Elder Calder Horsley

Hey everyone! I hope everyone has been doing well! We got in a good week of biking on the snow, so my legs were pretty tired by the end of the week. Luckily all the snow we got from this winter storm melted, so we're back to biking on asphalt. Asphalt is a tender mercy. I'm so grateful for it! I don't have a ton to report on, but we had a great week! We had a lot of great lessons with our friends, and I've been letting everyone know that our goal is to baptize them. Some have laughed, but they have all taken it super well so far. I thought it would've been more awkward and people would've been more against working towards that, but so far everyone has been cool with the idea that we're trying to do that. We haven't put any of our friends on baptismal date yet, but they're definitely progressing! It's very fun to see. I love having a front row seat as I watch these people let the power of Jesus Christ into their lives. It is incredible! Being a m...

Hey everyone! So it's 9 degrees over here right now. Pretty epic. Never thought I'd be experiencing weather like this in Texas of all places, this is like some Ukrainian spring type stuff. Pretty excited! It makes for good drifting weather when we're riding our bikes and the rode is paved with only snow. Becuase of the storm, we have been asked to stay inside as much as possible, which is so hard because it's perfect for contacting because everyone is home because of it. When we do have to go out, we make the most of it and stop by a bunch of the people we're teaching because they literally cannot avoid us. No one here has any idea how to drive in the snow, so everyone refuses to leave their house. It's a blessing and a half! It's so fun to bike in too. This week we had some amazing miracles! I only have time to talk about one though, but it was amazing! We were biking to go knock on the door of one of our friends, and rode past our friend Denise's stre...

Hey everyone! I hope you all are doing well! I think about you guys a lot at random times (especially when I'm running on the treadmill in the mornings), and I just want you all to know that I love you all! Thank you for reading these emails that I send! I know the quality is oftentimes lacking, but thanks anyways for sticking with it haha! Well, onto the week! This last week was quite the experience. We had a lot of things planned, and then we didn't end up teaching our first lesson until Saturday. That was a bit of a rough go, but we made the most of it. We got lots of oppurtunities for service this week, so that's always great. We almost maxxed out our service time as well, so that was pretty cool. Honestly I'm thinking about the week right now and I really just don't have a lot to report on 😂. We're working hard, so I know we will see the fruits of our labors soon! That's something that's hard for me to grasp sometimes. God's timeline is so much...

Hey everyone! Elder Ames and I had some crazy news during transfer announcements yesterday in that there was no news! We're both staying here in North Garland 3rd! We were both completely surprised, because we both for sure thought that I was going to be leaving. But I'm excited to be staying! After this transfer, I will have spent 24 weeks in this ward. I love all the members here, and I love everyone we're teaching too. I hope we can keep working hard and seeing success during these next 6 weeks! For other news this week, we don't really have that much. A lot of stuff fell through, which is always dissapointing. However, we still did get a lot of good contacts in, which is always fun. Hopefully it starts warming up so that we can talk to some more people outside! We did get to meet a super cool new friend this week named Alhaji, and I'm super excited about him. And if you remember our friend Denise who was not super excited we invited her to church a few weeks ago...

Hey everyone! Elder Horsley here back to report on another week! And I'm sending this one early in the day instead of with 5 minutes left to write emails, so this one may blow all of my other emails out of the water! Or maybe not it still probably won't be very long. It feels like my emails get shorter and shorter every week. NEWS: - On Monday we knocked on the door of someone who we thought was a member, but it turns out she definitely was NOT. It was like 7:50 PM and she looked out the door and yelled "GET OFF MY PORCH OR I'M CALLING THE COPS". So I got to check that one off of my bucket list. - On Wednesday we had a super awesome lesson with one of our friends named Denise, and the Spirit was so strong! She has had a hard time building up the courage to come to church, but during the lesson she said "wow I should start coming to church". I was like "YES", so at the end I invited her to church. She said maybe and then I testified of the b...

Hey everyone! We had another great week this week! It was kind of weird because a lot of appointments fell through, but hopefully we can reestablish contact with our friends this next week. Please be praying for them! And please be praying for them to come to church! They have a hard time with that one, which makes Elder Horsley pull his hair out and pray so much because he just wants to help these people get into the celestial kingdom but they're like "actually nah". But it's OK! I have faith in all of them, and we're going to keep working with them to get them to make and keep commitments! But we'll get into the highlights of the week! - Apparently I'm a good target when it comes to random high schoolers asking for my phone number, considering it happened a couple of times this week. Always really awkward when I tell them I don't actually go to a private school and I'm dressed nice because I'm a missionary for my church. For some reason it a...

Hey everyone! This week was awesome! We had so much fun teaching and finding and riding bikes and finding out that it does indeed snow in Dallas Texas. This was one of the fastest weeks of my life! January is flying by. Honestly say that every week but I'm in a time warp haha. Here's the weekly info dump in condensed bullet point form because my time management is what we in the business call "not good". - We have a new friend named Jojo who is kind of a rough guy but he is so funny. He told me I looked like his friend named (and I quote) "Alec the Jew" and that's why he started talking to us in the first place. We love that guy. - It snowed on Sunday! I would've never guessed that that would happen. It was pretty legendary not going to lie. I've been missing the snow. - We got to talk to Klaus again yesterday because his self isolation is over, and it was one of our best meetings with him yet. It was incredible! The Spirit was so strong, and I...