Week 18

 My read-through of the Old Testament continues. I finally finished Deuteronomy, and came out of the other side of the Law to Moses mostly intact. Feeling excited to get back into the action, I started the Book of Joshua. About halfway through it turns from an epic recounting of the conquest of Canaan into a record of the number of kings who the Israelites destroyed (31), what they were the kings of, and then goes into excruciating detail about the EXACT borders of the lands each tribe is doled out by Joshua (each of them gets at least half a chapter). So it was a bit of a letdown. But maybe the book of the Judges will be better...

This week was better in terms of missionary work. First of all, wonder of wonders, we had an actual lesson with a Friend! We met with Richelle, who has been meeting with the missionaries off and on for a few years now. Her adult daughter Tanya was there too. We felt impressed to talk about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and how that's kind of the center of everything we talk about. It was a little disorganized  but we got through it. Tanya was pretty quiet at first but she started asking questions and we got a discussion going. She was skeptical of some things but we testified of what we knew and told her she didn't have to take our word for it. It was really nice to have the opportunity to share my testimony with someone. That's my personal favorite thing about missionary work, it makes me feel really happy. 

Also, we texted Jack, who is a friend of Brandon's and accompanied him for some of the discussions Brandon had with the missionaries. We weren't sure if he was really interested or if he would want to meet with us without Brandon, but it turns out he totally is! He said he would come to church- he ended up not being able to- but he wants to come next week and meet with us more. I'm looking forward to seeing him in person. 

We had Zone Conference last week, and the theme Pres Fisk set forth was "Let God Prevail," basically to trust that the Lord will accomplish His work. Part of that is what the APs are calling "goalitos," or little goals. They're supposed to be centered on what we can control. We have no control over how many people will listen to us, how many will be interested in our mission, but we can control things like how many people we talk to each day, what we focus our studies on, etc. I think that's a pretty good message for me in this area (Elder Christensen lovingly referred to it as the "deadest area [he's] ever been in"). So I'll be taking things one day at a time, trying to focus on my part and to trust God to do the rest. 

Thanks for your emails, it was lovely to hear from you. Continue sending them in! Even if the ones I send in return are getting shorter and shorter with nothing going on in this area.

Yours Faithfully,

Elder C. Calder

We finished the rather large task of cleaning the apartment on Thursday. As with any apartment that's been inhabited by missionaries for a long time, there were plenty of strange relics and hidden treasures to discover. I found this set of golf clubs (and the sunglasses) and tried to see what I would look like as a real golf player. Needless to say, the golf world wouldn't know what hit it.

Pikachu windshield wiper that I thought was funny

We found this ancient, hard-as-rock Twinkie on the balcony closet outside. I'm not sure if a relief society member was trying to be cute, or if an Elder was trying to insinuate something about his comp. In any case, I thought it looked eerily like a Minion.

We went into this retirement home to bring the sacrament to an older sister. There were lots of little nooks and corners filled with knick-knacks. Of particular interest was one little corner we found that was basically a creepy clown shrine. There were all these little statues of them all over the place and a framed picture of a guy that has definitely been to jail at least twice. But there was also a little plaque, and guess who they happened to be quoting?