"Life is Like a Sandbag"

2 Weeks down and Elder Walters seems to be doing well. Most days are spent in the hotel contacting members in their area and teaching online. We are proud of his attitude. - Jessica 



Well y'all, this week has been a big one. First, thank you to all who wrote me emails on my birthday!! Sorry I couldn't respond I had an early Pday for Utah's Pioneer day the Friday before so they took away my Pday. Anywho... I'm still in a hotel livin the best life! My birthday was pretty chill I didn't do a whole lot except buy a few missionaries some chick-fil-a. I've also put my cooking and baking skills to the test and gotten pretty creative (pictures below). I've had a full 2 weeks here and I'm trying my best to get the hang of things but... it's gonna take a while lol. I love Utah so it keeps things pretty comfortable. 

We had zone conference this week and it was amazing!!! If I put in all of the things I learned here then this would be a very long email haha. The topic was recieving revelation and one quote I heard was "God does not send thunder when a still small voice will do." It's not the topic of the email but it is something that I think can apply to us all. I got a chance to perform a musical number in the zone conference which was awesome and kind of the first time I've sung in such a small group in public so definitely something new and nerve racking.

The topic for this email is "Life is Life a Sandbag" simply because it is haha. The meaning for this analogy is this... In life we are given opportunities and experiences that fill our sandbag with sand. Occasionally, things get in our way that damage that sandbag and allow it to get tears but usually we notice that and fix it. Sometimes there are things that tear the fabric of the bag piece by piece and we dont notice it or don't realize it is an issue until there is a large tear that is too large to stop. Without the atonement of Christ and the love of God, the sand in our bags will fall and be lost giving us no choice but to find more sand to refill our bag. But luckily, The atonement of Christ and the love of God act as a bucket to catch the sand we let slip out of our bags so that we can attend to our wounds and reclaim the sand we lost. 

I recently had an experience where I let my RIP in the bag get too big and i lost a lot of sand. Thankfully i was able to stitch up the tears and move forward with faith in myself and the gospel I am striving to proclaim. Love you all and hope all is well.

-Elder Walters

PICTURES!!

1. Played some competitive Skip-Bo while my comp was in meetings

2. Got creative and made brownies on the stove because we dont have an oven 

3. My comp showed me Mexican Haystacks and they were pretty good 

4. The Portugese Sisters made me a cake for my birthday

5. President and Sister McBeth

Temporary Defeat is NOT Permanent Failure

Aaannnnnddd.....we are back! First letter from Elder Walters from the Mission Field! We have spoken to him 4 times this week. His situation is a little more relaxed then we thought it would be. We can maintain constant communication as long as he needs. Today for church he and his companion taught us a lesson. It's nice to see his face. I am feeling grateful for modern technology. He is currently serving in West Valley City, Ut. 


Well one week down... ish. I have a special P-day because of pioneer day which is kind of nice but they steal our usual Monday P-day for it and there aren't even any cool parades or anything :( BUT that's besides the point. If any of you have seen The Best 2 Years... I am Elder Calhoun. I can prove it, 1. There are 3 other Elders serving in the same ward and they have all been out 15+ months in Spanish missions 2. All 4 of us go everywhere together and basically live in the same place 3. My comp has 2 transfers left sooo... Elder Calhoun. PLUS if any of you know how I role... Elder Calhoun haha. Honestly, it has given me an opportunity to dive in the deep end a little. 

My comp is Elder Sutton and he's from Mesa, AZ! First day we jumped straight into Spanish as soon as I got there and we have been grinding trying to get the language ever since. I love how he is pushing me and giving me an opportunity to fall on my face a little in order to understand where I need to improve. I got to see basically everyone that I knew in the mission which was super cool! I know about 5 missionaries in the mission and I coincidentally saw them ALL except for 1. Oh and they put us in a hotel about 3 miles outside of our boundaries and my comp and I are whitewashing an area that got split in two. We spend most of our day at meetings and contacting members to get to know who is willing go help or not haha. My comp is the Zone Leader as well as an Elder in the other companionship we are with which gives me the opportunity to follow them around and see how everything works on a higher level. 

But enough of that haha, the title of this is "Temporary defeat is not permanent failure." I got an email from the one and only Elder Nick Jones that contained that very important phrase. He allowed me to see that sometimes falling on your face is what you need in order to stabilize yourself enough to not do it again. Spanish is an interesting language and I am in a ward and area that only speaks Spanish so it is a little hard to understand what they are saying especially over the phone. However, I will not be able to improve if I dwell on the amount of times I fail because the victories are what is going to propel me forward in order to meet my goals of fluency. 

Love you all and hope everything is good in AZ... or at least stable haha 

PICTURES!!!

1. My comp and I got creative with our hotel dinner and made rice and meat tacos.

2. We went on a beautiful hike as a district to Dog Lake. It was just about what it sounds like haha. Small pool of water where people bring their dogs lol. 

3. Flight into SLC at 6am had a few more missionaries than I thought. 1 of them being Sister Cranney! Crazy coincidence.

No One Wakes Up Planning to Fail

SEMANA 5!!!!!!

THIS IS INSANE!!!!!! I can't (and can) believe I am almost done with the CCM!! I finish officially on Saturday. Here's the plan y'all... I finish Saturday and am released on Sunday. From Sunday May 31st until July 20th, I will be a normal dude (weird). My plan is to continue to study Spanish as often as I can by taking MTC training courses and studying with friends and family. Hopefully in 2 months I will have a good rounded out fluency so that I don't lose the language on my mission in Utah. Honestly though, I love just putting my head down and getting to work on my own so I am excited for this break!

Studying at home in your last week feels like senioritis but on steroids because you're so close to getting out of the house to go speak English and the last thing you wanna do is learn difficult concepts in Spanish. However as I said in my last email, "Keep Moving Forward". You never know what opportunities God is going to throw your way if you are ready and willing to receive them. The point is, we are learning hard concepts, teaching multiple people this week, and I finish in 4 days sooooooo... REALLY gotta focus on motivation jaja. 

I learned this saying earlier but it applied to a lesson we taught today. My companion and I had to teach a lesson on P-Day in the MTC (not fun) so he was tired and so was I BUT we still knew that if we didn't plan... we were going to fail. So, we threw together a good solid lesson that was focused on allowing the other person to share their feelings and then we would end it with a video. What we didn't see coming was the amount of questions she asked us. They weren't even necessarily gospel related topics. One specific question she asked while we were talking about prayer was "Why did you choose to serve a mission?" It threw us off but we answered it just fine. After I shared my end, my companion went next and as soon as he started I thought "MAN, Mosiah 2:17 would be PERFECT". Mosiah 2:17 is "... when you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God". This was the only scripture shared out of the Book of Mormon AND it was last minute. Once I finished sharing she asked "Where was that scripture from? The Bible? or another book?" I explained that it was from the Book of Mormon which was not separate to the Bible but a compliment. This led her to asking us if we could meet again to explain to her what the Book of Mormon is. COOL STUFF! Soooo the full quote to the title of the email is "No one wakes up planning to fail... but don't plan, and you will fail". Although we had not planned to share a scripture out of the BoM, the fact that I could step back knowing we had a plan and let the spirit guide me wherever it needed me helped us to secure a second lesson. 

Love you all and hope to see some of you when I get released!!

Pictures!!!!

1/2. Disney took over the meeting (+Video of Elder Rogers as a Lion)

3. District reassignment map

4. How I feel sometimes

Keep Moving Forward

Semana 4

Wow this is insane because I finish in a week!! It felt super long in the moment and it still kind of does but honestly it's gone by so quickly. Things that I struggled to place in my life are now ingrained into my daily schedule and I may actually have a hard time transitioning when I'm released. I get released on March 31st and do not leave until July 20th so tengo mucho tiempo entre fechas. Pero, I got to go to the United Food Bank with Sister Giles (my cousin)!!! How often can missionaries say they got to go do service IN THEIR MISSION with their cousin, SUPER COOL! (Picture provided below).

Entonces, it is really fun learning Spanish as the DL because I can learn with the other members of the district! In the MTC most people are aware of SYL. SYL means Speak Your Language and is an opportunity for missionaries to strive to find circumstances in which they can speak their mission language. My STL (Sister Training Leader) and I found that the current categories for SYL application didn't fit very well with the online situation. So for those of you who know me... you know the first thing I did was make a proposal to change it jajajaja. Both of us drafted a proposal and submitted 5 new categories (Originally: Residence, On-the-go, Gym, Class, and Meals). These new categories are: Residence, Companionship, Personal, Class/Lessons (teaching), and Extracurricular for P-day. We submitted this to our teacher and we have gotten permission to use our district as the "Test" to determine if it is worth changing MTC wide. Kind of fun not gonna lie jaja. 

However, planning and putting that together took a lot of my time which stressed me out. I didn't have much time during the rest of my day to finish much else and I also had a hard time trying to meet with everyone. This started to become a self-inflicted burden that was justified by helping the district. It was a good thing but it made me busy. The movie Meet the Robinsons (Best movie ever) has the quote "Keep Moving Forward". I would like to emphasize that it does not mean "put your head down and never stop" it means "move forward with a purpose so that you can get where you need to, when you need to get there". We are going to have stressful times in our life but God does NOT intend for us to put our head down and follow blindly. We have a purpose and a plan and so does he. Make your eternal salvation worth striving for every single day. I KNOW God is wanting you to understand his plan for you and if you can set goals for where you want to be and "Keep Moving Forward", God will make sure you end up exactly where you need to be, when you need to be there. Ether 12:4,6

Picture time:

1/2. United Food Bank with Sister Giles

You are only as fast as your slowest guy

Semana 3!!

Wow this is crazy!!! He aprendido muchísimas cosas en este semana. Honestly the housing situation is great so far! I don't have to pay rent and my landlords send me the occasional "Clean up" notices but they are super nice about it haha. I have a full two and a half weeks left which in the grand scheme of a mission is pretty much 1/50 of my mission but hey, I'm livin the life. My favorite part about being at home has to be the level of comfortability I have with my surroundings. I am not in some foreign country surrounded by a different culture and a ton of people who don't speak my native language. It's quite relaxing actually.

My studies are moving a lot like a rollercoaster. The beginning of last week I hit an all time high of time used to study in one day. However... It burned me out pretty bad so I had to regroup and start over. I was recently asked to be the "leader of the district over the Elders" which is a cool opportunity for me to get to know the people in my district a lot better. I am to look after 5 other Elders and there is a Hermana who watches over the other 3 Hermanas. I took time before my mission to study Spanish and to get a head start into the MTC which worked, but I am learning to forget about myself and use my knowledge to help those around me. I am having to help out my comp, who is an amazing guy but is struggling to understand the concepts. When it comes to Spanish-English, it is almost harder how simple Spanish is because you have to rephrase words from English because they don't exist in Spanish. For example, there is no verb "to text" so you have to say "enviar mensajes de texto." Ya... I know. But it's fine because it also makes it easier because you don't have to memorize as many words. 

Anyways, being the leader of the district (as mentioned before) has taught me a lot about selflessness and how to let go of my own personal progress and help those around me. In the marathon that is "MTC" everyone starts at a different spot and has their own pace that hopefully allows us to all cross the finish line at decently close times. Unfortunately, this race is not marked by those who cross the finish line first, but by the one who crosses the finish line last. As a district we have to work in unity with the mindset that "You are only as fast as your slowest guy." I tend to like to put my head down and get to work, blocking out everyone else and anything else that distracts my train of thought and focal point. In this specific instance, I am having to stop myself in my place in the race and turn around to do my best to help those behind me. Although I never purposefully act with selfish intentions, I am now seeing that I need to sacrifice my time and effort NOT to make sure I get as far ahead as possible but that as a district, we take 1st place. Mosiah 18:9

No pictures this week... BUT I'VE BEEN REASSIGNED!!!!! I am being reassigned to Salt Lake City West Mission reporting the week of July 20th!! I AM SO EXCITED!!! I will be released when I finish MTC and will enjoy life until I return to the field.

Love you all hope quarantine is becoming less of a drag!

Push Harder to Work Smarter

Semana 2

Everyone keeps telling me they can't believe it's already been two weeks and my simple reply is "Well... I can." That isn't necessarily because I don't like it here but because it just feels like a long time. Days start to blur together to the point where things that I recall in the afternoon that happened in the morning feel like they happened days before. The schedule is so relaxed that the free time that I have just goes to studying more because there isn't much else to do. My usual cook decided to take on the role of Gourmet Chef which really enhanced the learning experience because I knew as soon as I was done, there was a delicious meal waiting for me. My Chef just so happens to also be my personal trainer, life coach, best friend, consultant, entertainer, ninja, body guard, laundry lady, lover of all things France, and my Mother... she wears many hats haha. As many of you know 5/05/20 is Cinco de Mayo. Well... little did I know that the Mexican natives don't actually celebrate Cinco de Mayo and I went into class without this information with what many refer to as "full send mode" (picture provided below). I also got to go and help distribute food for the United Food Bank with my Uncle Tyson Nansel. It was a super neat experience and definitely a good workout. I brought two Elders from my online district who live and Gilbert and 3 other Elders who are all in a District that is "Connected" to ours. We are 16D and they are 16E (picture below)

As far as the study goes... I do a lot of it. I have recently upgraded my time with my companion from 2 hours a day to 4-5 hours a day with some extra yoga and pronunciation practice thrown in. Days are still the same schedule except I workout in the mornings now and study all between classes with my comp. We signed up to teach an actual investigator on Friday and I'm not exactly sure I'm ready but I'm confident it'll work out. We started this Intermediate Core thing that I like to call "Baby Clifford" thanks to my good friend Elder Bean. Baby Clifford because it's small and Red like a small version of Clifford the big red dog (even though it's not a dog, I know). Anyways it came right after Basic core but from basic to intermediate is like from 0-60, it picks up speed pretty quickly. We have also taught two other "investigators" but those are just my teacher pretending to be an individual. 

There have been some pretty neat experiences in this last week that taught me to push harder. In the first week I could tell my comp was getting pretty discouraged and I tried to talk him into continuing to work hard until the spirit gave him some help. He wasn't sure that was going to get anywhere until he heard it from his Dad and a switch flipped. The next day he apologized for being down all the time and he was ready to get moving!! I was so excited! That day while in a zoom breakout room I had a thought that we needed to teach someone this weekend and I could see him thinking so I said "yes... I know." Without even speaking to each other we were able to communicate the similar spiritual prompting between us both it was so cool! Right then I signed us up to teach Friday. For how not far we are in Spanish... that was a bold move. I started to see a lack of motivation in my efforts as well because I knew the information but I had no way to communicate my progress. That night I watched a video that really turned my perspective around about Christ with Henry B. Eyring and Jeffrey R. Holland. The title of this week is "Push Harder To Work Smarter" because that was my motivational motto that told me that sometimes you need to sacrifice in order to learn the most. Just because you work smarter does NOT mean you can push less. That was the shift I needed to really push hard this week in getting done the things I needed to and step up my game. "Commit to the Lord whatever you do and he will establish your plans" Proverbs 16:3

Hope everything is going well with everyone! Here is the video if anyone wants to watch it (highly recommend it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6FKiNVbw3Y

PICTURE TIME!

1. Cinco de Mayo... (Panda head+Poncho+Argentinian Sash+Mariachi Music+Cinco de Mayo Background+Dancing=Full Send)

2/3. Service project with Elder Newman and Elder Davis (in my district on the far Right) and 3 other Elders from a "neighboring" district

4. My comp and I have been making virtual backgrounds of ourselves and we play them in class. 

Enfrenta La Verdad

¡HOLA AMIGOS! 

1 week down in the rigorous life of home CCM (MTC in spanish) and 5 more weeks to go. The food here is ok and my roommates are up past my bedtime but other than that it's great! My schedule consists of an hour and a half of Companionship study over video chat followed by a 3 hour Spanish class on zoom with a teacher in Mexico. After that, I usually go to the gym for an hour, come home, study, and nap. But the fun doesn't stop there, I also have another 3 hour class that ends at 6:30 followed by my dinner and more night study. I almost forget sometimes that there is a worldwide pandemic that is keeping us all inside for multiple weeks. 

There are 10 in my district with six Elders and four Hermanas. The Elders have started a group chat where we make jokes in class so half of our class is laughing at random times and the other half (including the teacher) have no idea what is going on. Pretty dang exciting eh? -Nacho Libre But by about day 2 I realized that my companion and I have a lot in common which makes it really easy to relate to each other and gives us opportunities to share our past experiences. 

The language is... well... a second language. By that I mean that all of the struggles and stresses that come from learning a second language are the same on a mission. The only thing that changes is in the CCM all you do is Spanish until you are fluent. 

But the reason I titled this week "Enfrenta La Verdad" is because my companion wrote a story back a year ago entitled "Face the Truth" where he basically had everything taken from him while moving houses and he was forced to Stand "in front of" the Truth. Being in front of the truth means that the truth will ever continue to move unless you do something about it. You can't just run along with it hoping that it slows down enough for you to understand. You need to face it head on and do with it what you must. Trusting that when it's all over, God will have given you enough to keep moving. But you have to be in line with the will of God because if you aren't, it'll run you over. Proverbs 3:5-7

Love you all and hope all is well,

Elder Walters

Ok time for pictures

1-2. Forgot I had a panda head and decided to wear it into our class.

3

. I had to pretend to be a man named "Jose Luis" for the Elders to teach in spanish and this was my outfit of choice.