Bednar? Sweet!!!

This week has definitely been better.  Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time today because we're going to the temple, and the ride we had, cancelled on us last minute, and so now we need  to take the train, which requires that we leave a little earlier.  So... to start off the bad news, I left you last week with one investigator, and then guess what?  On Thursday our last investigator dropped us.  WooHoo.. :( but that’s ok.  I'm not gonna dwell on that because some much better stuff has been happening.  On Friday we're gonna have a supper awesome opportunity.  We are having a general authority… well an Apostle is a better name for him, but yeah,  Elder David A. Bednar is coming to my mission to speak to all of the missionaries!!!!!!!  So yeah, we are getting the opportunity to have him come, and talk to us and for us to ask him stuff and learn from him.  We're SUPER excited!  So yeah, that’s one thing that’s been great.

Also, a couple weeks ago we were teaching a younger Ecuadorian man named Ruben, and because he wasn’t quite ready to listen to us, he dropped us.  So we were kinda bummed about that.  But on Saturday we received a referral from the church saying that this Ruben wanted a video.  Turns out he had lost our number, and that he had wanted us to come back, so he called the church and asked for them to send the missionaries back to his house.  This has really been the miracle that we've been praying for.  He’s been going through a very hard time recently, and now feels more ready to listen to us.  He came to church and said that he LOVED it.  Woot Woot!!  Which is great; the only problem right now, is that he doesn’t feel worthy to be a member of our church, which is something we'll have to work on, but I think he might just be the one we've been praying for.  He's also really been going through a hard time recently.  His wife is still in Ecuador, and recently some things have happened, and they are separating, which has been really hard on him.  He is someone that really has very good potential, and would benefit so much from this gospel.  Like I said, it's been such a miracle to get him back.

Anyways, like I said, we don’t have a ton of time.  And I've gotta get going, but I look forward to hearing back from you, and I'll send you some pictures next week.

Les Amo Mucho,

Carson

Rough Spots

Ok, so another week has come and gone.  I am still companions with Elder Lopez, He goes home at the end of this cycle, and I'll probably stay in Peekskill for one cycle after he leaves, but hey, you never know.  Anyways we still have this next six weeks, and we have some pretty good goals to help us receive the miracles that we want (unfortunately we are really in some dire need of them).  On Monday we had a Meeting with the Zone to discuss the goals that we want to set for the month of March and so Elder Lopez and I had to plan a goal for our companionship that would work towards the Zone goal.  (Zone goal=all companionships added together.)  So on the way to the meeting, we were talking about our investigators, and about who we thought could be baptized in March.  And through our discussion, we came up with 3.  Two of those three being Cibelis and Israel.  We decided that we both felt good about our goal, and that we could achieve it if we continued to work hard and be obedient.

Now we have been having a pretty hard time recently with finding people, and getting the number of lessons that we want to get on a weekly basis, and many of our investigators have been calling and dropping us.  and so it happened again, on the way home from the meeting, we called Cibelis to check to make sure she was still alright with us coming to her house to teach the two of them, and during that call, she told us that they weren't ready to change, and that they didn’t want us to come over anymore, because they were too busy.  So once again, we lost what we thought were our most solid investigators.  Now we have a large goal, with no idea of who's going to fill those numbers.  Of course we're going to work our very best, and if it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen we’re just going to put it in the Lords hands, and do our best to make the goal.  I've been thinking about the emails that I've been sending home recently, and I feel kind of bad because they are all containing bad news.  But hey, I just saved 15% or more on my car insurance by switching to GIECO.  But yeah, although we've hit a couple rough spots, we're doing our best to continue the work here and to find people.

Now for a couple other little things, slightly less related to missionary work.  I was rear ended for the first time in my life, the key word being, "I".   Elder Lopez and I were sitting behind another car that was waiting to turn, and then the car behind us who wasn’t paying attention hit us.  But don’t worry, there was very little damage, only some scratched paint.  Over all it was just fine, just a new experience.  I feel like I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I also think that my most recent emails have been a little dry, so I decided I'd add something a little more interesting.  Recently the weather has been super nice, like 50 degrees, it's awesome.  I can’t decide where the winter weather is nicer.  Here or Calgary.  Sure Calgary gets cold, but here you have the humidity, which literally doesn’t care how many layers you have on, it's going right through everything!!  But on the other hand, it never gets as cold.  I haven’t had a day where it got less than 0 Fahrenheit, which is also a great thing.  I guess the nicest thing, is that here they have more distinct seasons and from what I've heard the fall is super nice and colorful.

Well that’s about all I've got for this week,

Con Amor,

Carson

A quick update

Well, another week has come and gone.  Things here have been going quite well.  Things are definitely picking up, meaning we're teaching more people.  YAY!  But still not a whole lot to add for now.  I've been thinking about a couple ways of trying to get pictures to you.  I'll still try sending my memory cards, but I was thinking that if I posted them on my blog, it would be an easier way to get more of them to you.  What do you think?

About the transfers things, I'm really not sure.  I find out on Tuesday, and then transfers are on the following Thursday.  I'll let you know what's happening next Wednesday.  Unfortunatley this is a really short little update, but I'll add more next week.  Also, we might be getting a couple new baptisimal dates for the end of this month, or early March.  Their Names are Cibelis and Israel.  Myself and Elder Lopez would really appreciate it if you could pray for them.  But that's about it for this week.

Con Amor, Carson

Hardest thing to hear as a missionary...

Well, you were right about the weather.  It didn’t snow too much though.  The worst part is the freezing rain.  It just makes everything super slushy, and all the snow on the side of the road gets a nice layer of ice.  But the roads are still good, because they do such a great job of cleaning them.  Anyway, it still really sucks, because it impedes our work, since we need to drive to get to most of our appointments.   kinda unfortunate, but, it's still lots of fun.  On Tuesday we walked around Peekskill contacting people and doing all we could to stay busy.  That’s really all we try to do when it snows.  Just show the Lord that we are doing all we can to progress the work no matter our circumstances.

Unfortunately the bad weather wasn’t the only bad news we've had.  Yudelka (the single mother) called us last night when we were on our way to her appointment, and told us that she doesn’t want to listen to us anymore.  Probably one of the hardest things to hear as a missionary.  Because when you’re teaching these people, you really develop a love for them, and when they don’t want to accept it, that hurts, because you know what they're missing and turning away from.  But we've just decided to take comfort in knowing that God knows his children, and he has a plan for each of us. 

I think the hardest thing for me to do right now, is sit here and write this email.  I pretty much have nothing to write about.  One cool little fact that I've found out recently is that the crime rate in the town I'm currently located in was worse than the Bronx, and that was pretty recently!  Apparently when they made a big push to remove the crime from New York, all the people that left came to Peekskill, so that’s pretty cool, but don’t worry, it's much better now.

That’s cool that Sarah is officially a UTEP Miner.  When will her name be up on the website?  Oh, and tell Brooklyn to say "Hi Jason" for me, and "congratulations on the baby girl".  Good to know all is going well back home.

I'll definitely need to send a letter to Sam.  That’s awesome that he gets to go to California.  He'll love that.  I'll bet his family is super excited about that.  Is the church still having missionary visa problems?  Either way, I'm sure he'll get his visa on time; he's got like 5 months.  He also enters the same date of the month that I entered the MTC.  Also, don’t worry too much about my sub and amp…as long as you can sell the car. 

So far we haven’t had a whole lot of zone conferences; about 4ish.  But that’s including goal meetings.  I've only had one mission conference, and technically it was only half the mission.  But that’s just because it's hard for the city elders to come upstate, so they just do the same thing twice; one for upstate and one for city.

But anyways, Elder Lopez and I appreciate any prayers, and are working really hard to progress the work in this area.  How are the Elders in Heritage Ward doing?  I can imagine the work being pretty hard there too. 

Anyways, my mind is about out of things to ramble on about.  Hope everything is going well back home.

Love, Carson