A Great Week!

This week was great!  We started off having a Zone P-day in Burlington and so we traveled there with the Keokuk sisters.  The Zone leaders in Burlington live with a member who lives in an old elementary school.  So once everyone arrived we went over to the church and played kickball.  It was so hot outside, but we still had a lot of fun.  After kickball we went back to the school and the members who own the building have a bunch of foam swords so we had a zone sword fight.  Which sounds like it would be really stupid, but it was so much fun! Also, close to where the elementary is there is a road called Snake Alley which was crazy and of course we all drove down it.  It is all brick and looks like a snake, hence the name Snake Alley.   After Zone P-day ended we came back and had dinner and FHE with a family in our ward and then went tracting.  On Tuesdays and Wednesdays we do a lot of community service so we help at city hall, county health, a care center, library and hospital.  On Tuesday we decided to stop by two random homes out in the middle of nowhere and both homes had people that were really nice and actually listened to us.  We didn't get return appointments, but it was nice to come across people that don't immediately tell you they are not interested. We also had a lesson with the Shallengberger's which went amazing and so hopefully they will continue to keep their commitments!  On Thursday we had our goodbye zone conference for the Jergensen's.  It was a bitter sweet moment, because we are all sad to see them go, but we are all excited for them to be back with their family.  The Jergensen's leave this week and the Jensen's come on Saturday!  After we got back from zone conference we went with a member from our ward out to West Point to have a lesson with a new investigator.  The lesson went well and we will teach her again I think next week, the only problem is that she has health problems and she lives a ways a way so we can't drive out to see her very often because we have limited miles.  Friday we had a lesson with our investigator Sarah.  She is such a great person, but has a long road ahead of her, but my love for her grows every time we meet with her.  That evening we were in Hamilton and decided to check how we were on our miles. We figured that we had 100 miles left for the month since every car was cut back by 200 miles this month.  And so we went into panic mode because Sister Thompson is going to be gone from Tuesday until Saturday this week doing exchanges, and there was no way that we would be able to accomplish all the things we needed to with only 100 miles.  Also, one of the families that Sister Thompson worked with in a previous area was getting sealed in the Nauvoo Temple Saturday and we were approved to attend.  We literally called at least 10 people in our ward to see if we could get a ride to Nauvoo the following morning and we had no luck.  Well, we went and contacted some referrals and tracted some more.  When we got back to our car an hour or so later we looked back in our miles book and found out that the day Sister Thompson and Sister Anderson had mission leadership council in Iowa City we hadn't subtracted those miles.  So we actually have more miles than we thought. (Prayers are answered.) 

Saturday was my 1 month mark of being on my mission!  And it was a great day!  WE started off with being in the temple for the sealing of the Schaale family!  The Nauvoo Temple is absolutely beautiful!  And what better place to be on my one month mark? While in Nauvoo we contacted some of the members in our ward and then went tracting outside of Nauvoo.  We had another lesson with the Shallenberger's and we had a couple in our ward who recently returned from a mission come with us to the lesson.  The lesson went great and they were going to come to church on Sunday, but they said they were sick when we called Sunday morning. 

 

Yesterday was phenomenal!  I loved every moment of it (besides the fact that investigators weren't at church).  Sacrament meeting was wonderful and the talks were on trusting in the Lord as well as Elder Worthlin's talk " Come What May and Love it".  The sister that spoke on Elder Wirthlin's talk was in a serious car accident years ago and wasn't supposed to live, but survived and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since.  She is amazing, is in our Relief Society Presidency, and never, ever complains.  She mentioned to not be a burden to be around.  Also, that in the midst of trial and adversity there is always another in need of help. 

 

I also loved the broadcast last night and if you haven't watched it I would say that it is equal to if not better than a session of Conference!  Elders Perry, Holland, Anderson, and Nelson spoke as well as President Packer and President Monson!  Talk about some powerful men! And even better it was all about how everyone can step up and be better missionaries because in your baptismal covenant you promise to stand as a witness of God at all times.  This covenant is not just for missionaries, it is for everyone who has participated in baptismal covenants.  I also loved how they emphasized love. That if an invitation is extended with love for others and for Jesus Christ it will never be seen as offensive.  Also, how we shouldn't have to have assignments for us to go and act.  We need to be motivated by love and act out of love towards all! 

 

After the broadcast BYU's Vocal Point group did a fireside which was amazing as well!  They sang hymns and arrangements of hymns as well as the director didn't tell any of the members who would be speaking, so they found out if they would be speaking as the audience found out, but each message was so wonderful.  One of the messages I really liked was, "Don't let fear stop you from being the best you can be."  We tend to compare ourselves and then doubt our own strengths.  But each of us is a child of God; we are a representative of Christ!  Trust in the Lord and become the best you can be! 

 

Love you all,

 

Sister Call

 

 (Editors Note:  To understand Hannah’s letter to her dad, you need to read his letter to her.  It is published with his permission.)

 

 Dear Sister Call,

How was that? I addressed the letter Sister Call.  I still prefer Hannah.  Anyway, I hope you had another rewarding week and that all is going well.  We all look forward to your letter today.

 

There is not a lot to report here.  We worked during the week and fished on Saturday.  Surprised?  I will share one funny thing that happened during the week however.  I was shooting ground squirrels from the side deck Monday evening, and Lucky was in the house.  He wanted to get out very badly.  He ran to every door of the house in his attempt to escape.  I then heard him running back through the house.  The next thing I knew is Lucky was flying over the deck railing to my side.  I yelled "Lucky, no!" but it was too late.  He crashed into the ground below, got up and headed for the field. Crazy dog!

 

Keep up the good work Hannah.  Know that the work you are doing is supremely important although it is not appreciated by the masses.  The Lord will help you daily as you place your trust in Him and are obedient. 

 

 

Keep your chin up and your knees bent.

 

Love, Dad

 

Thank you so much for the email Dad!  I loved the story about Lucky!  haha I miss that crazy dog!  The best part about the story is that I could picture the entire thing happening!  Oh funny story about dogs.  Friday evening we were tracting and Sister Thompson had to go to the bathroom so bad and so we knocked on several doors and no one was home so Sister Thompson saw a cute house she wanted to knock on so we go up and knock on the door.  The dogs went crazy.  Now we are used to little dogs going crazy but these were big dogs and they are barking and the next thing we know one of the dogs ran into the door and scared us half to death, so we decided to go to another house to use the restroom, but we were laughing because the dogs startled us and Sister Thompson was about to pee her pants. 

 

Well I hope you have a great week!  Also, did Palisades ever fill up? 

 

 Love you,

Sister Call

 

Pictures

Sister Cox, Sister Thompson, Sister Call



haha-note to self--don't wear the blue necklace and jump if you want your face to show

Jumping with Sister Cox





Sister Call and Sister Cox with the Mississippi River



Sister Call, Sister Thompson, Sister Cox at the Nauvoo Temple



At Snake Alley



Snake Alley

Iowa Des Moines Missionaries serving in the Nauvoo Zone



Sunset on Mississippi



Breakfast this morning with Mama Joy, our landlord.

 

hand-written letter -- 15 June 2013

Family,

How are you?  How was Father's Day Weekend?  Did you do anything for it? 

So I'll tell you a little about the Carthage area--It has only had Sister Missionaries in it for quite a while and for sure for the past 10-12 years.  We are assigned the Nauvoo 3rd Ward which is approximately a 40 mile radius area, so pretty far apart.  The ward members are good to us and we have a dinner appointment every night, but we are really focusing on using the members to help with referrals, fellowshipping and teaching in their home because the area is saturated with churches, for example, Carthage, IL -- population 1,100 has 16 different churches and not one of them is our church.  So to increase our chances of real investigators we need the members to help us.

We have spent a lot of time in training meetings or traveling with Sister Thompson so she can train at other meetings.  We spend a lot of our time tracting and so I've been very thankful that it is pageant time because those that have no interest whatsoever in our church we still hand them a pageant card and invite them to the pageant, since a lot of people enjoy the pageant.  Little do they know that when President Hinckley re-wrote the pageant for what is now performed it teaches the Restoration!  Once pageant does start the Nauvoo Zone (Iowa Des Moines Missionaries) will be working the pageant, so I will be up at pageant a lot!!  Which is great because all missionaries in our mission are allowed to watch pageant once in their mission regardless of the area they are serving, except the Nauvoo Zone who will see pageant lots of times!

Another thing I am excited about is that there is a mission rule that if someone you taught is doing baptisms or being sealed in the temple, President Jergensen will most likely approve so the missionary can be there.  So one of the families Sister Thompson worked with up in the quad cities area is being sealed June 22nd, so President said we could attend!!

I love both of my companions and I really enjoy being in a threesome.  We sort of have a competition/game where whenever something is needed one of us will say "Sister Cox would Love to call Sarah..."  or "Sister Call would love to play the piano..."  haha so our phrase is always "Sister ________ would LOVE to __________!"  So the threesome makes it more fun because we all do it to each other.

Oh about Carthage, haha, we live in an upstairs attic apartment here in Carthage and we turn off our AC during the day so when we get back the apartment is at least 90 degrees.  The apartment is not fancy by any means and our stove has one burner that works.  The water is not drinkable so we have to buy our water or fill jugs up in Nauvoo.  But regardless of our apartment I still love it and it is home here in Carthage.  Oh I almost forgot to mention that the floor is so uneven that you almost get motion sickness while walking on it...Okay maybe not quite that extreme, but you get my point.

I think I did forget to mention that the 1st night in the mission home we found out that Sister Mader and Sister Rogers also had received a package to Elder ___________ like I had. 

Well I hope everything is going well!  I love hearing from you!  I have a few requests:  Can you send me my GPS, as well as just some basic common recipes so like pancakes, bread, simple/fast recipes that we eat commonly. Thanks for everything you do for me and the examples you are to me!

I love you all!
Sister Call

Life is Great

Life is great in Carthage, IL.  We had another good week.  On Tuesday, Sister Thompson had a Leadership meeting in Iowa City, so Sister Cox and I spent the day in Keokuk with Sister Pratt.  So we are all brand new missionaries and we spent the whole day tracting around Keokuk and visiting sisters in the branch.  It was so hot and we each got blisters from our shoes, but we met some good people.  Wednesday we volunteered at the hospital and the library for service hours and our dinner appointment was with a single sister in our ward.  We found out that she has only been a member for just over two years!  So we changed our lesson and are going back to visit her this Wednesday.  We went tracting after dinner and the people here are really nice to us, but don't want to hear our message, so I am so thankful that it is almost pageant time, because even though they don't want to hear our message they don't mind coming to pageant.  So we give them the pageant card and little do they know, when President Hinckley rewrote the pageant he wrote it so it teaches the Restoration! 

On Thursday, Sister Thompson had to conduct training at two different zone conferences so we went up to the Davenport Zone Conference in the morning and then traveled up to the Clinton Zone Conference in the afternoon.  This was an all day affair, but it was really neat to see some of the people from my MTC zone as well as meet other missionaries.  Also, the training was really great as well.  Something that was said at one of the meetings that I really liked was "if you don't change from a meeting it was worthless"  meaning that if you don't find something that you could be better at then what was the point in wasting your time, we should always be looking for ways that we can better ourselves. 

My companions are great and I really like being in a threesome.  Since there are three of us we tend to offer one another for different tasks that have to be done and we always use the phrase "Sister ______ would love to do _____ " haha and whenever it happens we always look at each other and about bust up laughing.  We also figured something out, because it seems like one person will be picked on all day to say the prayers when we are with other people and ask them to choose who says the prayer.  But we finally figured out that whoever is the person in the middle they are the one who is getting picked to say the prayer, as of now the theory has not been proven wrong. 

The area is not very receptive, but we have some potential investigators that we are really focusing our work on this week to try to expand our teaching pool.

After church on Sunday we went over to the Family Search Center and Elder and Sister Price fed us lunch and helped us learn more about the family search website, which has been completely updated since I entered the MTC and it is way cool now!  Elder Price grew up in Geneva, and is second cousins with Nita Hirschi's husband.  After the training the Price's took us over to the Relief Society President's home for dinner and we were able to go over the entire list of sisters in our ward and figure out which ones we should visit.  We also stopped by a lady who Sister Thompson had tracted into before we came and she was way nice and set up an appointment for us to come and she'll feed us and we will teach her the first lesson.  Only problem is that it is set up for a month out so we will keep our fingers crossed that it will actually happen. 

Keep praying for the people's hearts to be softened in this area, and we will continue to work hard at trying to find those ready for the gospel. 

 

Love you,

Sister Call

Heavenly Father Loves Me and You

Heavenly Father loves me.  Heavenly Father loves me.  Heavenly Father loves me.  I cannot repeat that saying enough to describe how I feel about my Father in Heaven and the best part is that He not only loves me but He loves every single person!

Brother McClain, Hannah and Sister Coltrin

Grandma Jensen & Hannah

This week has been one of adventure.  I was sad to leave the MTC because I will miss my teachers and the experiences there, but I was so excited to head to Des Moines, Iowa! We left the MTC at 5:00 in the morning so we ate cold cereal in the cafeteria at 4:30 with the missionaries leaving from my zone.  It felt so weird to leave the MTC and when we passed the first gas station I was weirded out because it seemed like it had been forever since I last saw one, even though it had only been 2 weeks.  Anyways, we arrived at the airport and it was so good to talk to you and to see Grandma!  Our flights were uneventful, and our layover in Minneapolis was long enough to get from our plane to our gate.  The plane we flew on from Minneapolis to Des Moines was a 50 passenger plane and there were 24 missionaries on it!  Haha, one of the guys on the plane said that if the plane started to crash he would want to join Mormonism real fast.  When we arrived in Des Moines, President and Sister Jergensen as well as the AP's were waiting for us and there ended up being 3 groups of missionaries traveling to Des Moines that day.  So all in all, there were 32 that arrived.  20 sisters, 12 elders and 8 of these sisters are Visa waiters. Haha, so it was hilarious as we were at the Des Moines airport waiting for all the missionaries to arrive, you wouldn’t believe the number of stares we received as all 32 new missionaries walked through the airport!  I couldn't help but smile because everyone and I mean everyone was staring at us because I don't think a flock of 32 missionaries is an everyday site in some of these areas.   It was the first time in the Iowa Des Moines mission that more sisters arrived than elders and the sisters were able to fill up the entire mission home so the elders stayed at members and the assistant's homes.  We had training, interviews, dinner, and testimony meeting Wednesday evening.  We woke up early Thursday morning so we could head to Iowa City for transfers meeting.  

Sister Call & Elder Heap

At transfers meeting I saw both Elder Heap and Elder Keeley from Star Valley.  So President Jergensen thinks that Elder Heap and I are cousins and we have both tried telling him that we are not related as far as we know, so most of the mission thinks of me as Elder Heap's cousin, which is fine because we are basically like cousins.  At transfer meeting I was assigned to the Carthage, Illinois area with Sister Thompson as my trainer and Sister Cox, as my companion as well.  Sister Cox is also brand new to the mission so we are both being trained, but Sister Cox is waiting for her visa to Brazil.  

 Sister Thompson is from Spokane, WA and is on her last 3 months of the mission. Sister Cox is from Philadelphia.  They are both great!  A member from our ward drove to and from transfer meeting so we didn't arrive in Carthage until after 4 Thursday evening.  We live in an attic apartment which I will just have to send pictures because it is kind of hard to describe.  But the floor is very uneven so it feels like you are walking on a ship or something of that sort.  It is just the 3 of us in this apartment which is great because three people is pushing the limits.  The owner lives on the main floor of the house and is an older lady who we call Mama Joy.  She is a really nice older baptist lady that all the previous sisters who have lived here swear that one day she will be converted.  After we put a few things in our apartment we had a dinner appointment, went tracting, and taught a lesson to Sarah. 

The Carthage area is an interesting place to be in, because there is so much church history and the people are not very receptive of the gospel and the ones that are receptive tend to be a little older, but then their kids threaten them because all growing up their parents had taught them to hate the Mormons and now their own parents are considering joining the church. 

Friday we had meetings and what not that lasted until after our dinner appointment. Which after just a couple dinner appointments I already miss the MTC food, because my piece of chicken Friday night had several pieces of black hair on it. Anyways we had investigators attending the Sunset on the Mississippi show in Nauvoo and the BYU folk dance team was performing afterwards so we were there until we had to head home for curfew. 

Sisters Call, Cox & Thompson with Mormon Helping Hands vests.

Ever since the tornados missionaries have been going down to Hannibal, Missouri to help with the clean up, but since that has been adding lots of miles to our cars, President said that we could not go down on Saturday unless we rode with a member.  We called several members Friday night and had no luck finding anyone. We woke up Saturday and were saying our companionship prayers when our phone started ringing and it was the wife of one of the members we tried calling the night before and she suggested calling the Evan's family because they were planning on going down.  We called and sure enough they had room for us to ride with them! Again, Heavenly Father loves me.  Each time I saw an article or anything about the Mormon Helping Hands before my mission I thought that was the coolest thing and how I would love to just help with Mormon Helping Hands. Well prayers are answered and when we arrived in Hannibal we were given the yellow vests and went to several homes to help clean up after the tornado.  Mainly the men from the ward were using the chainsaws and cutting the fallen trees as we cleared out the cut up pieces and piled them up.  We were there from 10:00 am until 3:00pm and then we headed back.  Once we got back we went to help Carolyn with her yard and were able to talk a little bit about the gospel there.  We had another lesson with Sarah that evening, but she has an extremely rough past and so her progression rate is really slow. 

Yesterday was really good, but I do miss the Sundays at the MTC.  For some reason I was having the hardest time staying awake in church.  My trainer said that the first Sunday in the field is the longest, so hopefully that is true.  Our ward is interesting.  We are in the Nauvoo 3rd Ward which includes areas in Nauvoo, Carthage, Warsaw, Elvaston, Hamilton, and other surrounding areas.  The summer time is kind of difficult because since we have the 10:00 church all the visitors come to our ward so each week it looks like we are having Stake Conference.  They even have two sacrament meeting tables to accommodate all the visitors.  So with all the visitors it makes it difficult to know who exactly is in the ward. 

Our companionship is the only set of missionaries assigned to our ward and Carthage is only a sister area.  There is no proselyting allowed in Nauvoo, but we do get to help out with pageant which starts like the second week in July or so, so I am way excited to spend lots of time in Nauvoo. 

You know how Aunt Nancy asked about Pella, Iowa?  Well it turns out that it still is a cute little town, but Sister Thompson was saying that it is one of only two areas that have been closed due to danger to the missionaries.  It was closed for 10 years and recently opened in the past year or so and they have a good investigator with a baptismal date set there. 

Here is my address for the apartment, so you can send stuff directly here because I suspect I will be in this area for at least 4 1/2 months but possibly more:

Sister Hannah Call

632 1/2 Locust St

Carthage, IL 62321

haha so dad our area is a bunch of small towns and I used to always think that maybe Star Valley is a little bit backwards sometimes, but I am thinking that Star Valley is a really great place to live and is nowhere as backwards as these little towns!  I swear the majority of people have dogs in their homes and are borderline hoarders or are hoarders.  I never realized how much messes and dirt and anything else bother me until I started having dinner appointments and rides in others cars.  Like don't get me wrong some have very beautiful clean houses and cars, but others are a thousand times worse than the Previa and I am having the hardest time with some of the messes.  I literally get way excited when I know we are with a member who is clean.  Anyways the town and ward are good, the mission work is difficult, but hopefully we will be able to make changes and make this an area that the gospel is booming in like Iowa City and some of the other places. 

We really haven't had a whole lot of time spent finding or teaching people because I swear you spend more time planning, studying, and going to meetings and trainings than you do out working which kind of drives me nuts.  Like tomorrow Sister Thompson has training all day in Iowa City so Sister Cox and I will be spending the day in Keokuk with Sister Pratt who was in my MTC zone as we work in her area, and then we will be up in the quad cities all day Thursday since Sister Thompson has to conduct training up there. 

Love you!

I just wanted to say Happy Early Father's Day to the best dad and grandpa in the world!  Thank you for all that you do for me and for your support in all that I do!  I look up to you in so many ways and am so grateful for the example you have set! 

Love you all  and Hope you have a wonderful week!

Sister Call

MTC District Sisters

The Sisters in Hannah's MTC District

Sisters Despain, Rogers, Lindgren, Call, Alvey, and Woodbury