Write It In Your Mind To Understand It In Your Heart

 Well sorry for the skip in a week we had a pretty busy P-day last week! Anyways things are super awesome but man last week was long haha. Every day we were struggling to find a schedule that worked and we think we may have something but honestly it's still not super fijado (fixed). Entonces, I'm grateful for the opportunity to stay busy but I also wish I could keep a consistent schedule.

So a lot has happened in the last two weeks so I will do my best to explain it all! Soooo last week (week 2 in the area) we really tried to find people and ended up getting 32 lessons but nobody on date. Honestly I'm not upset about that just because there is a lot of stuff going on and there is a lot of work to do so people will come eventually. The next week (week 3) we had a Zone Conference through Zoom with Elder Walter Gonzalez and his wife and it was awesome!!! They extended the invitation to try new things and see how it goes in the next few days sooooo... time to get creative haha. We also got challenged go open our mouths wherever we go which is going to help us to expand our options. I wish i could explain all of Zone Conference but that would make this email huge. 

Anyways, we also got new updated COVID-19 guidelines!!!!!! They aren't much different but we are now allowed to do meetings with members in their house for 15-20 minutes our backyard meetings so I finally get to see what our members look like!!! We do church every sunday but we give up our seats to the members. Sometimes i wish it was like a video game and everyone had their name floating above their heads haha! 

 So in lieu of Zone Conference, I decided to title this email using a quote from it. The point of the quote is to make sure that we are not just reading and moving on but that we truely understand the meaning of it. It allows us as missionaries to be able to better understand what we are teaching to also be able to relate personal experiences to the principles we want to get across. 2 Nephi 33:10 talks about the importance of not only believing in Christ but believing in his word and if we believe in his word, we can recieve the blessings that we need.

I hope everything is going well and that everyone is safe!!! 

PICTURES!!!

1. Just another pic of the good Elders I have the pleasure of living with... sometimes 😜

2. My comp mining for gold

3. Pre pic for those of you who didn't see my facebook post. (If you didn't you should check it out lol)

Noone Cares How Much You Know, Until They Know How Much You Care

 This week has been pretty crazy! I am in a new area with a new companion in a new apartment so it's been fun trying to get to know everything! 6 Elders in the same apartment usually would be super messy and crazy but we have kept things pretty organized and we have cooked and baked a ton! My comp as mentioned before, speaks mostly Spanish so I am seeing a really crazy improvement in my everyday speaking!! I also have a car that I named Baby Clifford (picture below) and it is my precious child haha. I am the only one in my district that has a car and I'm the only one who can drive it. The problem with that us I have to give a lot of rides... but it's fun at times.

Right now in this area my comp and I have an interested person who is super committed and goes to seminary at her school and everything!!! We are trying to do what we can to explain the importance of baptism and why it needs to be done sooner rather than later so it was a good opportunity for me to have a little more action than just first lesson calls haha. I love the people in this area!! The members are super nice and we gave already had 3 service projects this week! I'm very excited to see how the rest of the transfer is going to look!

This week I was able to apply one of my favorite sayings from my Dad. A couple of our calls have been majority talking and a little bit of scripture for 1 simple reason, "noone cares how much you know until they know how much you care." If you remember my saying last week, this explains how you go about touching a persons heart first. One of our lessons was almost completely just listening to the problems of the individual and using the scriptures to allow them to find solace in the love of God. It is so important to allow people to see that you care before attempting to, as I mentioned before, intrigue their mind. Especially right now people are interested to know how to find peace and comfort and I am so lucky to be able to testify of how accessible that is for everyone. 

- Elder Walters

PICTURES (we got some interesting ones)

1. Baby Clifford

2. Da Boiz (Face Mask Bonus)

3. Some good ole dinners

4. The longest day ever (got a total of 15 minutes of study the entire day and was serving and giving rides until 8:30)

It's More Important to Touch Someone's Heart Than it is to Intrigue their Mind

 Hello all viewers! It's been a pretty... all over the place kind of week. This was the last week of the transfer which means I'm being transferred!! I can't spoil the details  now or y'all won't read on ;) sooooo this week was full of a lot. Our weekend was pretty crazy. It was filled with service, driving, packing, celebrating, and definitely feeling sentimental about the last 5 weeks. I got lucky to have such an amazing district and people who I have grown close connections with but I am needed elsewhere so that's ok.

We got a new person and had some amazing opportunities to teach and meet more members! I have seen such an amazing progression in my Spanish I am so grateful for my trainer/Zone Leader/Companion haha. I am getting transferred to the Hunter zone and serving with a Peruvian companion! I'm super excited because as you know... I was originally called to Cusco, Peru so this will give me a chance to learn how to speak Peruvian Spanish!!! I also get to drive which I am super excited about :))

This week I have learned that if you try to go around giving facts and information to people it will not turn their heart to the gospel it will only satisfy a temporary interest. In order to really get someone interested in the gospel and gain the spiritual hunger for it, you need to "Touch Their Heart Instead of Intrigue Their Mind." This means sharing meaningful experiences that you have had and focusing more on how you felt and less on what happened and I promise that people can feel the difference. The spirit is such an incredible tool that allows us to understand and feel other people's feelings without having gone through their situation. How can we better #HEARHIM?

Love you all and hope things are going as well as they can!

Pictures!!!

1-3: Coolest hike ever!!! The lake was beautiful! Definitely worth waking up at 5... I think haha (also, that's my super cool zone)

4: Finishing 2 service projects back to back.

5: If you can see them, there are 3 moose... meese... moosen in the woodsen. 

"If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail"

 Hey everyone!!! It has been a month now in the mission! I haven't done a ton this week but we have actually been able to teach some new people which is awesome! I also did my first heart attack haha. It was specially requested by the sisters so we thought we would help out! I hope it was the right door and that she understood because if not... somone recieved a lot of hearts with Spanish phrases on them lol.

Anyway, we have been spending a lot of time learning the guitar and playing music because we don't have a lot of other things to do. Hopefully if we can get things moving then we can start helping out with English classes in the ward which will be SUPER FUN!!

This week I have realized that it is very hard to juggle a lot of tasks without coming up with a plan. We do daily planning and weekly planning to allow us to make sure we have everything figured out. As soon as we have an open space we realize that it is so much harder to plan in the moment then it is to do it earlier. Especially with all the time we have at home and in the chaos we are encircled in, it is super important that we have a plan for everything because "If we fail to plan, we plan to fail." Captain Moroni is the perfect example of someone who is always planning and I look up to him in so many different ways. 

Pictures

1. Our heart attack job.

"The Importance of the Book"

What is up y'all! It's been 3 full weeks and I'm doing what I can to survive. No it's actually super nice and my comp and I are having a great time! 

Our teaching pool is pretty limited and we don't have any investigators so we keep calling members. We are in round 2 of calling all the members in our ward and setting up meetings so that's fun. We are trying to come up with new ways to find and we are about to implement a few so look out for next weeks letter for some more info. We have to get creative with no in-person contact, no lessons at the church with members, no eating with members, no in house service projects, and some other stuff. The one person that answers the phone the most is the voicemail lady so we may have to get her number and see if she wants the discussions hahaha. 

This email is entitled "The Importance of The Book" pretty much because it's super important. The Book I'm referring to is the Book of Mormon. In the first two weeks I had a super hard time coming up with the words to say but I could understand what they said. It was super frustrating for me and I didn't know how much longer it was going to last. I've honestly never been a super strong scripture studier and I talked to one of the ZL's and he helped me realize the importance of The Book. As soon as I started really reading it from the beginning I have seen my thoughts and my words connect for the first time ever! It felt like my words were blocked off by a wall and reading the BoM just tore down that wall and let the words flow. Such a neat experience for me and it allowed me to know and gain a greater testimony for the importance of the 1 thing that holds everything together in the church, The Book of Mormon. 

PICTURES!!!

I gave myself a haircut (with some help from Elder Heaps. It's really the only crazy thing that happened this week so here's a few extras just for fun. (Ok I maybe accidentally hit my eyebrow... oops)

"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.