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