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