Umm...CRAP

So transfer calls came last night!  They usually come Saturdayy night, but Roswell had a Stake Conference, so they held it back til Sunday.  I think I told you about how transfer calls work when I got called as trainer, but I'll share it again.  The APs stay up and call people all night.  We don't know if the call will come at 11pm or 2am, we just stay up (some people do) and wait!  Usually I just sleep and wake up, but so far every one of my companions likes to stay up.  Elder England and I got home from teaching a Recent Convert lesson at around 9:15pm and finished planning up real quick since today is P-day.  I was writing in my journal and  we were joking around about who was going where and all of a sudden the phone rings...at 9:45pm .and its President Augustin!  Weird.  Anyway...I am leaving Seminole and Elder England!  I am really happy.  Hahaha I know that is terrible to say but its true!  And...I'm gonna be a freaking ZONE LEADER!  AH.  I dont know how to do that!  I'm only 4 transfers in the mission field!  That doesnt happen!  Haha.  It's scary, but I am really really excited for the new challenge!  Even worse though..I'm gonna be in my first full spanish area!  I still don't speak spanish, so that is a little scary haha.  Anyway, I'm gonna be serving in Hobbs Spanish.  Apparently our apartment is really big and nice, and since we are spanish we cover the entire city, so that will be cool.  I'm nervous out of my mind, but pumped.  Some advice I got from Russ comes to mind:  Don't take yourself too seriously, its like correcting somebodies grammar...you might be right, but everybody is going to hate you for it.  Hahahaha.  I hope I can apply that well.

Most of the lessons we had scheduled for this week canceled.  But we did get a couple new spanish investigators, still no one attending church.  We have a Recent Convert who just moved from Arizona named Luis in the branch.  He works a ton, but he gets one hour off on sudays, just enough to come to church!  Yesterday he showed up in a bright pink suit....IT WAS SICK!!  I wish I had my camera with me, I wanted a picture so bad!  He's pretty sweet.  His English sucks, he sounds Cubano, but he's straight from Mexico.  He's the one who feeds us at the restaurant once a week.  I don't know if I told you about that but...he feeds us once a week, real good Italian food. 

Another RC in the branch named Ignacio is a boss.  He's 57 and doesnt know english at all.  His wife is still in Mexico trying to get money enough to hop the border. He doesnt have work right now, so we've been helping him apply for a lot of things, that's why i Know his exact age haha.  He let me dress up in some cowboy stuff! I looked like a champ, I'll send you a pic.  I'll miss both those guys!  

Well...I'm really sorry this is another shortish one but nothing ever happens out here!!  I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say in the coming weeks!  Oh, I don't know my address in Hobbs, so I'll let you know that next week.  Love you so much!!!!!!!!!!!  And thanks for all you do:)

Love,

Elder Caleb

Warm!

Caleb Porter	2:47 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

This week was a BLESSING!!  It never got below 50, I think, and we had temperatures up to 90!  Oh my gosh, it felt SO good.  Finally after enduring all that crappy cold we get some warmth and some good finds!  Since it was so warm outside, everyone was out!  In each mission there are a set list of goals for, its call the Standard of Excellence.  The Standard amount of finds (talking to random people, not including knocking) is 70 people.  That is 70 souls touched and 70 souls given an opportunity to accept the Restored Gospel.  Before this last week the most I have ever had was 50, and that was an unreal week.  In Seminole the missionaries usually get 20 or so but....WE GOT 70!  IT was insane.  Since we don't have any investigators we were able to spend a lot of time just biking around, it was so nice!  The first 56 weren't really interested, and that was a little discouraging, but on Sunday we set the goal to get 14 for that day and we reached it AND at least 10 of them were actually interested!  Oh my gosh, it was so amazing.  I look forward to this next week to teach them all.  Obedience=Blessings.

I was thinking about some of the advice I got before I left on my mission, trying to decide what has helped me the most.  I decided it was Mom's advice to SMILE!  Attitude is a straight choice, every day.  We have been given an amazing gift of AGENCY.  We can choose every day to be happy and to smile.  I love that.  If we can be happy, then what else matters?  I'm talking true happiness here, none of that Satan's counterfeit crap.  Even though the mission is so hard...it is SO sweet.  I love it!  EASILY the happiest time of my life so far.  I am grateful for that choice I get to make everyday of whether or not I want to have a good day or a bad day.  So anyway...SMILE!

P-Day last week was a dream.  The internet was down in Lamesa, a small town 30 miles from Seminole, so the elders there got to come down to Seminole for the day.  This was the first time I've had more than just my companion on P-day.  So what did we do??  We played ball.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!  3 hours of basketball on some random court outside a school in the freezing cold and I was in heaven.  I am the worst basketball player in the universe, but I love it so much!!  Elder Ross, one of the elders from Lamesa, is from Morgan Utah and probably knows all our family out there...I don't know any of them so we aren't sure haha.  I miss sports a lot though!  man, it was sweet. 

Thank you so much Mom, for the Valentines package, I gained like 6 pounds from it!  Haha.  Thanks Ben's family and Joe's family for the Valentines stuff as well!  I am so blessed.  Love you all and have a good week:)

Elder Porter

Not Much

Not a lot happened this week, for real!  It was 15 degrees on Tuesday, but it felt like 5 with windchill.  That's what the local weather said haha, it was a pretty rough day.  I felt like I was literally warmed by the Spirit though.  Elder England was real mad the whole time, but I was able to say way more happy than usual!  It was a blessing:)  

I love the branch, the members are stellar.  We don't get fed, and even if we did we would have to bike a really long way to get to most of the members houses haha.  We just picked up a new city in our area, Plains.  We'll need to get a ride so we can do some work down there .  No branch mission leader here either.  

So now I'll just send pics I guess!

                                                          Really cold.

 
                                          Somebody's first time doing dishes.....not mine though
.

                                                              Bikes in the snow

                                                                              Cold

Cool Lizard

Super Bowl

Man, that was an insane Super Bowl huh?!?!   The early safety was a dream!  Just kidding...I didn't get to watch the Super Bowl and man was that hard for me.  I'm over it though, the better team won, I guess.  

To answer a few questions: 

Elder England has been out for a year this week.  He is about the same as me at Spanish.  He's a really great guy but sometimes I want to rip him in half. He loves to sing and rarely stops, he's pretty good though.  He also has the worst attitude ever, that is really really hard for me to get over.  Seminole is a whole lot colder than Ft. Stockton, in fact, it snowed yesterday.  The town doesn't have a superwalmart, so i kinda know what its like for my friends in other countries hahahahha just kidding.  We aren't allowed to drink the water here because it is too oily and will turn our teeth black.  It's pretty flat though, at least.  I enjoy it though, its still the same work no matter where I'm at, so its good.  

Like I said, it snowed yesterday.  It was pretty discouraging waking up to snow, especially when you know you'll probably be biking around in it all day.  Church got canceled, so I was hoping maybe we could just stay inside all day, that wasn't part of the plan though!  I really miss having a car!  I think I'll be forever grateful for whatever car I have.  We go 15 miles a day on average, I bought a little thing for my bike so I could figure that out.  Sometimes we go more sometimes less, but right around 15.  My legs are gonna be huge. Heck yes.  With snow on the ground, Church getting canceled, and the Super Bowl on it was the best day ever for a non-missionary haha.  

I really don't have much else to talk about!  The work is pretty slow, so we knock around a lot.  There are a lot of hardcore Mennonites and Baptists around here who don't usually give us the time of day. I keep getting opportunities to use Spanish though, so that is sweet.  I helped a Spanish guy change his tire yesterday and it was pretty cool to talk and learn about other things than the Gospel. There is a Recent Convert who just moved here from a town named Andrews who owns a restaurant, so we get free food:)  Thats about it!  Sorry! 

Love you so much!

Elder Caleb 

Mission Life

ET!

Well, on Wednesday this last week I was teaching a lesson to Aidee, our recent convert in the hospital when I received a call from President Augustin...he told me I was being transferred as part as an ET (emergency transfer)!  He told me to start packing right away.  That was about 12:45, at 1 I got a call from one of the APs and he told me I needed to be in Odessa by 4:30, which meant I needed to leave by 2:30!!  So I packed really really quick and made it in time, only forgetting a few things, and by dinner I was in Seminole!  That is where I reside now haha.  It's part of the Hobbs Zone, that is in New Mexico, but Seminole is in Texas.  Our district leader has to stay up an hour later to get numbers from some Elders in NM's time zone.  My comp in Elder England, he's pretty funny.  Elder Nelson is gonna finished being trained by someone else!  My new address is PO Box 543 Seminole, Texas 79360.  

Seminole is pretty weird, I won't lie.  It's even smaller than Fort Stockton, about 6000 people.  We have a HUGE apartment, at least compared to what I have been living in for the past 5 months.  This area just recently got its car stripped from it so...I bike all day every day. It's colder here than it was in Ft. ST. cause its 6 hours north.  The branch here is huge though!  There are like 50 active members and some SO COOL recent converts.  So far I have really loved getting to know them and working with them.  The town is mostly Mennonite, like 80%!  That is one weird religion.  They dress like Amish and don't do TV and things (most of them) and they speak German.  A lot don't even speak English so...I get to learn some German now!  We just have to know how to find them, as in see if they are interested.  We have German Book of Mormons and pamphlets as well, it is really really weird!  They usually don't talk to us though, so its fine.  In the 4 days I have been here I have already talked more Spanish than I have so far.  I even had to translate church yesterday!  Fun stuff.

I was really sad to leave Fort Stockton, it felt like home to me!  I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to anyone either, that was really hard for me!  I did't realize it happened, but I LOVED those people there in Ft. St.  Everyone was so kind and just amazing.  People knew me, by name, cause I had served there long enough and its small enough of a town.  It was cool for me to be invested in so many random people's lives!!  I hope that comes fast with the people here.  I was sad to leave, but I'm excited for this change!!  

I love you all a whole bunch!  Enjoy your cars;)

Love,

Elder Caleb Porter

Fort Stockton Forever!

Transfer calls came and I'm staying in Ft. Stockton, duh.  Elder Nelson will be done being trained after this next one, so I'll probably move, if I dont I'll set a record for the longest time a missionary has served in the Fort Stockton Branch!  Haha.

We had a killer oportunity for service this last week, I was so SO happy!  We went out with a less Active family to their ranch and helped them unload bales of hay into their barn.  We moved 2 trailers with 204 bales on each trailer, the first one took us 1 hr 19 min and the second took 57 minutes...they said it was a Ruebush family record by a long shot!!   It was so much fun to do that!  They raise Long Horns and horses, so they needed a whole bunch of hay, they figure it will last them about a year.  Wanna learn something cool?  A Section is a measurement of land, it is equivalent to 640 acres...holy crap!  Here in WEST Texas, the driest place around, you need a whole bunch of land to raise cattle.  The Reubush family has 15 sections and President Cox, another Branch Memeber, has 43 sections.  That is so insane.  Land is real cheap out here though, apparently.  It would be a pretty good investment to buy a lot of land out here because the oil is starting to boom again, they suspect it will be at his highest point it has been in a really long time.  People are gonna need houses...the price of land will go up...and you'll be a rich person!  Well, maybe, what do I know?  I cant even read the news haha.

This week, since we didn't have a car, we biked a whole lot.  Thank heavens it was warm all week:)  We went to a park called Roony Park, its like 60 acres of park, I would live there if I could.  Anyway, we saw these two guys playing basketball.  In my mind I created a story about E. Nelson and I plaing them two on two, beating them, teaching them, and then baptizing them.  The idea sounded amazing...so I challenged the guys to a game, first to 21.  I dont know if you have ever seen me play basketball...I doubt you have, because I really am not very good at all.  Elder Nelson is 15 times worse than I am, but I was hoping for some kind of power from Heaven because we are missionaries.  It didn't come.  We got CRUSHED!  Hahahaah.  It was one of the funniest things I have ever taken part of.  They absolutly killed us.  I swear the kids belong in the NBA!  We got to teach them anyway, because they felt pity on us, and we scheduled a return appointment with one of them.  So it wasn't all bad...just mostly haha. 

I got to go on Exchanges this week as well.  I went up to McCamey and lived in the Trailer for a day!  It was a fun little experience that I never want to re-live haha.  The town of McCamey has 1800 people and there has been missionaries for 3 months.  They have had one baptism, but currently they have 0 investigators. In fact, they havn't had an investigator for an entire transfer.  They are always pretty depressed.  We biked around for 4 hours and talked to 5 people, none of which were interested.  Then, when it was dark, we just went inside and studied more cause we aren't allowed to knock after dark.  It made me really grateful for my town Fort Stockton.  The work is slow, but not THAT slow! 

We teach a guy named Daniel, I can't remember if I said anything about him yet.  He is really cool and has sick hair.  He's basically on a journey to find out if God excists and he has chosen us to help him figure out.  He reads the Book of Mormon a lot, and thinks about it hard, too.  He read Lehi's dream 6 times trying to figure out the symbolism of it all, when he found out the answers begin to come in chapter 11 he was pretty mad haha.  He has a million questions about God, questions that we really don't have the answers to. I keep telling him to pray, but he wouldn't do it for a really long time.  Finally when we stopped by on Thursday, he told us he prayed.  When I asked if he got an answer he told me no, but that he felt really calm right after and ever since then he hasn't gotten so frustrated by it all.  It was a neat chance we had to explain about the Holy Ghost and how that peace he felt was an answer that God does indeed exsist.  Prayer is such an amazing gift that we have.  It's a way better phone than the iPhone ever will be (sorry Joe).  God will always be there no matter what to hear us out, and he loves to hear it.  A song we listen to sometimes in the car has the line "we send up our misseries (sp?), God just hears a melody."  That is really cool to me.  He really does love us so much.  He always has and He always will:)

Well...LOVE YOU ALL!!:)

Elder Caleb Porter

P.S.  Mom, you're so cool now that you're the President of Utah.  I know it's jus the Quilt Guild, but I think it will probably eventually take over the government, so I just cut the rest off.:)

Tracting Fun

Fun at District Meeting

New Years Eve

Was New years in this last week?!?  That feels like forever ago!  The week went by super fast for me, so I don't get it haha.

 

This week we decided to spend all our extra time knocking doors, something we don't usually do.  I enjoy it a lot!!  I think it is so cool to talk to and meet so many people.  There are a lot of people around here who have a lot of cool stories about pretty much everything.  We met an old man this week who made his living by being Santa ever since he was 26. He must have been born with a long white beard!!!  We knocked 123 doors.  At 82 of them no one answered, at 40 no one was interested, and 1 became a new investigator.  It was worth it.  I keep the data because I love math, and it just makes things a little bit more fantastic!

 

Speaking of math...I USED IT (as in big math, not just adding or collecting data) IN REAL LIFE!!!  We were talking to a guy named Nathan, one of our few investigators, as he was fixing up his truck.  Elder Nelson is a real car guy, so he and Nathan hit it off real well.  I just act like I understand what is going on.  He wanted to lower his fender so that it would make the whole bottom of the truck look flush (that is some of the stuff I'd pretend to know).  He drew it out for me and I was pumped because 1.  I could figure it out using some simple Delta Y over Delta X Algerbra, so I did.  We figured out he needed to extend the front like 2.324 inches down, or something like that. Then 2.)  I got to use some real life calculus with derivatives and integrals to figure out how best to cut and use the metal and where (optimization).  I WAS SO PUMPED!!!!  I was seriously shaking from the adrenaline of real life brain work.  Wow.  I love math.  I'm going to work at NASA.  It's decided so...just letting you know that it IS going to happen.

 

Right now our car is being fixed for a dent we had from back when Elder Moyer drove.  We dropped it off this morning at the shop and then had to bike home....4.5 miles in 15 degree temperature.  It was MISERABLE!!!  I know that probably doesn't sound too bad to most uh y'all, but it was terrible for us hahah.  We'll be on bikes 100% of the time till Friday.  Even for when we teach Macky, a guy who lives 8 miles outside of town, 10 miles from our house.  We usually teach him at 8 PM. Hahaha, its gonna be a good week!  I'm excited.

 

I'm really grateful for authority, as in Priesthood Authority.  We teach about it a whole bunch, about how its the big difference between us and EVERY SINGLE other church.  There is a member here,  Truman Hinkson, he's from Orem too!   He is really good with history and things and one day for Elders Quorum he taught a lesson about the history of the Preisthood and about all the other chruches, things like Emperor Nero and Constantine and the Nicean Creed.  It was really cool for me to learn all those things!!  Anyway, we were teaching Jennifer, our recent convert, the restoration all over again, we have to teach everything agaim after baptism.  I started to testify about how I know the Preisthood Authority is real and true, and I just got so pumped.  I felt the spirit so strongly and I knew without a doubt that it reallly is a fact.  I have been so blessed by the Preisthood thoughout my whole life and I am so grateful for that.  I love that now I have that sacred authority that comes with a sacred duty to serve and to love.  It is an amazing thing.  God is good.  His plan is perfect and it covers every single nook and cranny, not a single person or thing can sneak through the cracks.  I love it.

 

Well,  I LOVE YOU!!:)

 

Talk to y'all next week.  Be safe!

 

Elder Porter