Week 19

     My absolute unfavorite day of the year in December 26th. I absolutely hate it. It's the worst. I refuse to take down our Christmas tree yet. I think we might just leave it there so the Sisters that serve here next December won't have to put it up. They're going to thank me for that. I know it.

     Yesterday all of us missionaries spoke in sacrament about.... Missionary work! Shocker! So I played the piano for all of sacrament last week, taught Sunday School that day too, put on a movie night Saturday night, delivered 15 dozen cookies to people, played Secret Santa, spoke in sacrament this week, worked on converting Keystone, giving a training for District meeting tomorrow, and went squirrel hunting on top of that. I'm exhausted and slowly dying. And we are already 30 miles over our limit on the car this month. But I've seen that blessings come with craziness! I keep having the strongest feeling this week that we are going to get a baptism in January. I've been praying so hard that this will happen and that's been my driving force this week. It will happen! Full faith!

     When Sister Hillman skyped with her family on Christmas, she told them that we've only tracted like 2 times and it hit me that we've been working so much with less-actives and member referrals and the investigators that we already have, and I haven't blessed her enough with the experience of every missionary's favorite experience of tracting. So we've been working a lot on her door approaches for about 2 hours every morning since Christmas. I'm pretty sure she hates me by now. We both hate it. She even told the Sister Training leader that it's worthless and unproductive. HAHAHAHAHA! (You don't say that to the sister training leaders, hello!!) But it's always an adventure to meet all the colorful people that hideout here.

     There's a less active family that we usually visit every week but haven't been able to see this transfer and I was kinda iffy about seeing them, but yesterday I had the strongest feeling to go see them and we just did it. And holy cow am I grateful for the Spirit! We had the most amazing discussion with them and she was dying to have us help her bring FHE back into their home and to help with their family scripture study. I shared 2 Nephi 25:26 with them and I've never felt like people were listening to me so sincerely and intently before. She even said that right before we came she couldn't even sit up she was so sick and by the end of our visit she was laughing and chatting a lot with us. She said we were miracle workers, I'm not sure about that, but it was cool. I love them so much! They are one of the reasons I came out here. I love these people.

     We had the most amazing lesson with Alex yesterday. He won't come to our ward but he'll go to  Palatka. So I decided we were going to have a 'do or die' lesson with him and just pound out all his thoughts and make sure that he was legit about this. I judged him way too hard and from that lesson found that he has the most amazing testimony ever. I've never heard him talk about how he felt about the Gospel or how it's helped his life and I'm so glad we got it out of him. I was giving up on him cause he's met with the missionaries for months and he won't commit to church but dang, does he know that this is true. He bore the most amazing testimony ever and I don't remember anything he said but I just remember that the Spirit was super strong. He's never felt so happy in his life while he's been meeting with us and he feels 'holier' and has received so many answers to his prayers from our lessons. We tried to set a baptismal date for January 30 and he said it might be even sooner than that. WHAT?? God is a God of miracles and I've for sure seen them here. He's remembering the South! This is His work and we're just going along as instruments in His hands. Holy cow I am so grateful for this opportunity to see how real God is and see how closely He is involved in our lives. LOVE IT!

Sister Carr

Me, Sister Hillman, and the Beckham's granddaughter Zowie (She's in love with Teen Beach Movie so she's a homie) on Christmas morning. Pink rifles and pink real tree camo, NOTHIN BETTER. Welcome to the South.

Week 18

   

  HELLO UPGRADE! Welcome to our new little piece of paradise! We've been SOO blessed this week and my heart is so full of gratitude and love for this area! We officially moved out of the trailer Saturday and we have the cutest little lakeside cottage! It was built in the 50s and it's just so perfectly cute and vintagey and I'm kinda a little obsessed with it. It has wainscoatting throughout the whole house and has the cutest we have our own personal dock! Guess where we'll be studying in the morning from now on! Best Christmas ever.

 

Our new address is:

6565 Immokalee

Keystone Heights, Florida 32656

 

     This week has been super busy but soooo good! We had our second Proselyting Family movie night. Four nonmembers came and three of them were in tears by the end of the movie! Holy cow was the Spirit so strong in there. Our ward is getting more and more involved in missionary work. We've been working a lot with our Bishop's family and we have lessons every week in their home for one of our investigators who is SOOO getting baptized not as soon as I'd like but it will happen. But anyway Sister Carver, the Bishop's wife, was talking to me about the challenges we've given them to reach out to their friends and to get "nos" and she expressed to me how grateful she was for all the times we pushed them. She said that she's seen her family do things that they never would've done and never would have if it weren't for us. That built my testimony a whole ton! I'm grateful for the members we have to work with and for the willingness they have to participate in this work no matter how difficult it is for them! So many blessings are promised when we do member missionary work! I've seen these families grow and seen their happiness increase as they help bring their friends and neighbors closer to Christ! LOOOOOVE IT!!

      Last Monday we were walking through the grocery store and I saw those cheese balls that we get from the Daileys every year and it hit me that I was going to miss out on all the Christmas food. And then I had a tragic thought that I wasn't going to get any meat and cheese from Hickorys this year. I gave Sister Hillman this 30 minute schpill about my favorite Carr family Christmas tradition and how that just makes my year and I hate how I won't be getting any this year. And then guess what I got in the mail the next day? Hello best Christmas gift ever?! I kinda freaked out a little bit when I saw that sitting on our porch. Scared some neighbors. Some joyful tears were shed over that wonderful little surprise. Kinda like the best day of my life.

  This is the absolute best time of the year. The Spirit is just so dang strong where ever you go and we've been using and abusing it to its fullest. We'll come in to 'share a Christmas message' and end up with a full Restoration. Gotcha. It works. My testimony has grown so much this past week and it's been such a great testament of why I was supposed to come out and serve a mission. I absolutely am obsessed with the advent package that mom sent me and I look forward to reading those stories every morning. My favorite was the third day with the Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus pieces of the Nativity set. First time I cried opening a present. Lame, I know. How amazing is it that we have a Savior who submitted Himself to the will of His Father and came to this earth so innocently and willingly to give us a chance to return back to our Father?! This month I've been rereading the first four books of the New Testament and His ministry and His teachings blow me away. His Gospel is so simple, so powerful, and so insanely true. I can't get enough of it!

      A few nights ago we were teaching this one family that we've met with a few times. We were talking about the Plan of Salvation and the husband was so hung up on the fact that God has a body. It's one of the simplest truths of this Gospel! I asked him how he saw God and who God was to him. He corrected me and said that God is a "what" not a "who," that's like a sci-fi type light that touches each of us but no one can ever see it or even comprehend what it is. What on earth, dude? I was a little dumbfounded when he said that. It was the first time that I realized the importance of the knowledge that comes with this Gospel. I pulled out a picture of the First Vision - hello, welcome to the truth, here's a picture of God.

     I've ALWAYS known that we were created in God's image, He has a body of flesh and bones, He is our Heavenly Father who hears and answers our prayers, who watches out for us, who loves us, and is actively involved in our lives. It for real hit me so hard that a lot of people don't know even that simple truth. I can't even express how grateful I am that I have this Gospel in my life. We have the truth! We know who we are, Whose we are, and how to get back to Him!

     We have an investigator named Alex that we've been meeting with a lot. He just found out that his cousin is a member of the Church and the Bishop of the Palatka ward, which is maybe like 30 minutes away. I absolutely love Alex to death, but he just won't come to church. He's had 3 different baptismal dates set up, but we've had to push them back cause he won't come to church. We had a ride arranged for him to come last week but he said he wasn't coming. Got a call from him on Monday and he went to the Palatka ward! Holy cow I was dying. You have no idea what a miracle that was! We had a lesson with him Saturday and the first thing he said to me was "I'm joining this church." AHHHHHHHH!!!! He had never felt so much peace before in his life (hello Spirit) and he was shocked to find that the majority of the people in that ward were people that he had grown up with. Each one of them all found this Gospel and he was able to hear them bear testimony of how true this gospel is and how they've found so much peace and happiness in their lives from it. I felt like being really bold and told him that he too has found this Gospel and it's not something to take for granted. It's true and it's his choice to act on the truth that's been placed before him. He simply responded with "Oh sweetheart, I know." Miracles are happening in the Heights.

     This Gospel is true. It's so ridiculously true. I can't even begin to tell you how true it is. It's true. I've never felt the Spirit so strongly in my life before. It comes from living and breathing this true Gospel. I've never been so happy in my life. I just absolutely LOVE this Gospel. It's just so dang true. It's true! God lives! He loves us! I'm so grateful for this time of year. It's like the whole earth suddenly remembers that we have a Savior Jesus Christ who has given us opportunity for exaltation and eternal happiness. He's there all year even if people don't remember. But I'm grateful for this short time that I have to help them remember Him no matter what time of the year it is. He lives!  

Love yall!

Sister C

Week 17

 This week has been so awkwardly amazing.

     First, we're moving from the trailer. I'm SOOOOOO sad about that, for real I'm so in love with that piece of plastic, it's grown on me. But we'll be out by January. Merry Christmas to Keystone.

     We had a mission Christmas party/conference on Thursday. It was the first time that President and Sister Craig were able to see all 300 of their missionaries at the same time. They were a little emotional about it. So I was able to meet my trainer's trainer's trainer and we took a big family picture of all of us. I think we got at least 5 generations in there. Fantastic family time. It was so neat to finally meet all of these missionaries that I've seen on Facebook and that I've heard stories about. I got to see all of my MTC peeps and Sister Conley again! I barely just met and know these people but we were all so stoked on life to see each other and the Elders would make fun of us cause we'd scream when we saw each other. Judge us, I dare you.  It's the most amazing feeling ever just how much you learn to love these other missionaries that serve with you. You just can't help it. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! I can't get enough of the Spirit that's here and just the funness of it all. LOVE IT!

     I'm the only pianist in our ward so guess who's in charge of the program next Sunday? This girl! I feel like Sister Matthews - I'm playing for everyone and their cat out here. Day in the life.

     Starke has a Christmas parade every year (How small town is that??? Love it!) and guess whose float won first this year??? OURS DID! Starke ward, what up?! Us, the Elders, Sister Carver, and Sister Underhill walked next to the float and passed out pass along cards and candy. And it was pouring rain. Worth it. It was SO FUN! We all climbed on the float after and screamed Christmas songs as we drove through the pouring rainback to the church. I've never been more wet in my life. Worth it.

   I'm obsessed with this ward. We spend all day Saturday helping to put the float together and I don't think I've laughed harder in my life. It was such great ward bonding time! I absolutely love the people here. And President and Sister Craig came to our ward on Sunday and helped us get the missionary work amovin, so we should be seeing some miracles with that soon!

   It's been such a great week, lots of bonding time, new investigators, lots of reactivations!, lots of singing and pianoing, and lots of the Spirit. Love it! Love you!

Sister Carr

Week 16

This week has been hectic and crazy and next week will be even busier, so I'm just tryna tackle everything and swallow it whole. We had a couple of great miracles this week. We are still struggling getting our investigators to church - SO FRUSTRATING! But the Elders had an investigator come to our ward Christmas party on Saturday. Hallelujah! Brother Beckham was going to bring Alex to church on Sunday but he never showed up even with Brother Beckham giving him a ride. President's coming to speak in our ward next Sunday and going to whip them into shape cause I'm just so tired of not being able to get anything done ourselves. We need help.

We found a couple this week who have a son who's LDS. He served his mission in Corpus Christi so I'm hoping Dad knows him. They're amazing and I've been feeling like we needed to go see them for a while now but it just never went down. But we went over Tuesday and they were so welcoming and loving and loved us so much! He runs the food pantry and desperately needed our help the next day - perfect timing!

We met a lady named Carol on Thursday. She's Catholic and wasn't really interested but we shared a message and prayer with her. We started driving away and I got the strongest impression that we needed to turn around and give her a Book of Mormon. So we awkwardly drove back to her house, knocked on her door again, ignored her surprised face. I was super nervous and excited and started blurting out how much happiness the Book of Mormon has given me and how I wanted her to have the same joy, etc. The Spirit was so strong and she started crying and I asked her if she would read and pray about the Book of Mormon and she kept saying "I will, I will, I will" over and over again through her tears- so good!

The church is true! I love all of you!

Week 15

     I'm still in shock about Brother Trounce and I honestly don't know what to say. But how grateful I am for the Plan of Salvation! We were out tracting on Thanksgiving morning and we met this lady who just came out sobbing. Her 20 year old daughter just passed away 3 weeks ago and she was having a rough time with the holiday. How grateful I am to have all the answers we ever need! We were able to talk to her about the plan of salvation and shared Mosiah 16 with her. She will see her daughter again and she said she needed a strong church family for support right now. Welcome to the Starke Ward, Cathy. That was a great miracle for us this week.

     My new companion's name is Sister Hillman. She's from Orem, Utah and is 21. All fear that I had of training went away when President announced my companion, but it's stressful and I feel like all the souls of Keystone are on my shoulders. Not a fun feeling. Like at all.

     But I've seen myself grow as missionary. Brother Beckham went to a lesson with us on Friday and he told my companion that he was blown away with how well I taught. I've never had the opportunity to teach and lead a lesson cause Sister Conley always did it, but he said that it was such a spiritual lesson and he was really impressed with how well I was able to teach. I'm starting to feel like an actual missionary and I really am grateful for that.

     We had two Thanksgiving dinners with the Artmans and the Beckhams. I've never felt so full in my life. Worth it.

     I love you all!

Sister Carr

Week 14

Story time! Last weekend was going great - we had a lot of people at church, we had a great relaxing P-day, but Monday night we were spreading Jesus around town when our lovely mission president called us. I'm training. Wasn't fun. I started crying immediately. We drive up to Jacksonville tomorrow morning and Sister Conley takes off with her new companion to Brunswick, Georgia and I get my new trainee, straight from the MTC in P town. And then the next day, I get to stuff my face with food. Two dinner appointments? I think yes. Here we come.

      I didn't feel ready at all, I've only been out three months and Sister Conley has taken care of everything and been there to help me out. So now I have to do everything on my own and teach a new missionary everything she needs to know about the wonderful missionary life, which I barely know anything about, so here we go! Sis Conley said that training is a lot like being a parent. I'm in no way ready for that, I don't want a kid. So I'm losing my mother and now being thrown into the glamorous world of child rearing. Fun times on the mission. I've gained 7 pounds this week alone.... you know,when stress hits, it hits. It happens.

     But really, besides trying to eat everything in my sight, I'm good. We had our 'training the trainer' meeting in Gainesville on Tuesday. I don't feel ready, and I'm not sure why  President  called me to train, but I know it will all be good. Change is good. The Artmans are the sweetest couple ever and they drove us down to Gainesville cause we don't have the miles. Sister Artman knew I'd been having a rough time but she kept telling me all these things that she's already seen me do and how I was scared but just did it and the Spirit finished out with the rest. I love her, and that helped me out a lot. So after a rough start, I feel ready now and I think I'm going to be okay. Hopefully. I love this ward and I love the people here, so that's kept me going. It's worth it.

     We had our first proselyting family movie night on Saturday - such a success! I was on cloud nine, it went perfectly! Found some miracle people this week also. And we actually had someone new move into the ward! That never happens down here! Miracles!

     So my Southern story of the day: We met this guy tracting the other day and I called the "Civil War" the "Civil War," which it's called. The Southern pride thing here is off the wall and I won't ever make that mistake again. I got a 45 minute lecture about how it wasn't a civil war, it was the "War between the States" or the "war of Rebellion." Don't ever call it the "Civil War," I thought he was going to start yelling at me, but hey, he still wanted to know more about Jesus, so it all works out in the end. I don't think I'll ever be used to it down here.

     Anyway, the South is still going strong. The Confederacy lives. God bless America and all that. I'm going to live through these next few months with my new trainee. Love you all! The Church is true, the Book is blue, and Jesus loves you!

Our Starke ward missionaries (well not after tomorrow): me, Sister Conley, Elder Clark, and Elder Moose

Week 13

This week has been amazing as usual!! I got a Facebook, I won't really be working with it till next transfer, but it's up! I can't add anyone outside my immediate family, I love you all but I'm sorry about that!

     We had another zone conference on Thursday and trade offs with the Sister Training Leaders on Wednesday. I've been so blessed with such great leaders in this mission and such an amazing mission president. President and Sister Craig are just the cutest things ever and just make me so happy, they're the best. 

      Zone Conference was in Gainesville, which is such a huge city compared to Keystone. And I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I'm so grateful to be serving a such a small city. I could never live here, but it's so amazing to serve here with these people, they're just so amazing. And I love the country…. I know, I know the mission's really changing me, but I love being out here in the middle of nowhere. 

      We've been visiting this less active family for the past few months and the mom called us the other day and just thanked us for not giving up on them and to let us know that she had the first spiritual experience that she's had in a long time. She felt so blessed to feel the Spirit guiding her life again and she wants to do all she can to completely immerse herself in the Gospel again. Uh I love it!! Sister Conley never cries, but she was so close to tears while we were on the phone with her. That is why I'm on a mission. It's those little moments where we're able to help people see the reality of the Spirit and it's so incredible to me to see how much the Gospel blesses our lives!! I love love love love it!! 

     We've seen so many miracles this week! Remember when we felt prompted not to knock on that one trailer and we later saw that pit bull attack that lived there attack the little kid? Heavenly Father is so greatly protecting us and I'm so grateful for it! We had a similar experience this week - we were tracking this one area in Starke and we turned down a random street and felt really weird, so we sat there for a little bit and tried to decide whether or not to keep on going. We decided to turn around and try a different area. But anyway, we were telling the elders about it later and they asked us what street it was… turns out we were in Reno, which is like the California version on Compton, but worse. The elders quorum won't even go in there when they're on trade offs with the elders and the elders got held at gun point every time they've been down there. We've heard of Reno but had never known where it was cause we're not usually in Starke. But we're being so greatly blessed and protected. I'm so grateful for the Spirit!

     My new favorite scripture that I've found this week is in 2 Peter 1:8 - "Neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." How great is that???! I'm so grateful for this time to spread my knowledge of my Savior and constantly try to be fruitful in that knowledge! What great of a work we have to do and how grateful I am to be apart of it! It's tough. This week was the hardest week I've ever had but I love this work and I love this gospel!! 

Sister Carr

Week 12

This week has been amazing as usual!! I got a Facebook, I won't really be working with it till next transfer, but it's up! I can't add anyone outside my immediate family, I love you all but I'm sorry about that!

     We had another zone conference on Thursday and trade offs with the Sister Training Leaders on Wednesday. I've been so blessed with such great leaders in this mission and such an amazing mission president. President and Sister Craig are just the cutest things ever and just make me so happy, they're the best. 

      Zone Conference was in Gainesville, which is such a huge city compared to Keystone. And I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I'm so grateful to be serving a such a small city. I could never live here, but it's so amazing to serve here with these people, they're just so amazing. And I love the country…. I know, I know the mission's really changing me, but I love being out here in the middle of nowhere. 

      We've been visiting this less active family for the past few months and the mom called us the other day and just thanked us for not giving up on them and to let us know that she had the first spiritual experience that she's had in a long time. She felt so blessed to feel the Spirit guiding her life again and she wants to do all she can to completely immerse herself in the Gospel again. Uh I love it!! Sister Conley never cries, but she was so close to tears while we were on the phone with her. That is why I'm on a mission. It's those little moments where we're able to help people see the reality of the Spirit and it's so incredible to me to see how much the Gospel blesses our lives!! I love love love love it!! 

     We've seen so many miracles this week! Remember when we felt prompted not to knock on that one trailer and we later saw that pit bull attack that lived there attack the little kid? Heavenly Father is so greatly protecting us and I'm so grateful for it! We had a similar experience this week - we were tracking this one area in Starke and we turned down a random street and felt really weird, so we sat there for a little bit and tried to decide whether or not to keep on going. We decided to turn around and try a different area. But anyway, we were telling the elders about it later and they asked us what street it was… turns out we were in Reno, which is like the California version on Compton, but worse. The elders quorum won't even go in there when they're on trade offs with the elders and the elders got held at gun point every time they've been down there. We've heard of Reno but had never known where it was cause we're not usually in Starke. But we're being so greatly blessed and protected. I'm so grateful for the Spirit!

     My new favorite scripture that I've found this week is in 2 Peter 1:8 - "Neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." How great is that???! I'm so grateful for this time to spread my knowledge of my Savior and constantly try to be fruitful in that knowledge! What great of a work we have to do and how grateful I am to be apart of it! It's tough. This week was the hardest week I've ever had but I love this work and I love this gospel!! 

Sister Carr

Week 11

I am so blessed to be able to serve in this area and to serve at this time! I've never felt so much complete and steady joy in my life and I'm so grateful for that! This is the hardest thing ever, I've been trying to get 1D out of my head for forever now (Satan), but it's absolutely the most rewarding thing ever! Uhhh, I'm in love with being a missionary! I had the picture of me taking my tag off when I get home come to my mind the other day and I completely lost it. I'm trying to enjoy every second of this while I can!

The ward is slowly coming out of the dust and being revamped into missionary work. We've been praying and working so hard with having member present lessons and the devotional with President Zwick has inspired the ward. We've been teaching the Bishop's next store neighbor for a few weeks and they just asked us last Sunday if we would like for them (the Bishop and his wife) to come to a lesson with us. Ahhh, hellur! It was the greatest thing ever to finally get some fellowshipping going on. Bishop pretty much took over the whole lesson and he and Dwayne were talking the entire time - Sister Conley and I barely got 10 words in, it was much needed! That was such an incredible miracle!

We started with our ward's proselyting families. Everyone's so excited and even though it's a huge and difficult task for them, everyone's been so enthusiastic!! It just makes me so happy! So we're hopefully going to get Starke ward rollin on to bigger and better things! It's still a struggle cause the ward's so small and they're not too into missionary work yet, but we're working on that! There's only two of us that can play the piano in the ward, so I play in Relief Society while the other lady plays in Primary. Our Relief Society president is the sweetest lady ever and I just absolutely love her. She got up yesterday and just said that she doesn't know what she's going to do when I leave and is so grateful that I can play piano. So thank you for forcing me into that, the Starke ward thanks you for forcing me to play the piano.

We're still working a lot with the less actives in the ward and we've been seeing a lot of miracles with that!! I don't have a ton of time to write them all, but they're great. I'll leave that cliffhanger for y'all!

I'm getting good at door approaches and just randomly talking to people which was probably one of the hardest things for me to learn how to do, but I'm so grateful that I'm finally adjusting! The South doesn't phase me as much now, which is also such a great blessing, cause I was losing it at the beginning. It's so backwards here. Fun fact: I just found out this week that the city of Keystone's bars were segregated until 2004. That's the kind of people I'm dealing with. It's.... interesting to say the least. But it's great, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else!

Love you all! Enjoy the West Coast!

Sister Carr

Week 10

We had Zone Conference on Friday and Elder Zwick of the 70 and his wife came for that. They are so amazing and I was so inspired by them and just love them to death! He's going to fight for us to go to the Orlando temple at the end of our missions, which I'm so stoked about! Everyone was freaking out when he said that so hopefully he'll get that for us! It was so fun to see so many people from the MTC and meet so many more missionaries! It was the best!

Elder Zwick talked a lot about how inspired Preach My Gospel is and is very involved with the missionary department for the Church so here are some Elder Zwick fun facts of the day:

-As of last Wednesday, there are 81,000 missionaries and 12,000 with calls! What?? He originally told us that there were 93,000 missionaries and we were all freaking out (that escalated quickly) but then said he adds the ones with calls too, but we still be a'growin!

-In May 1995, President Hinckley read Mormon 6 to all the General authorities in their temple meeting and with tears in his eyes told them that they needed to do something more and it was then that he got the inspiration for Preach My Gospel. 

-It took 9 years to write PMG and apparently each one of the 15 of the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 were desperately needed in that work because not one change was made in those 9 years. Even the oldest of them worked on it and lived to see its publication. The oldest member of the Quorum was Elder Haite (don't know if that's spelled right) and he passed away 2 weeks after PMG was published. He was needed for that work. 

-The only missionary committee of the Church is the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. It's their main priority and to me, that's just saying how important this work is. Pretty dang important. 

But we're still working hard and we just got special permission to have more miles, so we're going to be able to get a lot more done! Elder Zwick held a devotional Friday night for the ward councils that was absolutely amazing! Our ward is insane and we were just praying that our Bishop would come, but the Bishop, and 4 other members of the ward counsel and some of their wives came too! So that was a miracle in itself!

The ward is super not unified, there are three "tribes" as we call it, in the ward and we've been trying so hard to make the Bishop see how much we need to unify everyone. He's finally seeing it and the stake councilman over our ward has been helping us out a ton too. So on Thursday, we were brainstorming and we decided to kill like 3 birds with one stone and have a Proselyting family activity (In Carr language, a cookie night thing) every other week to get the tribes to bond, have them invite their friends to it, and have our investigators meet some of the ward members, just easy fellowshipping. so we're hoping for the best with that. 

We had a youth activity "Bring a hot dog, Bring a friend" on Saturday. We had way too many hot dogs, not a ton of friends brought, and the youth got a lot of "no's" with that. But it was super fun. The youth learned pretty quickly that Sister Carr is a bomb volleyball player and is super hard to scare (...and it's really hard to be sarcastic via email) - quite opposite. I was the main focus of all scaring and attacking for the night, and  it became the running joke during volleyball to yell at me whenever someone messed up. Whatever, I'll take it. And if I get called a "Yank," one more time, I'm going to lose it. Actually, I don't know what I'll do cause i have to be a nice missionary. The South is just a weird place. But, the activity was super fun and we had a couple of less active members of one of the tribes that came out helped and the youth just love us - so success! I absolutely love the leaders and youth of this ward and feel so blessed to get to be apart of the Starke ward.

We had a mission fast yesterday that we invited the ward to do too for more baptisms and for the members to be more involved in the work. And from Friday, the ward's been inspired to be better member missionaries.President Craig is coming in December to speak in the ward and get them moving - so stoked to have him whip them into shape! We are so desperate to have the members fellowship our investigators so they'll feel comfortable coming to church. That's been our biggest challenge. And no one in Keystone has a car, so that's also another major issue with church, but we'll tackle that challenge later. So we'll be seeing miracles with that! Love you all!

Sister Carr

Week 9

Rj says hi! btdubs

I'm not sure how I'm feelin about this whole new ward thing.  That's so weird and different, but okay, alright, gotta get used to the fact that I'll be giving my homecoming talk to the 3rd and 2nd ward, that weirds me out a little.

Okay so first of all, it's getting colder, but it's like one day it's freezing and then the next it's super hot, so it's in that Ah-qwuard (jerome voice) transition stage right now. 

Also, I thought you'd enjoy this, but I was reading in Isaiah 3 the other day and it was talking about the "costly apparel" and other stuff that people get caught up with, but it said "glasses" which really is see through clothes. I kinda freaked out and was like mom was right! Look at that, people think it's still modest, but look again! I thought that was cool.

And sorry that we didn't get to talk to you on Tuesday, she calls Sister Conley's mom like every week and I refuse to let her call you cause I don't need to be caught up on home and be calling you every week, but I finally let her call you this week and you weren't even there, so that's what I get for giving in!

it's been an awful week for their family. Bob got his pacemaker replaced on Friday and Milly was stressing out about that and their granddaughter has bronchitis and their daughter, Sheila hasn't been feeling too hot either. Then on Sunday, we found out that they were in the hospital in Gainesville cause Bob found Milly in the living room that morning and totally unconscious. We were scared and it was awful. Bob said it wasn't looking too good for her and I lost it in RS and was having the hardest time with that. And we went to the house to let the dogs out and all the furniture was moved out of the way cause the ambulance people had to get in there, so we cleaned the house and put everything back for them. And last time we talked to Bob, she had awakened once and saw her daughter and freaked out because she thought it was her mom, but he said he's hopeful now, so hopefully everything is going to be okay. 
I discovered another reason why I was sent here, I think I told you about how Sister Artman asked us to speak during her Relief Society lesson a few weeks ago and I absolutely lost it and everyone loves me now?? Maybe? I don't know if I did, but I'm in love with this ward and there's something new everyday that I helps me realize why I was sent to Keystone. But Milly and their grandson, Noah, do not get along at all. They're just a mess and it's the saddest thing ever. But I just realized this week how grateful I am for my mom. I'm sorry I was such a punk and I hated you so much. It's the saddest thing to watch the Beckhams go at it and Milly will get mad at Noah for the dumbest reasons, and he's such a good kid, but he makes just stupid choices sometimes. I'm so sorry for treating you so bad, I had it so good and I had no reason to treat you so awful. It wasn't fair of me at all and I'm just so sorry for putting you through all that!

you can send this out: i don't know what to write in these letters, im strugglin with that, but whatevs

      But yes, I'm so happy here and even though I sometimes wish that I was back home, or in Idaho, or in the 0% humidity of Arizona, I'm just so in love with Florida. It drives me crazy sometimes, but you just get used to the ways and weirdness of everything here and the members are just so absolutely amazing! Milly says that Sister Conley and I need to be together our whole missions because we get along so well and she tells everyone that we're just sisters. I'm grateful for a companion who is just absolutely crazy and hilarious and keeps my spirits high and still is able to motivate me when we're working all day and every appointment falls through and we're getting doors slammed in our face. We're constantly laughing and just loving the time we have to be apart of God's work and share the joy of the Gospel with the people of Florida.

       We were at a less active sister's home the other day and she challenged us to think of a motto for each transfer to live by. The very first thing that popped into my head was 'Hakuna Matata'. I've found how important that is out here! That's not at all the lesson that I thought I'd learn on a mission, but it's been so huge and such a help to me out here. I've learned not to freak out whenever an investigator doesn't read or keep their committments, panic when I can't find a scripture right on the spot during a lesson, or stress when I have to give a training to missionaries who have been out here way longer than I have. All that Heavenly Father asks is that we do His will, are obedient, and work hard and He'll do the rest. Our zone leader always says "too blessed to stress" and I've realized what a blessing that is. If we rely on the Lord, He'll do the rest.

      I was reading in 2 Nephi yesterday and Lehi was telling Jacob about Christ. 2 Nephi 2:6-8 is my absolute favorite! But I was sitting there thinking about it and noticed that he kept using words like "He will come" and "He shall make intercession.." and was talking about Christ in the future tense, cause of course, they're living 600 years before Christ comes. And then I switched over to Moroni just to read how he describes Christ, thinking that he'd use the past tense cause Moroni lived 300 years after Christ. But when Moroni talks about Christ, he says "He calls," "He advocateth," "the Lord God prepareth," and "Christ liveth." I was so amazed by that and had never realized that they never talk about Christ in the past tense, but always in the present. Christ lives and blesses us to this day. How great is that?! We have no need to fear and no reason to mope around being stressed all the time. We have a living God who loves us and watches over us and we have a Savior that saves us and maketh an intercession that we may one day live with our Heavenly Father again.

      I've had to rely on Him so much in the past few weeks! We've had a few investigators have to push their baptismal date back, but we've seen so many miracles and so many blessings as we continue to help them and as we find and teach others. It's absolutely amazing how much God is in this work. It's His work and glory, so why wouldn't He be? He is in the details of our lives and knows what we need. Rely on Him and everything will turn out, we have absolutely no need to worry! Love you!

Sista C

Week 8

Miracles! Miracles! Miracles!
 We've had so many breakthroughs with our investigators and I can't thank 
Heavenly Father enough for all His help and for answering all of our prayers! 
We've been having people that we've been seeing forever finally getting their 
prayers answered and finally seeing how important and how true this Gospel 
really is.  
One has the hardest time coming to church and we were finally able to introduce 
him to some members and for the first time he's expressing that sincere desire 
to come to church and open up about how he feels about the Gospel.
 The other loves the Spirit that we bring in her home, but has been having a 
hard time accepting the Restoration. We sat down with her yesterday and watched 
the Restoration DVD with her. The Spirit was so strong and she had no words to 
describe how she felt. She is so excited to come to church with us this Sunday. 
Best experience of the mission so far:   We received a referral from an elder 
who served in this area a while ago, so Friday we went to the house, but no one 
was home. So we're walking across the yard back to the car and the guy drives up 
- right there. So we're awkwardly standing in his yard, behind a closed gate, I 
might add, and he just happens to drive up right then and there. Just imagine 
the awkwardness.  Let it burn a little. Fun times.
    But he immediately got out of his truck and was like "Well isn't this the 
most beautiful sight ever?!" He was so welcoming and so excited that we were 
there, his name is Larry and he is the most amazing person ever. He is SO 
RIDICULOUSLY ready to receive the Gospel!
    He told us about how he had never read the Bible, but once a preacher had 
handed him a copy and he said that as soon as he had it in his hands, he felt 
this tingling feeling in his chest and he didn't know what it was, but it felt 
good. We had an answer for what that was.
    He also was telling us about how sometimes he has this awful guilt for 
things he did in the past and he didn't know what to do about it and he 
sometimes doesn't feel like a good father or husband because of that. He 
proceeded to ask us if that was normal to feel that kind of pain and how to not 
feel that guilt anymore. We had an answer for that.
    We talked for a while with him and we was saying how he felt like he was 
going through the motions and he was at a time in his life where he just needed 
some peace and he didn't know where to find it. We had an answer for that.
    He's going through a hard time right now and has a lot of hard choices to 
make and he was asking us if it would be okay if he asked God for help with 
that. We had an answer for that.
    He also was talking about how he believes that God has an order for 
everything. He looked at us so sincerely and asked if we had been sent to him 
for a reason. He was like "What if I had spent an extra five minutes at the 
store on my way home from work? You would've already stopped by and then left. 
Do you think it was just a coincidence that I came home right before you had 
left?" We also had an answer for that.

   This is a Gospel of peace. This is a Gospel of answers. And this is the 
Gospel of truth. We have all the answers we'll ever need and we have a Father in 
Heaven who is watching out for all of us. He had been preparing Larry for almost 
50 years for the moment where he'd find Sister Conley and Sister Carr in his 
front yard. I CANNOT imagine living in this world for 50 years and not knowing 
where to turn to, or where to find peace and happiness. I can't even describe 
how much I love this Gospel. I'm so grateful that we have those answers that 
these people are looking for. Can you imagine if we had been talking with him 
and didn't know how to help him or what to say to him? I usually get super 
nervous when I teach, but the entire story of the Restoration came out perfectly 
and I know for a fact that that wasn't me speaking to him. I wouldn't have been 
able to do it. I'm so grateful for the Spirit, it'd be impossible to do anything 
without it.
   I'm grateful that a 14 year old farm boy decided to act on his faith and ask 
his Father in Heaven for guidance. We watched the Restoration with an 
investigator yesterday and I've never felt the Spirit so strong. I think of Dad 
everytime I see the Smith's split wooden fence and it's always a reminder to me 
of how so beyond blessed I am to have parents who lived their faith by example 
and passed the blessings the Gospel on to me. I'm so grateful for the peace that 
comes with knowing that I get to be with that family for all eternity.
    I'm grateful for a Father in Heaven who answers our prayers and has given us 
the blessing to live in this day and age where we have the fullness of His 
everlasting Gospel. I'm grateful for a Savior who gave us the chance to find 
peace and happiness in this life. He lives and leads this Church. I'm grateful 
for the Book of Mormon. I've never realized how amazing it was until I came out 
here and had to bear my testimony of it 20 times a day. It's true! It's true! 
It's true! It's my favorite thing ever to hand someone a Book of Mormon and 
promise them that if they read it and pray about it, they'll also know it's true 
because I know how real that promise is and how much it will strengthen their 
faith in Christ. Uhhhh, I just can't get enough of it. I love you all!
Love, Sista Carr

Week 7

 

Hello,

 

Mom - We've been trying to get our ward to be more unified and we were bringing up some ideas with the RS president and I told her about those butterfly/humanitarian aid/coloring sheets that we did... I don't even remember what they were for or where you got them, but we need ideas for our ward. We have like a ton of kids, and a ton of older kids that are going to meet their Heavenly Father soon, and food CANNOT be involved at all. People here don't like potlucks or other food events because they don't trust the living conditions and cooking of certain people in the ward. It's messed up here. But if you have any ideas. Help.

 

 Kaycie and my FHE brothers wrote me and said that they tried to get one of their friends to  prank me in the MTC, but she couldn't find me but they wrote me about it anyway and sent me the card that they were going to leave with the prank. So after about three hours of hard contemplation, I came up with this genius plan and was going to have either Catherine or Ashley or Ryan prank them up in Idaho. They would've never expected that coming their way. I was so stoked and created this elaborate plan to get them back and it had a couple stages to it and I was sitting there thinking about all this and realized that I had just wasted 3 hours scheming away my mission time. We've been talking a lot about putting things on the alter and it hit me so hard that I need to put away pranking for these next few months while I'm here. It was awful and I cried and it seems so stupid and dumb, but that was my life in Idaho and I love them so much and wanted to get them back so bad! I was just getting way too excited about this huge plan and it was so dang hard to give that up. But I did it and I'm just going to keep writing them, but anyway that was my trial this week. It's not fun.

 

But anyway, I've successfully completed my first transfer down here! Still alive!

 

I literally control the weather down here. It has rained exactly 7 days since I've been here. I have straightened my hair exactly 7 days that I've been here. Every single day I straighten my hair, it rains. If we hear that it's supposed to rain on a certain day, I'll put my hair up in a bun that day... doesn't rain. When we hear it's going to be sunny and perfectly cloudless, I straighten my hair.... it rains. It's creepin me out.

 

We've been working a ton with the ward and trying to get it to be more unified, cause it's literally these two huge families and then everyone else in the ward. We have 196 Relief Society sisters on the ward roster, with only 16 of them active, so Sister Conley and I spent five hours this week and called all 180 of them. Not fun. Some of them keep asking to have their records removed, which was the hardest part for me. I just want to go up to them, throw the gospel at them and run away. The first call that asked for their records removed just ripped at my heart. It was absolutely awful. But then when the Bishop sends them a letter asking for whatever the ward needs to get their records removed, they don't ever respond, so we have almost 50 "do not contacts" on the roster that we can't do anything about. I just love this ward so much and I absolutely love the people here, they're so amazing!

 

The Elders and us have been trying to gain the trust of the Bishop, apparently there were some issues with other missionaries in the past, but we've been working on that. He's lightening up and joking around with us and giving us more assignments and hopefully it's going to help a ton with getting the ward involved in missionary work. Hopefully. We usually get kicked out of ward council after we say our part, but he actually let us stay for the whole meeting and it was so great because all the RS president talked about was us calling all those people and how we're trying to find a way to unify the ward. And all the YW/YM presidents talked about was the youth activity that we did last Wednesday.

 

It's amazing to see how we're been used as instruments in the Lord's hands. We have an investigator that we just recently met whose entire family is LDS and she's been thinking that it's probably time for her to learn more about the Gospel. We stopped by this less active lady's home that we had never met and as soon as she opened the door, she was like "Oh, I was thinking about you guys all morning, you need to come in right now" Music to our ears. We even were at the Bishop's house and we asked his wife for any referrals and she said that the elders had gone to their neighbor a few years ago and he was super interested, but they never went back. Idiots. So we've been teaching him for a while now and he's so into the Book of Mormon and he just loves learning about the Gospel and loves Nephi and gets so mad when Laman and Lemuel don't listen. It's amazing. I love being able to be apart of that.

 

Sister Conley and I decided to try to live the beattitudes better, so we're going to pray for one attribute each week. This week is humility. We got a call from President yesterday and we were freaking out and wouldn't answer it, something's not right if you get a call from President. We kept thinking about every little thing that we could've done wrong that week and my stomach felt so gross and I was like "Dang, we're gonna get it! I will be the best missionary ever after this! I won't ever mess up again, I'll do whatever, just don't let president get mad at us!" Sister Conley ate 5 bowls of cereal, just stressing out and stared at the phone for at least 15 minutes and finally decided to face the music and call him back. We did and the only thing he said was "Sisters, I have some chastising for you." *we're dying* and he said he got a call from one of the members in the ward crying to not transfer us and begged him to keep us in Keystone for a little longer. He was proud to hear that we had impacted someones life so much and was just calling to say how proud he was of us and that we're doing too good of a job out there. Worst idea to pray for humility, because that was completely awful to go through that stress and worry and that sick feeling that came to my stomach. Not sure if that counts as humility, but it was definitely a humbling experience having to go through all that stressing out.

 

But besides that, I've never had so much complete peace in my life. I realized during Conferene that I had absolutely no regrets and no worries. No stress. I love being out here in the mosquito and redneck infested boondocks of central Florida. I love all the weird things that people do out here. I love Starke ward. I love all these people that we get to share the Gospel with. I love how I get to read the scriptures for three hours every day. I love that I get to bear my testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ multiple times a day. It's incredible how fast your testimony grows from doing that. My absolute favorite thing ever are the Bible videos on the Mormon Channel website. I love the one where He heals the lame man by the pool. I could watch those for hours. I'm so grateful for Christ and His Atonement. I love seeing it in action out here and I love seeing people change through it. I love applying it to my own life, it's absolutely impossible to do this work without Him. It's amazing. He is the head of this church and is there for us always. This Gospel is so ridiculously  true and I can't imagine living without it.

Love you lots,

Sister Carr

 

More MTC Pictures!

Our amazing District!!  Purple Day.

Back:  Sister Hibpshman, Carr, Hall, Spendlove, Yates, Williams

Front:  Elders Monson, Curtis, Payne, Larson, Blanchard, Freeman

All the Jax Missionaries

Back Row:  Sisters Cram, Sullivan, Spendlove, Hall, Williams, Yates, Hibpshman, Carr, Johnson

Front Row:  Elders Payne, Curtis, Barcala, Lake, Young, Stewart 

Aren't we adorable?? I have no idea what I'm doing in this picture.

Sister Spendlove, Sister Hall, Sister Williams, Sister Yates, Sister Hibpshman, and Sister Carr 

Red day!

 

left to right: Back row: Sister Yates, Sister Williams, Sister Hall, Sister Spendlove, Sister Carr, Sister Hipsman

Front row: Elder Monsen, Elder Blanchard, Elder Curtis, Elder Freeman, Elder Payne, Brother Morris (our Zone Teacher)

Week 6

This week we had our district meeting in the first LDS chapel that was built in Florida. How cool is that?! I was lovin it!

Conference was absolutely amazing!! We watched it at the Beckhams on Saturday and then with our Bishop and his family on Sunday. Funny story, apparently the Beckhams invited us to watch it with them on Sunday too, but we didn't know and when we didn't show up on Sunday she literally thought that someone got in our trailer and killed us and sent out a search party and called the elders to look for us and even called President Craig. We had no service at the Bishop's so we didn't have any access to our phone... oops. That actually wasn't that funny, but it was great. Goood times.

Anyway, Conference... I have such a great respect for our church leaders now that I'm out here. I love them to death! All the talks were amazing and were such a great help for our investigators! The Lord definitely knows what we need to hear! I loved all the talk about how our new moralities are just the "old immoralities" and that just because something legal doesn't make it legal to the Lord. Smack to the world's face. Oh and I saw Jacob in the World Report. That was so exciting to see a familiar face! I love all my missionary peeps!

And I heard about all those woman protesting....   Heavenly Father knows what He's doing and He's given us different and unique roles in this life. He has order to all and obviously if you're not too sure about that, Doubt your doubt before you doubt your faith.  I'm grateful for that sure background I've been given where I know what's right and have been taught that if I put God first, everything else will work out. Thank you so much for that.

We've been doing a lot of service this week. At one member's home, she posted a picture of us on Facebook. The elders are just standing there staring into the distance and Sister Conley and I are in serious work mode. Perfect showcase of our ward's missionary efforts. Classic.

Anyway, I love it out here, it's starting to cool down, hallelujah. I am so happy out here and just lovin the weirdness of Florida. We just laugh at everything, you can't help it and it keeps you sane and makes the day so much better! Good times in Florida!

Love you lots,

Sister Carr

Week 5

This week has been interesting. I literally got eaten alive last Monday night. 67 mosquito bites. 67. I counted. We had a zone meeting on Tuesday and I was the idiot sister who doesn't know what bug spray is. I'm sorry I live in a place that God loves so much that He doesn't send the bugs of Satan to. Sorry. So I learned my lesson with that.

The four of us missionaries spoke in sacrament yesterday. It was so bomb. We've been setting up family mission plans with the ward and trying to get them excited about sharing the gospel, so we all coordinated our talks to attack them with inspiration and ideas how to help out. It all went really well. We've been challenging every family to set a goal of how many nos they can get. The youth have been so amazing with it. The adults are like "yeah, I could probably get 2" and then all the youth get way competitive and aim for like 15 and so far, they've been doing really great.

The Bishop's wife called us last night and she's been so stressed about getting nos and she got two "yes's" last night and was freaking out, she was so mad. It was quite entertaining.

I love our ward so much! I have a serious testimony about the church being a safehouse. It's hard to go out in the world where everyone hates you cause you're a missionary, but it's such a relief to go to church meetings and stuff and just have so much love around you. I'm so grateful for that.

One miracle that I had this week was with this guy named Dwayne. He's so into the Book of Mormon and can't put it down. But he has this long list of questions to ask us and when we met with him, I just had answers flow to me, it was incredible. There was this one question that he asked and I was trying to explain it, but didn't know how, so I just kept talking trying to figure it out and I had this chair out the window experience where the answer just came to me and I honestly didn't even the answer myself. The Spirit is amazing. He had a lot of questions about church history too and I'm SO GRATEFUL that we went on that church history trip, cause man, that helped so much. I knew all this random stuff that he was asking about and it all came from what I learned on that trip. Thank you for that.

We have this trailer park that we recently tracted and have a couple investigators there. But we were visiting with this guy the other day and all of the sudden this pitbull ran out of one of the trailers and literally attacked one of the little boys in the neighborhood. It was bad and we were there for the whole thing. But when we were tracting the area, Sister Conley and I walked up to that door and both kinda looked at each other and had a bad feeling about it, so we just walked away. Not knowing about the killer dog inside. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

The RS broadcast was incredible. I was able to see one of my friends from Idaho in the choir! I loved how they talked about the temple so much! That's honestly been so hard for me - I miss the temple so much, it's really weird. But I miss not being able to go every week and when I go back to Idaho, I'm just gonna go every day. It seriously makes a difference!

Love you! I'm doing well, still alive so far!

Love, Sister Carr

Week 4

Great week! Crazy stuff! I'm so excited that Connor's home! That went by so fast! Those pics you sent me made me cry. I know, loser crying in the library. That's me. So I didn't get to respond to Dad's email but he was like "I'm so glad you're some place safe." Right.... Not to freak you out or anything, but I'm not. It's pretty sketch around here. Our elders got held at gun point, fun stuff. The Beckham's grandson gave us knives, so I'm so hardcore carrying that thing everywhere. I'm armed and the Lord's watching out for us, so we'll be fine.

The bugs have been getting worse. In the 60s some genius person from the University of Florida decided to create a bug that would breed with mosquitos and eventually get rid of the entire mosquito population. Yeah no, they didn't want to go near the mosquitos and so we have millions of these nasty lovebugs everywhere that get on the car and jsut swarm in clouds everywhere. There's so many of them that it sounds like rain on the windsheild when we're driving. It's fun.

We did some service for the Beckham's daughter and just raked the front yard of her house in the woods. I had only seen one cockroach in my entire life before that day. But now I've seen one million and one too many. Holy cow, there were some that were literally the size of my hand, and they would crawl up my leg..... oh my goodness gracious. I've been scarred. I've learned that California doesn't have bugs and Florida's are legit dinosaur zombies that have come back to eat the entire state of Florida. It's disgusting.

President's been making a lot of changes. We're now going to be staying inour areas for a minimum of 6-9 months so the ward can actually get a chance to know the missionaries. We're getting ipads soon. I don't know when, but we've been told soon. And we've had Facebook for a while now. I'll get one in a transfer or two. It's so cool. One of the Elders in our ward called us and was like "hey, can I get your guys' address? One of Sister Carr's friends, Elder Engelman asked me on FB if I could get that for him" So Joe's mission has facebooks too and he was able to contact Elder Moose to get my address. How insane? Look at us, 21st century missionaries. I love it! I can't wait to get one! I can add immediate family, but I can't message you and I have to block you from my home page or whatever. So I can't ever communicate with you through it, but it'd still be fun.

The work has been moving along so fast! Our mission's always like "JAX is white and ready to harvest" So true. Last week President Craig made it a mission wide goal for each companionship to find 5 new investigators. We got 10, look at us! Us newbies have a conference call every week and there were four of us that had people just walk up to us and ask to be taught the gospel. One lady walked up to us last week and she's been trying to turn her life around and we left her with a prayer and our number, and she's jsut trying to get settled so she didn't have a phone or address yet, so hopefully she'll contact us soon. I was so stoked, she just lit up and was so full of the Spirit. The sisters who were here before us befriended this lady who works at an ice cream parlor by our "home"/trailer and so we've been stopping in and it's been awkward cause she's at work and we can't be teaching all awkwardly while she's working. So we've been struggling to try to teach her. But we were talking to this family the other day and the dad's best friend just kinda walked in and we started talking to him and it turned out that he's the fiance of the lady that works at the ice cream place. WHAT?? Sister Conley and I kept looking at each other and were just shocked, what are the chances of that? The Lord works in mysterious, yet miraculous ways. President Craig was so stoked when I told him about that. We've been able to meet with him a couple of times and it's been going great!

  I love you all so much! I've only gotten one letter from kenna and like none from Ethan. So send me some - that's the best getting them in the mail! Love you lots!! Thanks for everything!

Love, Sister Carr

Week 3

Hey fam!

   It's been such a great week! We had our first zone meeting, which was so fun to see some of my MTC elders! We all decided to start counting how many no's we could get, just to make it fun and the more nos we get, the closer we are to getting a yes! That night, went on exchanges with the Sister Training Leader, Sister Call, who is absolutely amazing. We worked so dang hard and got the most "nos" out of the entire zone that day. I was so stoked!! We saw so many miracles that day! She told me that Heavenly Father knew that Sister Carr was going to be in Lake Butler that day so He put these people in our path for a reason, cause I was able to connect with them in a way that she wouldn't have been able to. It was amazing. My comp and I have found 10 new investigators this week. We found this gold mine of a trailer park - saddest living conditions I have ever seen, but they all love Jesus and are dying for us to teach them more! President Craig has had every missionary read "The Power of the Everyday Missionary," my zone leader just ordered mine so I haven't read it, but our ward has been focusing on that book and it's so amazing. GET IT AND READ IT!! It's amazing!

   We also had stake conference this weekend!  But holy dang.... How grateful I am for our stake. I thought that every stake had such amazing musical talent and such a strong youth program like ours... HAHAHAHA That's a definite NO! I wanted to cry during their choir numbers, and they weren't tears from the Spirit, that's for sure. I don't even want to see any stake production they do. There's only two of us that play the piano in the ward, so I've been officailly made the Relief Society pianist. I usually can't play for my life just because I don't ever practice, but lately I can play any hymn right off the bat - talk about blessigs. The youth program here is AWFUL too. None of the youth know the youth from the other wards and they're so obnoxiously rude and the leaders just sit there and do nothing about it - they don't care at all! I'm so grateful for my amazing youth stake and ward leaders. I honestly don't think I would be active if it weren't for them, and I'm scared for these kids and their lack of that foundation.

   So Matthew 4:10 is my life right now. I thought that those few months before the mission were awful to get through, but holy cow is Satan trying hard! I've never prayed more in my life and I've been so feeling that! The Spirit is so strong out here! The veil is so thin and I've received so much revelation and have had so many chair out the window moments, just from daily studying. The missionary stories from Gpa, Rachael, and Mike have helped me out so much this week. I read them constantly. I've been experiencing a lot of stuff that Rachael had to deal with. That helped me out so much!

  This Gospel is amazing. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind - it's so true! I'm so grateful that I made this decision to come out here. It's ridiculously hard, but it's getting easier and time is going by faster for me now. I love it - not Florida, but the work I've been doing. I love it, love it, love it!

Love you lots,

Sister Carr

First Letter From Florida

I have no time to write - I'm so sorry, so this one's going to be short. I'm in Keystone Heights, Florida. Population about 100 , there are a million lakes, and I'm sure even more gators. Florida is definitely different. The people are amazing, redneck and crazy, but amazing. Keep writing me! My address is:

7486 Lakeview St.

Keystone Heights, FL

32656

Google earth it. I dare ya. There are a set of elders in our ward that cover Starke, our ward covers like 50 miles. It's huge, a lot of driving! Lots of bugs, my legs are completely covered in bites. We don't even have a walmart here, so I'm pretty much living in the dark. Everyone has Confederate flags in their front yards, which scares me to death, but so far it's been good! The MTC ain't nothing like Florida, that's for sure. We've been teaching a lot of less active families, almost 60% of the ward is less active. We have two baptismal dates coming up, which I'm so stoked about! I love being here and getting to know all these amazing people! The Spirit is just so strong here, it's amazing to see this work in action. There's absolutely nothing better than sitting on a porch teaching an investigator  under the huge Southern stars and having frogs croak in the background and just feelin the spirit. I'm convinced there's absolutely nothing better.

JAX is gorgeous, I spent the first night with two sister missionaries in the area and they toured us around - most of the areas used to be plantations, so all the roads were built around these huge trees that are hundreds of years old and hang down over the street. Watch the Last Song, most of the houses are like Liam Hemsworth's house in that movie. Long driveways, huge mansions, GORGEOUS, I wanted to cry driving down there. But Keystone on the other hand, is completely different. The trees are gorgeous and hang over the streets and are covered in Spanish moss, which is just breathtaking, but everything else is dirt and trailers. Watch Honey Boo Boo more, just to get a feel for my life right now and watch Princess and the Frog, just to get a feel of what kind of people I've been teaching.  It's great. 

So this whole missionary work thing... it's hard. It's dang hard. Everyone always says it's hard, but they say it in a happy voice. This is H.A.R.D. There are some days that the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that there's a prayer being said for me every 45 min in Rexburg. I've been sick the past few days too, thanks Satan. Yesterday was the hardest day for me ever and that was even more awful because the temple's closed on Sunday, so I didn't even have that hope going for me. Our bishop gives all the new missionaries blessings when they come in and he gave the new elder this generic, "find people" and the "Lord will bless you" type of blessing, but for mine, he said all this amazing stuff that he had no idea about. No doubt the Spirit. That gave me a lot of strength and hope!

I don't have a lot of time, but I even brought my camera and cord to send you pictures from the MTC, but they somehow disappeared from my bag once I got here. Thanks Satan. Idiot. So you'll get your so desired map pictures and pictures in front of the Provo temple hopefully next week.

Love you!

Sister Carr

She's in Florida!

Dear Brother and Sister Carr,

We had the pleasure of greeting your daughter Tuesday as she arrived in the Florida Jacksonville mission. She did arrive safe and well.  We are excited to watch her grow over the next 18 months as she serves her Heavenly Father.

She has been blessed with gifts and talents from our Father in Heaven which we are sure she will share with us and the people here.  She will come to love the people of the south!!

Her companion is Sister Conley, and we are sure they will learn a lot together.  They are serving in Starke Florida.  She will bless the life's of the people she will be serving there.  

Thank you for your support and love for her as she begins this great missionary adventure!  Please feel free to contact us by email or phone if you have any concerns.

With love,

President and Sister Craig

Week 1

Hello gorgeous family! 

I love hearing from all of you - my district leader makes fun of me so much cause I get the most letters out of everyone! I love it!  I'm leaving Tuesday morning (we have to leave the MTC at 2:30 - oh joy!) and my flight takes off at 7 UT time, so I'll be calling sometime before then - be ready to answer!

So much has happened this week and I feel like I've grown so much! We had an MTC devotional on Tuesday night, it was broadcasted to other MTCs around the world. That was such an amazing experience, we were singing "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" and in walks Elder Anderson - we had no idea he was speaking and it was so cool to be singing about the Savior and have one of His apostles walk in - as you could imagine, I kinda let a couple tears out. We had 1500+ missionaries in the choir, which was the COOLEST thing ever! The camera got me singing way up close a couple times, so awkward. But Elder Anderson was so amazing. My favorite quote from him - "We love the things we sacrifice for and we sacrifice for the things we love!" How perfect?!

Mom, I'm really glad you and Sis. Payne are friends now - Elder Payne's in my district but he's also our zone leader, such an amazing missionary. He came up to me a few days ago and was like "Would it be weird if I told you that I knew who you were before we came here? Cause my mom FB stalked you." You two were so meant to be friends.

  Anyway, the Spirit is so dang strong here, I feel like this place shouldn't be real cause it's so perfect, but it's just a little spot of heaven on earth. One of our teachers told us yesterday that the veil has never been thinner for us and heaven's always so close for missionaries. Holy cow can I testify to that! I have a whole new view on the phrase "the heavens were opened," I always thought it was some Avengers-like, giant hole in the sky thing, but no no no, I have seen the heavens opened many a times. It's a long story, but our district calls them "chair out the window" moments, where we'll be reading our scriptures or role playing and one of us will get this huge revelation or get this amazing insight on a verse or make some insane connection and we'll all just sit there in awe and are like whoa - The Church is true! We've had lots of good, spiritual tears every single day and I can't believe how amazing this gospel is, I've gained so much insight and I look at everything so differently now.

   My favorite thing is being able to teach investigators in this trc thing ( i don't know what it stands for), but real investigators come to the MTC and we get to teach them. With that and role playing with other missionaries, I'm constantly teaching and bearing my testimony to others. It's insane how doing that can increase your testimony so much. I've always known this stuff was true, but telling people about it, you're like holy cow, this is seriously so true! I've relied on the Spirit so much to teach and it's amazing the outcome when I do. We had our last lesson with one of our investigators the other day, and it went so insanely well that my comp and I were smiling so much and we just knelt down right after and thanked Heavenly Father for His Gospel and the Spirit that was in the lesson and just everything. His hand is in everything here - it's amazing to see it in action.

   Our weird color days have been continuing, and we've gotten other districts to do it with us. We had blue day on Tuesday and Wednesday was black in mourning of our favorite teacher leaving and yesterday was red. I've also run into another guy from EFY, there's four of us here who were all in the same company together and now we're all preparing for our missions together. Who woulda thought?

I wish I had more time, I have so much to tell you! Love you so much! 

Love, Sister Carr