The Week Where the New Place was Awesome‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale had to
pack all of her things and was not particularly surprised when she
realized that she had enough office stuff to open a store, Sister Cale
got to see Sister Brown before transfer meeting, Sister Cale was told
by President Daines that he had put her in three different places for
this transfer and he still hadn't decided which one she was going to,
and Sister Cale got transferred to Fairborn, Ohio.

Hello Dear Ones,

Greetings from Fairborn Ohio! Fairborn is actually where the Air Force
Base is in Ohio, so in some ways the ward really feels like home. At
the very least, having grown up near Hill AFB gives me a good landmark
to tell people when they ask where in Utah I'm from. The ward here is
super nice and I'm excited to get to know them better. It's some kind
of crazy that I got transferred so soon after just being transferred.
It makes it hard for me to guess what is going to happen next in my
mission life. I've spent six months somewhere and six weeks somewhere,
so it's kind of hard to guess what we're looking at next.

So Fairborn is pretty awesome and my new companion Sister Wolf is
adorable. She's been out for three months now and is a great
missionary. Honestly, she's way more put together as a missionary than
I was when I was barely done with training. She's really good with
people and is a hard worker. She also likes to run, which is awesome.
For the sake of full disclosure I have not yet run with her, I have
walked in circles as she has run in them. I might decide that I want
to try running again sometime, we'll have to see. Sister Wolf is from
Yucaipa, California. She is the second oldest of four kids and her
older brother is also on a mission right now. He'll have nine months
at home before she gets back. (Side note specifically to Ethan-let's
try to avoid something like that, deal? We'd have way more than nine
months...like your whole mission. Just saying). She loves adventures
and Disney and things are great.

We're working with some really cool people here. One of the families
has a pet wolf named Haven. She's the sweetest thing on the
planet...though it is just ever so slightly alarming that she is a
wolf. I don't know. It's cool. We're also teaching the coolest family.
They are exactly the kind of people that you just would want to be
friends with. I think they would be brilliant with the youth in the
ward. I want them to be seminary teachers someday. Last night we were
actually able to invite two of their sons to read from the Book of
Mormon and pray about it and they were able to share their testimonies
with their boys about the church. SO COOL.

Honestly, my life is like this weird blurry dream and for whatever
reason, right now I can't really remember what else has happened this
last week. I'll do a better job of keeping track of my golden moments
so I can write a much more interesting e-mail next week.

The church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you.

Love,

Jessica

The Week that Finally Felt Normal‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-the Sisters got to
teach a lesson in the waiting room of the temple, a closet door tried
to kill Sister Gordon with a sneak attack on Tuesday night, district
meeting was everything that the Sisters needed to hear, the Sisters
got to shake hands with an apostle and hear the awesome things that he
shared with the mission, and had their first normal Sunday night for
the whole transfer.

Hey Loves,

So this is one of those weird Wednesday e-mails because transfers are
tomorrow. And I'm leaving Pataskala...and I'm really sad about it
because I feel like there are still about a million things that I can
do here. Sister Gordon is going to be training a new missionary
though, and that is going to be totally awesome. She is going to be a
brilliant trainer. I just wish she were going to be being a brilliant
trainer somewhere else.

Anyway, not to dwell on that, let's look at the past week and a half
and see all the craziness that happened, shall we?

So, Tuesday night we were able to have a lesson with Garrett and Julie
in the temple waiting room. Our lesson was all about putting on the
armor of God and preparing to go to the temple. I am so glad that
Julie suggested that we have our lesson in the temple waiting room. It
was the world's best idea ever and totally awesome because it meant
that we got to go and be in the House of the Lord after several weeks
of general discouragement and overall minor chaos. I love the temple
so much. I'm excited that we get to go as a mission in September.

Tuesday night we had all sorts of fun when a closet door that had been
taken off its track by previous missionaries decided to jump from its
spot where it was resting against the wall and attempt to knock Sister
Gordon out. She went into shock, I couldn't really remember how to
treat shock (besides help them breathe and keep them warm), our
district was variably helpful, and we woke up once an hour every hour
to try to make sure that she was okay. Later on in the week one of our
investigators who used to be a trauma nurse said that she was pretty
sure that Sister Gordon had a concussion. Cool story.

Wednesday we had easily the best district meeting that I have ever
participated in as a missionary. Elder Lloyd centered our district
meeting around what makes someone a
successful missionary. It was exactly what I needed to hear. Pataskala
is a wonderful place full of really nice people, but I've really had
to adjust my expectations for how I measure whether or not we did what
Heavenly Father needed us to over the course of the week. In Delaware
it was pretty easy to see our work from our lessons. That's not
exactly the case in Pataskala. It was perfect to be reminded that
numbers do not indicate success, but rather the desires of our hearts
and our diligence in the work.

Easily the coolest part of this last week was our mission wide meeting
with Elder Cook, Elder Hallstrom, and Elder Titera. We gathered early
as a mission and were all waiting quietly in our seats a half an hour
before the meeting started. Elder Cook came in and asked President to
arrange for us all to be able to come up and shake their hands. That
was very cool. The miracle of the meeting for me actually came as the
questions that I had searched for answers to were answered by the
spirit as I listened to the different remarks that were given. Most
significant to me was the apostolic blessing that Elder Cook gave to
us as the missionaries of the Ohio Columbus Mission. He promised us
that we would come to recognize that missions are supernal. And that
we would recognize later on that we were able to bless everyone that
we love better by being here on missions than if we were at home. He
blessed us with the spiritual power to accomplish everything that the
Lord needs for us to do at this time. That was huge for me. It should
come as no surprise to any of you that I am a master worrier and I
spend a fair portion of time wondering if I would do more good if I
were at home. There was a very special sort of spirit present as Elder
Cook made that promise. And I'm trying very hard to hold onto it.

Other cool things that happened this week include painting with
Tiffany (we taught the Restoration and then painted our representation
of the lesson. It was so cool! I'm really sad that I'm not going to be
there for the rest of Tiffany's lessons. She's brilliant.

Well my dears, I love you all. The church is true, life is good, God's
in charge, and Satan hates you.

Love,

Jessica

The Week of House Shopping‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-the Sisters went to
Zone Conference (it was awesome, even if they did install babysitters
into our cars-Big Brother is literally watching now and gives warnings
if you don't drive according to his liking), Sister Cale hit her seven
month mark (WHAA???), the Sisters got to be a diversion for a surprise
birthday party, they met a lot of really nice people (most of whom
were not particularly interested in learning more about the
Restoration than what the Sisters had shared, but that's cool
#agency), and the Sisters spoke in sacrament meeting.

Hey Lovely Humans!

What a strange, hard, and yet somehow lovely week it has been. It's
funny to me that even when I'm in the middle of a week and it feels
like the hardest thing ever, I get to Monday's and e-mailing and I
realize just how blessed the week has been. I'm starting to learn to
recognize that God's plans for what he needs us to accomplish, and our
plans for what we want to accomplish are often not entirely aligned. I
think it is miraculous that God manages to get us where he needs us to
be when we sometimes have different ideas about what's supposed to be
happening.

A prime example of this happened Thursday morning when we started
knocking doors on Essex in the Oxford neighborhood (sometimes you pick
places to go because the streets have good names). So we knocked...and
we knocked...and we knocked...and fifteen doors later no one had
answered and we had finished the whole side of the street. It was time
for us to head back to the apartment for lunch and we were both
feeling pretty confused as to why we had felt like we should come and
knock on this specific street that morning. As we walked to our car
there was a girl sitting out in the road in front of her vehicle. We
walked by, then both of us stopped and we started to talk to her. She
was having a rough day and we were able to have an awesome
conversation with her about the Book of Mormon and the way that it can
bring us peace during hard times. If you had asked us that morning
what we were going to do on that street, we would have told you that
we were going to talk to the Oxford Mom's and attempt to find new
investigators. Neither of us would have guessed that we were supposed
to be there to talk to a girl who was going to be sitting in the road
in front of her truck. I would venture that that was precisely
Heavenly Father's purpose in directing us to that neighborhood though.

My new favorite contacting game is to go house shopping as you walk
around neighborhoods. Ohio has a lot of interesting and beautiful
houses. Sister Gordon and I have started picking out features that we
like from the houses and taking pictures of them. It's kind of a fun
way to mix the time up.

We had some really awesome missionary meetings this week. Zone
Conference was some kind of crazy because it was the gathering of
three zones as opposed to just two like normal, because the missionary
department was there installing the tiwi devices. The devices are
basic operant conditioning, that will hypothetically eventually lead
to safer driver from the missionaries. It's hard not to feel a little
micromanaged, but I trust that the missionary board knows what they're
doing and I can just be grateful that I'm not the driver right now.

The coolest part of Zone Conference was our conversation about the
relationship between faith, the Atonement, our covenants and power.
President Daines talked about how Heavenly Father wants to give his
children all power, and that we begin to access that power as we make
covenants which allow us to have greater connections to heaven. We
talked about how miracles are only worked by the faith of the people
and that a lack of miracles does not mean that God has changed, simply
that his children aren't showing the required faith to allow him to
work in their lives. An aspect of this that I found to be most
interesting was the concept that God won't interfere without someone
showing faith because that would interfere with our agency. President
Daines said that a miracle truly is something that we do that is
beyond our own capacity, though we often use the term tender mercy to
save the superlative of miracle for the really big tender mercies. So
cool!

Sister Gordon and I spoke in Sacrament Meeting yesterday. My topic was
hungering and thirsting after righteousness through obedience. I
talked about Kohlberg's Moral Reasoning, created my own obedience
ladder, and used the scriptures. I'll send an e-mail with my talk
(because for once in my life it's really written out (I needed to be
able to time it and make sure I was roughly around twenty minutes))
but I don't expect you to read it. You can if you want though.

The church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you!

Love,

Jessica

The Week of Planting Seeds‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-the sisters talked
to everyone (again) and planted a lot of seeds that will grow
(someday...maybe), they discovered that their car is cool enough to
read their text messages aloud (including emoticons like :) which
becomes "happy smiley" when read aloud), and the Sisters got to make
crepes, a calendar, necklaces, and blankets.

Hey Loves,

So this week was a weird one. I'm still really trying to get used to
being in an area where things need some establishing. I am dying of
exhaustion, but I'm really happy. It's probably not good that I start
to dream the second I fall asleep (shout out to the astronaut power
naps), but I'm running with it and trusting that everything is going
to be okay.

We get to talk to a lot of really cool and nice people here in
Pataskala. They're not always interested to learn more about the
gospel, but they're really nice to us about it. Finding is really hard
and I'm so much less awkward as a human being when I've met someone
and it's been established that they're actually interested in talking
to me. I just have to remind myself that I used to walk up to
strangers at stores and say, "Hi, I'm Jessica Cale, what's your name?"
#nostrangeranxietyhere. It's arguable that I have delayed stranger
anxiety now. Not exactly ideal timing, so we push through.

We survived the few days without our car and were able to get it back
on Wednesday after Zone Training Meeting. ZTM this time was pretty
interesting as we had received none of the texts regarding what we
were supposed to bring to the meeting or what they were supposed to
have studied in advance. Aren't phones just so fun? In the end,
because Heavenly Father is merciful and knew that I would have
prepared a talk had I known that was necessary, I wasn't asked to
speak. Phew! (Yes, I know that I could have just pretended that I was
back in debate and made up a talk as I went, but...that's really
beside the point). I get to speak in sacrament meeting this week. If
any of you have thoughts on how we hunger and thirst after
righteousness through obedience, I can check my e-mail every day and I
would love to hear what you think.

One of the roughest moments this week was when we got the texts from
Garrett saying that at his dad's request, he had decided to postpone
his baptism. His dad felt uncomfortable with how fast things seemed to
be happening (and you can't argue that two weeks isn't fast) so he had
asked Garrett to search things out a little longer. It was one of the
weirdest moments for me in terms of feeling calm and simultaneously
devastated. It made for a rough sort of emotional battle. I know that
the gospel will bless Garrett's life when he gets baptized, and he
knows that he is to make sure that Sister Gordon and I get invited
when he picks a baptismal date.

Other things from this week-

I am so grateful for the people here who are willing to love us and
take us in. Especially on hard weeks when things have felt so
unsuccessful. We had an awesome conversation with the Slack's about
the relationship between the Atonement and faith on Saturday night
when we stopped by to see them. They are another set of Ohio
grandparents that I have adopted into my life. They're so fun!

Sister Gordon and I were able to sing at Mary's baptism on Saturday
morning. We sang an arrangement of our own creating #missionarylife
that was a mix of "If the Savior Stood Beside Me", "Baptism", and "The
Holy Ghost". Elder Lloyd played the guitar for us and it was
beautiful. I was really glad that we had the opportunity to contribute
to her baptism in that way. It was a good reminder for me that we all
have something to give, even if it is just a song. (wow that sounded
cheesy...I'll refrain from deleting it so you can all laugh).

Well dears, I hope to have more to report this next week. We've got
our major contacting goals again and are excited to follow up with a
bunch of the people that we've met in the last two weeks. We have Zone
Conference tomorrow, which should be awesome. President Daines asked
us to read "The Path to Palmyra" and "The Coming Forth of the Book of
Mormon" from the last two Ensigns in preparation for our meeting. They
were both really awesome articles, so I'm excited to see how President
Daines teaches us from them.

The Church is True, Life is Good, God's in Charge (even when no one
seems to be interested), and Life is Good (even when you spent the
week knocking doors).

Love you all!

Jessica