Off to Ambato, the City of Parks, Flores/Carter Strikes Again

Dad, I´ve been waiting ALL NIGHT to tell you this!!! Hehe.

 

Thirty years later, the daughter of Troy Carter has a new companion named Hermana Flores from BOLIVIA.   (Editor note: When I was on my mission one of my best companions and the last one of my mission was Elder Flores from Bolivia )  And, my new area is Ambato. It´s very rare for a new missionary to be transferred out of a zone after only one cambio but the Lord knows what He is doing. I don´t know what I´m doing because Hermana Flores doesn´t speak a word of English. And I rode a bus 2.5 hours here with an elder, just the two of us, which was super weird, and he didn´t speak English either. To be honest, I don´t really speak English anymore. I had the opportunity to teach a lesson in English the other day because I was talking to a guy from Romania and he said he would understand me better if I just spoke English. Translation, my Spanish is still pretty bad. I have a nasty gringa accent and I am trying to fix that stat. But yeah, teaching him in English was difficult, I was stuttering like I was 4 years old. So basically I´m very much no'lingual. Yum. But, this will be good for me. Even though I´m feeling a little bit like I was dropped in the ocean and told to swim, again, I know this will be really good for me, and this time I´m determined to be able to find my way around. This never happened in Solanda. After 6 weeks. All the streets look the same and there´s like 4000 parks. "I live in the apartment by the park" oh yeah, okay thanks, you just described THE ENTIRE WORLD.

 Anyways, My new sector, Ambato, is basically at the tippy tops of the mountains and is a lot cleaner than solanda. I took pictures of Solanda but I accidentally left my camera in the house because I´m actually a scumbag. I am so sorry, cuz I had some great pictures from this week. Next week, I promise. But Hermana Flores told me that this area looks exactly like La Paz, so Dad, I´m basically living your life. I hope we can baptize over 100 people, although judging by my success in my previous sector, this is looking very unlikely.

i.e. I didn´t have a single baptism. We never even had one investigator who came to church more than 2 times. But, I feel like I´ll have success in this sector. Luke 5:4-6 describe how I´m feeling right now. Jeremiah 4:19-21 describe how I was feeling yesterday after lunch. And Helaman 10:4-5 describes how I am feeling about this whole change. This week I grew pretty close to Hermana L.... First. I prayed like crazy for charity. And then in the middle of the week Hermana F... got really mad at me for something...I´m still not completely sure what...but I bonded with Hermana L... top because I had nobody else to talk to. So I didn´t want to leave them, and then I love the ward a lot. Even though the members weren´t too keen on helping us they were all so loving and kind. My bishop is awesome, and he is going to visit you guys in December because he´s going to Utah to visit his sons. So I gave him our address and phone number, I thought you guys might like that. Obispo Pepinos, don´t forget :) But yeah, I was really comfortable in Solanda, but I felt like I needed to pray for new companions, and a new area. Even though I knew it would be a lot harder, and it is, because it´s like charades all day long, I know this will be good for me in the end. Very very good. I also felt the spirit a lot stronger this week, maybe I was praying for it more, I don´t really know, but I felt happier in the lessons, and like I loved the people more. Even though ALL of our investigators were secretly crazy. I´m not kidding. All of them. But maybe everyone is secretly crazy, a little. Also we had a baptism this week, the other Hermanas in our ward, and watching that was really nice, it reminded me of my purpose, and I felt really happy, I felt the spirit really strongly, it was all so good. So, I´m looking forward to seeing that here.

 We also had a zone conference. I decided that Hermana Ghent is going to be my mother here for the next 10 months because she´s basically as close to a mom as I have here. The mamitas with their crazy food just aren´t cutting it.

Quick diversion story about mamitas. One of them, who I actually love very dearly, served us a soup with chicken feet and cow stomach. And they asked me to set the table in the other room so I secretly dumped all my chicken feet into the bowl next to me, which turned out to be Hermana F.... She doesn´t know about this though, unless at this moment she is reading my blog, after her mission, in which case, now you know. Hehe....yeah. Sorry. The cow stomach was chewy and nasty and then afterwards I felt like I had a stomach inside my stomach. I´m not the one who came up with that analogy but the fact is that is exactly how I felt.

 Okay, back to Zone Conference. Yeah, I felt stressed the entire time because the other zone was having bastante more success than us. And when you´re being counseled by your leaders and you´re sitting there thinking, yep, I´m doing all this, but it just isn´t cutting it, you feel ashamed and like a bad missionary, and then you feel stressed. But, then Hermana Ghent talked to us very last about how we need to serve our missions for our families, our families now, with our parents and siblings, but especially for our future families, our spouses and kids. Which was my very first reason for coming. I took 3 pages of notes and afterwards I just went up and hugged her because wow, it was exactly what I needed. Basically, she is a gigantically great example to me, and I´m super grateful to know her. 

Well, pray that I´ll be able to watch conference in English, please. I´m going to be really sad if I can´t. If I can´t, could you send me an English conference Ensign? And then I can rave about all the talks 3 months later like a bandwagoner. Jk, I just want to study the words of the living prophets.

I think that is basically it, okay, it´s never it, but thanks for sending me the Ensign article, I´m going to read it! Pray for me!! And I promise next week I will send pictures!! Send me pictures of yourselves, too, and the new couch, tell everyone I say hi, how is the new Wolverine movie, tell Stockton that I really missed his email this week but his email last week filled me with lots and lots of gozo, oh and Ambato has the best pan in Ecuador (supposedly) and a fruit market right next to my house so basically it´s fruit and bread and sketchy meat for the next probably 12 weeks!!!

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Keep being excellent missionaries!!! And tell Tulga that I say hi, and that the church is true!!!

 Love, Hermana Carter