Week 51 (3/24/14)

Okay I PROMISE that I'm not being like over optimistic or anything…. but this week was pretty much the bomb too. We've just seen SO many miracles!! :) 

Something cool I've realized is how much I've been able to not only teach by the spirit, but teach simply as well. You know how they say the more you learn the more you are able to teach simply? Well it's totally true! I love it!! :) I have seen how much I've been able to talk to non members and explain things that they understand. We're constantly thinking about non-members for everything! You can usually see us cringing in sacrament meeting or trying to distract people when people go deeper than deep. Which seems to happen in our ward a lot… it must be the old ladies. 

When I first came out on my mission I really wanted to tell everyone that families can be together forever! But now along with that, my real goal is to make people happy! Mainly because the gospel brings SO much happiness into my life and I want other to have that same JOY! 

It's cool :) 

It's spring break so it's been CRAZY here! The traffic is awful and it's taking us a lot longer to get places! We're living in a vacation place… I think I just forgot that. 

We're doing a 5K on Saturday! We're SUPER excited! Fun finding activities! :D

I got to talk to Ernie and Ashley on the phone :) they were planning on coming down this weekend but stuff got messed up. So in a couple weeks they will come down here and go to church with us and then on p-day we'll hangout and go to the beach and stuff. I'M SOOOOOOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D I love those guys so much! 

We got to have dinner with our mission president on Tuesday! He took us to this awesome place. it was pretty fun. It was about 6 sets of sisters and then him, Sister Cusick, and Kate. Pres asked Sister Upshaw and I why we were so happy… all we could say was- "WE JUST LOVE EACH OTHER!" Hopefully he'll keep us together longer….

I ate sushi for the first time and actually liked it! One had tuna… one had crab… and one had shrimp! There ya go. Branching out…. we go to lunch every week with the YW president and one of the young women who's having a hard time. SHe loves it!!!! She seems happier and we just love her!

Our less active work has been taking off! We have seen so much success and we love it!!!! :D 

We set a date with Terri Taddle! We're SUPER excited for her! 

Yeah. That's a good run down. Boring email eh? Sorry!! Everything is just great :) 

I love you all! 

Love, Sister Calder

Giant hamburger that President was really impressed that I ate

This has our name in it. this is a Filipino from my ward. What is this stuff though?

Squished a giant cockroach

I ate like 4 of these. Store bought cupcakes are my  weakness.

Week 50 (3/17/14)

This week has been AWESOME! As always. Surprise! :) 

As I get emails from more and more missionaries I realize that my mission is SO different from a lot of others! Our average is teaching 20 lessons a week and I've heard from a lot of other missionaries that they're teaching a lot more than that! It gets pretty discouraging at times thinking that I don't get to teach as many people, but we still do our best! Apparenly we are one of the most obedient missions. President Cusick has done wonders to all of us. He keeps telling us how proud he is of us :) I'm not gonna lie, it's been hard to change and be exactly obedient, but we are doing it and seeing miracles! 

Here's some crazy things that makes our mission so different…. 

We don't tract. At all. We stopped doing it back in September. We actually are not allowed to. But I've heard that other missionaries still do! We thought that was everyones rule! I haven't knocked on a door in FOREVER! But we didn't see any real success from that anyways haha 

We aren't allowed to eat dinner at members houses AT ALL unless they have an investigator or less active member there. Sadly… we hardly ever get to eat at members houses :(

Uh… we have iPads and get to check our emails every single day! I just don't get to respond to them until Monday. So if you want to send me hilarious emails though the week you totes can :) but we also have to take a bunch of surveys every week cuz they're testing everything on us so that's fun! 

We are on fb… so that's crazy! 

We have online Elders that just do online work. 

We teach online lessons. 

We went to a baseball game with our whole mission. 

Our mission conference was on the beach and we're allowed to go on the beach on pdays! 

We are running in a 5K next week wearing mormon.org shirts to get our name out there! 

We have a metro training center. 

We can't listen to music. 

We have to park our cars once a week and bike to talk to people. 

We spend usually 6-9 months in an area and 3-5 transfers with our comps. Which is a lot longer than Pres Summerhayes used to do… 

We can't hangout with the Elders on p-days and sometimes we can't even call them…. 

We basically have sister AP's 

Crazy! It's so different. But I love it :) I know it's where I'm supposed to me that's for sure! 

Uh. I'm like out of time. I had a lot more to say. But I just have so many awesome people emailing me! 

I got to go on an awesome exchange with our SL Sister Kenegy. She rocks. I'd send you a pic… but I just stuck my memory card in the wrong place and it's stuck in the computer… so I hope we can get it out… 

Also- this work is so all about love! I just have learned so much to love people! That's what everyone needs is a bunch of mushy love. Tell people you love them all the time! I don't really think it gets old! I've realized how much this work really is about loving those around us :) and that love comes more and more naturally to me as my mission goes on :) 

Just love everyone and you'll be so happy in life :) 

I love you all so much! 

Oh yeah and and put this scripture at the bottom of the email…. 

D&C 64:33 I found this scripture this morning. It gave me a lot of comfort :) 

Love, Sister Calder :) 

Week 49 (3/10/14)

Have you ever had one of those moments where you're just like- "Man!

God totally loves me :)"

Those are pretty much my favorite moments EVER!

I feel like I get them a lot on my mission- where everything is just

going great, and you know that he loves you so much and is so aware of

you :) I had one of those on Saturday. We pretty much were just having

such an amazing day. We don't have too many investigators right now,

so we were doing some bike contacting while trying to contact some

less actives in the process. We weren't having too much success but

decided to stop and get some water at Walgreens (you know there's a

MILLION of those things here. Sometimes they have Walgreens and CVS on

one corner and then a geriatric clinic on the other... Those

oldies;)). As we were in line I pulled out my wallet to get some cash

and the lady behind me a couple seconds later asked me if I was a

Mormon missionary from Utah. Of course I was shocked because that like

never happens, and me and Sister Upshaw both are like "YA! How'd you

know that...?" Then she told me that she saw my Utah license in my

wallet (which I do not think is at all creepy just to let you know...

You should see some of the things we do. Fb doesn't help the

creepiness at all either...). Then we talked to her for a sec with the

cashier standing right there. After we were done the woman asked us if

we had a cars. We handed her a Mormon.org card and the cashier put out

her hand for one as well! Then she looked at it and asked if she could

have our number cuz we didn't give her one with our phone number on

it, the cashier gave hers back too for our number! So cool. The lady

was telling the cashier about how the Mormons are all so nice and

they're so family oriented. Nice. She taught a lesson for us :) that's

always a plus

Then we were unlocking our bikes and she comes out and gives us her

number and explained how she'd been taught by missionaries in.....

NAPLES! Cool eh? I felt even cooler when she told me where she lived

and I knew exactly where it was! You know how that makes you feel

cool... She didn't seem to like Naples as much as I did though....

Haha It's funny how fast we learn the areas that we're in! Anyways...

That was awesome. That same day we got a ton of texts from people that

we had texted them asking if they'd be at church tomorrow and about 5

of them were like "yeah we'll be there!" So that was SUPER happy! We

even got a call that same day from one of our gators nephews who'd

referred her to us and he said he was down and wanted to bring her to

church! Then we get a call from a LA saying that him and his wife will

be at church tomorrow (they haven't been in over 15 years and we found

them doing "To the Rescue" and the whole story is a miracle how we

helped them return to activity but we just love them!)!

Then as we were biking down to the church for our awesome ward party I

just had this moment where I was SO happy and couldn't stop smiling.

The weather was BEAUTIFUL and everything just seemed to be going right

in that moment :) I was SO happy... Well I guess you could say that

pure joy :)

Sooooo since were constantly showing people videos I always have these

videos pop in my head and I just want to do an air hashtag or

something with it... #mormonmessagemomentsthatmattermost

Look it up :) it'll change your life...then... SHARE ON. Easy

missionary work right there!

But you want to know what all these miracles are from?

OBEDIENCE.

It's so simple, but brings mountains of blessings! I didn't have as

strong of a testimony of that till this week. Sister Upshaw and I

decided to recommit ourselves to being exactly obedient to the very

end and working our hardest. We prayed together, and promised our

Heavenly Father that we would do better and talk to everyone, and try

our best to be obedient. We saw blessings IMMEDIATELY. Ria committed

to be baptized! I KNOW that being obedient and keeping your end of a

promise, that Heavenly Father will not only make up for our

imperfections, but pour out his blessing upon us. He's just waiting

for us to ask! Even when it doesn't make sense, still be obedient!

That's faith and trust :) serve The Lord with EVERYTHING you've got!

And don't hold anything back! You will see miracles :)

If I could give one piece of advice it would be-

BE OBEDIENT! Even to the rules you might think are stupid, you'll

probably realize later on that your mission president was right all

along... :)

Be obedient...and if I had to throw another... take LOTS of pictures :)

So numbers wise, this was one of our worst weeks, but I can't tell you

how fulfilled we feel :)

Also- we've been doing some crazy online stuff in our mission, we have

6 sets of missionaries just doing online procelyting! It's crazy all

the cool things that we're apart of right now! This should all bring

your comfort.... I probably won't come back as weird as you thought ;)

although I probs won't be able to sit on a couch....

Also- I'm a firm believer in oxi clean...

And Sister Upshaw and I have follow the prophet memorized. We're

pretty proud :)

Love you all!

Love, Sister Calder :D