpose and create more
detailed records for the missionaries who come after us. I feel like I
can have more charity towards it now that our data inputting party is
over. We accidentally left our area book at Zone Training Meeting.
When we realized that we didn't have it we called our Elders who are
also our Zone Leaders and asked them if they had happened to pick it
up. At first they pretended that they didn't know what we were talking
about, and then they said that they had grabbed it...at least they
were 90% sure that they had grabbed it. For the record, I wouldn't go
with Elder Petersen's statistical probability predictions if I were
you. Elder Wheeler had accidentally taken it with him on his exchange
to Mansfield. At the very least it was good that we had all been kind
of spastic about it.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are all some crazy kind of
incredibly busy blur. Thursday afternoon started with acquiring a
table cloth for our First Friday table from the Dollar Tree and then
meeting with the Elders to make plans, since we were supposed to be
all good to go the next day. We finally settled on talking to people
about freedoms that they cherish most and taking pictures of them
holding a chalkboard or white board in front of our tree with a
freedom they cherish most. The initial plan was to relate cherished
freedoms back to the fact that we have those freedoms because of our
ancestors, so we should do family history. It sort of worked? We're
going to be able to make an awesome video with all the pictures and
then relate it to family history, so it will work.

Thursday afternoon at the Historical Society Ralph presented me with a
certificate stating that I am Queen of the Easter Egg for all the work
that I did with the Presidential Easter Eggs. It brought great joy and
happiness to my life. And I'm excited to include it in my mission
scrapbook. Haha.

Thursday evening we went on exchanges with the Worthington Sisters. It
was good. It was really bad timing because we had about a million
other things to do, but whatever. It was good. I was happy to be back
in Delaware.

Friday we exchanged back, got things ready for First Friday and got to
work. Even if our initial turn around to family history didn't work
out according to our plans, we were still able to talk about the
gospel and it was amazing to see how much speaking our name tags
really seem to do as so many people would talk to us until they
noticed our name tags and then would suddenly walk away. Good times.
First Friday wasn't as busy this time, likely because of the Holiday
weekend, but we still felt it to be a good use of our time.

Saturday we were able to go out and just talk to a lot of people. We
had a great time in our predictable but totally cute 4th of July
outfits. We got to talk to people before the parade and before a
concert that is put on by the Central Ohio Symphony at Ohio Wesleyan.
It was so neat to get to see what freedoms people cherish and to
surprise them by asking them a question that is intended to get them
to answer something we can testify of. I loved it because there were
lots of opportunities for us to testify. The only reason that I really
missed fireworks was because I missed hearing mom say, "Those ones are
my favorite".

Church on Sunday was busy, but good. It's so weird to me how having
church from 1-4 makes the missionary day suddenly immensely shorter
and there's so much less time to accomplish things. Sheer craziness.
We were able to finish inputting our records and teach a lesson, so
that was nice.

And now I'm just playing the waiting game. I'll send an e-mail out
when I know what's happening or not happening. It's all very strange
to me.

The church is true, life is good (even if I have to pack today and
leave my new home), God's in charge (hence the possible packing and
leaving), and Satan hates you.

Love,

Jessica