Caden {3.30.15}

Well.... i am alive so that is good! There were some close calls for us. But it was an awesome week! I LOVE MY NEW COMPANION. Don’t tell him, he is prideful enough as it is. We are getting work done and i am following up training him and it is going so good! He knows what he is doing! how refreshing that is:) we had some close calls with the tornado and flash floods and then went back to see the wreckage a few days later! It was intense. Other than that, we are pushing Mercedes date back and Ivan and Demarco are still set!:)Hope you like the pics!:) That is the green sky in the middle of the tornado and some wreckage and some other cool stuff!! It was AWESOME! And scary. We spent part of our night in the women’s restroom with 20 other people at Freddie’s steak burgers.

Caden {3.23.15}

Okay, i am being transferred to the brook hallow ward... 6 miles from where i am serving right now! But i am taking the ysa branch with me so i am very excited about that!! I am going to be with elder Chapman. He is in my zone and i am sooo excited! He has been out for three months! I am going to be the district leader again but it is a different district now. I am still close enough to go to Demarco's baptism again

Caden {3.16.15}

This week was pretty good! We set two baptismal dates for the 11th. we had a zone conference on Tuesday and i got to take a pic with 3 of my comps i have had and i got to see Elder Bulpitt which was cool! But best of all....... ELDER REYNOLDS WAS THERE! I just love that kid tons! Special shout out to CHAZ NELSON! I miss you kid! But ya... everything has been going super well and oh ya! There was a place called Belk having a sale on ties and i got 5 ties and saved 200$ on my purchase... i only spent 20 but they were worth 45 a piece! Thanks for teaching me to bargain shop gram! We will be back at it in no time!:) We went to the hospital to give a blessing yesterday and some random guy put a little pink flower in my pocket... really random. Didn’t know him. But i was very grateful! And this was a slight cup in the mouth accident! That drink was really good.

Caden {3.9.15}

Subject: SPANISH SPEAKING

Well i am not Spanish speaking but i figured i needed a title that really rushed you into my email because i am really important and i deserve all of your attention;) just joking! Well lots of good stuff happening this week. Claudia from red robin got a new job 2 minutes from out house so seeing her should be easier. Demarco is set to be baptized on April 11th but we have a conference that day so stand by! And we are going to set an upcoming date with Mercedes either today or tomorrow! So we are super excited! We have a special zone conference tomorrow! If we don’t get our iPad's i will give up ALL hope... so we will see. But ya! Nothing too exciting! Just fulfilling the will of God like it is an everyday thing! How exciting is it that as members of this church we can do that! God Bless Everyone! (I have never seen the movie that is from). 

Much love,

E. M.

P.S. Chris do you remember a Brother Bonham from your mission... taught seminary, potentially at a middle school and is in one of the pics. Let me know!

Caden {3.2.15}

Well i am at the 15 month mark! Well in two days i am... and things are going pretty good out here. so basically, someone in these emails needs to impregnate there lover (under the bonds of marriage) and deliver that kid the day i get home and then i will come to the hospital first thing and give it a missionary blessing and then get set apart;) You're welcome! Well in other news our dear sally was baptized on Saturday so i got to go back up to see the Owassins which was really awesome! I tried to stop by Melissa's but it didn't work out:( i do miss that family dearly! This week we found some really cool new investigator who is a lot like Katie from Springfield... just not quite as cool! So we are working with her now and our lesson went great. She tried to put on the tough girl act but the spirit broke her down and she talked about how much she wanted to change! We also went on exchanges and I and elder coon got invited to dinner with President and Sister Shumway! President cooked... original recipe..... Hahaha but ya! It was a good week! In the past two weeks i got two SUPER amazing packages from McKayla's awesome family and my family! I just love them both so much! Thanks for all of the support. I really appreciate it!

{15 Months}

So here's some happy news for the week: My best friend comes home in nine months!!! I can't believe he's already been gone for fifteen months. That's a really long time to not see someone! But whenever we get to talk (well.. email) it's like he never left and so so normal. But.. I'll definitely be excited to have him back home.

This month's postcard takes place at the Nanjing Lantern Festival. (: It's kind of a funny story because we went there with our paper lanterns that we had bought, ready for a Tangled experience. When we got to the Confucius Temple, which is where it was held, there were no lanterns in the sky to be seen. Instead, their "Lantern Festival" was more of a fair with games, food and little sights to see set up around the park, where thousands of people came to celebrate the end of the Chinese New Year Festival.

Well, we already had our lanterns so we decided to use them. We went to a little off section of the park near the water and did just that. It was SOOO much fun. A group of locals came up to read the chinese writing on my lantern and told me it was done very well, so obviously I had to invite them to help release mine. They were so excited and so was I because they seemed to know what they were doing! Hahah.

Mine went up just fine along with some others and it was just an awesome experience! However, Tara's got hit by some wind in the opposite direction and flew into a bush... Hahaha! We got it stomped out and it was fine but the cops came over to inform us that this wasn't that kind of lantern festival and they "don't do that in China" so... whoops. But it was great, so no regrets.

Happy 15 Elder. 我爱你 Wǒ ài nǐ ♥

China {Zhangjiajie}

Well, our month long vacation has come to an end.

The last stop on our adventure was first a pit stop in Changsha, then onto Zhangjiajie. We spent about a week there and it is a beautiful city!! The weather was crappy (as you'll see in the pictures where we're literally in a cloud) but still gorgeous nevertheless. 

Highlights:

-catching up on some rest (;

(month long travel is kinda a beast)

-Tianamen Mountain

-7 hour wait for cable cars

-movies with the girls

-roasting marshmallows with chopsticks

-The Avatar Mountains

-monkey feeding

-hiking a million and one stairs

I'm so sad to be done with our adventure but equally ready to be back in Nanjing and finish what I came here to do. Plus, living out of/carrying around a fifty pound, ripping suitcase was getting real old. Haha!