1/23/2012: Robbers!

well this week has been pretty... interesting hahaha. it started off

pretty good. it was sunday, and i met my new ward and then pday was

monday and we just got a bunch of pizza and played board games. Then

tuesday we just went around and saw some of our investigators and that

was fun :) 

then.... on wednesday... this is when it starts getting

crazy!! so, we wake up, and headed to district meeting and it was a

great district meeting :) we went out as a district to lunch and when

we came back to our apartment to change out of our suits.... we

noticed the doorknob looked kinda weird. and we open the door and walk

in and i throw my jacket on my bed and i was like "i dont remember

putting my hoodie and that hangar on my bed..." and elder basset goes

"i dont remember knocking over my cards (they were on the table)..."

and we start looking around. i go in my closet and some of my ties are

on the ground. i was like... no way... hahaha. we start looking around

and we realized that we got broken into!! haha. so here is the weird

thing... we left at 9:30am and came back around 2ish. so we got robbed

in the middle of the day... and we live above a lawyers office...

right across from the court house!!! hahaha. 

so here is what they took.... they took my comps suit and his sports 

jacket and thats it from him. then from me they took a white shirt, 

a tie, 2 bottles of my cologne aaaannnnnddd my electric shaver!! hahaha. 

so weird!!! 

my guess is that they had either A) a court date B) a date C) a job

interview or D) wanted to look like a missionary and smell like me

hahahaha. so when the cops showed up we were all kinda laughing bcuz

its so strange that they didnt take anything else!! like we had a

portable dvd player that the mission gave us... my nice basketball

shoes... my gps was on my desk... its just weird!! so the next

couple of days i put a note on our door just in case he came back and

it said something like "Dear Robber... what the poop?! if you want

more of our ties you can have some more... we have tons. You can also

have some food, we have lots. Make yourself at home!! from, the

missionaries" hahahahahha. but he never came back, or he saw the note

and just walked away idk. but it was pretty funny. 

then yesterday we found out some other crazy news. My comp is getting 

ETd (emergency transfered) to Mount Juliet. and im getting a new comp, 

his name is Elder Goodwin. I was his district leader when i was in Linden. 

so thats all going down today at 4pm. its just weird stuff

happening!!! 

so ive been in the area less then 2 weeks and im getting

a new comp haha. so basically we are kinda like white washing (2 new

elders coming into an area). its gunna be pretty interesting!! last

week was pretty fun so lets see what this week has in store!!! 

by the way, i cant picture bert alert working in juvi haha. thats crazy! 

welp i love yall!!!! "yall come back now ya hear!?" i hear that a lot haha.

peace out girl scouts!

Elder Cawley

1/16/2012: I Love Cookeville!

hey familia!!
 
So i love Cookeville!! i serve in the Burgess Falls Ward... but Burgess Falls Ward is the city. 

And Cookeville Ward is more of the country haha. kinda weird, but its sweet!! Our apartment 

is above a lawyers office like in the middle of downtown cookeville :) its crazy. 

We set 2 dates for this saturday bcuz they just need to come one more sunday... 

but they got sick so we have to push back the baptism. I think we are going to have them come 

a couple more sundays before they get baptized. 

My bishop is soo sweet!!! He is pretty young but he knows his stuff. He is pretty inspired :):) 

Its pretty sweet here...I've already been to Outback and got coconut shrimp :) so tasty!

Anywho it is pretty weird seeing Cristine and Scott and Jakey. haha. When I saw Jakey he 

instantly smilied :) haha. He is just a happy baby!!! And he likes to chew on my missionary tag 

haha. He was drooling alllll over me though... like no joke ask Scott hahaha. But I didnt care bcuz

he is soo cute!  i tell people that my sister is in the other ward and they are like "what?!" 

It's pretty funny to see their reactions. 

We do have some good people to teach here though :) It's a small pool... but its growing :) 

Thats all that matters! I do like cookeville though... it reminds me of Hopkinsville :):) My
first area :) I gotta get running!! I love yall!!!!
 
peace out girls scouts!
 
Elder Cawley

1/9/2012: Coming to Cookeville!

So transfer calls were yesterday... and im getting transfered. and guess where im going?!?! im still going to be District Leader... but for a different district... i.... am.... going.... to... BURGESS FALLS!!!!!!!!!!! and right next to that place is...... COOKVILLE!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT?!?!?! crazyness!!!!! hahahaha. im like going CRAZY here!!! what im wondering is if i meet in the same church building as cookville?!?! if so... ill see da garrisons every sunday... and also ill go on exchanges with the cookville elders bcuz im DL... so deenie and bil can feed us when im in cookville for a couple of days!!! hahahahha shweeeeeetnass!!! haha. so yeah thats going down... like down town china town! 

so that family of 5 that we were teaching have been hard to get a hold of :(:( so thats no bueno. but the mom knows our ward mission leader really well... so they talked for a good while and i think everything is okay now. The mom and one of the daughters came to church last week. that was exciting :) We are going to go see that family today at 3 today with our ward mission leader. the mom told me that she wants me to come back and baptize her if i can :):) woohoo!!! 

but today... man its going to be crazy. i havent even started to pack yet...and we have an appt at 3... then at 6 we have an appt with our EQ president.. so idk when imma pack!!! uh oh :O 

Everyone on sunday was saying that i need to stay longer bcuz one of our investigators wants me to baptize him... but now i cant :( but hopefully pres will let me come down and baptize the mom and her family i talked about in the beginning and this investigator too. Im also kinda bumbed that i cant teach the _________ girls anymore :( they are 9 and 11.

well i would love to talk more haha... but i in a crunch time to pack and stuff. so i love yall!!!! and deenie, bil, and jakey... ill see you this week maybe!! hahaha :):)

peace n' blessins'

Elder Cawley

12/21/2011: Christmas is Coming!

hey familia!!!

sorry i didnt email on monday, we had to clean the car bcuz we had zone conference... and that took forever. We went down to _______'s car shop (he is a member) and used all his stuff to clean our car... so it looked soo nice!! then we had to drive all the way to columbia. its like 1 hr 20 mins away, bcuz we were giving them a ride to zone conference, and we live 2 hours away from green hills (thats where zone conference was) and it started at 9am... so we didnt wanna get up super early so we stayed in columbia haha. so thats why we couldnt email on monday :) 

zone conference was great though! it was all about christmas and i just kept thinking about what grandma says about the star :) makes so much sense haha :) i love it :)

this past week we found a family!!! woohoo!!!! its a family of 5 and the mom and dad are super interested! we went with our ward mission leader and taught them about the restoration and they just ate it up. i was sharing scriptures about the apostasy and the book of mormon and they were loving it! we have a return apointment today at 4 :):) im excited to teach them about the plan of salvation!! bcuz thats really going to make them happy knowing that they can be together as a family.. forever!! woohoo!! so that is pretty neat. 

okay so about christmas :) we are trying to find a place to call yall :):) since we live in the middle of nowhere... we dont have any service haha. but a member said that we can go over to their house and use skype :) so we will prolly do that since we cant really use our phone. so we have church from 9-10:05 or something like that :) so we can do it anytime after yall get out of church or if you want to do it in the morning. and i didnt get the package from you mom. it'll prolly get here soon though :):) i 

hope everyone is doing good!! did yall put up the big tree?? haha. i love yall!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

peace out girl scouts.

Elder Cawley

12/12/2011: Sister Baptisms!

its almost Christmas!!!! woohoo!!! and just to get into the Christmas spirit a little more... Elder "Cornbread" and I set 2 dates on friday!!!! yippe! We went and visited Bro. ______, in Hohenwald. He called us the week prior, and told us to come teach his 2 daughters. so i was like "can do boss, can do."

So we go over there and teach a cups lesson. (its a visual where you build a pyramid using cups and it represents Christ's church when he set it up when he was here on earth, then you knock it down and rebuild it... restoration :)) and as we were talking about baptism one of the daughters was like "I WANNA GET BAPTIZED!!" so... i couldnt just let that go by ahha so we set a date for them for january 7th :):) so the two sisters will get baptized that day. they are ages 11 and 9 :) that was way exciting since it has kinda been pretty slow here lately. yay for blessings!!! :) 

also, president mckee has asked us to wear our suit coats while we go proselyting. he said it will touch the hearts of people as they see us in our suit coats, gotta follow the priesthood leader :) oh mom, i sent you another email about the 2 ties :) idk if you can do that or not, but yeah :) 

The rest of the week we just had to walk around and knock doors, not to much success there, but thats okay, we wont give up :) the main place where the work is, is in hohenwald. and right now we can only go there once a week, until we move there. hopefully that will be soon. 

i saw the pictures of jacob being blessed... so cute!! well i hope all is well back at home!! i get to talk to yall soon!!! i love yall!!! oh and deenie to answer you question... yes.

peace out girl scouts!!

Elder Cawley

12/5/2011: Elder Cornbread

So hows my fam bam doing?

This week was pretty sweet. So my new comp, Elder _________, got here on tuesday. We got back around 4pm, and transfers ended at 1pm. we live so far away. and our ride was 45 mins late so that helped in the 3 hours haha. 

Then the next day, the zone leaders went on exchanges with us, so Elder Cornbread (thats what i call him haha) was only here for one night then he was off to franklin, and elder _____ came down to the land of miracles, linden :) So that was wednesday, and nothing too exciting happened on that day... all of our appointments cancelled, so that was a bummer. 

Then on thursday, we went to Hohenwald :) elder _____ loves that place bcuz that is where back in the 1800s 2 missionaries were killed haha. it makes for a good story :):) anywho, our appointments cancelled that day too so we went knocking doors. No one was listening to us, so it was pretty frustrating. Then we were walking by and we see 4 guys playing bball. So i was like, hey, lets go play bball with em. So i walk up and ask if we can play and they said sure. So here we are in shirts and ties playin bball. They were all around 18-20, and it was great bcuz it was a 9ft hoop, so elder ______ was just throwin me alley oops alll day long hahaha. Then we challenged them and if they won we would buy them lunch, and if we won they have to listen to our message. Of course with free food on the line... they accepted. and... WE DOMINATED! hahaha. so we got their addresses and next thursday we are going to see them :) woohoo. 

then friday we walked all day after weekly planning. and nothing happened on saturday. but on sunday,______ and _______ came to church :):) they are a young couple that have a baby. the wife is a member and her parents are members, but the husband isnt and ive only been over to their home once. so i went over and sat by them and started talking to them and got them laughing :) always a good thing. and i asked if we could come over this next week and they said sure. and i also invited the husband to an activity the priesthood are having... shooting guns and eating breakfast haha :) only in the south. and he said he wanted to go so neat!! we can go to it! haha. so hopefully soon we can start teaching him and baptize him, then work on them going to the temple :) 

its been a pretty good week. I love yall!!! stay classy!!

Love,

Elder Cawley

P.S. im so getting married before bert alert :)