Monday, February 25, 2013

Jessica has sent our family letters about every other day.  She did email me on Saturday which was her p-day here is a little bite of her email -
Wow where to start! This week has been rough, its been hard not
to think as i learn about how inadequit i feel. but on the positive side i
know that the more i learn the better i will feel about what i'm doing and
how well of a teacher i will become. Yesterday Sister Wood (My companion)
and i had the oppritunity to teach our first investigator (our eclesiatical
teacher) going into it we both felt really good about what we had planed to
teach him, but as we were teaching it just got a little slow and hard to
talk about the things we wanted to, but it was a great learning experiance
and tonight we are going to teach him the first lesson about the
restoration of the church!
          You hear so often about time in the MTC being really strange. Man
how that is true! the days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days.
The MTC President's wife put it perfectly on Wednesday night when she spoke
to all of us. "The days feel long and the weeks feel short, the weeks feel
long and the months feel short, the months feel long and well you get it :)
time is weird here! I haven't gotten to see Martin yet and i'm not sure i
will, our days are so planed out for us we barley have time to breath!
Today however is my time to breath :) I can't wait to go to the temple
again later today. i'm in serious need of a recharge. My mission gets to
fly out to Missouri on March 6th! crazy how little time we have here and 
how much we have to prepare!


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

MTC
Well Jessica went into the MTC today at 1:30 today February 20.  Ben and I took her to Brick Oven then dropped her off.  Jessica was very nervous and a little scared.  I was too. We cried here and there but it was all good. Well her family is missing her tonight. It feels a little weird around the house. Alora wont stop crying so it makes us all cry.  So the next time I post will be her email. :)

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Receiving My "Call"

          Before I tell you about the day i opened my call i think its appropriate to go back a few weeks, maybe months, okay years. My desire to serve came from one extremely blessed summer in 2010. It was my third tour with the Utah Valley Children's Choir, and by far the most influential. The summer of 2010 was the choir's church history tour, we spent 18 days traveling to the many different church history sites from Independence Missouri, to Palmyra New York, and Winter Quarters Nebraska. But it was at Historical Kirtland that I got a strong desire to serve my Savior, and His Church.
          This sister missionaries in all of the sites were amazing but especially in Kirtland. It was here that i truly felt my Savior's love for me and a deep sense of peace that came from this love. I came to know while sitting in Kirtland that he was watching out for me along with my Grandma Mahaffey (who had passed away only 2 month before my trip). At the end of our tour of Kirtland we were asked to fill out comment cards and leave a phone number for the missionaries if we wanted to. I honestly don't know why I filled that card out but a few days after our stay in Kirtland i got a phone call from a number i didn't recognize, this again was another moment i don't fully understand, but i answered it. On the other end was a Sister serving in Kirtland, we talked briefly about my experience there and hung up. I left that call with one of the greatest feelings of my life, and a desire to serve when i turned 21.
          Fast forward to the infamous October General Conference. With the age change came so many different emotions, excitement, fear, inadequacy, etc. But at this point I knew it was something that I should start praying about. About a month later I had decided to start my papers with the intent of going in the summer so I could save up money to pay for my mission.
          The weekend after Thanksgiving my mom, little sisters, and I were driving home from vacation in Colorado when my mom told me that she and my dad had a feeling that i should go sooner than June, like right now soon! At first I was so SCARED at this thought, but peace quickly replaced fear as I came to know that this was so right. I almost immediately called my wards secretary to set up an appointment to talk to my bishop.
          I'll skip the boring (to many of you, not me of course) details of my papers and go onto my call. It was  I believe Dec. 2nd when i met with my stake president, President Clare, to finalize and submit my papers. Four very long weeks later after many days of watching the mailbox my call came!!
          On Jan. 3rd my call was finally here, but the funny part was even though the mail comes at 3:00 pm i had no idea until a little after 8:00 pm that it was here. That's right, my mom hid it from me! Cruel right? Family and friends just started showing up at my house for no reason. I remember once my Grandpa Mahaffey showed up finally realizing what was going on. I quickly turned around to Rachelle and yelling "It's here isn't it?! Why didn't you tell me?" I later came to know that they didn't tell me because they didn't want me leaving work early to open it and she wanted to get everyone together to open it with me.
          After many rushed phone calls to friends that my mom had missed, and a little hyperventilating everyone was at my house and it was time to open my call! With shaking hands and family on many cell phones I opened the call packet and read "Dear Sister Randall, You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of the church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Missouri, Independence Mission...You should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on Wednesday Feb. 20th, 2013." (That's 6 weeks folks!) Words cannot describe how blow away, scared, excited, nervous, you name it, I was about this call. Even though it is super quick i know that the Lord knows me and my strengths and weaknesses and knows that i will do best in Missouri. I know that my mission is a divine call and i can't wait to go out and serve the people of Missouri (and Kansas).

Let the adventures being!!!