Hello "erry" body!
Yet another week in the Ohio Cleveland mission! This week has been pretty crazy! Sounds like mom already has an idea about our neat activity we had this last week called social media splits. (excellent stalking skills mom. I applaud you) So basically we had members do everything with us and take pictures and videos of the things we did. They then posted them all on facebook, instagram, and all those other social media things that you people do. Then we asked those people to tag those posts with things like #adayinthelifeofamissionary (longest hashtag ever) and #clevelandldsmissionaries and #socialmediasplits. I am pretty sure we told some of our members the wrong hashtags so it didn't work out like planned, but we figured it out before it was too late so some of them worked out. (If you're curious seacrh those hashtags and we accidentally had some posted with I think #dayinthelifeofamissionary and #clevelandldsmission . Whoops. So close right? But there is my adhd for ya) Otherwise, it was quite the day. Mostly just crazy. Especially because everything was canceling last minute. But in the end it all worked out. In particular we had miracles with our investigator Karen. We had been afraid to bring a member with us to see her because she was already skeptical of having us over teaching her, but with social media splits, we felt this was the time to introduce her to one of the ward members. The member who we originally planned to bring with us had to cancel the day before so we were super worried about whom to bring. The spirit prompted both Sister Adame and I immediately that we should have Sister Day come with us instead. So we called up Sister Day and she was available for this last minute switch up. She ended up being the perfect member to come with us for the lesson! We were talking about the Book of Mormon and Sister Day shared the most incredible testimony of how the Book of Mormon influenced her life. Karen is not one to show her emotions, but I saw a tear come down her face! Karen also has had lots of doubts about prophets and we have been trying to get her to watch the Restoration DVD. But right after Sister Day shared that testimony, Karen said, "I am going to watch that DVD tonight!" The spirit was so strong that Karen said she didn't want us to leave. In fact she invited us all to move in to her house so that she could have that same feeling that she felt all the time. Its just beyond incredible to see this change in Karen first hand. I can see and feel Heavenly Fathers love for her as we continue to help Karen come closer to her Heavenly Father. I just love knowing that He truly cares for each and everyone of His children. Before my mission I questioned that a bit but I know that I can never question that again. His love is immeasurable and it empowers me to work harder so that more of His children can feel and embrace that love. Missions are the best! And despite how difficult they can be, its all worth it. Every minute! Karen has not committed to baptism yet, but I can feel its in the near future. I probably won't be able to be there, but man I sure hope she gets baptized more then anything. She deserves the truth and the joy that the Gospel provides. I am probably now spending my last couple of weeks with Sister Adame since I have now been in the same area my first 6 months of my mission. But man, let me tell you, Sister Adame is a beast and I am pretty sure she came pre-trained. Mostly because she is perfect!. A little shy. But for the most part perfect. Ah crazy thing, Sister Adame and I took a Spanish tour the other day at the visitors center. It was way cool because I could understand almost everything, but then also kinda sad because I couldn't really say much the whole tour. But Sister Adame is going to teach me how to do the tour in Spanish before I leave so that's going to be way cool. Missions are the craziest! Everyday I just think about how crazy it is that a bunch of teenagers and young adults leave their lives for a 18months or 2 years to go to some random place and to talk to a bunch of strangers! Who does that?!? Haha and then when we tract I always think of elementary school and my teachers always telling us not to talk to strangers. Funny how that works out. But AHH my fellow missionary friends and I are doing the neatest thing! We get to wear Christ's name on us every day!!! We are representatives of Christ!!!! We get to share the greatest gift with everyone we possibly can!!! Sorry, I just get really excited. Its just that, we are so lucky to be serving and we are so incredibly lucky to have the fullness of the Gospel! Aren't missions the greatest!?! Last thing, Connee and Chuck received their Book of Mormon and they loved it!!!!! Connee and Chuck have now been reading in it every day. I am pretty sure they weren't even reading the Book of Mormon until now. AHH so cool!!! Thanks fam for sending that. Also Dad, Connee just couldn't even stop telling us about how much she loved the letter you left in the book. AHH she was so excited and beyond happy! My family is the greatest!!!! Keep being awesome!!!! Love y'all!!!! Sister Katie Call This week was way fun! It started off by an awesome p-day traveling to the Amish lands! One of our member families took us, the Eging's, and we got some cute pictures. I don't know if they sent the video to y'all of me trying to figure out "the Amish puzzle" but I will probably send it to y'all again anyways. Oh my... I hope I get to serve over there. There are buggies everywhere! In fact, they even have little buggy stations at Walmart and the other local stores.... pretty funny!
Oh man, I always blank on what I did this week when I get to a computer. Ohhh... did I tell y'all about my first Skype tour? I can't even remember if it was this week or last week. Anyway, I have pictures so I'll send them. A couple of weeks ago we gave a tour to a lady and she said she was a seminary teacher. So we set up with her a time and we got to Skype with her seminary class. They live in California I believe. It was pretty neat! I am so excited that I get to do the same for the Austin Texas seminary! Woohoo! Lets see...Ah I am having a hard time thinking about what I did. Oh... one miracle that happened on Sunday. Okay, so we hadn't had normal church in like forever because we had General Conference and then Stake Conference. Anyway, that made it hard for us because of the dinner sign up list. For three weeks we had super scattered dinners. We are SOOO spoiled I know.(because our calendar is usually filled up, even to the point where we sometimes have 2 dinners a night)... but these last couple of weeks we have been starved! Hahaha, not really, but it was so weird. So on Sunday we didn't have a dinner appointment and we didn't even realize until we had already left. So we didn't get to pack a lunch or dinner and we live forever away so we couldn't plan on just going home to eat. So then at church we were worried and hoping someone could have us for dinner at least. Everyone was busy and so we lost hope. So then we just planned to starve until we got home, But then a member came up to us and said they were planning to feed the other sisters that day, but the other Sisters had to go to sites (the Visitor Center sites). They asked us if we had an appointment already. At first we were sad because we thought we wouldn't be allowed to go (they aren't in our area) but then the zone leaders were right behind us and gave us permission. It was awesome! So we got a dinner last minute. Wow! Heavenly Father is taking care of his children. Also we ate fish and I liked it for the first time! Probably because I was super hungry, but still!!! Well, I got to run now! One of the senior couples is taking us out for a Mexican food lunch! Woohooo! Haven't had Mexican food foreverrrrr! I LOVE MY FAMILY SOOO MUCH!!!!! Take care!!!!! Love, Sister Call This week has been a little crazy... actually wayyyyyy crazy!
First off I want to share an accomplishment that I feel is noteworthy. I cleaned a hoarder's living room this week and it was probably the grossest thing I have ever done in my life. I think I still have cat hair crawling in my throat. So before I continue with that story, my site days changed so our whole "science for the area" got thrown off and it has been super frustrating. You know how everyone has their own schedules and we have to work with that plus make time for everything else. Well yes, that was all thrown off, but we are figuring it all out. We had so many (what feels like a million) cancellations this week. Every hour we had to re-look at our schedule and figure out what was going to go down. But the Lord blessed us with opportunities and everything worked out. One of our back-ups was to go serve "M" our investigator, so we got the brave Sister Benally and her oldest daughter Ashley to come over and help. Oh man, I have never seen so much cat hair in my life. I don't think I will ever have a cat. eeeuwww. So that took us forever but M's heart has been and continues to be softened. She has been getting back to reading the Book of Mormon. She is starting to ask more serious questions that shows us that she's actually looking into the church. Its always been hard to see potential in her and we had been thinking about dropping her, but something didn't seem right. So we decided to give her a little more time and ended up having an amazing lesson about baptism last week and we know it stirred her up inside. After we had helped her clean, it looked like she was going to cry. She said no one had ever helped her as much as we had that day. We committed her to looking at some of the conference talks and continuing to read and pray about the Book of Mormon so we will see how that goes. She has had a hard and very confusing life, so I hope she will really pray to receive that clear assurance that the Church is true. Oh I love "M" and I hope we are doing the right things to help her come to the knowledge of the truth. What else... We saw Karen twice this week. She has recently had some more personal struggles so she really wanted to see us this week. Both the lessons were sooooo good and she recognizes the spirit every time we are over. She says its the best feeling and that she really just never wants us to leave. We finally got The Book of Mormon in her hands and she was sooooo (unexpectedly) excited! I don't know why we didn't get on to her earlier. Karen is one of those people that we tend to be really cautious with because we don't want to lose her. I decided that was dumb and we have been super straight-forward with her ever since. When we gave her The Book of Mormon she said she was so curious to read it so we read with her the introduction. She wanted to keep going so badly but we had to leave for our next appointment. It was the best thing! We also have been singing hymns to her every time we come over. She is really warming up to the idea of prophets and we can see her getting baptized within the next month. So keep her in your prayers. Maybe even before I get transferred! That may be a little too much to ask for but miracles happen :) Our less actives this week have also been doing really well. Sister "M" has been one we have really been working with. (I think working with less actives is my strength) She is the funniest women I have ever met. Before I thought she just joined the church for the social aspect but I was wrong. She left the church more because of the social aspect. She told us that when she got baptized that she thought she would never leave the church. But then some things in her life got in the way and she had lots of difficulties. So she craved going to one of those fun preachy "amen!" and Hallelujah" screaming churches as she described. She told us that she knew she needed to come back. But then acted like she was just going to "visit". She knows the church is true, its just a matter of getting her back and recognizing that spirit that she has been missing. I will tell y'all a little about my Kirtland sites' investigators. Okay, so when we aren't touring, we are calling and such right. Well... I was on chat and I talked to this guy from the UK. By the way, his name is Jim. Okay, so Jim ran into the missionaries last week and has taken maybe 2 lessons with them. So he came onto Mormon.org and found chat and bam! this is where I came in. So he has a ton of questions and they were so good! I started answering all them and I could just tell he was golden. I invited him to be baptized and he didn't respond for the longest time. So then I waited and waited and then I got an answer of... yes, but I have to read The Book of Mormon first and know its true! It was so cool! I mean I didn't do anything but I know Heavenly Father was preparing Jim and I am so grateful that I get to help him learn and continue to grow. With chat you get lucky if you find someone that wants to listen and learn. Most people just come on to bother us or ask insanely hard, ridiculous questions. So to let you know how it works, when we do get someone who has real intent to learn, we get their information and then contact them about once a week to teach them over the phone and get them to continue working on those commitments that they get from their local missionaries. I mean I haven't talked to Jim very much, but I really see so much potential and I know Heavenly Father will get him where he needs to be. I had many more miracles, but I have to leave really soon. We are going down to Middlefield with the Egings today to see the Amish :) Mostly to go to the cool little Amish stores :) Well it sound like my family has a lot going on anyway, so have a great week!!!! I love y'all soooo very much!!!! Love, Sister Katie Call Happy late Easter!!!!!
How's my family doing?!?! Conference was amazing this week!!!!!! I just want to re-watch the whole thing!!!! I actually didn't get to watch it all, but I am going to finish watching this next week when I have free time at the visitors' center. I ended up having to give a tour during the second half of the Sunday session :( But hey its okay, because it's all on lds.org! Ooo... my favorite talks... I really liked L. Whitney Clayton's talk and Dale G. Renlund for the Saturday session!!! They were SOOO good! And then of course Elder Holland's talk was just SO amazing!!!! I have never had such an amazing conference experience and I feel like the mission has opened my eyes so much more. I found it so amazing that I could take something from every talk to apply to me and those we teach. This week has been great! Sister Adame and I have been focusing on using our time wisely and we have seen how much can get done if we really do work hard to keep on schedule and plan ahead. I think my favorite thing is to come home at 9 and feel like we got a lot accomplished. I know that if we work hard and do our part, that the Lord will bless us with opportunities and miracles. This week was especially neat because we had a miracle when it came to watching conference. We had been planning to watch conference at Mary's house but she canceled on us last minute. We had planned a back up with Eging's and contacted them last minute to make sure it was still okay. In the meantime, one of their friends texted them and asked them if they wanted to hang out. They told her that they had plans to watch conference and invited her to come. So when we showed up at our members' home, they had their friend there and we got to talk to her about our faith. It was such a miracle! Sister Adame and I were disappointed that we didn't get to watch conference with our investigator, but we were so grateful that Heavenly Father had blessed us with another opportunity to share the gospel. I especially feel like my testimony of God's love for His children has grown significantly throughout my mission. I probably say this all the time, but Heavenly Father really does care for His children! He wants each and everyone of us to feel His comfort and guidance. I am also so grateful for our Prophet Thomas S. Monson and all the apostles for being worthy and inspired men! Its conference never ceases to amaze me with such great inspiring and life changing talks. Aren't we blessed?!?! I LOVE Y'ALL SO MUCH, Sister Katie Call |
Archives
March 2016
|