New Jersey News--Manhatten Temple!!!

Hello my family!

So this week was awesome. We have been teaching Steve who came to church yesterday. He is trying to make time to really read and pray and we just taught him again today (on P day because we love him) law of chastity which i actually really like teaching. Its so important and i can just feel the spirit testifying that we must obey Gods commandments to live in His presence again.

Sister Schaelling and the Manhattan Temple!!!

On tuesday we had district meeting and taught the Roberts family, members about the atonement and missionary work. On wednesday we went to visit Jim and Jane in a nursing home they are less active. Nursing homes are rather depressing if you ask me. We sang to them and prayed with them. We met with a lady in our ward who is a recent convert who is struggling with cigarettes. It was cool because my companion thought we should teach word of wisdom and we didnt even know she was struggling with that but she opened up to us and we are helping her. We took her cigarettes away and follow up with her often. A man in our ward, Brother Gibbs, made us a lasagna that was so nice. Thursday we of course had weekly planning (best thing ever! haha) and we did some street contacting. Actually we called it "hymn contacting" because we just sang hymns and handed out cards to people. So we were walking and singing and this man was like hey what are you guys doing? How can i come to church? well we would love to talk to you about that!! It was awesome we sat and talked a little bit and prayed with him. His name is Patricio. He had to work this Sunday but hopefully he comes next and we can teach him.

Sister Pack and Schaelling--trainees

 That night we went and visited Brother Carrol a less active who is in the hospital. He's old and it was so sad being there. He was just weeping to us and scared that he might die, his wife also has stage 4 cancer. He told us he wishes he had lived up to his potential. The elders gave him a blessing. Now he is in the ICU on a ventilator and sedated. It shook my trainer up because she has been teaching and visiting with him for a while. 

Sisters Pack, Schaelling and Kranewitter

On friday we woke up early early and drove into Jersey City....and then took the train to New York! To go to the Manhatten Temple. It was so lovely, in the midst of Manhatten there is a house of God. It was amazing. A bunch of elders came that day too. We walked back all through Times Square (it took like 3 hrs to walk back to our train) it was so fun. We were handing out cards like crazy! We sat for a minute with the French Guy and talked to him about the Book of Mormon. He was so straightforward to us- why should i read it? Convince me. Sell it to me! We did our best haha and my companion raised a good point- you have to have a desire before we can convince you to do anything. We talked more about it and he said allright, you girls are cool, i'll read it. That would be sweet if he actually does! We shall never know. We also talked in New York to this  man who told us we looked like the FBI (theres like 20 elders walking with us) until he saw us sisters haha. We gave him a card and invited him to read the Book of Mormon.

Saturday we tried to see Brother Carrol again but we are a trio and only two can visit in ICU. We ate dinner with the Bishop and his family, they are great. We did hymn contacting again and got a potential investigator. He wanted to buy us pizza haha but we told him we were okay. Sunday was great and we hung out in the chapel all day because we are running out of miles on our car. We watched the missionary broadcast for members and missionaries it was so amazing! watch it! be a member missionary! :)

Sister Schaelling in downtown NEW YORK

This week was grand! Being a missionary is so awesome and hard and great. Its funny because all the things i thought were going to be hard are not and vice versa. Waking up early is fine. Teaching by the spirit is hard. and a million more things. haha. 

i love you all!!!!

much love,
sister carly schaelling

Jersey Says Hello! Week One.

Hello dearest friends and family! Here i am in the lovely New Jersey. I am serving in Sparta South area which is all of Sussex County! aka 8 cities! Yes, we have a car!

So i got here on Monday and slept in the mission home. Then we had transfer conference on Tuesday which i like to call "The Reaping" (hunger games) where we find out who our trainers are and where we go. So my trainer is Sister Kranewitter (kran-a-vittah) and she is from Essen, Germany. She is 4 foot 7 and awesome! I am in a trio with another newbie, Sister Pack (we flew out together.) Then we went to our areas and taught a lesson to Peter, a 13 year old recent convert. They also fed us. It was good. On wednesday we taught Steve Pollack who is so amazing. He has a baptism date for June 30. He is super smart and i learn so much when we teach him. Seriously if he goes through with this he could be a stake president. We taught his lesson 3, Gospel of Jesus Christ. Man i love teaching but it is so hard. You have to be so focused and listen to the Spirit carefully. It is so interesting to think that as missionaries we are the window to Gods love for these people. We bring them the words of Christ and invite them to follow Him. After Steve we went to visit a less active but she wasnt home. We found this random man who said he lost his cat. So we prayed with him and he prayed that his cat wouldnt be dead. Then he gave us a referral for his daughter so that was awesome. On Thursday we had weekly planning, which was so long...oh my goodness. So much to plan! So many lists! :) Also, our monthly focus is Goals and Planning so Dad i am going to be the best planner ever! Who would have thought? After we planned we did a little street contacting and found a man named Joe who was with his daughter. He let us talk to him and were still working on an appointment. I thought about him a lot after we left. I remember asking him if he wanted to be with his family forever. He said he hadnt really thought about it, but yes. I hope he listens to us! I dont know if this will be funny but it was hilarious when it happened, we were talking to this guy and he said he wasnt really interested but as he left he was nodded his head and said "benevolent wishes to all of you"...like who says that?! Hilarious. That night we had dinner with less active/active Menendez family and it was great. Even though everything was in Spanish. They liked my attempts at espanol. The old father was there and thanked us for the spirit we brought into his home. He inactive son said he was grateful for youth that serve the Lord because so many do not. That was kind.

Sister Schaelling and Sister Kranewitter with some delicious concoction.

On friday and saturday we had leadership training!! Two days, eight hours a day. i like to call this, RPTTCCH or Role Play Til The Cows Come Home. Man we role played like no other! President Jeppson, the assistants and other missionaries trained us on the eight fundamentals of missionary work. then we role played all of them. It was amazing! The theme of this training for me was boldness. It is so important to be bold and loving and straight forward with people. It is also very hard for me to do. I can tell people i love them with no hesitation, but calling them to repentance is a whole other story. One of the assistants, Elder Silva is always so bold. They were demoing where someone had a concern with baptism and he said "Do you know, that being baptized is the only way for you to make it back to your Heavenly Father?....Do you love him?...Do you want to be with Him again?" Well what can people say to that? awesome. I love role playing because you can recieve revelation for investigators. On Friday after leadership training we taught the less active Fabricio and his non member wife and kids. It was rough teaching them but also good. We know they have family issues so we taught Family Proclamation and committed them to have family prayer. We got a return appt with the non member wife. during the lesson we tried to ask her about her relationship with God and she said she didnt really know if he was there or what because of all the hard things that she has had to go through. We tried to talk more about it but she didnt want to in front of her kids. I testified to her that God is there and that He loves her so much. That Heavenly Father is truly her Father in Heaven and he wants her to pray to him. On Saturday we had leadership training again and the Spirit was felt. I love President and Sister Jeppson they are amazing and so kind. We went to a members house for dessert that evening. 

Sister Schaelling, Kranewitter, Pack

Sunday came and I met the Sparta Ward! The elders serve in our ward too. They are great. We had correlation with Bro Mathusek who is the ward mission leader. Then we went to p.e.c. and then church. Steve came to sacrament! yay!! He is great. Mina, another investigator also came and so did Fabricio and his kids. Church was great. After church we taught bro. Robertozzi who is a recent convert. He has some testimony issues. We taught him the restoration again and bore our testimonies. We knelt with him and his wife (member) and invited him to ask God again to confirm the truths to him, that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that this church is true. We then talked about how the spirit speaks to us, how it is different for everyone, how the fruit of the spirit is peace, joy, long suffering gentleness meekness, temperance. It was good. Then we moved apartments! Wow i love moving. (sarcasm.) We  moved upstairs and Bro Mathusek came with his kids to help us! The elders came too.

New Jersey is beautiful. There are beautiful trees and hills and everything is green. It is humid like Korea! But it hasnt been too hot. I love it here and i love being a missionary! What a blessing it is.

I love you all! So much

love,

Sister Carly Schaelling

168 Spring St 2F

Newton, NJ 07860

i love letters..... :):) love you

Flying Out!!!

Carly has called to tell us she will be flying out on MONDAY (tomorrow), to the New Jersey Morristown Mission.  She seemed excited to have a stateside mission experience AND Australia.  She is waiting for her VISA, once that comes, she will head to Australia.  (She was really hoping to go to Spokane and work with her cousin, Sister Sarah Jane Meservy.  Oh well.)

Here is her Mission Address there, if you want to send her a letter or something:

Sister Carly Schaelling
New Jersey Morristown Mission
5 Cold Hill Road So. Suite 10
Mendham, New Jersey  07945

2nd letter from the MTC

June 6, 2013 (Thursday)

Hello dearest mother and family!!  Thank you for the pictures you sent mom! and the printed emails thank you. So I am just kickin it at the MTC still because this place is the place to be! I find out where i get reassigned hopefully today, so when i do know i will give you a call.

My new companion, Sister Allen and me, studying outside in beautiful Provo

So this week...last thursday we had in field orientation! which is disneyland at the MTC they say. We learned how to contact and work with members and such. We also had some really good TRC's this week, a less active and a referral family. i am getting better at teaching without looking at my lesson plans. Its so important to listen to the investigator. Elder Holland said, (it think it was him) if you listen with love, you wont need to wonder what to say. Sweet! On friday we had class as usual and on Sunday we said goodbye to our elders! they went off to New Mexico. Then we said goodbye to sister wulfenstein who is going to Australia and her visa came through! Yay. We miss her. Oh and fast Sunday at the MTC is sooooo long!  We also taught Jordan, (our teacher/progressing investigator) for the last time on tuesday! I have grown to love him even though he was hard hard. For tuesday devotional Tad R. Callister came and spoke to us! He talked about the blueprint or the foundation of the church that is outlined in the New Testament, and how our church today is a perfect restoration of that. It was really good. He gave us a lot of scriptures and we were all scribbling notes like crazy! Also on fast sunday we had mission conference which was good (and long) and we realized that by the end of fast sunday we had sung 17 hymns. Dang!

Sister Schaelling and Sister Allen waiting to go to Australia!

Sister Schaelling's New District--most waiting to get Visa's for Australia

So i am in a new district (District X...seriously thats our name!) now and Brothers Corbitt and Gill arent my teachers anymore :(  they were sooo awesome!!  Now i am in a new district with 13 elders and 8 sisters, so for the first time i feel outnumbered by the men! Our new teachers are Sister Peets and Brother Gonzalez. They are great. we are getting a lot more teaching opportunities and we are teaching progressive investigator one on one with each other, meaning i teach a twenty minute lesson to someone, evaluate, and then they teach me and were both pretending to be someone we know who isnt a member. It is a great teaching experience, im teaching and elder from provo. All of us in the visa-waiter-district are heading to Brisbane eventually with two elders going to india.

District X

How could i forget? On Sunday you can watch taped general authority talks and of course i watched CHARACTER OF CHRIST by Elder Bednar. DANG, is all i have to say! it was splendid and totally worth the hype.  Loved it. Turn out when it is easiest to turn in. i think you can find a different version of it online so read it everyone!! read it day and night!!! :) So the highlight of this week: So me and sis allen, and sisters crawford, mullen and bailey were the only ones left in our district since monday because everyone else left. (so we appointed sister bailey to be our district leader and get our mail haha) anyway, we were talking about how much we wanted a smoothie and we entreated Brother Gill to bring us one from Jamba juice. But teachers arent allowed to bring food for students so yesterday we got a package from Brother Gill with a smoothie in a waterbottle with five cups same day delivered from the wilk! how nice is that? haha even if it was totally melted it was still awesome!

District Sisters on "Abbey Road" to the Provo Temple

So i cant wait to find out where i get reassigned! i am hoping for boise idaho! because thats where my teacher bro corbitt went and he is the bomb so it has to be awesome there right!! also, Aunt Naomi sent me cookies!! That was so sweet and they are yummy!! Speaking of yummy, the ice cream here is sooo good.  i may have it twice a day wednesdays and sundays. dont worry, i utilize my gym time. ten laps to a mile! never gets old!!:):) I have become so close with sister baily, sister mullen, sister crawford and of course my companion sister allen. we are the visa-waiters! i am so blessed to live and be with them! they help me learn and we can laugh so much together. We were also really close with the elders in our district! Now they are out in the field killin it. (in a good way) Sister mullen also teaches me how to do yoga. And sister bailey is a p.e. major so at gym she is runnin around doing ab workouts that i didnt even know existed! Sister allen is way good at volley ball.

Sister Mullen--i love her

I am glad i have this extra time at the MTC to better my teaching skills. teaching is so hard and so rewarding. I have learned so much here. Something hit me the other day in zone teaching. We talk so much about what to do and what to say and how to organize, plan and teach. But there is more to missionary work than just doing missionary things. We must become like Christ, so that those we teach will recognize us as servants of the Lord. Not as convicing salesman or only service givers, but disciples of Christ. We have all been converted and we share His message. This is not my church, it is His. And just as vital and having good teaching skills and learning how to contact and such, is who we are as people, as disciples. I hope to become more like Christ and i am leaning every day. i love you all! I pray for you always.

much love,

Sister Schaelling

Yay for Brisbane!!!

Sister Allen and Sister Schaelling, companions in District X