Tender Mercies

This is a post by Elder Carper's Mom






Saturday, April 12th I had a missed call from Palmdale, CA.  My first thought was, oh no, what's wrong with Taylor.  (Is that a bad first thought or is a mom thing?)  I called the number back to find out is was a kind lady, Sister Rowe, who was in the same ward in which Elder Carper is serving.  She was visiting her mother in Davis County and was willing to take back a package.  I was so exciting.  I felt so close to Taylor.  I had to go do my duty at the Davis County Delegate Convention that day (7 hours), but I put something together and sent it with her.   On Wednesday, April 16th just a couple of hours AFTER Lucas Carper Zarate was born, I received a text from Sister Rowe.    It showed Taylor enjoying the package I sent.  My heart SOARED.  I knew Taylor had to be there at that moment.  I texted Sister Rowe back with a picture of Lucas and the baby stats.  Sure enough, five minutes later I was rewarded with a text saying that "Elder Carper is jumping around!!"  What a tender mercy that Taylor was able to get the news of his little nephew's birth so quickly.  If not, he would be finding out about it today.  Would he have survived without hearing word so quickly?  Of course, but what a tender mercy it is when our Heavenly Father reminds us that He is cognizant of us.  It meant a lot to me, Aleesa and certainly Elder Carper.

DON'T BIBLE BASH!

This week has been so unbelievable hard! Tuesday was just a normal day in the neighborhood, al anyone can talk about is the supermassive earthquake that will hit us soon. I can think of at least 3 signs for sure that point to the earthquake. 1. A member told us she was reading on the news and scientists were saying that the 4.5 in LA was just a precursor to what will hit. 2. We are WAY overdue for a giant earthquake 3. We have been having a lot of severe weather changes which is also a sign for earthquakes. 4. There is an Elder in the Bakersfield mission whose Patriarchal blessing says that he will survive a giant Natural Disaster on his mission. So therefore, earthquake here really soon, I am really excited!

 

Wednesday was the cause of my bad week. It was a really long day and I was feeling really discouraged and very irritated because of the lack of help from our ward. Every appointment we had on Wednesday fell through and we decided to go see a HQ referral. His name was L L, he invited us in, offered water and snacks and then started talking to us. Turns out that he is a preacher at the local Church of God, and thinks he is a prophet. He began immediately Bible bashing with us and trying to prove the Book of Mormon wrong. Of course we defended everything and shut down all of his accusations (like how Ammon smote the arms off the bandits) but he just kept bringing it out. It got to the point where he knew he couldn't prove our religion wrong, and so he started preaching at us and telling us that we don't know anything about religion.

 

(here is the part where I gave into temptation)

 

He tried to show us the name of Heavenly Mother, and the name of the Holy Spirit....I have only wanted  to strangle someone twice on my mission, once when Baptist Bob said we believe God has physical sex with Mary and then with L. My decision was either snap him in half, or destroy his religion. So I decided to destroy him. I pulled out my Bible and I went to work, he had told us everything his religion taught and I proved it all false. I didn't even tie it to the Book of Mormon I just disproved everything with the Bible. After about 10 minutes of me hammering this guy, Elder Lewis (bless his little heart) said that we need to leave and so we did. Of course afterwards I felt absolutely horrible, Elder Lewis was really cool about it and he was about to pull his scriptures out and do the same thing but I beat him to it. It was not a good spiritual experience for me or for Lamar. I still feel really bad and we are going over this week to apologize because he didn't deserve that, even if he thought he knew something like Her name. Which, he thought was Jerusalem, he got confused in Isaiah where it mentions Beulah. It is Hebrew for Married to God. The context it is used in only means that when Zion is in line with gods will, it is Beulah. So he got it confused, and he thought the second coming happened in 1948 when Israel became a country again.

 

Im going to teach you a well known "missionary doctorine." When you bible bash, the spirit will leave you for a certain amount of time just like it did Joseph Smith. For me it usually lasts for a week and that week is absolutely miserable. So that is why this week wasn't very good, my own fault but still. The only good things that happened was I was able to give a lot of service to a non member family that NEEDS to be members. Seriously these guys are awesome! They are the M's and they love us missionaries! It is so great, we did yard work for them for like 3 hours Wednesday and 4 on Saturday. My entire body is super sore and I am loving it! I have a lot of high hopes for that family!

 

Anyways I hope you all have a solid week, I am really hoping this week looks up, I could use a good week! Love you guys!

 

Elder Carper

GC, Mean Feet, Monster Melon

Sorry that I didn't send a big email last week, we only had 15 minutes to email because a member was going to take us jeeping up a mountain. It ended really bad because his ignition broke and so we couldnt go. So that was super lame but we went and played soccer with all the Spanish Elders. I miss soccer it was really fun! Last week was a good week, general conference was absolutely fantastic! I think my favorite speaker over all was president Uchtdorfs in Sunday morning, with President Eyrings on saturday afternoon was a close second. I love his words when he says "if the blessings came right away it would not strengthen our faith" That really hit me, especially the way I look at missionary work. I get really frustrated sometimes when I know I am being obedient and working as hard as I can and nothing seems to be going our way. We are told to expect miracles but not to be discouraged if they dont come. That is really hard to do, so when President Eyring said this, it was like getting slapped in the face by the spirit and hearing God say, "you already knew that." So that was a very humbling experience for me, If there is one thing that I need to drill into my head it is that acts of faith is a process and not an immediate deal. We become better missionaries by striving every day to strengthen our weaknesses and making correct choices. I have the vision of where I want to be and I am a lot closer than I was. It took me almost 8 months to get this far and I have a long way to go. I loved conference. The first thing I wrote down in my Book of Revalations is to actually pay attention to speakers other than the apostles. I kind of zone out and I feel bad haha so I am trying to work on that.

We picked up some more investigators these past few weeks and they are progressing at a steady pace which is good. A few of them are actually rap artists who are trying to bring back the tupac era of rap. When its not just about sex, haters, weed and money but its about philosophy and life. I was pleasantly suprised by some of them, that and I havent listened to any good music in months. The only good music is whats playing in the background at best buy while we email. Right now I think Coldplay is on, but I dont know anymore!

The bad thing about this week was that I got an ingrown toenail removed. That sucked worse than the warts. I was out of commision for like 3 days. I wanted to die, lucky for me Sister W is awesome and made me her special cinnamon roll cake. It is pretty freaking incredible! We didnt get any missionary work done all week and then I finally got back on the bike on Saturday. We found some really cool potentials. One of which is a refferal from the Elders back in Rosamond. I asked what they were doing in rosamond and they said they were doing service for a lady named Billie Stocking. I freaked out Im like do you know Zac Fernandez than? They said they were family friends and have known eachother for years. I lost it I was like " OH MY GOSH I BAPTIZED THEM!" Than they were like "oh YOU'RE Elder Carper" which I dont know why they didnt make the connection, how many Elder Carper missionaries do you know? Bottom line I was really excited to talk to them, they are R and L P. In all seriousness they are kinda scary because he just got out of Prison like a month ago. He is 46 and has been in and out of prison since he was 14. We did the math and he has spent more than half his life in there. He is a really solid potential though and wants to learn what his purpose is in life. He also hates people who are hyppocrytes and so I was excited because most mormons arent! At least Elder L and I arent haha.

 

I got the call on saturday and I am staying for another 6 weeks with Elder Lewis, we were both pretty excited! Elder L is a goofball haha he is awesome. So we had a party because Sister H is finishing her mission, and Sister W is getting transferred so on Sunday all the Ana Verde missionaries came over to our apartment and had Monster Melon. Its just diced watermelon in a bowl full of Monster. Its basically the greatest invention in the history of ever. We had a lot of fun, signed eachothers transfer journals and today have dinner with the Bishop and will say our goodbyes that night. The Elders are staying but both Sisters are leaving. Im bummed cause they would always bring us cookies and brownies! They pretty much owe me because they always call me to give blessings and kill spiders. So its cool, I think that is all for this week, I hope you guys are doing amazing and I hope you have a wonderful Easter Sunday!

Love,

Elder Carper

Zone Conference

This week has been uneventful as far as missionary work goes. On Thursday however, we had a zone conference. It was so sick! I love zone conference, 3 zones around us came as well so I got to see some of my buddies! It was really fun, apparently our mission has a huge problem with gossip. It is super understandable because there is a lot of rumors going around between missionaries about missionaries. So as a mission we are cleaning that up. He also gave us a new challenge. The new mission wide goal was to reach 50 baptisms in the month of March. We reached 47, we missed the mark but we had more baptisms than we ever had before. The new goal is that by the end of this next quarter, each area in the entire mission have a baptism, at least one. So we are working towards that. President Wilson is awesome, he sat by me during lunch and we were talking about Utah. I told him I think he should run for President of the United states, I said "you could be king!" He turned to me and said "I already am" with his business man smurk. It was a really funny moment the whole table was laughing!

Friday I went on exchanges with Elder M our district leader. We met a couple cool people, one of which became an investigator. Elder M is from Ammon Idaho, he was really surprised to hear that I knew where that was! A YSA member took us out to lunch to Panda Express. Im not that big of a fan of Panda but its free! For dinner he made me the best chicken I have ever had. He is a way good cook! Elder L claims to be a good cook but he will never cook anything, so whatever haha. We exchanged back Saturday and I made everyone French Toast. I love French Toast!

Saturday we took N to the AP's baptism. He really liked it and became excited for his, we are still working on helping him gain a testimony on the Book of Mormon, but it is hard to help a blind man who cannot read! He is really awesome though! We have correlation on Saturdays and we were talking with our ward mission leader Bro. T. turns out his son has served in Greely on his mission, and a buddy of his is going to ATC school out in Greely, so I was like maybe he knows Mike! Gotta be a small world in the weed center right?

Sunday was a bit of a let down, N is getting ready for a kidney transplant so he has been on dialysis for a while, he didn't come to church. I was really bummed about that. Sunday night was interesting because we were studying with Elder J and Easter, and the sisters just showed up. Elder J and I tried to calm sister W down because she was having a meltdown. We were sitting in J's car talking and freaking Elder Jeppson gets a call from the District leader and leaves. Just leaves Sister Weiman and I in the car, I was so uncomfortable, don't get me wrong Sister W is awesome and super attractive but it was horrible, I lasted about 5 seconds in the car before I got out and pretended like I got a call. She saw right through it but she wasn't mad because she knows how Elders are. I don't get what Sisters problems are, Elders will be pissed for like 10 minutes and then their fine. When Sisters are mean to eachother, suddenly they have insulted their family, their pet fish, their ancestors and the world. It becomes a ball of hatred that I don't understand. Probably never will but Im cool with being simple minded, its easier.

This is how uneventful this week was, the coolest thing all week, was that I found a sandwhich thingy that now only cuts the crust off, but it cuts your sandwhich into 4 puzzle pieces! So I became a peanut butter and Jelly master! Do you like my apron? Sister W made it for me cause I killed a spider in their car. Small and simple means I guess. To her credit it was the freakiest spider I have ever seen. I think Mom would have cried. So I will describe it for her since she didn't have the opportunity to see it! It was green, hairy, and it had like 4 REALLY long legs and 2 smaller ones, I don't get that but it was also a huge spider, it was probably close to the size of my palm. If I ever see one again I will take a picture before I stab it. I didn't want to smash it cause I don't wanna get my shoes dirty, so I stabbed it.

I will let you know more next week! Love you guys!

Elder carper