Nasty food and 1 year.

Hello todos!!

Well, it happened. I have one full year in the mission. Just yesterday I feel like I was talking to Elder Scott in the airport about summer sales. haha Well, now one year, 1000 spanish words, and 6 ripped pants later, here I am. As you guys will be glad to know, I did indeed burn a shirt. I'm sorry though, all the pictures didn't turn out. I have a 30 second video that I'm going to send to my mom with my camera, so we'll see if she can sub that to the blog. 

Anyways! So this week I had divisions with one of my Zone Leaders, Elder Coe. He's from Taylorsville and he's a stud. One of my favorite ZLs. I actually went to la Villa de San Fransisco. So, if someone can tell Trevor Casey that the cocinera in that area says hi, that'd be great. Anyway. We went out to work in that area and man am I blessed. Zamorano is a winter wonderland compared to la Villa. I was sweating like a pig the whole day. We contacted this sweet old lady that let us into her house. We started just talking with her, getting to know her and all that fun stuff. Then we felt super strongly to talk about Jose Smith with her. That was actually consejo given to us by Elder Duncan, the Area President here in Central America. So as we testified to her about the experience that the young Jose Smith had, she stopped us. She then started to tell us that she had distanced herself from two churches that she had gone to in her life, because to her, they didn't feel right. Then she asked us "Is it really that easy? All I have to do is pray?" And we told her yeah! Of course. That's what Santiago says and he was an apostol! She promised us that she was going to find her very own arboleda and pray. Honestly, I have the faith that she went and prayed. The only bad part of that story was that she didn't even live in our area. 

So divisions ended with district meeting and we went back to our area. that day we had to lend service to a member here in the rama. Her name's Celsa and she is the rumor woman of the whole town. She could not stop talking about things that she had heard throughout the week. And well, for those of you that know me, I love egging people on. So I was acting very interested and kept on getting more and more out of her. Meanwhile, my companion was dying. He was getting so annoyed of hearing it. As we left he told me that he wasn't going to let me talk at all the next time. Obviously he was joking, but I ended up laughing a little more than him after. But wait, that's not the worst part. So after halfway building a chicken coop for her, she made us lunch. She gave us the plate and it had some kind of meat, rice, and a giant full tomato with salt. I hate tomatos. But mom, I'd make you proud because I ate that whole thing. Buuuut still that's not the worst part. As we were eating the meat, we kind of looked at each other. It tasted super bland. And it had a form that was pretty gross. So, just casually I asked her what animal it came from. And she answered pig! Then I went too far and asked what part of the pig.....And you know what she said? Penis. She said it while I was chewing on it. I held back a gag and said, "Oh hermana....Que rica esta carne....Nunca habia probado pene de chancho en me vida...." Then she told me that it'll put more hair in my beard, so I ate it all. That was pretty rough though. 

So on Sunday, we show up to church and this really old guy walks up to us and asks what we were doing at 5. We just had contacting in our agendas, so we told him nothing. He told us to go to his house, so we wrote him in. Then 4 more times in the church, he walked by us and said "At 5 right? good. don't forget." We didn't even check our agendas and at 4 we had a cita at Familia Martinez house and that was all the way across the pueblo. We ended up leaving that house at about 5:30. So we decided to take a mototaxi. We actually had no idea where this guy lived, we were just going to go to his bvarrio and start asking people if they knew him. So we walked by this house and it was throwing a huge party and Elder Wardle turned to me and said "There's no way that's his house." And i agreed. We went and asked someone down the street where he lived and she said at the party house! So we walked up and called at the gate and someone let us in. We went out on the patio and there was Hermano Theodoro with a party hat! We asked him who's birthday it was and he said Me! Haha so we sat there and watched these kids play a bunch of party games, ate some good food, and drank the best horchata. It was a good time and we have some fotos from that as well. Well, I hope you guys are taking care! I love you all. 

Love, Elder Carter

Hey everyone!!

How is everyone doing? I hope great. Things are pretty smooth here in Zamorano. We've been trying to help a lot of the members progress as well as get references from them. We've been able to receive a few this week. We received one from our leader missional that seems pretty golden. We've been able to teach hm twice. He's very very open with us about his feelings. We taught the first lesson to him this week and he took it all super well. He told us that up front, he doesn't believe it. Then I told him what Joseph Smith had said. That if he hadn't experienced it, he wouldn't have believed the story either. He well that that made sense. We challenged him to pray that night, as a family. His girlfriend hasn't been feeling well, so she hasn't been able to accompany us in the lessons. But David (That's his name) Tells us that he tells everything that he learns to her. He accepted to pray as a family and also said that he wants to start going to church. He wasn't able to come yesterday, but he's very excited about next week. I'm super excited for this man. He's such a stud and we can tell he wants to make a lot of changes in his life. Obviously, he still has to get himself married, but who doesn't here....haha but really. He is probably our most positive investigator that we have right now. 

We have gone back to Hernan's house two times, but he hasn't been home. His son says that he's been working abnormal hours lately. We'll see what is going on with him this week. He was also another that was so positive.

Well, I'm sorry for the short letter this week! We didn't have much time today. The family with the keys to the church haven't been home all day and we just got the keys about 40 minutes ago. I hope you all have a wonderful week!! I actually took some pictures this week, but I'll get more quality ones next week!! I love you guys so much.

Love, Elder Carter

"That's a snake!!"

Well family and friends, another week has passed here in the green valley.

Everything has been going great. Always slow when you open a new area, but that investigator pool is growing!! As long as the pool in front of our house. It's been raining almost every day for the past week. It's been a bummer because my pants get super dirty from trudging in the mud. But hey, missionary life. Live and love it. I have a fun story to tell you guys before I inform you about the work! On thursday, we came back to the apartment to drop stuff off after District Meeting. As we were talking in our kitchen, I noticed just a tail sticking down the wall from the ceiling. So I walk over thinking it's just a gecko, and when I get close, I was like, "That's a snake!!" My comp runs over and says "It's a boa!!" So he just goes up to it and grabs the tail, but the sucker was strong and slipped away. So we look up into our roof and see it coiled up in there. And that thing was big. We started looking around for places where it could have gotten in and we couldn't find anything. So we go and talk to our dueño and tell him there's a boa in our house. He comes over and looks up in the roof and can't see it. Then he turns to my comp and calls him a "Visionary Man" Haha that one made me laugh pretty good. (Our dueño isn't a member.) So he goes and gets a hammer to pull the ceiling board out, and when he does....there was nothing there! So we pulled the whole top panel off and finally found it. It had gone to the other side of the wall. When we saw it just sitting there, we started thinking what we were going to do. My comp just said, "Well, I'll grab it!" and he climbed the latter and grabbed it. Haha so we started playing with it a bit and took a few pictures. We ended up skinning it and drying it. Now Elder Wardle has half a snake skin and so do I.

So we've started to work a lot with contacting, especially since the mission has turned it's focus to that. We found two very positive investigators through contacting this week. One is named Hernan. He owns a rock cutting business here in Zamorano. We just walked up to him and started chatting with him. (We did the sly, "Hey, does Juan Alvarez live in this house?" And he said no, then we got to talking. I asked him if he was a member of our church and he said no. Then I asked him why not. And he said, "Well, I've never really thought of why not. I have a lot of friends that are members of your church." Then I said, "Well, now's your chance! We're having a baptism date the 26th of September. Will you prepare to be baptized then?" And he said, "Well, yeah, if it's right." We then had a little talk of how he could get to know if the church was true or not. I told him, "All you have to do is pray tonight. If you ask with sincerity, you'll get the answer." Then he said, "Why can't we do it now?" I said, "Vaya pues! Let's do it!" He prayed and we asked him how he felt. And he just said he was content. We haven't been able to return with him yet, and he didn't make it to church, but I have a really good feeling about him. 

Well everyone, thank you so much for all the love and support! Take it easy this Labor Day and go ahead and drink a good ole cold Dr. Pepper for me.

Love, Elder Carter