Welcome to Nebraska

Hello Family and friends!

I was indeed transferred! I'm sad to leave Sioux Falls, there was a ton of great people there, members and investigators. I'm sure we will go back there and visit them. And Elder Matheson was so dang great. He will be a great missionary.

I'm now in Omaha! The dream baby! The area I'm in is SUPER small though... so who knows how this will go. Also its MEGA rich. Like... we have been knocking on million dollar homes... so that makes things interesting!  I have also never been tempted more to wear my crazy socks... Everyone in our ward this Sunday was wearing them. I guess its the new thing now.... who knew??

My new companion is Elder Wangsgaard. (pronounced wangs guard) He is from Utah like pretty much every one else. He's still pretty new so I'm working with him to make sure he is comfortable with everything. He is a shy timid kid. Hes nice. I'm hoping to get him out of his shell a little bit. I'm sure we will do a good job here together.

My goodness the weather here is crazy. Wednesday it was legit 70 degrees. And then Friday it snowed and it was like 15 degrees. And now its about 50 and all the snow is gone. Wild mid-west.

I met my first Scientologist. Talked to him for a couple of minutes at the door. They have some interesting beliefs. But hey i guess whatever floats your goats.

Love you all!

Elder Carter

Za Za Za Zone Conference!

Hello everyone,

This week has been super great! We had Two exchanges this week! We went with The Zone leaders on Tuesday and it was super great. I went with Elder George and we taught a ton of people. It was super cold so we did as much as we could to not have to go outside and freeze haha. Sadly sometimes its unavoidable but thats alright. 

Then we went on Exchanges with Elder Brandon! It also went well. We got to teach one of their New Converts. They are super awesome.

We also had Zone Conference this week! We learned so much about the Doctrine of Christ. The doctrine of christ is a way of life man! Everyone has got to live it! in 2 Nephi 5 27 it says they lived after the manner of happiness! Thats the doctrine of christ! As you live it you do become happy! We also talked a lot about What Moroni Said to Joseph Smith when he appeared to him. It was very interesting.

So weird picture of the week

They have these signs all over the place here in South Dakota. I guess its where people have gotten in crashes and have died. These signs are quite shocking i think. South Dakotans just do what they want man. Why die?

I hope you saw some great pictures of me from zone conference! 

Thats all i got! 

Love you all!

Elder Carter

Oh wow what happened to January...

Oh wow what happened to January...

Well happy February everyone!

This week has been great! On P-day we played some board games which i thought was super fun. And my family knows that for whatever reason i am super duper lucky when i comes to board games. We played Settlers and Carcassone. I won. Go me. Haha i guess my hidden talent is dice rolling

So yesterday we went to the Ulrich's house for dinner! They are such an awesome family! They are the ones that we skyped at their house. They have 10 kids which is just CRAZY! but its pretty fun. Mom and dad- They said that when you want to come tour or whatever, we can stay at their house, super nice of them!

WE also had district meeting this last week too, talked a lot about hope and how it relates to faith. Which is good because i love those two attributes. We have a tiny district so we don't have a ton of discussion but it was still pretty awesome!

This upcoming week is going to be full of stuff! We are going on exchanges on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday so its going to be crazy. Zone Conference is also this Friday which is always super good! I'm excited to learn from President Gardner! I'm sure it will be great. I might be participating in a special musical number for zone Conference but i don't know yet. We will see how that goes.

Love you all! Hope the week goes well!

Elder Carter

New year new schedule!

Big news for this year! On Wednesday we had a worldwide missionary broadcast where they announced 2 pretty big changes. They changed the missionary schedule quite a bit. Now instead of planning at night, we plan in the morning, and companion study was moved to the afternoon. I think they mostly changed the schedule to allow for more personal time to make it less stressful for missionaries. Also it will make the adjustment to coming home better because it has more flexibility.

The other change was to the "key Indicators" and if you don't know what that is thats fine, we just don't report basically anything except baptisms, investigators with a baptismal date, investigators that attended sacrament meeting, and new investigators.

I'm excited to compare this schedule to the last one, since i basically have equal time with both.

We also had interview this week with President Gardner! He and I talked quite a bit about what i would like to do with the last half of my mission. He helped me set some goals and gave me some ideas for what i should do to accomplish them. Hopefully i can continue to progress in my skills and effectiveness!

Other News, It snowed 7 inches on tuesday, it was pretty crazy. There were so many cars that got stuck, so many accidents, everything. Our car is one of the worst in the mission as far as driving in the snow goes. Its light weight, and two wheel drive, so we didnt even drive until wednesday night because we couldn't get out of the parking lot. so thats kinda fun!

Overall it has been a really strange week. Seems like a lot of things got in the way of procelyting. but hey thats how it goes sometimes. This week is supposed to be pretty warm, so the snow will probably be gone.

Well love you all!

Elder Carter

Below are some pictures from the mission facebook page.

Snickerdoodles

Shout out to my favorite youngest sister! She turns the ripe old age of 15 this day. Holy guacamole what a crazy time. half way to 30!

Well this week has been quite interesting. We had Exchanges this week! I went with Elder Connolly and it went really well. We ran around and taught a bunch of people and it was quite a blast. Hes a good guy!

We also had to do an exchange with the Other Elders in our ward because they had too many appointments and they needed help. Little did they know that we actually had the same problem. It all worked out in the end. That day was so crazy. We Were teaching like madmen. Good times though.

This upcoming week is going to be great! On tuesday we are having Interviews with our mission president! Its going to be great; president Gardner is the best. Then on Wednesday we have a worldwide missionary broadcast that is going to be great. If its anything like the one last year, its going to be fantastic.

Yes yes, a year has gone by. Its crazy how fast time really does go while i'm here. I have loved every second of being here and am excited to continue to work for another year. I hope that i will be able to do what the Lord expects of me.

Love you all!

ELder Carter

I had a dream

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

You know the weirdest thing about missionary work is definitely the dreams. There's so many times when I have dreams that I'm doing something but I'm still a missionary and I start freaking out because I don't have a companion or I'm not doing something productive. It's pretty funny! 

This week was transfers! And nope I didn't get transferred! Still here in Sioux falls. I'm excited! We have a lot of good stuff going so I didn't want to get transferred.

I guess today it's supposed to heavy ice rain. Like the whole mission is shut down right now because the weather is too bad. Ironically we haven't had it happen yet... typically we are the first ones. But I'll take it!

It's interesting that the Lord wants to make sure that we are busy. We have had to "drop" some investigators this week but we have been able to find quite a few more. Equal if not more than we had before. I'm so grateful for that because I really don't want to be outside in the -10 degree weather. And I guess Heavenly Father doesn't want that either!

This week we have exchanges coming up again! I'm excited, it will be with our new district leader! His name is Elder Connolly, and I don't know him that well so I'm excited to get to know him.

Well talk to you next week!

Love you so much!

ELder Carter

This week was super weird

My goodness this week was super weird. We had a lot of things going on. We had less time to proselyte this week than normal but that's alright.

I got to go to the temple!! It was seriously the best! There was so much that i was able to learn! and on top of that a ton of my mission friends were there and i was able to reunite with them! huzzah! Also I drove down from Sioux city to Omaha with Elder Kimzey and Elder Jones and we had such a good time. I'm so glad that i was able to go!

We also had the opportunity to participate in someone else's baptism. The ward I am serving in has 2 sets of missionaries, and the other set also had a baptism. Her name is Sister Berg. She is great! I was glad that we were able to do what we can! The missionary work in this ward is going pretty well! many of the members are helping us out quite a bit. i'm grateful for that!:)

I have another awesome story to tell. So we have this family that we had been trying to see for like the last 3 months but could never get an appointment set up with them. Then like last Thursday they called us up out of the blue and asked us to come over and teach one of their friends! So we went over there and met a girl named Keelee, she's 18 and wanted to learn more about the church. we were able to testify of the restoration and the spirit was strong. She said she wanted to be baptized as soon as possible. She doesn't live in our area which is totally fine but when she went back home she started teaching her Family the things we taught her. CRAZY. No one does that.  Talk about 1 Nephi 8:12. She came to church yesterday and she said that she wanted to serve a mission haha. It's crazy how much the gospel changes people in short amounts of time.

This week is transfers again... I don't know what happened to the last 6 weeks but i guess they are gone now... I don't expect to be transferred but you never know! I'm sure you'll  find out next week... or not and I'll just keep you all in the dark. That might be more fun.

Love you all so much!!!

Elder Andy Carter