Bye bye Salt Lake

 This will be my last email from the United States! This email might be a little longer because I had a great week and i have a chance to reflect on the last three months in Salt Lake.

To start off, I had a super great week. The highlight is obviously getting the chance to go to general conference! I went to the Saturday afternoon session and going as a missionary was so cool. The spirit is so tangible in the conference center. A couple things I noticed from conference that I love.

- this was my first general conference since receiving my endowment in the temple. I don't know if it's always like this and I've never noticed, but it seemed like they talked constantly about finding strength in entering into covenants with our Heavenly Father. So that was so cool.

- I saw some of my family down at the conference center!! It was so awesome to see some last familiar faces before I travel across the world this week! I love you guys!

- Another theme I noticed was each of our divine identities as children of God and learning to look at things with an eternal perspective. "Think Celestial". I love it.

TULSA IS GETTING A TEMPLE!!!! I am so thankful that my hometown is getting a house of The Lord. What an answer to prayers! A year or two ago my stake president said that he got revelation that Tulsa would have a temple someday. I'm so so so happy!

Okay so the last three months here in the Salt Lake City West mission have been awesome! So I'm not going to lie, I was not thrilled when I got reassigned. And when I got here all I could think about was leaving. But God knows everything! His plan is always the best one. I have met some of my favorite people ever these past three months. So many missionaries who I wouldn't have met before, and I've made some lifelong friends. I would always kind of roll my eyes when I would see someone say that they were sad to leave their reassignment but now that I am the one leaving, I TOTALLY get it. I am so excited about going to Sweden this week, but I can actually say I am going to miss it here. I'm going to miss the missionaries, the sweet members, the people and THE USA. I've been thinking about it and I am going to miss being in the states so much. I know that I was reassigned here for a reason. I met so many people that have changed my life. I have learned a lot and I know God was aware of me the entire time. 

So I want to give a special shoutout to a certain family I've met here. The Johansons are some of my favorite people ever! The Johansons are a family in the stake I'm in here in Kearns. They had us over for dinner every. single. week. They love the missionaries and are always so incredibly kind to us! They always say if we need anything to reach out to them and that we can always go to their house. Sister Johanson considers herself our mission mom and that is exactly what I consider her! Anyways I could just talk about this family all day but meeting them here in salt lake has been so influential to me! They are such great examples. And Sister Johansons food is literally the best thing I've ever had. 

I leave for Sweden from the Salt Lake airport on Thursday, at around 3pm. The first flight is Salt Lake to Paris then Paris to Stockholm! I am sad to leave here, but it's bittersweet because I am also SO SO SO excited to get to Sweden! I opened my mission call February 14th and now nearly 8 months later I'm finally going! I have been looking forward to this for a long time. It's going to be hard, especially the language, but I cannot wait. Everybody please pray for my swedish though haha.

I am so thankful for the opportunity that I have everyday to wake up and serve the Lord. People always talk about how hard missions are and I can confirm, it's hard. It's hard to be away from family, to constantly be out of your comfort zone, and to have constant change. So why do we do it? Because of Jesus Christ. Because He died for me. My Heavenly Father had given me literally everything in my life. He has asked that I serve him for two years so what reason do I have to not serve him? I love this gospel and I can testify that it really does bring lasting joy. 

I love all of you and I really do appreciate all of your emails and prayers. I'm sorry I can't always respond but know that I read every single email. Keep em coming! 

-Äldste Jackson Calder









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jag är fart

Image
Every transfer (6 week period) we do this thing called an engelska fast or english fast for those of you who didn't guess haha. This means that we try our best to go a full week without any english which is really cool and pretty difficult. But why do it? There are a few reasons, the main few - i want to prove i can do it - i want (need) to improve my swedish lol - we are rewarded with a movie at the end of the week that we watch in swedish. So the first time I tried decently hard at this english fast, i got blessed. WE GOT TO WATCH CARS. It was so hype and much needed. The title of the email is what Lightning McQueen says, it means "I am speed" (speed = fart in swedish🤣🤣) i laughed a little too hard and a little too long at that haha This week was very good! First and foremost, our friend Andreas got baptized. It was a super spiritual experience for him and for everyone there. I realized i havent said anything about this dude yet so let me tell you guys his really cool...
Read more

20 years old!

Image
Dang two decades. Hey everyone! I wanted to start this off this week by just expressing my gratitude. So many of you sent me super nice stuff for my birthday, thank you for all the birthday wishes. Its hard to be away from home on a birthday but you guys made my day so good for real! I read all the messages and ill try my best to respond tonight❤️. Let me briefly tell you about my week. - last monday we played basketball (suprise) and it was delightful. We also played this chair soccer game and its ruthless but a blast. - zone conference was on Tuesday! I always love zone conference for a few reasons, i get to see my friends and it is always a spiritual experience. One thing we talked about was putting ourselves in the shoes of the Nephites when Jesus Christ came to visit them in 3 Nephi 11. He talked to each person one by one. What would i say to him? How would I feel? I've been pondering a lot about that recently. - we had splits in Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden and I w...
Read more

Stockholm, Halmstad, and Copenhagen🫢

Image
  Hey everyone! Happy Monday😁. Life is good here in Sweden! It was a good and weird week so here is some stuff we did. Sooooo as the title suggests i traveled around a lot this week actually. On Tuesday i took the 4 and 1/2 hour train ride to Stockholm to do splits there.  -Stockholm was beautiful as always :) i hope i get the opportunity to serve in the Stockholm zone at some point. I was with Elder Belnap for the day and golly is he a good missionary. It was a cool learning experience.  - we went to some random barbecue with a recent member in Täby and it was the funniest experience of my life. We showed up and they had brought a little grill to a fire pit because they couldnt get the fire going and it was just us, the Täby sister missionaries, the recent convert and her british friend. I dont really know why it was so funny to me but the new member kept trying to give us food and had a take a bunch of pictures (literally throughout the whole barbecue) with the sisters...
Read more