The Week with Just Enough Deja Vu‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-the sisters bought a
very interesting selection of groceries (spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers,
uncrustables, chicken, and laundry detergent), the Sisters helped to
paint a living and dining room jogging path gray, Zone Conference was
awesome (more on that later), Sister Cale wanted her brother to be
there to direct the service project happening on exchanges (more on
that later too), there were Hawaiian Haystacks (TWICE!!!), and much
goodness in the land.

Hey Lovely Humans!

How are you all? This week has been a good, albeit strange one for me.
Here's why-

The Brethren recently changed the format of exchanges to be that all
missionaries participating in the exchange go and work in the leaders
area for the day. If exchanges didn't already feel like the strangest
sleepovers that have ever occurred they certainly do now. Tuesday
morning before personal study Sister Clark and I made the treacherous
drive (admittedly it wouldn't normally be treacherous, but there was
freshly fallen heavy snow) to Pickerington 2 to spend the next twenty
four hours with our Sister Training Leaders. Though we split off into
companionships for the normal work we got together in the afternoon to
do a service project for the city of Pickerington. We helped to paint
the holiday figures. The Sisters have been working on this project for
several weeks now. When I asked if they wanted to add highlights or
lowlights to the figures they looked at me like I was speaking another
language and I wish that Ethan had been there to demonstrate. From the
places on the figures that they hadn't yet repainted it was clear that
the last painter had done such work and I wish we could still help
them so the figures would look as nice as they could. The rest of the
exchange was nice enough. I learned the importance of being urgent,
but not frantic and was reminded that if we fail to listen to what
people say it won't matter what piece of gospel doctrine we try to
offer.

Wednesday we got to help Sister Adkins paint and then got right back
to work. Because we had both exchanges, Zone Conference, and weekly
planning this week we needed to be extra diligent in order to achieve
the goals that we had set at the beginning of the week. As we reviewed
our weekly goals last night it was a blessing to see that we had in
fact been able to do just as we had committed to the Lord to do.

I've learned a lot about goal setting on my mission, but I didn't
realize just how much until we were at Zone Conference on Friday.
Almost a year to the day before had been my very first Zone
Conference. At that Zone Conference as we received training on various
aspects of missionary work we were asked to set goals and determine
how we would accomplish those goals in the next forty hours. I
remember setting goals and hoping that as we set our goals that I
really had this hope that our numbers would be like the other
missionaries and wouldn't seem too low or too high. At this Zone
Conference as we received various trainings we were invited to set
goals and make plans to accomplish them within the next week. As we
set about to determine what our goals would be I found that I didn't
care much if at all for what the goals of the other missionaries would
be, but rather cared what Heavenly Father wanted us to accomplish in
our area at this time. I knew that Heavenly Father had a perfect
awareness of the circumstances in our area and that if we would listen
he would guide us to make goals that would stretch us and require our
diligence and faith, but goals that we could ultimately achieve. It's
been fun to mark off things on our chart and see that we are in fact
keeping up to pace with the goals that we set.

I know that with the help of our Heavenly Father that we can do
anything. My daily life as a representative of Jesus Christ is proof
of that to me.

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

Love,

Jessica