Service, service and service!

Hey family and friends!!

Well, sounds like you're getting a little heat treat back home! over 100 in utah this week?? Wow.
I'm glad I'm here in the cool low 90s. haha Anyway. How is everyone doing? I'm doing great out here.
Nothing too new has happened. 

About 2 weeks ago, we get back to the hotel and one of the neighborhood kids was outside skateboarding.
I borrowed the board from him and did a few tricks and road around for a little bit. These kids were amazed
 by me. It was pretty funny. But the best part, they invited all their friends over the next day to watch me skate.
 And so a did a few more. The next day, the kids invited their older brothers to watch. Flash forward a week
later, Elder Fernandez and I were out contacting at night in centro and this teenager walked up to us and
asked "Hey you're the mormon that skates right? My friends and I were wondering if you could teach us all
how to skate sometime." So we're going to set up a little workshop to teach kids how to skate! And every
lesson comes with a free pamphlet! Haha I'm actually pretty excited to do that. I think it'll turn out better than 
our English classes.

The work has been a little rough, but we've shifted our focus from contacting to find new investigators, to give
 service. We've been able to do a lot of interesting things as service from cutting down trees with machetes, to
 washing the walls of houses with a brush. It's been really great to see the smile on the faces of the people that
 we serve. Usually the people are alright with us sharing a message after we do a little service as well. We still
haven't found any new investigators, but we had 21 people in church!! That was really cool. I got to give a
 suprise talk too. I just talked about the Book of Mormon and shared that the people that wrote it just aren't
characters in a book. They are real people. They really lived. I shared Jacob 4:1-4. This is such a powerful
scripture because Jacob is explaining how hard it is to write on planches of gold and how every day he prays
that younger generations will appreciate the work that he did. Well folks, we're the younger generation. Do
we appreciate what the profets of old have done or no? I hope the answer is yes. This book is such a great
treasure. We can honestly find peace and happiness in these pages. 

I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful week!!! 

Love, Elder Carter

PS. Fotos coming soon.

Big ole 20

Hola family and friends!

Thank you all for the Birthday wishes! It's going to be a little weird to call myself 20. Definitely don't 

feel a year over 16. But hey, we all gotta grow up sometime.

This week was amazing. On tuesday we had the opportunity to have interviews with President Bowler. 

He gave Elder Fernandez and I some great advice on how to work here in Langue and I had the time to 

ask him a few personaly questions. I really feel that we are going to be blessed as we follow the council 

that he gave us. He counseled us to make promises. He said that we are representatives of Jesus Christ 

and we have the right and authority to promise our investigators blessing. We've really been putting that 

into practice this week.

Alcides made it to church on Sunday!! But again he said he wants to wait a little longer before baptism. 

That's alright. I know with a surety in my heart that this man will be baptized. We found a few new 

investigators this week! One is named Nancy. She lives pretty far. About 3 Kilometros from the church, 

but she is absolutely pilas. she accepted the Book of Mormon very quickly. She still has a lot of doubts 

and is pretty confused, but it's nothing that a few lessons can fix. We teach her with her little brother 

Kevin. This kid is 13 and just as pilas as her!! He always sees us when we're walking around and rides 

his bike over to us and shakes our hands. Then he asks when we are going to visit him again. 

The others we started teaching are a family of 3. The parents aren't married, but the dad Santos is so cool. 

He always pays close attention and tells all the kids that are in the room to be quiet and listen. He has 

never attended a church in his life, but promised to come yesterday. He didn't make it, sadly, but I'm not 

too worried. He remembers all that we taught the time before when we return, and has amazing questions 

during. The mother isn't too interested, but it she can come to love this gospel, just like anyone else.

I hope you all have a great week. I love you all so much!

Love, Elder Carter

PS: These pictures are from a branch activity that we did! We taught everyone how to make pizza! 

The Hermana in the pink shirt is our cocinera. (Cooks us food!)
And it was Elder Fernandez birthday on the 6th.

Trials

Hello family and friends! I hope this week has been a great week for everyone. I guess it's getting pretty hot there in the United States! It's always hot here. Actually it's started to cool down a bit. It rains about every day now, and will continue to rain until September.

I've personally been doing better. I'm on medication that has really been helping me get rid of this bacteria. It's not bad. The worst part is the Pepto 4 times a day. That's really rough. Oh and we haven't found any more scorpians in the house! 

The work has been extremely hard. Remember Alcides? Well, he's had some difficulties pass him. He's had people come into his life and talk bad about the church and just flat out told him lies. Now he doesn't read the Book of Mormon and he didn't attend church yesterday. We actually only had 13 people not counting children at church yesterday. He also is talking about moving 3 hours away in Choluteca. Also an other investigator named Samael doesn't want to put a baptismal date. We doesn't want us to impression him.

We've put a lot of our strength and energy into contacting and other churches have seen this. The churches in this area have really upped the heat against us. They now say that we don't believe in God, so we've had many doors slammed in our face. But that doesn't discourage us! We keep contacting new people every day. Up to this point, we don't have any note-worthy contacts. But we will keep you updated. 

We have been teaching classes of English though. We have a really small class right now, but really expect that to grow. Doing this, i think, will be able to grow our investigator pool.

Well everyone, I'm sorry this is short, but we have to get to work. We've made some big goals for this week, so expect a better email next week full of miracles!! I love you all and always remember to read the Book of Mormon. Honestly, you will find peace, love and purpose in your life with this book.

Love, Elder Carter

Stool samples and Scorpions

Well. You can get an idea of how this week went from the subject. I took a stool sample tuesday and found out I have bacteria in my stomach. I've been having really bad stomach pains all week that has almost completely stopped the work. Today I received medicine though. Hopefully this will take care of everything. It's been a rough week just to lay in the house, but I've had almost no energy as well. We got to leave on Saturday though. We worked a bit, not too effectively. But when we got back from working, there was a scorpion on Elder Fernandez's bed. We killed it pretty quick. That was actually the first scorpion I've ever seen and I found out on Saturday and I have a giant fear of scorpions. I actually haven't slept at all since then, just thinking about them.

Our investigator Alcides was going to get baptized on Saturday, but he couldn't because he went to San Lorenzo for medical treatment. We have a cita with him tonight and we'll program a date for this Saturday. He's such a great guy, but he had a stroke about 4 years ago that disabled him physically and mentally. He gets frustrated a lot because he can't understand. BUT! He read the whole Book of Mormon in one week! We were blown away! 

Anyway. Thank you guys so much for your support! I love you all. Until next week...

Love, Elder Carter