The Week Where There Was Opposition in All Things‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-there was pumpkin
pie ice cream, a behaviorally backwards contacting competition, an
incredibly prepared investigator, a basher, crunchy fall leaves, sore
calves while running, a major mix-up with the building for the
baptism, the baptism happened after several hours of panicked
coordination, gorgeous fall weather, and an unsatisfactory interview
with President.

Hello My Friends,

I am here to say that you can survive the craziest week of mission
life and come out on the other end blessed, happy, and full of
gratitude. In so many ways, I feel like if something could go wrong
last week, that there was a pretty good chance that things were about
split even going to. There were seriously so many moments that were
those moments where you say to yourself "Hey, at least this will make
for a decent story." And there were so many other moments that I will
consider to be some of the most special and wonderful that I have been
able to participate in during my mission.

To be completely honest, the week didn't start out so hot when we got
back to work on Monday night, because we had been given the least
behaviorally sound contacting competition ever. I was beyond
frustrated because missionary work is not about comparing our efforts.
We are here to teach specific people and any form of competition is
largely inappropriate. We set goals as missionaries to help us improve
our performance and growth, but those goals typically happen within a
companionship under the inspiration and direction of the spirit. It's
a bit more complicated than just saying that whoever gets the most
phone numbers this week was the most successful. Luckily I was blessed
with a companion who intuitively knew that when I get sad and
frustrated like that, that ice cream is a definite solution. Try the
pumpkin pie ice cream, it's delicious.

On Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with Victor about the priesthood.
I am so blessed to have met him and have had the opportunity to teach
him. He truly is a choice son of God. I'm also so grateful that Ryan
was able to come to our lesson, because it is so much easier and
powerful to teach about the priesthood when there is a priesthood
holder present to testify of the way that having that priesthood has
given them opportunities to serve. I am so grateful for the righteous
priesthood holders in my life who have blessed me as they have been
worthy to use that power (Hi Dad! Hi Granddad! *waves*)

Wednesday we had two lessons. And they could not have been more
different. Our first lesson was so directed by the spirit. We were
able to invite her to be baptized and teach about several of the
commandments that we hadn't anticipated teaching and she was excited
about them. Our other lesson was devoid of the spirit as soon as our
investigator decided to turn the lesson into an opportunity to raise
questions about where we get the priesthood from and other church
doctrines that just feel absurd to him. I was so grateful that we had
invited Chelsea, a member who is also a returned missionary, to come
to the lesson with us. I don't know what we would have done without
her.

Thursday and Friday were full of baptism preparation craziness and
some great laughs. Saturday morning we had interviews with President,
picked up our Blaze Pizza (the Subway of Pizza-Ethan would love it),
and then quite literally, all hell broke loose. We were maybe ten
minutes into our lunch when the Sisters came in and told us that the
building that we had reserved for the baptism wasn't going to work
because the weather was bad and they needed to move their
trunk-or-treat inside. If any of us had really thought about it, we
would have talked to President and had him call President Birch to
resolve things. Instead we made a massive list on the white board and
started to go through the process of moving the baptism to
Reynoldsburg. We were ninety percent done with all the calls and
arrangements that we needed to make when the Reynoldsburg Building
Coordinator called us and told as that he had been mistaken and the
building wouldn't be available for our use after all. We restarted the
process after securing a spot at the Dublin building. Then we had to
go to the building earlier than anticipated to fill the font and there
weren't the right sizes of jumpsuits and overall it was just insane.

Miraculously, the baptism was able to happen, and the chaos and stress
melted away, replaced by the sweet peace that the spirit brings. The
longer that I am a missionary, the more convinced I become that I am
doing so very little for these remarkable humans who accept the gospel
and rather am blessed to get to know them. Victor, Asia, and Sean all
got baptized and it was a wonderful night. The joy of the gospel is so
very real and overshadows all of the other stresses from this past
week. I know that this is where God wants me to be, and I'm grateful
that he loves me enough to ask me to be here.

Love,

Jessica