Week of Miracles

This week was really great! Conference was a huge uplifting experience for me! My favorite talk was Elder Eyring's in the Saturday Morning session. Fasting has been a huge focus for us as a companionship and as a mission. The entire mission will be fasting next week, members and missionaries. It will be HUGE! Our mission has had an average of a bout 30 baptisms per month. I'm pretty sure its the lowest in the country...but we have a goal of 75 baptisms in the month of June. The highest we have ever had was 48. So we are gonna need help! Its exciting though for sure! We found a few new investigators this week, and so its pretty great! We are working super hard trying to find people! I know this email is short but we don't have very much time to email anymore! Love you all!

Why can't we wear toe rings?

Cool fun event of the week is that we get mirrors. The mission is buying full length mirrors for all the Sisters so that they can make sure they are modest, and one of the Elders asked if we could have some as well. So long story short, we all get full length mirrors! Our mission is surely advancing in the technology! 

 

We have been working with so many members this week. President emailed me last week saying that I was sent here because I have so many creative finding ideas. I assume he is talking about how we would play soccer with a bunch of spanish guys like twice a week in my last area. We found a lot of people that way though. So essentially what we have done is we have been working with tons of members. When I came into the area they were only teaching 1 investigator. So things are definitely progressing! Elder Hernandez' trainer was not a very obedient missionary, so I do 12 week with him sometimes during comp study. He is a really good Elder but he is behind as far as knowing what to do. We have so much fun though! The members really like us which is a good start, but they are used to missionaries that just hang out at their house for hours. So we definitely have work to do! 

 

We had a mini zone conference last tuesday and President Wilson set apart like 30 minutes for a Q 'n A. It was pretty cool, he had never done that before. One of the questions that were asked BY AN ELDER was "Why cant we wear toe rings?" President was just like "Uh....what?" It was pretty funny, the missionaries new nickname (not my idea) is Elder Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a pharisee who is charged with asking the dumbest question in the history of ever. " 4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

 

Thats my fun spiritual thought for the week! Not really though, but one of the really cool things I found in the scriptures is in 1 John 4 6-11. I love that it tells us that we love God because he loved us first. He truly does love us! 

 

Love you all, have a great week!

 

Elder Carper 

Welcome to Lancaster

This picture is of the coolest lady in Bakersfield, Sister Rodriguez! She made me like 5 dozen cookies when I got transferred! Not kidding though, 5 dozen!

This week was way cool and way rough at the same time! On saturday I got diagnosed with Strep Throat, so I had to wait at least 48 hours of having antibiotics in my system to work because until then I am super contagious. Today was the 48 hour mark so I dont have to wait anymore! I was super stoked about that part! 

My new ward is super sick, the Bishop is the coolest guy ever! The first thing he said was Elders, these next few months are gonna be hard. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. Elder Hernandez is way sick, he is super green and his companion didnt do a super good job of training him but he is really humble and teachable. He likes to learn so he asks me a lot of questions about missionary work, makes me feel like I halfway know what Im doing! 

We had a super solid lesson with a part member family we found last week. They are doing super well and all of their kids want to get baptized! We are just working on the Mom. Things for me have been going a lot better ever since I seriously started trying to develop Humility. We are seeing lots of miracles that I knew otherwise wouldnt have happened if I tried to just use my own people skills.

The other fun thing is that I met my Dad's boss. They are the Frazer's and are semi-active. They have been asking missionaries about me ever since I came in the mission and now Im in their ward. I got pretty mad at Sister Frazer cause as I am sitting on her couch, she tries to face-time my Dad right in front of me. I was like NO!!!!!!!!!! Then her husband stepped in and told her not to do that, I appreciated it haha. They gave us some company t-shirts so now I can rep my Dad's work on P-days. 

The picture is of my trainee Elder Myers at transfers. He was a way good kid who is gonna do super awesome things on his mission! I owe a lot of what my mission means to me to this kid! Super huge shout out to him for helping me out early on! The photo is terrible cause I was crying the whole time haha awkward.

      Yall are the best!

Elder Carper

Transfer to Lancaster

So I am getting transferred out of Bakersfield! SO STOKED, im excited to breath clean air for a while. I was way bummed about the ward though, a few of them made me promise to come back and bring my future wife to the ward. Seriously this was a great ward! Im heading down to Lancaster in the Summerset ward with an Elder Hernandez. He has been out as long as Elder Myers so he is still pretty green! I guess I wasnt a very good District leader because they released me. They said there is already one so they wont worry about it. So that kinda confirms my belief that they only called me because i was the only one left who could do it. Im pretty bummed, I really enjoyed serving everyone in the District! They all are super fantastic missionaries!

Im making it fast because the internet keeps going in and out. Sorry for the short update but in short. Im dope, church is still true, Bakersfield still has a funky smell that I have never gotten used to.

Love you all

Elder Carper

 

Here is one of my favorite families here! Brother Hosking is a goofball!

Real Quick!

Shoot this has to be super quick cause Elder Myers and I are going golfing with a member today! 

This week has been solid! We went on exchanges with some elders in the District, it was a blast. I went with my buddy Elder Easter, we are both pretty much the same age in the mission so we had a blast reminiscing about Palmdale. We had a ton of fun down there! We had ZTM this past friday, I gave a training on finding while teaching. Nobody booed me so I am assuming it went well! Everything else is fine, this is the last week of transfers so anything you send me be sure to send it to the mission office!

This is a picture of my cousins Cesar, Jamie, Isabelle (5) and Ryan (2). They are so flippin cool! 

Elder Carper

We may be tools, but we're tools for the Lord!

This week has been CRAZY! On tuesday we went on exchanges with some Elders in the district  because one of them is being trained. It was a lot of fun, I went with the new missionary and had a lot of fun! We both had red hair so hooray for the jokes! I didnt care because they all got a good conversation going...usually about family history actually! Him and I had quite a solid heart to heart, his trainer isnt really being exactly obedient and its been hurting the companionship. They arent doing anything inherently bad, its just very little things like music or waking up on time and being diligent. So we just talked about how obedience is really a state of mind instead of just actions. We need to strive to be obedient and desire to have the spirit with us, not just do obedient things because he have to. It was a good exchange, the next day on Wednesday we had interviews with President and Sister Wilson. President just thanked me for everything I was doing...it was weird cause I dont like it when people compliment me. Makes me uncomfortable and do awkward things like run away and hide and make weird faces...

Since Elder Myers is still in training we had to go on another exchange with the Zone Leaders on friday. It was absolutely a blast! i went with Elder Allen who is a super good buddy and a brand new Zone Leader, pretty much the main topic of conversation was him asking me how to be a good leader. Again...super weird...I basically just told him is that the key to getting people to like you is to treat everybody like they are your best friend that you havent seen in years. So lets see if he takes my advice!

Super fun fact of the week:
Elder Myers (my comp) used to have a banjo. He broke it. 

I asked if there was more to the story and I guess not, he literally had it and then broke it. That is pretty much the flow of the conversations between my companion and I. We dont talk much...at all actually but I still love the kid! He has a strong testimony and he likes to work so no complaints over here! The picture is of me being bored on the way to a District Activity, your welcome.

Love you all! 

Elder Carper

 

 

His Work, His Way

I was humbled quite a bit this week. Our whole District was struggling really bad with success. Everyone is doing everything that they are supposed to and the results just havent been showing it at all. It pretty much broke my heart to see everyone struggling when i know that they are doing everything they can. So as I was praying really hard for things to be able to help I got the idea that we should all have a huge fast on one day, have a super short and very spiritual meeting before hand, bring a goal that the Lord inspired them to have, and then just hit it super hard to get the Lord on our side. Everyone added diligence to their covenant list and was working really hard to try and get blessings for Saturday (the day we actually did the fast). So everyone hit it really hard this week, I was so proud and excited for everyone on Saturday when they all came to that short meeting with a burning desire to have the Lords help. The goals everybody brought were about finding people and having hearts changed in their areas. Our goal was to find a specific family that was put into both Elder Myers and My head. It was a cool revalatory experience to find that out. So Saturday we hit it hard, the meeting was super spirit filled, so much you could almost see it. We hit it as hard as we possibly could to find this family, worked every second of the day, skipped lunch and dinner and....nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was pretty upset that night and just went to bed as soon as I got home because I just felt like the Lord let me down. The next day was obviously fast and testimony meeting and there was a lot of testimonies talking about why God sometimes doesnt answer our prayers. It was one of those face slapper moments that I knew I needed to hear that specific thing at that time. I pretty much realized that I had become pretty prideful in my missionary work, that I felt like I could just talk to anyone and convert them all by myself instead of relying solely upon the Lord for that help. I felt like I was a really good missionary up until yesterday haha. It was a hard lesson to learn but the Lord taught me that it is His work, and therefore it needs to be done His way. 

So the week ended super good!!! I learned something new that I needed to be taught the hard way, and so hopefully I can actually apply the lesson learned! Everyone else in the District was excited and understood that the Lord is just testing us, they are huge examples to me! Every one of them is a spiritual giant! 

Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Carper