4/16/2012: "you wanna try the shrimp?"

brittany has a boyfriend?!?! that's unacceptable! haha jk that's cool. but i don't remember him... but that's still cool! i wanna meet him and also i wanna meet the rat thingy bert alert has. so awesome! 

this week has been nuts! we had ZLC at the methodist church and went and saw their sacred chapel. its called "The Upper Room" and i guess all methodists are supposed to go there and pray once a year. it was pretty. they have this huge wooden carving of the last supper. and it was like we were on a field trip haha. we had a tour guide explaining everything and all that jazz. 

Reverend Albin took us all to the Hilton, downtown Nashville, and we ate at the buffet. it was super good. they had a huge table set up for us, but we were one chair short, so me and elder _________ went and sat at a lil table and just caught up and laughed. it was fun haha. i asked if he wanted to try the shrimp and i put some on his plate and then i was like "umm... this is getting weird. its like we are on a date." we tried to eat all fancy. drinking water with our pinky out and wearing our napkins and cutting our lettuce hahaha. it was so much fun. 

then yesterday we had the "I Believe in Christ" missionary fireside again. except this time it was in Bowling Green. but guess what... this upcoming sunday its going to be in hopkinsville!! and then the week after that its going to be in cookeville!!! and then after that FRANKLIN!!!! its so great!!!! all of my favorite areas! and then ending with my favorite one! franklin!! :):) and yeah that's about it :) 

still really busy. had around 35 lessons this week. so yup. glad the dodgers are doing good :) bout time! :) i love y'all!! have a happy week :):)

Peace n Blessins.

Elder Cawley

4/9/2012: uh oh oreo!

so... hi :)

we are sooo busy!!! it is seriously crazy how busy we are. we leave the apartment at 10am and we dont usually get back until 10pm! this past week we had a total of 40 lessons and 21 new investigators... its nuts! everyday we split up with 3 different members in the afternoon and also at night. so each day we have 6 exchanges... lots of more ground to cover that way :) one of us always works the CV2 ward and the other two work YSA and we just take turns. its like we are all in our own area bcuz we are with members so much we hardly teach together as a companionship haha. and i set a date with a person that we have been teaching :) its pretty cool :):) 

It is weird being a zone leader again bcuz i forgot how to deal with situations when they come up and stuff haha. i'm like "ummmmm" haha but i love it :) i did move apartments... just up the road though. 

and oh get this! so tomorrow is ZLC and we are having it in the huge Church of Christ building in brentwood :) some missionaries are teaching the pastor there and he wants us to have ZLC there so he can watch us haha. should be interesting. also, one of my companions, Elder Lund, is in charge of a musical fireside thingy that him and sister McKee have made. so every sunday starting this coming sunday... we will go across the mission and go on tour haha. this week is bowling green, then hoptown, and so on a so forth. i'm most excited for when we go to Franklin! cuz everytime we go there i just feel like home :) i love it! :) 

oh i got a hair cut earlier today and well.... let's just say.... it looks like i have joined the army hahaha. she totally gave me a military hair cut... but its all good i guess. 

I came up with a companionship slogan... we are the UH OH OREO! cuz elder ______ and i are white... and elder ______ is black haha. and everywhere we go we are going to leave "uh oh oreos" on missionaries cars and door steps hahaha. so they will know that we have been there :) i think it'll be pretty fun. 

i hope y'all had a great Easter! yay for bert alert finishing college!! love y'all!! stay classy m'kay??

Peace out girl scouts.

Elder Cawley

4/2/2012: Wings & a Trio

Hey family :)

so i just got back from Buffalo Wild Wings. we were gunna do the wings challenge. 12 of their hottest wings in 6 mins and you get a free t shirt. well we got there and you don't get a free t shirt anymore... you get a headband. and i was like... "hmmm. PASS!" haha. i would have worn that shirt forever if they still had them... but a headband??? where do you wear that to??? the movies or something

so a couple other elders did the challenge and they were dying. Elder ______ was crying. i was making em laugh and they almost didn't eat it in 6 mins bcuz i was making em laugh so hard. but anywho... back to missionary stuff :) 

so saturday was transfer call outs... and guess what?! i'm getting transferred... again. except i'll still be covering the same area. let me explain... so i was finishing training Elder ______ for his last 6 weeks in CV2 ward. and the Zone leaders covered CV2 and mainly focused on the YSA (young single adults) in the stake. well... they are closing my area, and i'm going to be a zone leader in the zone, with elder ______ and elder ______. so i'll be in a trio and we will cover CV2 but mainly focus on working with the YSA. so i will go to institute and FHE and all that good stuff. it's gunna be pretty interesting. so all the YSA's in the stake go to our ward and hopefully we will have enough going that we can make a YSA branch :) that's the goal right now. So it will be pretty fun. 

And elder _________ (my companion) is going to Sparta, TN. which is like 20-25 mins south of Cristine and Scott and Jakey. and our family of 14 is doing good. we kinda did the silent treatment to em to see if they would reach out to us if they wanted... works every time hahaha. :) he texted us on wednesday saying to come over. so we were gunna go over on friday but his wife had to go to the hospital :( so we will go try and see them sometime soon. he doesn't know what is wrong yet. 

but that is pretty sweet bert-alert trained a rat haha. if only she did that with her turtle in her room.... haha BURN!!! jk... but seriously... that is pretty cool!! and i'll work on my passport when i get the chance :) thank you for sending the shoes :) and thank you for the Easter basket :) 

sorry this is a short email ( i'm pretty sure i say that almost every email...) but i PROMISE next time will be a long one. i love y'all!! stay classy m'kay??

Peace out Girl Scouts. (speaking of those... thin mints are pretty tasty... just sayin')

Elder Cawley

3/19/2012: finding

So this past week was a FINDING week. we have a decent teaching pool, but of course... we wanted a better one. (who doesn't?). so we started walking and talking to people and asking everyone we talked to for a referral. and we didn't really get any referrals, but we didn't find 11 new investigators :) 

3 were pretty crazy. so we are walking home, its around 8:50ish or so, and we walk past these AT&T door salesmen. and one of them says, "hey are y'all Mormons??" and I'm like... "why yes we are.":) and we go over and talk to him and he starts telling us how he is from Egypt and how his church is what the Catholics broke off from and all this stuff. He started saying how Mark (the apostle) went to Egypt and gave them the priesthood. It was crazy cuz I've never heard anyone else call it the Priesthood. so i was like, "hmm tell me more." haha. 

and it was pretty similar to our religion, except they believe the Holy Spirit is the Priesthood. so i told him about Joseph Smith and how he had his vision and you can know if the Book of Mormon is true by praying about it. and he was like, "oh no no no ... you can't just go off of feelings of what you get, you need to pray to know if you should study it then if the answer is yes, then you study it..." and so i opened up the the Bible. i went to John 16:13 which says, "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come." and so i told him that the Holy Ghost won't tell you anything until you study it out. and so he took a Book of Mormon and so did his other 2 friends that were next to him. we talked to them for about a good 45 mins. it was awesome :) 

So miracles are happening here in Clarksville!! :) now i just gotta do my part to continue to let them happen :) Oh and from all the walking I'm doing each day (close to 15 miles a day) one pair of my shoes basically blew up haha. so i might be buying a new pair soon. just an fyi. love y'all!! stay classy!!

Peace n' Blessings!

Elder Cawley

just found this one. must be from when he first got to the mission.-cristine

3/12/2012: baptism date set!

Hey there,

So here is the run down on how last week went... we set a date with a part member family!!!! his name is _____________ and he has had 15 sets of missionaries teach him, and Pres. McKee told us to go to where no missionary has gone before in their teaching. so i was like... hmm thats easily said and hard to do hahaha. 

but we tried it and had a SUPER spiritual lesson. We taught the plan of salvation with cut outs and once we were done we talked a lot about the Celestial Kingdom. during the lesson i talked to him about how we want to make a goal with him and he kinda smiled and was like, "oh i know what goal your talking about," and i was like... "oh crap" hahaha. and he just picked up the cut out of the Celestial Kingdom and stared at it. then he looked at me and was like... "so what date are you thinking?" i was so happy!! i told him March 30th is what we feel is right and so he will get baptized then :) so awesome!!! :):) 

then our family of 14... we went on saturday and they had to reschedule to today :) woohoo!! so they still want to meet with us... but im SUPER scared now!!! cuz this time we talked to the dad (never met him until then) and he opened the door and i wanted to run home! he is 6 feet 11 inches!!!!!! we are teaching a giant!!! haha. we talked to him for a lil and then i shook his hand (more like i shook his thumb his hand was so big!) and then i asked him how tall he was. he is a cool guy :) so we will meet with them today at 6 :) i feel like we should take a pulpit in there or something haha :) naw it will be amazing to teach a family that big :) im excited!! 

other then that nothing too much has been going on in the Clarksville area. Just still trying to get our teaching pool up but that's what a missionary is always doing. hope all is well :):) love yall!!! yall be good now ya hear? :B

Peace n' Blessins'

Elder Cawley.

3/5/2012: Family of 14!

So... last time I wrote I was struggling a lot in our area bcuz it's soo hard! But we made a lot of sacrifices and now we are receving TONS of blessings!!! So, first off, we got 3 referrals one morning without even leaving our apartment!Sso that was awesome! Then... get this... we found...a...family!!!!!! But not just a family... a family of 14!!!!!!!! They have 12 kids!!!!!! We stopped by their house the other night and they had 2 HUGE vans in their driveway--like the 10 seater ones! hahaha. I was like SWEET!!!. 

They are an awesome family :) They met with missionaries before, and had a baptismal date and everything (like 2 years ago), but over the years they were lost in the transitions of different missionaries. So we are wayyy excited to go teach them :) 10 of the kids are of age to get baptized... I think the hardest part is going to be remembering their names. haha :) Not going to lie, I'm kinda nervous about teaching a family this big, because I've never done anything like this before!!! My goal is to get them dressed in white... TWICE! baptism and sealing :):) That would make Elder Cawley a happy boy :) 

We also found about 5 more different people that have potential to get baptized :) So this transfer and next transfer (if I stay) will be sicky tight! haha. It is pretty awesome to see that when you sacrifice something, with a purpose, that purpose will ALWAYS come into your life, if you trust and believe in the Lord. :) 

Now time to change the subject haha. i think its important to have a lil fun after a good days work... so at 9:30 I was bored and started to get creative. I found these Chopsticks in our apartment, and I found nerf darts. So I put one on one of the chopsticks, and I waved it like a wand from harry potter and it went pretty fast haha. So I started to cast "spells" on Elder Fincher and he soon caught on and we had a full blown battle of Voldemort vs Harry Potter. It was pretty sweet. And now every time I step out of the bathroom he is waiting to fling a dart at me haha. You become pretty creative when you're a missionary :)

Anywho, I'm loving Clarksville. We had a Linger Longer after church yesterday and we just met tons of members and ate tasty food :) So that was sweet :) But i gotta get going now :( We are going shopping then going to lunch and after that... idk haha. Stay classy Cali!! Y'all are the best!! :) Love y'all!!!

peace out girl scouts.

Elder Cawley

pictures

golfing in Franklin on Pday (back in august). 

Got my outfit at Goodwill... for like 5 bucks all together :) hahaha

3 months worth of soda in Linden. :D

 SNOW!!!

Sock Tie Transfer Day