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