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