Week 21

    This week's been hard, so we've been making a lot of videos to send home (but they're too long to email) and making up games to play in the car. We started counting how many trucks we can see as we drive. Our record's 34 in half a mile.

   Our three most golden investigators that I've ever found out here both dropped us within the same hour this week. After the second one, I was so losing it. We were meeting with these people to set baptismal dates and check up on their Book of Mormon reading, just on cloud 9 and had our hopes crushed so fast. We started walking away from the house and heard someone yelling at us from behind. Our lovely Dee, who was baptized right before I got here, was running up the street towards us. She was waving and all grins and was so happy to see us. She just started rambling about her day and a recent missionary experience she had just had and how she saw our car on the street and started her way back up the street to meet us. Heavenly Father knew that Sister Carr was about to fall apart and needed some lovin right then and there. His timing amazes me. Dee is such a testament to me of how this Gospel truly does improve your happiness in life and changes you.  It was interesting to see how fast people can use their agency and deny themselves of those blessings and then to literally turn around and see how happy the Gospel makes us and how much better our lives are with it.

     We've been watching a lot of the Bible videos and mormon messages this week. We're obsessed with the Bible videos. They're amazing. That's been helping us a lot. My companion probably hates me so much but we've been listening to a lot of David Archuleta this week. She knows it helps calm me down and just rolls with it. She's great. She's looking for a One Direction hymn album for me. I'd be the most on fire, stress free missionary ever with that blasting as we roll through the Heights.

     One miracle that I've seen this week is being able to help Sister Hillman. It's rough out here and there are some nights that she's just falling apart and I've been able to calmly talk her through it without losing it myself like I want to. I'm so grateful for that.

     There was one night this week that I was just sobbing and I normally can't ever fall asleep, but it was passed midnight and I still couldn't sleep. On a mission, when you have nothing better to do, might as well pass the time with some scripture reading right? I keep one of my favorite pictures from "Reflections of Christ" in there, the one where Christ is healing the blind Nephite and Christ has the clay on his eyes and the guy's just clinging onto Christ, with a bunch of my comfort scriptures on the back. I can't ever describe how the Spirit speaks to me, so I'm just going to type this out and hopefully it makes sense, if not whatever. I was staring at that for a little bit and the Spirit just totally overwhelmed me and I looked at it like I was the one that was clinging so desperately to Christ and trying to reach out and find Him, but He has always been standing there, trying to heal my imperfections and wiping the clay out of my eyes so I can see how close he actually is. I've been trying so hard to find Him and feel His presence, when I've been clinging to Him the whole time and He's giving me this awful time to clear away the clay and show me how close He actual is. I had the warmest sense of peace come over me and it sounds super lame, but it hit me and made me see how much Christ is actually in this work. We've been running into a lot of people of other faiths down here and I'm so grateful that I've been given this truth. If I was a missionary for any other religion, it'd be hard and I would hate my life for getting myself into this. But this is Christ's true church. I've found so much peace in knowing that Christ himself stands as head of this Church and it contains every aspect of His full Gospel. When you have Christ in charge, you better bet that you'll win in the end. It's not fun. But it will be worth it in the end. Everyone has already been 'saved,' and are fine with their Bible no matter what we testify to them. I've had to just let go and know that one day, they'll know. I can't wait for the day when Christ comes and the South is burned and the people will be like "Oh, those girls that we yelled at WERE right. Oh snap, we should've listened." And then we'll just be standing there next to Christ all like, yeah you should've. Oh, BEST DAY EVER. Cannot wait.

Love you,

Sister Carr

Closest thing we've gotten to a baptism this week....