Chelsee Letter December 18, 2008

Hello!!
So first of all, have you ever seen palm trees with snow all over them??? Well folks, I officially have. We had SO MUCH SNOW YESTERDAY! It was insane. It snowed about 4 inches. It was a really heavy wet snow and so we spent most of the day being wet. It started snowing around 7:00 yesterday morning and didn’t stop until 6:00 last night. Then the snow turned into rain and it all started melting. So much water!!! You might think that water would be a good thing down here but problem is that the desert doesn’t handle water too well… so there is quite a bit of flooding right now. The kids all got school off today. Crazy, it took like 4 FEET of snow to close school in Utah and Colorado! Haha! They are so spoiled here! Ha!
Our district leader, Elder Florence, who is in his 70’s and pretty much our Grandpa, called around 2:30 and told us that we should probably go home and get out of the snow. We didn’t like that idea so we called the Zone Leaders and they told us that our District Leader was crazy and that we should stay out as long as we felt safe. We stayed out until 9:00. Elder Florence is just a concerned old man… but the work must go on! A couple inches of snow never stopped the Pioneers!
Ok, next on the list of updates. Well, I think I might possibly be learning Spanish soon. I know, I know… crazy. I have felt like I needed to learn Spanish ever since I opened my call. I pushed the feelings aside but… Then when I was set apart I was blessed that I would be able to learn a language if needed. Again, I thought nothing of it and kept pushing off the feelings. Heck, my English is bad enough… right? I kept telling the Holy Ghost to leave me alone but he just wouldn’t. He always gets his way. Well, since I couldn’t get it off of my mind I decided to get it off of my chest and ask President about it two weeks ago in my Presidents letter. Yesterday morning I got a phone call from President and he talked to me about it for a while. I told him that I didn’t know why but I just felt like I need to learn Spanish. I even told him that I have a hard enough time with English, why add more difficulty into my life… but the Holy Ghost has been nudging me for quite some time. Well, he told me that there is a good chance of me learning Spanish. In fact, they do have a lot of English sisters serve in Spanish wards and learn Spanish. They used to not even call Spanish sisters to this mission, they would just have English come and learn Spanish as needed. So, I don’t know why I need to or if I even will for sure but I feel so much better after getting Presidents opinion. Shocker… eh? Yeah, imagine how I’m feeling about it. YIKES!
Next… After talking to President, we got a phone call from the Zone Leaders. President had talked to them right before calling us and he is actually thinking about keeping Sister Egan in our area. That means 9 months for her. That is unheard of. But that means that I have a chance of being transferred now… unless they keep us together for another transfer, again, unheard of. Crazy. So, we have no idea what is going to happen. I guess that’s how it should be but it could make you go crazy. Sister Egan is going crazy because we thought for sure she would be transferred and I would stay, so she started packing… and now we have no clue what is going to happen. Oh well!
We have a baptism on Saturday and we are way excited. Lots and lots going on! We have a new investigator who is so excited about learning about the church. She has been to church twice already and she has so many questions for us!!! We love it when that happens! She is great! She works with a bunch of members so she has a lot of support! Woohoo! I sure hope all is going well!
Feel free to send me mail through USPS whenever you want! Haha! Don’t get too cold. I’m sure trying not to! I guess it isn’t too bad though, mid 30’s today. But I’m not a fan of the cold. I thought I got sent to the desert to be warm, not have surprise snow!!! I love it!
Make good choices, don’t do drugs, be happy and share the gospel with EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Love, ME!

Chelsee Mailing Address

Sister Chelsee Walker
Nevada Las Vegas Mission
3127 E Warm Springs Road
Ste 200
Las Vegas, Nevada 89120-3134

Letter from Chelsee

Here are some highlights from Chelsee's most recent letter... I love that you can feel her Spirit as well as her humor. There's no one like Chels...
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11/27/08

Well, today is Thanksgiving….I know, you have been wondering what I’m doing today…so, I’m going to tell you. I’m going to start with last night. Sister Egan and I visited some people and found out that they weren’t going to be having a Thanksgiving meal because they couldn’t afford it. So we went to the store, picked up a few things and went home and started cooking. We made Mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, rolls, and pie….they had a turkey already….then this morning we delivered it! They were so happy! We dropped stuff off for one of our less-active part-member families and one of our investigators too. It was awesome.

On Tuesday we drove to Bullhead, about 45 minutes away, to have our interviews and training. I love being able to spend time with the Christensen’s. They are incredible. President Christensen started to cry in my interview. He was telling me how much he appreciated my hard work and my easy/smooth transition to mission life and he started to cry! In my head I was like, “Oh man, what do I do? Do I give him a tissue? Oh shoot…my bag is in the other room…um…I guess I just smile and say Thanks. “ Random, I know but I was touched that he is so happy with me.

So, also on Tuesday, we went over to Shannon’s house so that the Elders could give her a blessing. She is getting baptized on the 6th, and she has to be smoke free by the 29th. The Elders gave her a beautiful blessing. I even started to tear up. When they finished, Shannon looked over at us, smiled and said, “this is weird, does everyone get this really warm feeling when they get a blessing?” We told her that was the Holy Ghost. She has pretty much kicked the habit, and she will be ready for baptism on the 6th.

Ok, so Tuesday was really quite the eventful day I guess. I also on Tuesday had my first “scary missionary story meal”. Oh my goodness folks, lets just say YIKES! All day we had been fretting this meal. It was with one of our recent converts whom we had helped clean their house several times. I’ve never seen a place get so messy so fast. Anyway, we knew the condition of her kitchen and we knew what kind of cook she was. Remember how Devin would cook his eggs in bacon fat, grease stuff? Yeah, this person does the same thing too. Her kitchen is always disgusting, and her food looked and smelled terrible all the time. So, all day we were thinking of things we could do because this was a meal we knew we couldn’t get out of. We were going to buy sanitizing wipes, and trash bags to put the food in. ha ha! However, we ran out of time. When we got to the house you could smell something burning. We went in and she was making something that I think was supposed to be Chili, and it was everywhere! Hence the burning smell. She said that it had been cooking for 7 ½ hours and it only needed 30 more minutes. Well, that was at 7:30. At 8:00pm it still needed 30 more minutes, and then at 8:30 it needed 30 more minutes. She finally put some of it into the microwave at 8:45pm and set it to cook for 45 minutes!

Finally at 9:00pm she decided that it was done enough. She pulled out huge plate sized bowls, puts rice in the bottom and this chili stuff on top. Holy Crumbs, who could ever eat that much? Before she came to the table, I said a little prayer asking Heavenly Father to help me eat that food and not get sick. We began to eat. I took a bite…oh my…I have no idea what I had just put into my body, but let me tell you, I will be perfectly content with life if I never have to put it into my mouth again! The beans were still a little hard, and I don’t think that the meat was all the way cooked. I decided to skip the chewing process all together and just go straight to swallowing. I got about half way through before I decided I would probably die if I kept going. By that point I felt like crying. I kept looking at Sister Egan and I think she wanted to cry too. We told the person that we were full and asked if we could put our leftovers in a container to take home. She was ok with that, thank goodness. Then se proceeded to bring out the dessert….a half eaten cake that her husband had gotten into. She gave each of us a piece about the size of your average wallet. I took a big breath and want for it. One chew was plenty for me….egg shells!. To the swallowing technique it was again! I finished that piece of cake and part of Sister Egan’s after she looked at me with a pleading face. When I finished I had never been happier with myself. Victory was mine!!

Well, we got out of her house at 9:31pm. Yes, my friends, we are supposed to be home no later than 9:30pm. We took our 15 minutes drive home, then I ran to the bathroom and threw everything up. It was glorious! Tys, are you excited to serve now? Ha ha. Actually, that was the only nasty meal that I’ve had, so it’s not too horrible. Really though, I love that person, and she has one of the biggest hearts I have ever seen. And hey, now I have a crazy meal story to tell!

Well…that is just about all of the big news. It has been raining the past two days. I love the rain! Don’t worry, I took pictures of it for proof. I sure hope you are all doing well. I love you so much and pray for you every day. I hope you all remember this time of year and what it is all about.

Snow Ball Fight!

I just loved this video of Daiken and Grandpa. While everyone was finding a Christmas Tree, the kids were having a snow ball fight. Grandpa soon got in the middle of it all. Daiken sure loves his grandpa and loves teasing him, I think because he knows he'll get teased right back. We all had such a fun time and will be sure to post pictures of our tree all decorated.