Week 36

   We've been doing so much service this week. We topped last week
with 20 hours. I didn't have to be on the bike and I didn't have to be
in a skirt, so I love service!
   On Saturday, Sisters Orton, Mccann, Carlson, and I were helping
move boxes at a member's. She has 10 dogs. She kept them in the house
the whole time that we were there but of course this would happen, on
the last load, all the dogs suddenly appear. So we're walking to her
garage to take the boxes and they start swarming me and jumping up and
barking their heads off. My worst nightmare come to life. So Sister
McCann runs ahead to take the last box in while I have the dogs
distracted and one of them jumps up and full on bites my leg. She
finally came back and suddenly all the dogs scatter like she has some
magic anti dog power but then they come back and get me. I literally
can't move cause I'm half paralyzed so she had to pull me away and
pushed me through the gate and she got bit in the process of saving my
life. And Southerns literally worship their dogs so we can't complain
about her deadly "babies" so we sat there bleeding and in pain. I hate
dogs. That was my second time getting bit out here. I hate dogs. But
we have pretty gnarly battle wounds, so it works.
   We started doing a movie night here too. Our first one was last
night and it was a huge success! We had a ton of less active members
and investigators there! It was so amazing!
   We had the most amazing lesson ever in gospel principles yesterday
and all the investigators were answering questions and reading and
asking deeper questions. I was fasting that one of our investigators
would get to church - she didn't. But we had a surprise investigator
come. We've been stuck with her and don't know how else to help her,
but I'm Sunday school she was asking all these amazing questions and
everything was blowing her mind. Oh my gosh it was so good! Definitely
a great blessing! Heavenly Father answers prayers in the best ways
ever!
   The Fort Lauderdale temple is being dedicated this Sunday, so
we're so stoked for that!
   We discovered an anti guy on Facebook that was friends with only
missionaries and members and such. I was friends with him too and I
was super confused how I never discovered it before. So I messaged all
the missionaries he was friends with to let them know to unfriend
them. None of them had noticed his posts either. It was such a miracle
because he was specifically targeting missionaries since he was only
friends with us and not one of us had seen them. Someone's looking out
for us.
Love y'all!
Sister Carr

Week 35

    We did so much service this week. It's unreal. We totaled up to
about 15 hours of service, compared to our usual 2. Major bonding time
with the sisters and the other missionaries in our district. I'm the
only one who knows how to use a drill so I was on drill duty at every
project.
    We had gotten a referral from the Mama Odie of our ward and she is
so dang elect. She's been reading the Book of Mormon all day and all
night, she was so excited about it. She's on a "spiritual journey" and
trying to find out which church she needs to go to. She has this whole
line up of churches that she's promised people she'll try out so she
hasn't been able to come to ours yet. But she said that at every
church she's been to so far, they've given her a bible or something
and she doesn't feel right about any of them and always finds herself
turning back to the Book of Mormon. During our lesson with her she
looked at me and was like, I don't know what it is about you, but I
just see this light in your face and feel instant peace when I look at
you. Ahhhh, best moment ever! It's called the spirit! It's telling you
the truth! Ahh she's so elect, I'm so excited about her!
     We're all so obsessed with the #becauseofhim video. We watch it
24/7 and show it to literally everyone. We were serving at another
church on Saturday morning with some other sisters and one of them was
walking around with it on her iPad showing it to everyone. It's the
best. The church is so true. My Facebook has been blown up with
#beacuseofhim all week. LOVE IT! Of you haven't seen it yet, you have
to. http://easter.mormon.org
And that's really it.
Love y'all!
Sister Carr

Easter Sunday.

Week 34

My Ciera in Keystone got baptized! Hallelujah!
Some of my favorite moments of my mission were of her experiences with
the spirit and how strong the spirit speaks to her and Hailey.
She never believed in God, so our first lesson with her we just told
her to pray about it. The next day, I was asking her about it and she
just smiled and was like "He answered." She had gone home that night
and said her first ever prayer and as soon as she asked if God was
there, she felt this energy roll through her body and since she had
never felt the spirit before, it was a total shock to her so it
freaked her out. She jumped into bed and hid under her covers and was
like, "What did the sisters do to me?!" She was giggling hysterically
when she was telling us about it. She said that His spiritual
floodgates have opened now that she's finally willing to believe. I
miss her so much, I'm so grateful that I was able to be a little part
of her conversion.
And now their parents' hearts are being softened to teach and their
cousin asked the sisters if she could be baptized too! Miracles!
We've been able to get a few new investigators, thanks to our amazing
members. So we're so excited to finally get things moving about after
a long drought. Brother Brown was made our new ward mission leader.
Can't even begin to tell you how much of a HALLELUJAH that deserves.
We're all so stoked.
    We have been cleaning out an investigators trailer for the past
two weeks. Sister McCann and I went into the back room and just
started clearing everything out as fast as we can. Little did we know
that lovely little rodent friends had made their homes between the
trash and clothes that were compressed to the floor. We found that out
the hard way. The elders quickly started making me the running joke of
the day. That seems to happen a lot. Free entertainment, you're
welcome. But anyway, that wasn't a fun experience.
  This area is not the funnest and my testimony has been under attack
the entire two months that I've been here. It's been killing me and it
is so hard to have people attacking us literally every time we go
outside. Being on the bikes doesn't help with that either.  I hate the
south. It's so hard and there's not a day that goes by that I wish I
could go home. I've never been on my knees so much in my life.
There's been a few nights this week that I've felt inspired to read a
certain chapter on the scriptures and I've been told specifically what
verse I needed to start on and it's exactly what I needed to hear.
It's funny how God works like that.
So I'm grateful for those little miracles. I'm grateful for the
Atonement. I've never fully understood it until I came out here and
had to use it and just ask for forgiveness and ask to guide and direct
us and our investigators. I'm so grateful for the peace that comes
from Christ's Atonement, I honestly don't know what I'd do without it.
Love y'all
Sister Carr

Ciera's baptism!

Week 33

From: Chelsea Carr <chelsea.carr@myldsmail.net>

Subject: Happy missionary Christmas!

Date: April 7, 2014 at 12:18:04 PM PDT

To: Julie Carr <julie@jcarrcontracting.com>, Richard Risueno <rrisueno@myldsmail.net>

   I LOVED CONFERENCE! I can't say it enough, it was so amazing!
    We heard that the choir for the priesthood session was from BYUI
and Sister McCann and I we're dying to see it, and thanks to the
amazing blessing of our iPads, we were able to watch them during our
Facebook time. I saw one of my FHE brothers Austin, two guys from my
Idaho ward, two guys that I had a class with (one of them I knew from
OCMCO too), my home teacher in Arizona, a guy from EFY, and Jordan
Terry. Oh my goodness, it was so fun to see people I knew. And there
was a guy in the Orem Institute choir that I worked with in Arizona.
And Sister Hannah Schaap in the World Report! This weekend was just so
good. I looked for Ken, Tay, and Mal during the Saturday morning
session, but couldn't find them. :(
   I love the #LDSconf. The church is so cool, I can't even get over
it. During Elder Corbridge's talk, I checked on Facebook to see if a
potential Facebook investigator messaged me back and there were
already memes and quotes from him. And the talk wasn't even over yet.
People kill me.
   Sunday morning was so stressful trying to finalize rides for our
investigator, Sasha, I was seriously screaming at the phone, nothing
was working out. So we said a prayer and eventually got a ride and two
backup rides for her. #miracles But then she didn't answer when any of
them came to get her. SO FRUSTRATING! The sisters got 5 investigators
at conference by just sitting there and we did seriously everything
thing we could and couldn't get one. It's so not fair and so
frustrating. But then I got rebuked with the first talk that morning.
Uchtdorfs "be grateful no matter what" talk. He was speaking directly
to me. So I'm grateful for a ward that has two wonderful families that
are willing to do everything for us no matter what. Love them. They're
so getting cookies this week.
   It was pretty much the 14 of us missionaries and the bishop and
the occasional investigator in the chapel watching conference. As soon
as they announced that Elder Zwick (he came here in November) would be
speaking, we all screamed and got way excited. He has a fan club here
in JAX. He's letting us go to the temple now, so we love him.
   Had this crazy lesson with this family that I did not want to go
see, but the bishop told us to go check it out. So we're sitting in
the house and all the sudden there's police outside. I was dying. So
long story short, we got out of there okay, they were arresting the
dad's sister who was staying there. I was ticked cause I had a bad
feeling about going, but the bishop still wanted us to. Lesson
learned. Never again.
    I'm so grateful for a living prophet on this earth. Im grateful
for a Heavenly Father who gives us direction through Him. I know that
our Savior still loves us enough to still guide and help us. I'm
grateful for the spirit that was felt this weekend. The church is so
ridiculously true, I feel it every day!
Love yall!
Sister Carr

    This happened to the Elders' car this week, it's sharpie. They so
deserve it #karma for yelling at us

Week 32

  The Elders investigator got married on Saturday. My first Florida
wedding. That was an adventure in itself. The whole time I was like
"Mom would die, Mom would die, Mom would DIE!" It was fun. But they're
finally married so she can get baptized this weekend!
   The sisters found this abandoned building so we ate lunch there
and got some Deep! Deep! Dish! All four of us got über sick, so we
literally couldn't do many thing on Thursday, it was awful and really
ticking me off. My comp had enough guts to go check the mail so I said
a prayer before we walked down there and was like, "Heavenly Father,
I'm failing as a missionary today. This mint the only time we go out
today, So here's what's gonna go down. We're gonna take a walk to the
mailbox and you're gonna put someone in our path that we can invite to
church." So we crawled to the mailbox and the first person I saw I
started talking to. She immediately was like, "where's your church
located? I need to go!" God answers prayers. #truth
  Story time. So yesterday wasn't pday, so it already was the worst
day ever. We were on the bikes and were sitting at a red light waiting
to cross. So we're siting there and a guy in a car behind us starts
yelling at us in his thick southern hick accent. Typical "Joseph
smiths a fake!" "Go home Mormons!" "Hey Mormon!" He even yelled
"prophecy smith" (I had the thought, the mobs even yelled that at
Joseph Smith in the Restoration, oh my gosh, I have to deal with these
same idiots. I'm like the prophet). I was trying so very hard to stay
controlled and calm and not look back at him. My blood was boiling so
I started singing a hymn in my head and was like "Don't let them get
to you, you know it's true. You've been in the Sacred Grove, you've
felt that spirit. You know it's real, it's so undeniably true. You're
the right one here. Heavenly Father please let this light turn green.
Please let them rot in hell, I can't wait till Christ comes and they
realize the truth. Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry."  You know,
typical pep talk. The dude keeps yelling louder and louder, trying to
make us mad and get our attention, so we did our best to ignore him.
  So the light turns green and we go and I'm bracing myself for
something to be thrown at us, cause that's usually what goes down,
and for them to slowly drive by us and yell some more. I start
pedaling as fast as I can and am trying to ignore the car and just
stare straight ahead. So they drive slowly by us, yelling and such and
I don't look at them and focus straight ahead cause I'm so close to
losing it. Then when they passed us, I finally looked at the car so I
can get some mental image of what my persecutors look like, so when
I'm in heaven I can give Heavenly Father a more detailed idea of who
it was. It was a red corolla. With a bike rack. Then I saw the two
guys in white shirts in the car. It was our beloved, oh so nice
elders. I was TICKED. It was not nice at all. So God's a fourth watch
God, lesson learned for the day.
Tis all. Love y'all,
Sister Carr

Our HUGE NormaQuanaHouse district (my zone in LC wasn't this big)