Good-bye Venado Tuerto!

Last days here in Venado Tuerto

So hard to say goodbye to this awesome family!! 

Chilling with one of Venado Tuerto's best!

I Will Answer The Call!!!

December 31, 2014

 

Hey guys!!!! It was sooo awesome to talk with you guys on Christmas!! It was hard to say goodbye!! I miss you guys tons!! Thanks for all your good questions and everything!! It was a super good time!! Sounds like you guys had a great Christmas!! 

 

On Friday we got a call from the zone leaders informing me I was receiving a transfer. I will now be serving in a small city just outside of Rosario called San Lorenzo. My new companion is Elder Johnson and he is from Utah as well! My first 2 companions have been from Utah. I was really sad to leave Venado Tuerto.  We have a ton of investigators and I love all of them as well as the awesome members of my little branch! I felt like I had really connected with all of them!  But, I guess the Lord needs me somewhere else, so I will answer the call! We mostly spent the last couple of days going around and saying goodbye to all the members and investigators that we have! It was very sad! At the same time, I am excited to start a new adventure! Elder Stanworth is training again in the same area and I think he is excited about it!! He is awesome!!

 

I left Monday morning and met my new companion at the bus terminal in Rosario!! Our new area is the whole city of San Lorenzo! There is a massive river right beside it so it is sooooo humid here!! I am sweating like crazy!! Ha-ha! Buts it’s all good!! I really miss the snow right now!!!! We have the whole city as our area, so it is pretty overwhelming. At least for me it is because my last area was about 10 blocks by 15 blocks! Now it’s like 70 blocks!! It’s massive, but I guess there used to be 2 wards and 1 branch here a while ago and now there is only 1 branch left!! There are so many less active members!! We have lots of work to do here!!

 

Man, I’ll tell you that the pension here is not that nice! I was living in a palace in my other area!! I had air conditioning, and a nice shower and awesome members who fed us and a washing machine! Oh well, but it is livable here!! Ha-ha- I am doing good!!! We have a lot of work to do in this area. I am here for a reason and I am excited to make a difference, whether it’s re activating people or baptizing. I am here to do the will of the Lord!! 

 

Hey mom- thanks for your prayers!! I am slightly overwhelmed here because as you probably know, I’m not the best with change.  But I truly am excited to be an instrument in the Lords hands here!! There is a lot for me to learn here!! So keep praying for me!!

 

 Right now I am just trying to meet all of the members and investigators that they have here!! There is a lot to do here!! I hope you feel better, Mom!! We aren’t allowed to be out after dark tonight for the New Year’s festivities or to go out tomorrow so we might be cleaning (just like you will be at home!!)

 

 

I love you guys!! Hopefully I will email you guys on Monday again!!

 

Love,

Elder Carter

Getting ready to mow the lawn - Argentina style!

"We have a message we want to share with you!"

A great Christmas with a special friend!

Keeping dad's tradition alive - egg in a hole

Post surgery feet - did not fit in my shoes :(

Grateful for this good man!

Some of my Argentina sisters!

My new friends!

Saying good bye to these great missionaries!!

My new companion!

AND MORE CAME!!!!!

December 24, 2014

 

 

Hola!

 

Well, this week was good!! WE HAD 9 INVESTIGATORS AT CHURCH ON SUNDAY!! Which was flipping awesome!!? We just made sure we emphasized it a ton! Two of the investigators who came were actually ones we had stopped teaching so we are teaching them again!!! So awesome!!  I was pretty excited at church, but it was a little stressful, too! I was on my toes making sure that everyone was doing well and enjoying themselves!! One investigator was a young man, B, who we went and picked up before church. He lives in a humble house. One of the walls has a hole where there was a window, but where there is no window there now. Anyways, we arrived at his place and knocked, or clapped I mean, (that’s what people do here) and nothing. So, we waited for a while. They have a tin roof, so it’s pretty loud if you throw stuff on it. Anyways,  I threw a bunch of rocks on the roof and still nothing. My mind was made up - I was not leaving without him. We had walked so far to pick him up and knew it was important for him to come. So,  I put my hands into the window and clapped as loud as I could. It turned out his bed was not very far away from my hands. So, that finally did the trick and woke him up!! We finally got him up and to church, which was awesome!!!! He said he really liked it, along with all of our other investigators!

 

The other day, my companion and I were asked to do a service project. We were asked to mow a sister’s lawn. It was super super long and we were given machetes to accomplish the task!! Never done it that way before!!

 

 

Tonight for Christmas Eve we are going over to a recent convert’s home for dinner and have permission to stay out until 11:30 pm, which is really cool!!

Christmas seems to not be a big deal here. People put a little tree inside their homes, eat dinner at around 11:00 pm and then open gifts at midnight, and that’s it! It is weird for me to have Christmas without snow! It just does not feel like Christmas in one sense, but in another, being here has helped me better appreciate the real reason why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. We have had a great time sharing the video clip the church put out for Christmas (share the gift). It is a cool thing we get to do.

 

 

Thank you for everything! I am looking forward to talking to you guys tomorrow afternoon!! Merry Christmas!!

 

I love you!

Elder Carter

 

They came to church!!!

December 18, 2014

Hey guys!! How’s it going?

 

The big news for the week is that the MISSION IS BEING SPLIT INTO TWO IN JULY!!!! There will be and Argentina Rosario mission and an Argentina Santa Fe mission! There will be a new mission president, new mission home, new everything! So, what will happen is that if you are in the area of the new mission when the new mission president arrives, then that’s your new mission. If you are in President Zanni’s zone you will be in his mission. (His part is Rosario and lower). So that will be very interesting!! I wonder where I will end up!! Exciting, huh!! 

 

This week was good! We are eating and ordering lots of food cause pretty much here it is as cheap to order the food as it is to buy it and cook it. So we save ourselves the time and energy of making the food and just buy, it so that is very nice!! Ha-ha and plus the food it usually better if we buy it!! 

 

This week we had 3 investigators at church!!! Pretty awesome!!! I was super glad they came!! Hopefully, they will come this Sunday too!!! Recently, President Zanni has changed our missionary focus to reactivation. He is not so concerned about how many lessons we teach the less active or how many investigators we have. He wants us to help increase church attendance. In in our area, we have 280 families that are members, but we only have 28 families that are going to church every week! So, we have been working a lot this past week finding those people and trying to get them to church and teaching the members of their families who aren’t members!! It’s exciting to have lots of work to do!!

 

Yesterday we had a service project with the president and his family, which was really good! We went to an old folk’s home and painted rooms. When we first we went in we talked to the residents and man that was hard for me!!!! Sometimes I can’t understand the elderly talking in English, let alone in the small amount of Spanish I know!! So, I just nodded my head and said “si” and “que bueno!” but it was all good! Then we went to the church and ate pizza. The president talked for a while and then we played some fun games like ultimate Frisbee it was so much fun!!

 

We did division (went on splits) with the assistants to the president which this week! It went really well!! It was good to see and learn from others. I enjoy that. My Spanish still in not that great but I understand more than I can speak. Sometimes that is frustrating  because I know what they are saying but I don’t know how to respond!! Ha-ha, but i can usually figure out some way to say something.  I am learning slowly!!

 

I love you guys!!!

 

Can’t wait to hear from you on Wednesday and Skype on Thursday!!!!!

 

Love you,

Elder Carter

 

Toe Surgery

                                                                                               December 8, 2014

 

I got your package and envelopes this week!! I also got Bita’s!! I have not opened the package from home but I opened Bita’s and it was very nice!! She sent a bunch of snacks and it is all very yummy!!! I have been opening one card a day and they are super awesome!!!! Thanks everyone!! I can’t wait to talk to you guys on Christmas!!! We will skype from a member’s house, probably around lunch time, Argentina time, but I’m still not sure. Hopefully I can give you more information next week.

 The first half of the week was good!!  We are working hard. We taught quite a few lessons. I forgot to mention last week that during the big downpour we discovered that one of our investigators was not 100% stable. We had a suspicion before the day of the big rainstorm, but that day, we confirmed it pretty fast! She was outside screaming at cars as they passed by and then later we saw her bathing in the water. We decided to stop teaching her because we think she will go straight to heaven anyways!!

Our new branch president is awesome!!! He goes out with us often and is really involved! I think that is where we will skype from on Christmas. There is another family in our branch that also is super involved in missionary work. These members make such a difference!! I am really excited about this week! I think it will be better, especially since we will be able to work again!!

Elder Stanworth and I got surgery on our toes on Friday. The mission paid for everything. We went and saw the doctor a couple times this week and we had it operated on Friday. We had a few meetings with him and we took some antibiotics for a few days. We got the more expensive medical treatment which I think means that it was better quality. I went into the office and the doctor and nurses just started poking needles into my feet. As soon as they were frozen they started snipping and cutting and digging. It was pretty bloody, but they wrapped it up and I was on my way!  I had two in grown toenails, one on each foot. My companion had one so he got his operated too. We then spent the whole weekend in the pension which kind of sucked!!!! I was so bored!!! I like the scriptures, but man, I wanted to go out and teach!!!! Ha-ha - but yesterday one of the members was able to drive us to church and today we can walk. So everything is good again!! Sadly we didn’t teach a ton of lessons this week cause we were stuck in the pension, but it’s okay. We will this week!!

We didn’t have anyone at church this Sunday which was disappointing, but it’s alright. It rained too on Sunday which might have been another reason why no one made it. This week I am pretty sure will be a lot better!!! My Spanish is coming along. I can understand more but still not a ton. I can usually pull out what I want to say, but sometimes people are not too patient with me. All in all, I’m progressing!

Sorry, no time for pictures this week but next week I will send some. I have some gross pictures of our toes!! Ha-ha  - but thanks for everything!! Hopefully the recent cards you guys sent me will come soon! I will write  to you next Tuesday! (President it coming down to do some service with us on Monday so Tuesday will be our p-day)

Thank you for the prayers and everything!!

I love you guys!

Elder Carter

And the rain came pouring down!!!!

December 1, 2014

 

We survived our low-money week!! We had to dip in to some personal money a little bit, but it’s all okay!! It rained on Sunday so our branch was in low attendance!! We did not have any investigators at church, again, but it’s alright, this Sunday will be the week!!! Ha-ha - but we sustained a new branch president and he is super awesome! He is super involved with us and wanting to help us, which is good! We also have some inactive families that are excited about the change.

 

 

The big news this week was that we had a big flood!! Okay, so we were sitting at a lunch appointment and it just started pouring, like super super hard!!! We were eating with the new branch president and his family. They had made a yummy pizza, but there were olives all over it (I took them off) and we were sitting there eating and trying to talk but we had to yell to each other because the rain was being so loud on the roof!! It was awful! About 5 minutes later, their whole back yard was full of water! It was even coming in through the back door!! Within another 5 minutes there was approximately 3 inches of water in their whole house!!! Luckily we got all the important stuff off the ground. Their house, like most of the houses here, is built of brick and tile so there was not much damage to the houses, which was really good. When the rain slowed down and stopped for a bit, we looked outside and the roads looked like a river! It was crazy!! The president has a car and he was going to drive us home but he couldn’t get out because the water was too high (anyone who has a car here is rich) so we decided to start venturing our way back through the puddles. Well, we got a decent way back to the pension then bammmmm it just started pouring again. We were soaked within 10 seconds!!. I put my camera under my arm pit and we started running back. When we got to the road that our pension is on, we found it was covered in waist deep water!! There was no other way to get back to the pension, so we walked for 15 minutes back to the pension in waist deep water, in the pouring rain, in our shirts and ties!! There were cars submerged on the side of the street, it was so bad!!! Luckily my camera did not get wet at all. I don’t know how that was possible! We pretty much went swimming!! Ha-ha, it was kind of fun, even though at the time I was just worried about my camera!! But we made it back okay and our pension is higher up so no water got in. What an adventure!!!!!!!!

 

The other elders were supposed to have a baptism but it got cancelled because of the rain. Our baptismal font is challenging because it doesn’t drain water so we spent some of Saturday night taking the water out of the font bucket by bucket which was annoying but it had to be done!!

 

On Sunday some of our investigators fed us “asado” which is my favorite!! Lots of meat and lots of bread. It is super super super  super yummy!! I really enjoyed it! It’s all awesome when your investigators feed you because you get food and a lesson!!!

 

So, I have an ingrown toe nail. Actually two and so does my companion. So today we went to the doctors and they gave us some medicine and we are coming back Friday. The doctor is probably going to have to do some kind of surgery to our toes so we might be out for a couple of days. It doesn’t hurt to walk on it, it only hurts when I stub it really hard or try to do push-ups, but it could be dangerous if the infection grows. I am fine and will be fine, you don’t have to call the mission home or anything. I wasn’t going to tell you guys but I thought maybe I should. You will find out next week how everything went!!

 

It was a little bit of a slower week with not a ton of lessons or anything because we couldn’t find a lot of our investigators which was too bad!! But this week will definitely be a lot better!!!We had lessons last week but a lot of our investigators don’t seem to want to come to church. We have even had a couple that said they received an answer that the church is true! I wanted to yell at them “WHY DONT YOU COME TO CHURCH THEN!!!!!!” Ha-ha but its okay, I think they will come if it doesn’t rain. I will keep you guys posted on that

 

I now weigh 185 so I’ve lost a little bit of weight since the last time but slowing down a lot. Life is good!! I really enjoy it here! It’s just challenging sometimes to not see anyone getting baptized yet, but I know patience and faith will get them there!

 

I love you guys!!!

 

Elder Carter

 

During a rain storm!

Getting ready to go for a swim (in order to get home)

The big bag of cereal used for weekly sustenance :)

This week in Venado Tuerto...

                                                                                                                    November 24, 2014

Dear Family:

It is getting pretty hot here!! By the time I take off my white shirt at night, it is not white anymore. I get sweaty then the dirt gets on it and it does not stay white. We moved our beds around in the pension to the coolest part which was a good idea!

This week was good!!  It was hot, but we worked hard.  None of our investigators came to church this Sunday which was super super disappointing!! I don’t know how to get them to church. We even walked like 30 minutes before church to pick them up, but they were sleeping!! It’s pretty frustrating, but it’s okay. One of these days!

We dropped a few of our investigators this week because they weren’t progressing. It was hard but we can’t waste our time.  We have a couple new ones that seem really good! Next week, one of our investigator families is feeding us “asado” which is flipping awesome!! It’s like a barbecue, but better! This family seems pretty interested, the only problem is that they LOVE tattoos!!! They spent like 30 minutes showing us different drawings, but I think it will be okay! Anything is possible!!

We did service this week for a “menos active” (less active) family. We helped them build part of their house. They asked us to be at their house by 5:30 am but, as you probably would have guessed, we didn’t start until like 8! I could have got so much more sleep!!! Ha-ha, but its okay. We worked all morning mixing cement and stuff.  It was good!! I actually enjoyed it!! Afterwards, they fed us “churry pan” which is like sausages but better! Ha-ha, it was really good!!  We got back to the pension and we super tired! But it felt great!!

The family that is super poor, that need to take out” turno” in order to be married, fed us this week! I felt very humbled because it’s hard for them to feed their family, let alone us. But they made a really yummy meal! It was meat and empanadas. I really liked it and was grateful for their sacrifice. The only hard part was that since they don’t live in the city, the water they gave us made me want to throw up! It was so gross! Ha-ha, but it’s okay!!

Nothing super cool happened this week.  Hopefully this next week we will have more investigators at church. We are running super low on money, so this week we will probably be eating cereal all week. Hopefully lots of members feed us!! Ha-ha!!  We have like 100 pesos left which is equivalent to 10 dollars! Ha-ha, we will see how it goes!!! But, all in all, it’s been great!!

I love you guys! Thanks for everything!!

 

Elder Carter

We found this cool train track surrounded by trees

Looks so cool!

 

Building part of a house

Great food after our service project

Enjoying ice cream for lunch!!

I made this backpack myself! Good thing Bita taught me how to sew!

Nice and hot here!!

 

Working hard!

 

McDonald's, a new schedule, and a new investigator!!

                                                      November 18, 2014                                                                             

 

Hi guys!

 

No transfer for me or my companion this month!! I just found out I get to Skype with you on Christmas!!!! So that will be fun!

 

Mom asked for something in Spanish. Here goes:

 

Nosotros tienemos mucho investigatores, pero la problema es que nunca quieren asiste la iglesia! mi districto tenine 6 missionarios y 2 se va este translado. no conozco ellos muy bien perro el nuevo missionaries van a ser muy bien. ellos van a tranier. (they are being trained so I won’t speak the worst Spanish in the district anymore!! )

 

Translation: We have lots of investigators, but the problem is that they have not been to church yet. My district has 6 missionaries and 2 are being transferred this week. I don’t know the m very well. We are getting new missionaries to be trained. That will be great!! Then I won’t speak the worst Spanish.

 

Miss you guys tons too! But the time is going by surprisingly fast!! Mom asked me about some of our mission purchases. All the music stuff is very very helpful!! It’s super nice!! I like it! That was a really good purchase. The worst purchase was probably the rain boots... ha-ha! My self-confidence kicked in and there is no way I am going outside wearing those things unless there is a flood, but even then I don’t know. Ha-ha, but I thought I would use them, but I guess not!

 

Well I was going to write my whole email about my experience at McDonalds this week, but I decided that you would probably not like that a ton. But we went there after” tramites” in Rosario. Ha-ha, it was very yummy! It was a nice taste of home, but all in all, it is not the same as in Canada!!! 

 

I am still working on getting used to some things that are very different from home. Sometimes, the sanitary conditions I find myself in are not the most desirable ones! I just close my eyes and muster it out or drink up!. I have a feeling Heavenly Father is protecting me from all the crazy diseases I should be getting!! Ha-ha, so watch out when I come home I probably won’t want to clean anything because I won’t even notice it anymore!! Haha!!

 

Okay, this week we received a schedule change!! We now wake up at 7 and are in bed at 11! It’s pretty awesome!! Cause everyone is out way late in the summers!! Ha-ha I sure like sleeping in until 7 though!!!

 

This Sunday we only had one investigator at church and we went and picked her up. But it is frustrating cause we have 10 with baptism dates but we need them to come to church first!! They all say that they just sleep in and forget or something. It’s awful here!! Church starts on time but nobody shows up till later anyway!! 

 

We are teaching one guy, Gabriel is his name, and he lives in a room about 8 ft. long and 6 ft. wide. It is just barely big enough to fit a bed and a chair. So when we teach him me and my companion sit on the bed and he sits on the chair! But he is super excited so it’s awesome!! He is supposed to get baptized on Dec 6!!

 

C and V,  the people that are giving up the salary are kind of putting off going to get married. I am not sure why, but it is tough. I think they really are worried about their money. But they want to get baptized it is just hard for them!!

 

Daniel and Vanessa are doing okay. Vanessa’s mom is an evangelic and she saw us one day at their house and talked to Vanessa so she was not present at our last lesson. But he works on Sundays, which sucks, but it’s all good!! 

 

Those are some of the investigators I have shared with you before.  Some of the people we are talking to are “if-y” so I don’t want to write about them just yet! But we should have lots of baptisms this transfer!!

 

Love all you guys!!!!

 

Love,

 Elder Carter

 

Loving it here!!

November 10, 2014

Hey guys!!

 

I love you guys! Thanks for all the letters and stuff! Thanks for everything!! All of those funny sacrament meeting clips you sent me mom were super funny!!! I look forward to Mondays to hear from you guys! All the other days’ just seem the same. Every week I look forward to receiving and writing letters! I also have to write the president every week in Spanish. I don’t need to pre-write it in Spanish anymore!!  I can just do it as I’m sitting in front of the computer. We usually get an hour and a half to write, so I usually have enough time.

 

 I am really enjoying it here!! I am getting used to the life style and everything! I love it here! Next week is transfers, so I won’t be writing you guys until Tuesday. So, I didn’t die if you don’t hear from me Monday, Mom. I don’t think me or my comp will get transferred!

 

Elder Stanworth and I are working pretty hard... Or at least I think so! No baptisms yet, but we have 9 committed for December, it’s just a matter of them attending church and following through! Okay so that guy we found at like 8:45 last Sunday, yeah he’s actually crazy so we could not teach him. He does not know what we are talking about! Ha-ha lol! But Daniel and Vanessa, the family that we found last week, are doing awesome! We left them with a Book of Mormon and told them to pray about it. So, we will call tonight to see how that went. The family that is committed to getting married and will lose the salary as a result, have been putting if off forever! They finally went this week which was super good! So good!!

 

This week the AP’s came down and did splits with my companion and I. I went with Elder Muniz, from Brazil! He is a super good missionary!!! Elder Muniz and I did a really good job! He’s and awesome elder!

 

The next day we did divisions within our district!  I went to the other Elder’s pension and was there for the night. Man, our pension was about 100 times better than theirs!! They (and me for the night I stayed) have to take bucket showers! Ha-ha, it was freezing, lol!! But it’s okay! We taught a bunch of lessons and I did a lot of teaching that day! So that was good! I can teach all the lessons and kind of say what I want now, but other than lessons, Spanish is still a little challenging!

 

The biggest challenge here is that nobody likes to keep commitments. They say they are going to come to church, “si, si”, but they never end up showing up. It sucks. Ha-ha, but that’s something we will have to work on! That’s the problem with investigators here. Some of the challenges with the “menos activos” (less actives) is that they are casual in their church attendance. They wear the garments and keep the commandments, but they just don’t go to church because they sleep in or are running late…

 

We had zone conference this week with the president which was good, from what I was able to understand!! It was good to have him talk to us! Oh, and the food here is super yummy! I still think I am losing a little bit of weight, but man I eat a lot at lunch appointments!!! They can cook some good food!! They always have the best fresh bread sitting out! So, it’s really hard not to eat that!! lol!! But yeah, when we do have lunch appointments it’s delicious!

 

Tonight my companion and I have to go to Rosario (the mission home) for some visa stuff for me, so we will be sleeping there tonight! It should be good! Last night it rained again, which sucked, but we found 4 new investigators in the last 10 minutes! It always happens at the end of the night!! Every time!!!

 

Things are really good with Elder Stanworth!! We get along super awesome!! When we went on divisions this week, I was with  another missionary and man,  was I glad to get back to Elder Stanworth!! It wasn’t that bad, but i just like Elder Stanworth a lot better! lol!!

 

 

I love you guys!!

Elder Carter

 

 

This picture was taken at the MTC. Argentina and Paraguay have 13 missions!!!

Multitasking - studying while cooking (what's with the head lamp, Elder Carter?)

Having me some yummy chunky Argentine pudding :)

 

Rainy Day Blessings

November 3, 2014

Hey!

 

 I just sent a ton of pictures! I hope you like them all! Ha-ha, I love you!! It was actually pretty rainy here this week, so you guys weren’t suffering in the cold alone! Yes mom, the ¨We can do it!” theme is a big thing in our mission because I guess a lot of missionaries think that this mission can’t baptize very well. Our investigators are good. We have got a few who have committed to a baptismal date later in the month, but the problem with people here is they never follow through... with anything,  like sometimes it is hard to find them when we book appointments cause they just are not home!  The members are pretty good to us. We only have about 5 families on our side of the boundary, and the other elders have a ton, but the families are awesome!! We have lunch with them only three days a week and all the meals I have eaten have been super good! They love having bbqs with tons and tons of meat. We went to one of those, and man it was yummy! They had like ribs and sausages and all sorts of meat! They also make this pizza with eggs and bacon on it, it is pretty good! So the members on our side are treating us pretty good. It is a little hard to communicate with them though for me cause I don’t know a ton of Spanish.

 

Okay, for the weekly update! It was a normal week and everything was good! I am liking it here more every day! I am just getting more comfortable with the language and the culture and all! So, on Thursday this week, it started raining! It has been raining every day since, which has been super annoying! Argentines are funny with the rain. They don’t do anything when it rains. It’s like there is a blizzard and they can’t get out of their house. It makes missionary work pretty hard! But, also when it rains, they make this good scone thing, called “torta fritas.”  On Saturday we knocked on a door in the freezing cold rain and some guys gave us one! It was so good and warm!! Ha-ha, it was soo nice! Anyway, after we had been working all day in the freezing cold rain, it was like 7:00 pm and most of our appointments had fallen through so we went contacting. About an hour into it, we were walking down the street and we were turning into an alley where the really poor people live. I told my companion that we should knock on the door across the street.  I only suggested that because I didn’t want to walk down the scary alley. Plus there looked like there was a ton of scary looking guys there. Ha-ha! Anyway, there was this family that let us in and we taught the whole first lesson with them!! They let us in with our muddy shoes and everything. They were super receptive and think that they will get baptized!!! Awesome, huh! Ha-ha- my companion thought I was awesome since he thought I felt that we should go to this house, but the truth was that I just didn’t want to walk down the other road( lol).  Maybe that’s how the spirit works sometimes. Their names are Daniel and Vanessa  and we have another appointment next Sunday. I hope it goes well. When we were leaving she said that it wasn’t by chance we stopped by, at least that’s what my companion said, ha-ha, because I didn’t understand it!

 

So, that was a rainy story. I have another one. Oh, but first let me tell you that when it rains here, not even the members go to church. I guess I can see why. You have to walk through mud to get there and most people don’t have cars. The church was in low attendance last Sunday which was kind of a bummer and we had no investigators there!! Oh, well! Anyway, later that night when it was time to go out and work we wanted to reach our goal of teaching 40 lessons for the week. We had 35 and like 3 hours to get 5 more in. We went out and all of our appointments cancelled on us. Oh, and it was freezing and pouring rain that day!!! So, we contacted for the last three hours. It was 8:30 pm and we were just finishing up the fourth lesson! We were freezing!! At the end of the lesson, this guy gave us a nice warm “torta frita!” It was God sent! It was warm and everything!! Man, it was soo good!! Anyway, it takes about 30 minutes to walk back to the pension, but we really wanted to get another lesson in. We could have gone back to the pension right then, but we decided to keep working, except we had to be back in the pensions at 9:30 pm. Well, it was like 8:45 and we knocked on this door. I don’t know why, but we did. An old man answered the door and I guess he has read the Book of Mormon and has a burning testimony but just hasn’t had to opportunity to get baptized!! So, we got him a baptismal date!! It was crazy!!! Because we put the extra effort into finding that fifth lesson, we were blessed with finding someone ready for baptism!! If we had gone back to the pension, that would not have happened!! Ha-ha, we got rewarded for working in the pouring rain!!  It was sweet!!! It wasn’t by chance that we found that guy, that’s for sure. It’s because we were willing to work hard. Pretty good feeling!! We are meeting with him tomorrow.

 

Well, my time is almost out, but this week we did have lunch at a member’s house and they made a big meat thing- it was soo good!! I was so full at the end but it was pretty awesome!! Ha-ha- I am liking it more and more here every day! Thanks for everything! Keep me posted on what’s going on at home!

 

I love you guys!

 

Elder Carter

 

 

On the bridge we cross everyday

Off to teach, with Elder Stanworth!

Our yummy Thursday sandwiches!!

Feeling happy!

A little wet!

Getting warm with hot chocolate!

My new $11 "toms" made in Argentina