August 18, 2013

Hey so once again not a lot of time to email and stuff but here's the low down.

So I am here :) Mission life is NOTHING like I expected and there are no words to explain it. I am actually in Glen Carbon IL. My first tracting experience was great! We have one return appointment! Everyone smokes here it is crazy. We go home smelling like smoke almost everyday. Oh and My companion is Sister Anderson from Riverton. A majority of the missionaries out here are from Utah. But the weather is really nice! Not to hot or cold or humid. Just perfect. And so many trees and everything is green! It's okay that there isn't mountains cause we wouldn't be able to see over the trees :)

I have met so many people in the last week my brain is going to explode. And everyone hugs!! well all the women do at least. It's weird. Oh and there is a lady in our ward who is from the Philippines. She moved here two weeks ago and is getting married to someone she met on LDS singles this week. We are helping her out and I get to lead the music at her wedding :)

While tracting we stopped in to see a lady who is in our ward. We ended up talking to her husband who is a Christian, but he doesn't believe that the Mormons are true. He has shelves of books about the bible. We invited him to read the book of Mormon and he said he didn't need to. So frustrating how ready he is for it but just won't read it.

Oh and EVERYONE out here likes to talk. It is so hard to do just 1 hour appointments because they like to tell us their life story every time we visit. Its great though :)

So they had 3 baptisms the Saturday before I got here and now we are kind of starting from scratch. We go and visit the recent converts though and they feed us dinner. Last night we were teaching a couple about the temple. We told them about baptisms for the dead and she started crying. She said we don't understand how long she has been waiting to go to the temple! It was really touching and amazing.

I have learned so much and I love it out here. It is literally the hardest thing I have ever done, but at the same time when I am relying on the Lord it is so easy!

 

Anyway its exciting that Amy is starting college!  And I miss my nephew and now my niece!! Will you please send me physical pictures that I can put up on my wall.  All sorts I have no preference except that they are of you guys and my cute niece and nephew :)

 

I do have to go soon though.  Never enough time!  I love you and miss you dearly.  Mom thank you for my package!! It got here great and I now don't have headaches thanks to my sweet pillow :)  I am going to buy some new running shoes though.  The one's I got kill my feet and my comp. is a marathon runner so I need some I can actually run in!  :)  I love you all and will try and send more emails each week.  Hope all is well and school gets started well!  Love you!

 

Sister Whitney Calton