Happy Birthday Dad

DAD!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOODNESS YOU ARE 50 THAT´S SO OLD.

hehehehehehe ;) aw I love you Dad!!! I hope you had a wonderful birthday!!!!!

This week....ahahahaha um yeah. So I´m not sure where to begin!! Okay so really not much happened this week. I always have a billion things to say and then I get to the internet and I´m like wait...whut.

But thank you SO MUCH for that picture of the roof going on the temple!!! Eeee I can´t WAIT to be able to go!!! I hope sooo badly I´ll be able to go to the dedication but yeah I love watching my little temple grow!!!!! Also I am super sad that I am not in Utah right now for a super freaky cold winter, not. Haha I am thoroughly enjoying living directly under the sun and not getting as tan as I would like to. Except I rock the cardigan and 3/4 skirt all day long so yeah that´s what I get.

Dad, I loved that story about what you did for Christmas on your mission. I have a few ideas, but send me more if you get any!!! Today I accidently bought two combo meals from Tropi Burger because I actually don´t understand Spanish as well as I think I do so I gave one of them to a homeless lady and it was like the happiest thing that happened all week. But yeah service is like the best thing ever because that´s like automatic happiness, it was actually super cool with this lady because I bought a gigantic supersize meal cuz I was fasting, and then they doubled it so I was able to give this giant meal to this lady and she was like 90 and super cute. So yeah, I just want to give up on converting people and go find all the less actives and go do service and nothing else but I think my leaders would all toss me off Cotopaxi if I tried to do that because everyone wants baptisms and I´m just like yeah....sorry. My ZL was telling me today how his hardest transfer was when he only had 5 baptisms and I was just like -bashes head into a wall-. I also had a member get mad at me yesterday, when I asked her if she could help us find more of the less active members of the ward and she told me that I shouldn´t be thinking about them, because they´re already baptized and it´s their fault if they don´t want to stay active. -bashes head into wall again-

Also Dad, thank you sooooo much for the hobbit quote. You have to copy and paste it into the blog post here because I love it to death.

Gandalf: Well, why does it matter? He's back!
Thorin Oakenshield: It matters. I want to know - why did you come back?
Bilbo Baggins: Look, I know you doubt me, I know you always have. And you're right... I often think of Bag End. I miss my books, and my armchair, and my garden. See, that's where I belong, that's home. That's why I came back... 'cause you don't have one, a home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can.

Mom, don´t worry about safety. Only the elders in our ward have been jumped yet, funny it was the same street as the church is on. Haha but seriously, don´t worry about me. Yesterday was pretty bad, because all of our citas (appointments) fell through and me and my comp were just like...well what do we do now...so we headed over to the church and a bunch of the missionaries were there, so we asked one trio of elders if they wanted to contact with us and they were like "yeah, but we don´t really know how to contact" and we were just like "yeah it´s okay we don´t either" so that´s the only time I´ve worked on danger street. Okay so actually every street after the sun goes down is danger street but nothing has happened to me, just everyone else.

Actually something incredible and awful happened on that street. So we were knocking doors and we found a couple of teenagers who SPEAK ENGLISH BETTER THAN THEY SPEAK SPANISH BECAUSE THEY WERE RAISED IN THE UNITED STATES so we were able to teach about Joseph Smith and the Restoration IN ENGLISH and it was the most amazing thing ever. And they wanted to learn more, but live in our ZL´s sector, so we wrote down their number and went to give the reference, but THE NUMBER WAS WRONG. So we went back to the house where we found them the next day, but the only person there was their grandmother, and she told us that she wouldn´t help us at all because the whole family is Catholic, and the boys are too, and they don´t want to listen to us. Aaaaahhhhh so we´re going to specific prayer it up to find them again.

Another crazy thing happened. So we were contacting Tupac again, the street that we just always to go to contact half because of the name and half because of the view and we found a deaf lady, and my comp sort of speaks sign language and I have a gospel art book so we were able to sort of communicate with her but she asked for our number, and we gave it to her, and that night we returned early to do our weekly planning (and to celebrate thanksgiving part 2 with the amazing cheesecake that we secretly bought) and SHE CALLED US. It was like the scene in the best 2 years when they´re praying and the phone rings and the hallelujiah chorus starts playing because that is basically how we felt. And it was actually her daughter who called us, but we got the address and I think her family doesn´t want us to come because we haven´t been able to actually get into her house to teach her but we´re going to keep trying. But seriously, super cool, the spirit was actually way strong during that contact.

And mom, I TOTES DEFS want to go visit you and go to the DC temple after my mission. Haha I can´t believe it, today is my 5 month mark. I feel like a baby but I only have a little over one year left!!! It´s crazy, the time goes by so fast.

So I should tell you about some of the people in our ward. La familia G... is my favorite, by far. They speak a little bit of English, and have family living in Utah as well, so they´re like pretty normal but Hermano G... is amazing, he showed us the house of a less active family and he basically taught the lesson and they´ve been coming back to church ever since, so we basically want to bring them to every lesson. There is also the J... family, they are technically less active because they don´t really come to church but they always give us lunch and we´re teaching their daughter, who is basically Mormon already without the baptism, but they have a bunch of dogs and the other day we came for lunch but it wasn´t ready yet so the mom was like here let me put on a movie for you guys and we were like uhhhhhh so that was a little awkward. Who else who else. Well yeah that´s all I can think of right now, but I love the ward. They take care of us, but not our investigators or converts or anything. Haha not at all.

So we´re trying to put together a district choir for I´m not really sure why but we did a practice today, and you know how it is with Latin America and singing....haha yeah it was super funny.

So I´ve been starting to go a little crazy while contacting, because nobody wants to listen to "dos gringitas" so they just tell us that we are speaking English and they don´t understand us. But yeah maybe pray for me that I can actually find some people without risking my sanity.

Also, to all the people who are reading my blog who are return missionaries, or who are even missionaries, or even if I don´t know you but you read my blog or letters because they are just so hilarious and everything SEND ME YOUR FINDING WISDOM. Seriously email me, it´s kaela.carter@myldsmail.net if you have any creative ways of finding people that don't include knocking on doors or chasing down people in the street ENLIGHTEN ME. Hehe. Yeah but really. Thank you.

 

Okay I´m breaking out the mission tweets:

-Things I´m thinking while I´m watching the District

  -1% I´m really excited to apply what I´ve learned here into my daily work

  -99% I think this ward is actually located in the Celestial kingdom.

 

-So I'm thinking the reason I wasn't called Stateside was because I would order a pizza during the weekly planning session.

-How crazy is it to think that someone here in Ecuador is playing music from a band that was started in my very own city. In other news, yes, people continue to blast all my favorite songs during my morning studies. #somuchforspirit

-Things I have never said: "I sure hope a whole bunch of creepy men are standing next to me when this bus jolts to a stop and I fall over."

-So it turns out the guy who lives next to us is a super big fan of really bad Ecuadorian karaoke.

Well, I love you all so much. As far as something spiritual, I´ve been studying chapter 4 of PMG so I can have the spirit in our lessons, and I´ve been studying the conversion process and it turns out the people who have the strongest conversions, like Alma, all went down the exact same path of Faith, Repentance, Baptism (or making covenants), Receiving the Holy Ghost and then not Enduring to the End but actually jumping right into missionary work. Also Alma 5 is a beautiful chapter, go read it with the Work of Salvation in mind. Also this is a scripture but on a less spiritual note my roommate found 2 Chronicles 21:15, 18-19 and it reminded me of my first transfer in the mission.....haha yeah I´m glad I´m not sick anymore, but the fleas are back, grr. haha

Well, have an amazing week, I love you all so much and STOCKTON POR QUE NO ME ESCRIBES but seriously, you are always in my prayers. Thanks for all your support!!! Enjoy these great pictures, and your week!!!

Love, Hermana Carter

Me with my new megamaxi card!!! Super official.  aaaand I bought a coconut and broke it open just because I wanted to see what was inside.