1st baptism

We attended the Baptism tonight of Tony. He is from Maplewood Unit. We have never heard of a unit before but they have about 48 people attend every Sunday and they meet in a rented 7th day Adventist building in downtown Little Rock. It was really spirit filled. There were about two rows of black people , mostly children 7-15 , and they were real characters I was helping they learn how to conduct music from the Hymns book and then Tony arrived he looks to be about 24 and he was just glowing. The Unit Pres. conducted the meeting , he has been a member about 30 years. He and his wife were baptized off a referral from a waitress who they asked about a temple picture hanging up in her restaurant. He has a really strong spirit and testimony. Tony was baptised twice because his hair floated the first time, everyone clapped when he was done and he did kind of a black wassup kind of a thing. Then he came in and at the end bore his testimony. This was the cool part have you ever heard a testimony done in rap style? I have now. Very unconventional but he was just alive in the spirit and glowing. I love this place, these people are unbelievable in spirit. Last night the institute teacher was one of the best Ive heard, right up there with John Davis and Gerry Bench and Elder Benhdar. Loving the work and y'all

Monticello and Mongolia

We had our first interview with the Mission Pres. yesterday and attended our first District Meeting. (an inservice meeting with Elders) We then drove to the southern end of Arkansas almost to the border of Texas to visit and Institute class being held there at 7. Driving through Arkansas heading south you really feel the change. It becomes more rural and then for the first time I saw real cotton fields. They were full of cotton, big white bunches just hanging on a bush like someone took wet bread dough and flung it on a bush. We should have stopped to take a picture, as I looked out I could almost see the field slaves working in them, there was a strong spirit there. We sat in the car and reading ( did you know that Porter Rockwell was baptized the same day as Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy M. Smith? I had no idea he was with the Prophet that early in the Church history)in the parking lot of the little church building until the teacher arrived. Bro Carr joined the church as a young man and has raised his family in that area, he teaches institute every Tues night. He has two students one his daughter and the other his son-in-law. Yes they are not really single adults anymore but in case the single adults in his area decide to attend (3 others) he holds the class. His daughter was the Rodeo queen of Arkansas and does barrel racing and stuff. His son in law is from Virginia (not a Yankee he lived south of the mason Dixon line) he served his mission in Arkansas and returned after. She is going to sit for her CPA test . These are strong members who are living the gospel and growing strong in a remote area of the South they love and can't see living anywhere else.

OK another Mongolia story, My mom went out to Texas to visit my brother and on her way back to Utah she saw a girl in the airport in Dallas the look so pretty she had on a black skirt and a pink sweater and such pretty skin (my mom's words). Then when they landed in SLC she saw her again by the luggage pick up and she looked distressed and was looking a papers and looking in her purse. So my Mom (I come from good stock) went up to her and asked her if she was a missionary and needed help. He English was broken but she was a missionary on the way to the MTC and was supposed to call a shuttle service but lost the phone# So my Mom told to to come with her and she would take her to the MTC because she lived near by. The sister had been traveling for two days, flew from Mongolia to Korea, Korea to Dallas, Dallas to SLC. My nephew had picked up my Mom at the airport and brought his little (3 year old) Saddie with him. So she sat in the back with Saddie and they made fast friends. The sister pulled out a little stuffed camel (Mom thought it was handmade) from Mongolia and gave it to Sadie. Mom delivered the Sister to the MTC and took her in and made sure she was going to be taken care of, they hugged and the Sister is going to be serving at Temple Square and they made plans for Mom to go on a tour with her when she starts serving there. Mom told Andreus to make sure Sadie takes care of the little camel from Mongolia. Love to all

Sept 26 2010

My daughter informed me I was blogging on two different blogs so she instructed me on how to delete one and now everthing is on one blog. We have been here a week now and I am feeling more confident. We are organized with a plan( Malcolm is good at long term plans its a Wall thing) With my GPS I ventured out to the Womens broadcast Sat. to our ward building. When I arrived everyone was leaving and going to the Stake Center because the satilite was out. I didn't have the Stake address for my GPS so I followed the Stake Pres and his wife. Wow what a Stake building, it was much bigger than our Stake Center. The side pews were twice the size. I really loved the broadcast. My notes said Do esential things, Righteous women seek revelation,God had a bigger plan for RS than a womens club, Organize the energies of women. This I loved becuase one thing I know about my women friends is that we have much more we want to do after our regular work is done. We are amazing creatures! Prioritize properly, utilize power of Holy Ghost.

Prayer, scripture study, obiedence, service.

and my favorite " compassion = the desire to relieve suffering of others"" and of course pres Monson was amazing in his cute way.

We picked up a sister (Black) investigator for church today for the missionaries. Yolanda was very sweet she stayed for all three meetings and was most impressed with RS (of course). But one comment made me question her intent. She wanted to know if we had a food bank and when I told her about how welfare works she asked how do you get hooked up with one of these Bishops. I want to believe in her intent, I want not to judge, I want to help her out if she is hungry, So this is my plan, we are having a pot luck in between conference secessions (which I invited her out to) and Im going to bring spanish rice casserole, I'll make two batches and leave one on her doorstep, asking her to let me know if she thinks this is good enough for the pot luck on Sunday. Oh yeah I made us business cards to pass out, I was afraid to put our phone

#'s on it so I just put our email but now Im re-thinking that because if she is poor she may not have internet to email us Ill ask for opinions on whether we should put on our phone #'s. We called home tonight and talked to all the grandkids wow Im going to miss them so i wrote each one a letter and tomorow Ill invest in stamps and stationary Im going to need it. Love to all

Tues. Sept 7 2010

Tues. Sept 7 2010

Today reality hit. We had great lessons on teaching and I felt very confident in my abilities. Then we went into a gym with small groups set up and Malcolm and I had a person acting as an investigator to teach. He asked us where we were going and when we said Little Rock he said OK I'll be southern Baptist. It was really hard and several times I got very flustered . He asked really hard questions and tried to go off topic often. After 45 min. I was ready to go home. When I told that to my district group they thought I meant back to Motel 8 but I said no I mean Colorado, this is hard. We saw a Tanner Wiscombe here tonight at the Fireside he is from our home ward. Tell his Mom he was smiling alot and was chosen to stand by the door at the podium . Lowell M Snow from the 2nd Quorum of Seventy spoke . It was so good! He talked about Choices This is from my notes

What was it that brought you here? Why are you here? Life is a series of choices we make. What have you learned about choosing? How will you make the right choice?

Choosing becomes, becoming. Earth was created so we would have a place to choose.

Abr. 3:23-26 moses7:32-33

The best choice is to choose him. If we don't have experience in choosing him we won't be able to help others to choose him. Consistently choosing him = becoming like him

Prayer is not to change the will of god but for us to find out what his choice is for us and for help to make that happen.

Faith is confidence in him to choose him and to act accordingly

Faith to do what God wants trust his judgement

Choices reveal us

You can't give permission to do something if you didn't make the rule. You choose him by keeping the rules

My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they choose me.

What do you do when you choose poorly?

repent When have you repented last? if not yesterday then you are in denial or slow on the uptake. If you repent he will give you everything he has and his power to help you.

Decide right now to always for the rest of your life that you will choose him then help others to choose him also.

This made today worth it and I will try tomorrow to explain the plan of salvation without flubbing it up. Love to y'all and may we always choose to follow him. Love Sis Wall

Monday, September 6, 2010

Mission Life

I have waited all my life to serve a mission and go to the MTC. So today we drove up to the front to check in and the greeter said we would be staying at motel 8. I laughed knowing what kidders elder missionaries can be , then realized he was handing me directions to the motel. We have our classes at the MTC but are staying down the street at the Motel 8, at least it was a non smoking room. We met with all the other senior missionaries and did introductions. Most were from Utah a few from California and we represented Colorado. There are two going to Fiji, one to Samoa, one to Marshall Islands, one to Singapore, one to Mongolia, about 5 to Africa, one to Sweden, one to London, I sat there thinking of all these exotic places then came our turn and we proudly announced Little Rock Arkansas. I could see the envy in the faces of all who wished they were us. We had orientation about staying healthy, washing our hands, after dogs lick them, before eating, and after tracting. You know shaking hands is really germ-ie. We also learned about creating clean drinking water, first filter it through a coffee filter(preferably not used before) then boil 2 min. They also sell a water bottle with a great filter that takes any water and produces clean drinking water. We are getting those because you never know when you will need them in Little Rock. The food is not as bad as everyone was telling us, it is really pretty healthy. We were warned about the salad dressing causing gastrointestinal problems that make studying in small enclosed rooms with others aromatic, we have stayed away from that with a ten foot pole and box of pepto. So we had a great day and are heading to our Motel8 for study and prayer, I am so excited to be doing this but for the life of me I don't know why that is why faith is such a powerful force. Love to all Kathryn

Sept 22 2010

How many times do we have to go to Walmart? You forget how much little stuff you need when you start a new household. Just when I thought we were done my watch stops and I need to go get a new battery. We needed to purchase a GPS to help us find our way to all the places we are supposed to go. So we go to Walmart by us and they are out of the 100 dollar ones but they call their other store and they have three of them so we get directions to get to the other store and several wrong turns later we arrive only to find out that an employee broke the key off in the locked cabinet where the GPS's are kept and they can't get to them. So they send us to the Sams club down the street (yeah right) so several wrong turns later we arrive at Sams only to find that they don't have the 100 version but a more expensive version that we could have bought at the first Walmart if we wanted to spend that much. He said we could go to another Walmart and check but it was about 10 miles away and many turns, did they not understand that we needed the GPS because we can't find our way around all of Little Rock looking for a GPS. Heck we just paid more for their GPS so we could just get back home and rest. Do you know that Little Rock is a series of hills, you just drive around in between them never knowing where they are because the forest along the road is so thick that you can't tell if its a hill or not. Some one told us that come fall when the leaves drop we will be shocked to see all that we have been passing by and never knew it was there. We have now located the area notebook with all the information we need to know to do our jobs, but it is all dated 2008 , I think my first job is to update all the information to 2010=2011. We needed a big desk to work off of and there was one at walmart for 139.00 but it was not too big and probably would break the first month. So we thought about building one but Malcolm didn't bring his power tools.( he's lost without them) So then I thought about Goodwill, we got great stuff for Caitie when she needed it. So with our GPS we head off to Goodwill. Its a small one not like the one in Littleton, I can't see any furniture but in the way back there were some old bed frames and an old metal desk with a file drawer and center pencil drawer it was big (5ft.) and wide enough for a great sewing table and it was only $5.00 wow what a deal! Then we tried to move it , It took a hand cart and a big helper to slide it into my car. Did I say how much I love my car with the fold down seats. We had to pick up the Elders to get it up stairs and into the 2nd bedroom. But it fits just perfect and now I can start organizing. Paula Malcolm is giving me the evil eye as I try and organize the top of his desk, only you will know what I am saying. Love to all

Sept. 22 2010

Carrie said I needed to add in a story from the MTC so here it is. There was a senior couple going to Mongolia they ran into a missionary who teaches at the MTC who served in Mongolia. While talking he mentioned that he had taught and baptized a sister in Mongolia who had moved to Turkey and he could no longer get in touch with her. This senior couple said they had a daughter serving in Turkey and the missionary said he had her address there in Turkey so he gave it to them and they emailed it to their daughter who forwarded it on to her branch pres. The branch pres. had two mongolian sisters attending his branch but could not speak Turkish and no one could speak mongolian. Well the branch pres. called the missing sister who said she had been living there for 6 months and didn't know there was a branch and she wanted to go to church could she please attend his branch, she can speak Turkish and will now be the translator for the other two mongolian sisters. Small world!

We are now in Little Rock and have attended our first ward meeting at the Pinical Mt. Ward, we met with the Bishop Beheshti, who played football with Ed StPierre and was wittness to Cheryl and Eds courtship and ordained Ed when he joined the church. Small world!

The missionaries were going to climb Pinical Mt. on Monday and we went along, I mean we are from Colorado , how hard could it be to climb the hill they call a Mt. Malcolm and I were going up the easy side they said and they went around to the hard side. It reminded me of the Hanging Lake trail, pretty steep but do-able. Then about 3/4 of the way up it started, the BOULDERS !! It was all I could do to climb up these hugh rocks , no ground just big rocks piled on top of each other, but I made it to the top and what a view . WOW I don' know how to post pictures on this blog so Ill put them on facebook. Couldn't walk that night thank goodness for ibuprophen. Love to all

Monday Sept 13

Today we started our CES (church educational system) training and it has been really good.

We learned how to read the scriptures in preparation to teach. First you divide the verses into topic sections, then next to each section you write a summery of what its about, then the principle it teaches or the background it provides to the content. Then you put down how best to present that principle or just to summarize it quickly. We had to practice that and tomorrow we have to teach using that system. We are doing 1Nephi 16 so I'm going to work on it tonight when I can think clearly and not be under pressure to think in public or quickly tomorrow. We also got the 4 goals of our job. Enlighten, love, edify, involve. Quote Boyd K Packer True doctrine, understood, changes behavior, (I hope I got that right)

Principles I learned today

1. Principles are concentrated truth , packaged for application

2. Forced obedience yields no enduring fruit. (Richard G Scott)

3.Reverence invites Revelation

4. Purity proceeds power

I still don't know if we will be doing a lot of teaching in Little Rock, but it sounds like maybe we will be the institute teachers, and if so we will be teaching several nights a week so I will have great opportunity to utilize these lessons.

P-Day and Sunday

Sat. was our day off so we went to my Mothers to do our laundry. We bought lunch at Kneaders and drove her up Americian Fork canyon for a picnic. We passed Timp Cave and I remember climbing up with my Dad when we were little and going through the cave. They told us of the indian maiden who jumped off the cliff when her true love was killed and her heart made in ice and is hanging in the cave. Then they turn off the lights except for a spot light on the heart shaped stalagtite. Utah is full of faith promoting ruomers. Remind me to tell you about the one I heard here about Pres. Kimball and Youda from star wars.

Sunday we went to church at the MTC we were assigned one of the foreign branches and it was really neat to see the Elders and Sisters from all over the world who were there to serve missions. Lots of orientals, and I met a sis. from Mongolia, Carrie has a good friend from Mongolia and she is emailing a senior couple I met here who are going to Mongolia. The Fiji couples left for Fiji Sat. night and I told Malcolm they are arriving in Fiji this morning (Sunday) but there it is Mon. morning, they lost Sunday completely.

In Relief Society meeting we had a guest speaker , the general YW pres. She was really nice and gave a sweet talk but I just about started laughing out loud because at one point she was saying how God uses the weak and simple to do his work ....then I know you will be effective teachers. It reminds me of Malcom and my bathing suit story (for another time, close friends know it) You know the intent of their heart is good and they want to say something nice and supportive, but what the words really say is not at all their intent. So if you need to be weak and simple to be effective teachers I'm going to "hit it out of the ballpark" Love to all

Sept 10 2010

I'm just going to put some short blurbs of cool things I heard and wrote down so here goes

Prayer is usually the last resort but really should be our first resort.

The person is not the "project" the outcome is the project.

To say a prayer is a monologue to have a prayer is a conversation.

The people who need you the most may not be the obvious people.

When I was packing up my home and putting everything in boxes I have a drawer where I put precious things. When my Dad passed away I was cleaning out some of his stuff and there was a pen and pencil set he received when retiring I kept it in my precious drawer. So when I saw the pen set I thought , My dad can't serve a mission but his pen and pencil can , so I opened the box and now I am using them to take all my notes. So ever so often I see the pen in my hand and think "OK Dad are you getting any of this" I'm sure he is also learning a lot. He would have loved serving a mission.

Sept 9

We had a great treat today, a visit from Bro. and Sis Burns. They have served two missions and what a ball of spunk is she. We learned that its good to take pictures so you can learn names and faces quickly They also recomend making a travel area book and keep it in your car. It is to include maps, stake directories, that seemed to be a good idea. Another good idea is to make cards so you can leave a little note if the people are not at home. They were really fun to listen to. I didn't get all my studing in last night so I need to sign off early tonight and study. My quote for today that I heard is to" have a prayer" instead of "say a prayer"

Wed. Sept 7 2010

We got up earlier this morning and we were able to make some 3X5 cards with an outline of the plan of salvation. After several editing attempts we went to meet our volunteer investigator. Bro. Boone. We did a better job teaching this time, Malcolm took parts and I took parts and we made a secret sign when we were done with our parts and the other one would start their part. In our evaluation they said we did a good job. Yeah We have personal time tonight so we went walking on the BYU track, the food at the MTC is really pretty good so walking is a much needed time expenditure. I had to purchase some moleskin to put on my heels, the new shoes are causing blisters on my heels. I'm going to bed early tonight It was an exhausting day.