Gaining Direction

It’s nice to be back!

You know, after a mission I forgot how comforting it was to sit down and just think about the things that have happened during the week. I think that was a huge reason as to why I put all my letters up on this blog…. It’s easy to forget the miracles when you don’t take the time to STOP and think.

Side story: “stop and think”… I don’t know if anyone ever had this in school but I was there A LOT. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Beckstrom, was patient but by no means was I a saint. I learned the importance of “stop and think”. A little desk in the corner of a room (aka isolation) does the mind well… even if it’s for the 4^th time that day.

So here I am, once again stopping and thinking. It’s been an interesting past 6 months, so much has happened and I have barely had time to truly process it all—returning from a mission, work, love, marriage, moving… sheesh!

This post will be a funny contrast between my last few, I went from serving the Lord to fulfilling my role as wife—a completely different calling but just as fun and uplifting.

I’ve given it a lot of thought as to how I want to transition from mission life to the married life; the only thing that comes to mind is explaining how it all came about…

As I’m sure I have mentioned before, I always knew I was supposed to serve a mission; even more so when I was old enough to receive my Patriarchal blessing (a blessing given through the inspiration of the spirit by someone who is called to this position, it gives guidance and direction from Heavenly Father or God), I knew I needed to in order to be prepared to be the wife and mother my family future needed.

Luckily enough, that young man I married was patient enough to wait… not just while I served my mission in Idaho but for many years prior. We had met my first year in college at a dodge ball tournament, ha ha! I didn’t know then that I was breaking up with the love of my life. After a few years of space and a mission, we kept in touch through letters and emails for 18 months and he finished sweeping me off my feet!

So here I am. In a few days it will be one full year since I entered the Missionary Training Center (MTC)… and now I’m married and moved across the country! I couldn’t be happier. 

…it’s funny how an Aimless Motion has all of a sudden gained direction…

17 Nov 2014

wow, time.. can't believe it--STILL. 

anywho. Had a really good week this week. 

We had our first snow-fall of the year! so of course my companion and I had to play in it for a while. We were waiting for our dinner to come pick us up and she drove up and we were in the middle of a snowball fight.. it was really embarrassing. I'll send some pictures. 

We had an i n t e r e s t i n g visit with an investigator who had some visitors. We stopped in to see how she was doing and her husband had some buddies over for a few beers. Well half way through our conversation in the kitchen (the guys were in the living room) one of them comes into the kitchen and decides to join our conversation (with beer in hand of course). Long story short, he's talked to missionaries before "but never to such beautiful ones"--HIS WORDS, not mine... so while that continued for a while and we felt incredibly awkward our investigator was finding out from this guy that we don't smoke or drink or have coffee... and that was a wonderful mess to try and clean up. oh the joys of being a sister missionary.  

Something I learned this week was that temptations can hit anyone at any time. Watching investigators struggle and trying to find ways to help them we found out that satan is working just as hard with us. Both of us are so close to being done and the more consecrated we try to be the harder satan hits. It's been amazing to see how what we study and teach isn't just for our investigators, it's for us too. Though the temptations may be different, the distance it takes us from heaven is the same. We all have struggles, we all have weaknesses, but all these can be turned in to strengths if we use heaven's help to overcome. 

I Love you all. I hope you look for ways to over come temptations with the simple but powerful tool of the gospel. 

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Calero

10 November 2014

Oh this week... Just a few things:

Remember that lady (Yolanda) who hated us? well she invited us over for lunch this week... that was a BLESSING. We got to eat and talk to her and I think she's starting to like us.... We are hoping to be able to share a message with her this week. Slowly but surely... we're gonna get her to listen! 

We have been working hard this week, we have a couple potentials who will hopefully turn into investigators this week. We spent some time walking and knocking doors, we found a place neither of us had ever been to and it seemed to work--new move ins! woot woot. we're really excited to work with the Vargas family, the gospel seemed to come knocking at the perfect time. 

We had an investigator at the Elder's baptism! she brought her daughter and she loved it. A brother that spoke Spanish came to talk with her and asked her if she was a member and she said "not yet".... we almost peed our skirts with excitement! haha. 

I learned something really cool this week... I learned that no one can really tell you how your mission is going to end. Everyone has such different perspectives of what they expect the end to be like/what their experience was that you never know what to think! I have been really frustrated the past couple weeks because I was so sick--here I was trying to be the best and work the hardest in the time I have left aaaaand I become best friends with the toilet... my prayers turned into pleadings for a relief, not even the priesthood power healed me as "immediately" as I was hoping it would. In a way it was like HF was telling me to deal with it... so I did. So the second lesson I learned this week was: the quicker you learn the lesson, the less the trial lasts. The week ended on a high note and I'm back to about 99.9% health and things are great!

Oh patience.. I don't think it'll ever be a virtue that I master... 

Well, my time is up! have a wonderful week--I love you all!

3 November 2014

what a week!

There's a few things that I want to share really quick.. 

first... here are some quotes from Zone Meeting that I plastered all over my planner:

"Ask HOW, not WHY"

"The Lord strengthens you as you decide to be diligent"

"Virtue=Power, Master yourself, master the enemy"

"The Lord rewards Courage"

"Live up to your Calling"

Oh I'm going to miss these meetings.. It's amazing to see how taking the "easy" route in life is just that--EASY. Heavenly Father doesn't reward when we do what's convenient, He rewards when we do our best. 

Yesterday we taught the Gospel Principles class about covenants and it touched that topic as well. HF sets the conditions but He also sets the BLESSING. We want a particular blessing? obey the commandment that is tied to that blessing--easy enough! Its' so incredible how the more we learn the more our testimony is deepened. no wonder reading scriptures daily and saying prayers is a commandment!

Yesterday Bishop Perkins was released from the Murtaugh ward, I'm pretty sure I spent 90% of the meeting crying...what a good family. He was young and really good with helping us out with the work out there. 

we also had a fireside there, celebrating past missionaries. everyone that had served set up a booth with all the things from their mission and brought food to represent their country/state--it turned out AWESOME. hoping that might light a little more of a missionary fire in that ward. 

For halloween we carved pumpkins with the Perkins and watched a movie with our district--it was pretty fun! 

Time feels like it's slipping through my fingers.. it's been a hard week but it's been good. all the struggles really helps me remember to rely on Heavenly Father and not myself. I love this work. I love being a missionary. 

Love you all, have a wonderful week! 

Hna. Calero

20 October 2014

Another week come and gone! 

I walked into the mission office this week and saw my skinny face on the Return with honor board... Shameful.

We have a couple new elders in our district, kicking things up a little bit. Change is always good! 

Just a few things for this week

first.. we got attacked by dogs. they were GIANT AND OUT TO KILL US. okay that's a lie.. one was a puppy but he bit me. We've been trying to contact a referral out in the middle of no where for like a month and the only things we found home that day were the dogs.. sigh. wish something cool could have come out of this story.. 

Second.. we met a lady named Yolanda.. She was anything BUT NICE. We had talked to her outside her home before and we went back this week hoping she would have a change of heart.. and she did--she let us in. She kept talking about how as LDS we just do what we're told and how we are wasting out time on a mission and all that fun stuff... so what good came out of this? I realized that I had no desire to argue back! odd, I know. As we testified and talked to her about the blessings of the gospel she started to soften up and clean up her language a bit... so here we are, thanking her for her time and she says "well, when are you going to come back?", we were shocked! so here we were feeling great because we thought we got through to her when... i spill her kid's gatorade on her carpet... how embarrassing. So AFTER  I clean it up she says.. "you can come back but i'm not giving you anything to drink--you;ll stain my carpet!".. why do these things happen to me? 

Third, We've hit kind of a slump and it's been hard. We've had a lot of success finding new investigators and teaching but it seems like this past week no one wanted us. it was really hard and a HUGE test for us to stay diligent. We were able to fill some time with some service but it didn't feel too good to help some investigators pack up and move to California.. it seems like we are losing investigators left and right but as my trainer taught me "there are bumps in the road but nothing frustrates the work". ha.

sooooo We endured to the end of the week and saw the blessings. on Sunday Reyes helped bless the sacrament and Lalo helped pass it.. our two RC being able to exercise the priesthood. it was powerful and truly a blessing to be able to witness something so good after such a hard week. Over and over I'm grateful for the Sacrament, it truly gives me the fuel that I need to make it another week. 

that's all I really have for this week.. 

Can't believe we only have one more full week of October!!

I love you all--have a wonderful week! 

Hermana Calero

13 October 2014

woooohoooo Transfer calls came... and we're BOTH STAYING!! wooohoooooooo! Seriously, we celebrated last night with kettle corn--mmmm--

Oh man, another week come and gone. I guess the high light of this week was being able to go to the Zone Conference with Elder Golden from the 70 and his wife. It was super good! He gave me the energy/desire/motivation that I needed for the last little bit. He was such a powerful speaker, and I have no doubt that he was called of God. His testimony of missionary work is stronger than I've ever felt before. He reminded us just how important missionary work is--any time that we waste we are letting people perish in unbelief. It's really up to us, and if we truly understood the importance of this work we wouldn't take it so lightly--especially as members, not just missionaries. 

We had some really good lessons this week, over and over I'm reminded of the worth of each soul... there is potential behind EVERY door. 

These past few weeks have been powerful, I wish I had the words to truly describe the miracles that occur out here each and every day.. and most of those miracles I'm seeing in myself. We have a lot of plans to implement in this area--hopefully with our obedience and diligence we can see even more miracles!

I don't have much more to say.. time is going by so fast! I love you all--have a wonderful week!

Love,

hermana Calero

6 October 2014

oh man, we're in OCTOBER... I still remember last years Halloween! oh time... 

this week was PACKEDDDDD, Zone Meeting, Temple trip, and General Conference! all three were absolutely powerful. I don't have much time so I'm just going to get to the good stuff. 

Monday we had a super powerful lesson with an investigator family... We asked two brothers from the branch to come and bless their home and the individual members... they've had lots of "sketchy" things happening in their house.. lets just say I am soooo thankful for the power of the Priesthood! 

Something funny for this week. Some investigators that I talked about last week (the ones that were taught in Utah) well, we stopped by to see them this week... yeah... lets just say that the previous missionaries had pushed them too much into baptism.. From the moment we walked in the house the spirit of contention filled the room. The bro. kept telling us that he was already baptized by god and he couldn't be baptized in another church because he was not going to replace God with God... um... okay... we hadn't even said A WORD about baptism. it was interesting. Then he proceed to tell us that Christ was a sinner because He was born on earth and we are all born in sin.. WHAT??? It was interesting. OH and he kept saying "JOE Smith", I was offended..  So we bore our testimony and talked about our purpose and blah blah blah... no progress. so we decided to go. on our way out my companion is backing up after shaking his hand when BOOOOOM! SHE KNOCKS OVER A GIANT VIRGIN MARY STATUE WITH HER BAG.... hahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahhahahaha. Oh man, PRICELESS. the look on their faces. my companion picks it up and was like " I didn't do it on purpose, I swear!" ahahahahhahahahaha oh man. I was dying. so we booked it out. Will we go back? sure, but maybe after a couple weeks...  DYING. 

Being able to go to the temple is always such a blessing, I receive so much revelation that I wish I had the memory to write it all down... amazing. 

Speaking of amazing, Conference was incredible!! I couldn't believe that we got to hear talks in different languages!! Such a historic moment, so cool. I was super excited to hear from E. Gavarret cause he came and spoke in Stake Conference not long ago. His talk was POWERFUL. I wish I could pick a favorite one... I can't wait until the Liahona comes out. 

Lets see, what else. Oh we had some opportunities to do service. I love that conference talked about our personal ministy and how it should reflect the life of Christ. We had a chance to minister to those that are poor in spirit and the sick and afflicted. it was amazing. It's so cool to see how strong the spirit can be with us when we are worthy--and we need to be because we never know when we might walk into a home and the message we bring can be their saving grace. 

Overall, a really awesome week. I'm so grateful for these experiences. My journal is absolutely PACKED with entries for this week.. I've really seen Heavenly Father's hand in my life this week.

I love you all, have a wonderful week! 

Hermana Calero

us, E. Housewright, E. Eborall, E. Westfall, E.