New Apartment week-May 28, 2011

Sister Stoker and I

Peter Whitmer Farm

Plan of Salvation cake


Dearest Family,

WHAT A WEEK! WHEW! I could just sleep for an entire day and still wake up tired. Sorry you haven't gotten an email until now, it has been crazy (hence part of the: "WHAT A WEEK!" statement). We're probably going to be switching our Preparation Day back to Mondays now, so that means I won't get to email you this next week because of Memorial Day. So I guess its better that this email came a little bit later. I'm glad to hear that everyone is doing well. I'm happy Mom got a GPS for her birthday! Jill and Lola can be friends when they get home. I don't know how I would survive in New York without Lola... (and you all laughed at me when I wanted one for Christmas!) Dad, you should tell you friend Bro. Hill to tell President Christianson to let me come! He probably would. I don't know where I'll be working at during that time in June. We switch shifts every single day. Today we're working at the Book of Mormon Publication Site, Tuesday we're at the Hill Cumorah, Wednesday we're at the Joseph Smith Farm, etc... It changes every week. Its like a work schedule we get every three weeks. It always changes.

So.... where to begin. Well, to start off I feel like this week has been where I have hit my "Mid-Life (Mission) Crisis". We all go through it at some point. I was giving a family a tour at the Joseph Smith Farm the other day and when I told them that I was done in Decemeber the Mother replied, "Oh, are you getting sad?" I haven't had that response before. Most of the time people just nod their heads and say, "Oh you've still got a little while." I didn't even know how to react to that question! I didn't know I had hit the point to be sad yet! There is so much that I still need to do and accomplish! I know I still have a little over six months left but I feel like time is starting to slip away. As a result of this crisis of mine, though, I've been able to have a lot of tender expereinces this week seeing the progression that I have made and feeling my heart change in a way that I've never felt it change before.
Here are some highlights from the week:
- Went on companion exchanges with the Site Trainers. I was able to spend a day serving in Palmyra again which was a lot of fun. I was able to learn a lot from the sister that I was serving with, Sister Maughan. It is always nice to reaffirm that you know what you are doing, sometimes when it is just you and your companion you only ever learn from each other so you hope you're doing it right. We had a miracle lesson with a family who has pigs that sleep in their beds.... Yes, I said that correctly. They have GIANT pigs who just wander around their house and then sleep snuggled up in the blankets with them at night. So... weird.... We were able to set a baptismal date with them. It was an amazing lesson, one of the most spirit-filled ones of my mission.
- We finally moved!!! It has been CRAZY! Packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking.... ah. It feels like the Semester is over. Sister Stoker and I are so tired. It is such a beautiful new apartment though! It is HUGE, no black mold, a dishwasher, patio. even a walk in closet! We got the works! I already love it. I'm excited for the new opportunites that moving brings in as well.
- Because we moved this week we were a little homeless for the night so where did we go? President's! We got to sleep over at President's house one night this week and that was such a BLAST! We got to stay up late, sitting around the kitchen table, eating cereal, talking about all this deep doctrine. It was awesome! Being him with a couple hours will blast the spirit right through your nose! We got to learn so many cool things from him and Sister Christianson, it was awesome. Staying up till 12 never felt so good.... :)
- We had a specialized training this week about internet proselyting. I guess Salt Lake has asked us to go full-force with finding and teaching over the internet. So that means trying to find more creative ways to teach online. Tracting is going to be a thing of the past someday. That means I will probably be starting a new blog soon. We can keep my old one and family and friends can still read it but they want a more professional one for investigators and the people that we teach. So hopefully, your non-technology savvy daughter/sister can figure out what the heck she's doing on the computer. Hopefully Kyle gets to take part in this in Japan.
- Investigator update: We're teaching two new people now:
Tanya- has been being taught by some sisters in the next area over. She is awesome. Just moved into our ward, she has a baptismal date for THIS SATURDAY! Its going to be kinda crazy to try and pull that one off with the ward not knowing her and all but we have to have faith that it will all work out.
Mark- So this is a referral from none other than.... President. He ran into Mark at Radio Shack and they got talking about religion. Turns out that he has met with missionaries before but he doesn't really understand the "three heavens things". So President found out where he lived and he's in our area.... No pressure at all! So we went over and met him yesterday. He's awesome. He seems really excited to learn more and so we're excited to teach him!

So.... that is only a little of what this week has been like but I have loved it. I have learned so much and everything just seems to be falling together. We have transfer calls tomorrow. I hope that I am staying in Irondequoit with Sister Stoker. We both think I probably will but you never know. Hopefully I'll be able to get on some time this week and update you on everything that is going on. Well, I love you all! I think and pray for you every day! Enjoy the sun out there.

Love always, Sister Carter

Miracle lesson

Dear Family,

Hello from the rainy city. I think everytime I write you an email I talk about the weather first.... It plays a lot in your mood here. It has been so humid and... misty, lately. I feel like it looks like Forks, Washington. There could be vampires walking around and we would never know. Unless they were Edward... then I might take notice :). It has been a really great week though. I'm glad everyone at home is doing well. I got your postcards in the mail Dad! Everyone thought they were so cool. It was weird knowing you were so close to me. I have a feeling that as pageant time starts to draw nearer that I'll start seeing more people that I know. Its neat to get to talk to so many people that just came from Utah, they tell me that the weather is better here then it is there, right now. I'll take it!

It has been a busy week. Our weeks are almost completely booked beforehand. Being at the sites takes up most of our time but I love being there because I feel like I learn something new about church history every time I'm there. I'm going to be so annoying when I come back home, I'm probably going to shove all these church facts and stories down everyone's throats because I just love to talk about them now. There are so many little miracles that happened to get the Restoration of the gospel to happen in the time and place that it did! Last night, for our weekly Site Meeting, we had the guy come that restored the Smith Frame Home back to its original state. He was able to teach us a ton about the house and what it must have been like for the Smiths in the late 1820s. It was so neat!

We're working on finding new investigators right now. We had a miracle lesson with a man this week by the name of M. Bernard, our recent convert, is really good friends with M. They work in a recording studio together and Bernard told M about the church and M wanted to learn more. We've been trying to set up appointments with him for weeks but something always got in the way. We were finally able to make it to his house this week. He was a really cool guy! He is totally HUNGRY for the gospel. When we were telling him Joseph Smith's story he was leaning on the edge of his seat. He said that he can completely relate and that he already feels like there is something different about this religion. M told us that he had been really nervous to meet us but right when he saw us walking up he said he "felt like he already knew us". He told us that he could feel God working through us, and that we reminded him of Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus :). You gotta love these Bible loving people. He was great, though, and we committed him to baptism which he eagerly accepted. Unfortunately we don't get to continue to teach him because he's not in our area but we're excited for him to continue to progress in the gospel.

Sister Stoker and I have a lot of fun together during our work. This week alone we: 1- Got french kissed by a dog in the middle of a lesson (New Yorkers and their indoor huge dogs....). I tried to not make it obvious that I was spitting up dog hair the rest of the lesson. 2- Saw a naked butt. Like I said before, Hudson Avenue is an interesting place :). 3- Thought the second coming was taking place as an old Senior Elder took some old Senior men on tour and turned up the Christus' narration to volume 100. The WHOLE ENTIRE Visitor Center shook as the voice of the Lord boomed "BEHOLD, I AM JESUS CHRIST." There are so many fun things that happen out here, I'm writing them all down so I can remember telling you when I get home.

Well I love you all... oh, I almost forgot. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! I'm sending you a card but of course its late (and I don't think any more Elders will be sending you a 30 inch one). I hope you have the best day ever! I'm always praying for each of you.

Love always, Sister Carter

Spiritually blasted week!

Dear Family,

It was so good to get to see all of you on Sunday! Kinda unreal. It amazes me, the two times that I have talked to you, how normal it is. I don't feel like I ever left (except for the fact that everyone's hair is longer). I have a scary feeling that when I finally get home again that I will have that same feeling, that I never even left. I've been working harder lately on becoming more truly and lastingly converted. I've realized that the more of your heart you give out here the more your heart will change. Sometimes its just hard to give everything you've got because disappointments still come. But at least at the end of the day you could say that you really lived, that you really tried, and you left your mark behind.

So we had the most spiritually-blasted week in the entire world! You know when you exercise really hard and your whole body feels like jello? That is how may spirit feels right now. It has been incredible! We had our Zone Conference this week with President Christianson. The beginning of the day started in none other than.... the Sacred Grove. Just like Joesph, we met all together on a beautiful clear Spring morning. There we sang, and were instructed on being the Lord's angels on this earth. Then President Christianson took us on a tour through the grove. Everything was peaceful and beautiful, the sun was shining through the trees, the birds were chirping everywhere, and as we continued to walk down the path in silence I could just feel and hear something so much deeper. There is a spirit in that place that cannot be denied. It is a place of revelation. A place where you can understand your relationship with God more as you understand what His relationship was with the young prophet Joseph. I know that what Joseph Smith said happened there really in fact happened. I know that it was in that beautiful grove of trees that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to answer a 14 year-old boy's prayer. I know that Joseph was not a perfect man but when he heard the voice of His Father call, he responded. That grove of trees is a place of peace, of light, and of hope. Everything that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to the world.
When our grove time was over we met in a chapel to listen to the words of Elder Holland from the MTC devotional that he gave in January. What a spiritual whipping! He laid down the law, that we are to never go back to the people we were before our missions! That we are to be like the Apostles of old and leave our fishing nets back at the sea, and never return. We have all been asked by the Savior of the world to "Feed His sheep", and we are called to do that for the rest of our lives. This work never stops until the great Jehovah says that it is finished.
Sister Stoker and I were also able to go to the Temple this week, first time in about 7 months. Man, I love that place. I wish we never had to leave it to go back to such a confusing and distracting world. I have decided that the main thing that Satan uses to get me out here is distraction. He never gives up, he knows our weakness even more than we do. He's kinda a jerk. So... my new goal: Stick it to Satan, by spreading the good news of the gospel to everyone.

Storytime

P-day at the abandoned subways

Cherea Baptism. Sister Stone, Cherea and me

Sister Gines and me

Dearest Family,

Spring has sprung here in New York and it is beautiful! I thought that Fall was beautiful... this is another type of beauty all together! Its been raining a lot but we get those few glimpses of the sun (like today) and it makes the whole world seem right again. I'm glad that everyone such a good week! I can't believe Kyle is now done with school for the next two years! Crazy. It sounds like he has a really good summer scheduled before he leaves though. Are you going to go to go to Las Vegas to buy his missionary clothes (People think that is the funniest thing in the world when I tell them that is where I got some of my clothes from) :). I'm glad that they are sending missionaries back into Sendai! I gave a family a tour, a couple days ago, that just moved here from just north of Sendai. They said there is a lot of damage but that things are starting to look up again. I also can't believe that Osama is now gone... We hardly hear any news, as missionaries, but Ally made sure and let us know right when it happened by sending us a celebratory text, waking us up. :)

Wow.. it has been a crazy hectic week. There is SO MUCH TO DO. It is hard, at times, not to feel completely overwhelmed. We are at the sites almost every single day, which I absolutely love it is just hard going from full-proselyting to having maybe two-three hours in your area every day. Its hard to not feel like you're neglecting your area, but President continues to remind us that this is part of our call and as long as we're doing the best we can with the time we have then we're doing enough. We had a really funny thing happen to us this week.... Storytime!
So, Sister Stoker and I receieved a referral a couple days ago, for a man who actually works on Temple grounds and really is interested in learning more about what we believe. So we called him and set up a time to go teach him. He explained, over the phone, that he didn't want to meet at his house but that he wanted to meet somewhere in public, which is understandable- some people are like that. So we go to the designated meeting place at the set up time to meet with him, and wait. It just so happened to be one of the scariest streets in all of Rochester New York. We have a lot of sketchy areas in Irondequoit, it is known for it's ghettoness, but we usually try to avoid most of them and just focus on working in the areas that are a little more safe. So we were sitting on this street, waiting for a man that we had no idea what he looked like. There were tons of people EVERYWHERE! Going about their business, or smoking, or yelling at each other. Sister Stoker and I decided that it would be safer to just wait in the car then get out. As we were sitting there waiting I started to get a little nervous. I kinda had knots twisting in my stomach and so my companion and I decided it would be best if we prayed, in the car, to know if it was going to be safe if we stayed. So we said a prayer, asking Heavenly Father to give us guidance if we needed to leave or not and right when we said "Amen" we were able to feel at peace. So we continued to wait in the car, until we noticed that this group of men that was standing next to the car were drug dealers and it probably wasn't smart for us to be just sitting there watching them :). So we moved to the next street over and finally got a phone call from our referral saying he was waiting outside a community center for us. So we got up our courage and went to find him. He ended up being a really cool guy. He had a lot of interesting questions about the church. When we were explaining the first vision, to him, he asked us if Joseph Smith was the one who saw the centipede.... A centipede? What the? Ha! People hear the weirdest things. So, there we were, two white girls in dresses, standing on one of the scariest streets in New York, yelling the Restoration of the gospel to this man as traffic is zooming around us and old sickly-looking women, with no hair and pink lipstick smeared all over their face, keep running up to us and asking us if we have any money. Moral of this story:
1- Stay away from Hudson Avenue
2- Prayer really works
3- Don't just sit in a car and watch drug deals in the works
4- Jospeh Smith did not see a centipede (or maybe he did, but I don't think that is really important)
5- That even people who are completely off their rocker can read your name tag (Creepy old woman kept coming over yelling, "Sister Carter... do you have a dollar!?")
6- The Restoration of the gospel is true
7- I love my mission :)

I'm excited to get to see and talk to you all this Sunday! Ah! Can't wait! We're going to go over to our ward mission leader's house and they are trying to get it all set up right now. So I might give Tina Ross your phone number, so if a New York number calls... answer it. I can't remember when you have church... We'll most likely try to do it between 4-7 pm (your time) but we'll have her call or text you with the details.
I love you all! I can't WAIT for Sunday! Happy Mother's Day Mom.

Love always, Sister Carter