Happy Easter!

Hello everyone! Hope you had a fantastic Easter! Its always a good time to remember the savior and his atonement for us!

No I didn't get transferred. Still in Lincoln! im glad.

Something weird here in Nebraska... they have good Friday off every year... Why didn't we get that? Like what?

But hey something cool, we got to see one of our investigators get married to their boyfriend this weekend! Super cool! it was surprisingly very short. But yeah it was great because now she can get baptized... if she wants to that is. Their names are Ricky and MJ. Ricky is already a member, but super less active. We actually found them on accident haha. We were knocking on the house of a family that we thought lived there, turned out they had just moved and ricky and MJ just moved in. Ricky was super excited to see us and really wanted to start coming back to church. So yeah! Weird how we are lead to people sometimes. But happens all the time.

Easter was pretty sweet honestly! My mother sent me a package full of good stuff! Tropical Starburst Jelly Beans! Love those so much. I may have eaten 2 bags of them already... but maybe not. I love candy too much. But oh well. We also went to a members house for dinner and they had like EVERYTHING. Turkey ham deviled eggs potatoes green beans homemade rolls cake, like thanksgiving but on easter. Super good food.

The few days before that were awful though. It rained all day and it was windy and cold and no one wanted to let us in...those Sacks. But whatever, opposition in all things to be able to have joy!

Hopefully we will see a lot of success this transfer. We got high hopes!

Love you all!

 Elder Carter

2/24

Well well. Two months down already. I'm getting old. But I feel like I still just started yesterday. I know NOTHING. but hey... I'll get there.

Transfers! They are this Wednesday! Don't know what's happening but yeah! The transfer is over! One down a bunch to go! I don't think Ill get moved but who knows. Maybe I will.

This week was much more mellow than last week. We did have a sweet lesson with one of our investigators though. Her name is Ariana and she has a 2 year old son. We invited her over for dinner in a members home. It was super sweet. She brought her son and we talked about the plan of salvation. The family we were with (the Welch's) Talked about how important the plan was to their family and what it meant for them and their new baby. Super sweet. We are very hopeful for Ariana. she seems to be progressing well and hopefully she will want to be baptized.

On Sunday we did have 2 investigators come to church! one of them we totally didn't expect to come. His name is Frank. He kinda just showed up out of the blue. We had called him and texted him without a reply so we didn't expect him there but he came! the other investigator is Lisa and her daughter Anna. They are a super sweet family too. Very accepting of us and everything we teach.

Hey this weekend is Easter! Hope everyone takes time to appreciate the atonement that Christ preformed for us all. If you get a chance check out the churches new video called #hallelujah! its quite sweet. Also watch the older video called Because He Lives. They are both great. Post em on facebook! super easy way to share the gospel without confronting people!

I guess I don't have much else to say this week! sorry for the lame email everyone! don't be mad.

Enjoy Springtime everyone!

Elder Andy Carter

Slammed

Well before i started my letter i thought i would let my grandpa know that I've already gained 10 pounds since I entered the MTC. Ill be at 160 before you know it Grandpa!

Anyways now that that's out of the way... This last week has been so slammed. We've had so many appointments every day and we are having a rough time keeping up with it. Good problem to have i guess.

Holy Moley if you thought last weeks miracle was good just wait for this one.

So to preface the actual miracle i have to tell a side story. When my comp and i were on exchanges, he and his temporary companion saw a guy walking and they were like hey lets chase him down and talk to him. So they kinda ran and yelled to him and they were able to talk to him. Turned out to be a sweet investigator... but not in our area. Anyways now that leads to this miracle

We were knocking some doors and we saw another guy walking quite a ways away. My companion was like well if it worked before itll work again. Immediately i thought to myself this guy isn't going to be interested but he will lead us to somewhere that we have to be. Anyways we chase this guy for quite a while. maybe like 3 blocks. Like he thought we were stalking him. When we got close enough we yelled to him and he was freaked out and ran away. My companion looked at the house we were next to and was like "lets knock that house" (after the fact, he told me he had a distinct impression to go to that house) so we knocked. The lady, named lisa, opens the door and was like "man i was just talking about you guys yesterday. come on in! I was wondering why you stopped coming around to my house." Shocked. We taught her and she came with us to a baptismal service. We are going back Wednesday to teach her again. lesson learned: Always chase people down.

My dad had a few more questions so I'll answer them here again:

How much time do you have to write letters? We have an "hour" but we typically take about 1.5 hours. No set rule exactly

Do you always go to the library? Yes

Do all of the missionaries in your area go to the same library? Most of the missionaries from the Lincoln North and Lincoln South zone's do email at the same library. We do like everything together pretty much. The only ones that don't are the sisters. We don't see them ever except at training meetings.

How was your visit to the University? The stadium tour was sweet! They took us out on the field and everything. We saw all their practice facilities and such. They hook their sports players up. I mean they have like specific gyms for them, a huge hot tub/pool thing for relaxing, Gatorade powerade dispensers like everywhere for them, just like anything they need. I would definitely not mind playing tennis for them. Who knows maybe i will haha. I have no clue how good they are though.

Are you a cornhusker fan yet? Yes. Cornhusker is life. Sadly I'll probably never get to go to a game because the seats are all sold out. Apparently every seat is a season ticket and you have to buy a pass like 6 months in advance. They sell out within  10 minutes the dude said. And other tickets for those not attending are like 200 bucks. I hope to go to one game someday.

Is there a chance that you could serve in the visitor center or Winter Quarters? No only sisters serve in the visitors center and Winter Quarters center.

Anyways lifes great! finally getting warm here!

Love ya!

Elder Andy Carter

Springs a comin.

Goodness gracious family! Mission life is best life.

First of all congratz to my main man Bryce for joinin the crew! The lord's elite! Being a missionary is so rewarding im sure youll seen In a short few months. I'm super excited for ya, I hope you're excited too. I expect the whole state of California to be baptized before you come home. OK ok... not the whole state just your mission area.

Miracles man. They are everywhere. They come in weird ways too. My companion and I were about to die on fast sundaybecause yeah.. fast sunday... but anyways it was like 5 oclock and we had dinner scheduled for 530 so we were about ready to go over to the members house. They call us up and are like hey we actually have to push it back to 630 because my husband wont be home yet. We were like ok no big deal we are only about to starve but we can do that. (no we didn't really say that) So we like adjusted our plans and decided to go see this less active dude. Well before we got there we realized they don't even live there anymore but we decided that we were supposed to go there for a reason or the lord wouldn't have has us write them down. Anyways we go the the house, theres a dude sitting out front who tells us to go see his neighbor so we do. We knock on her door and she comes out and talks with us. She lets us share our message with her and it went super well. At the end of the lesson we ask her to say the prayer. She says she doesn't know how but we gave her instructions and the blueprint thing we have in the pamphlet. Her prayer was the most innocent, sincere prayer every. like when a child says a prayer. So great. Anyways her name is Ariana and we will be seeing her later this week.  There's no way we would have met her if we had our dinner at 530 like we planned. No way it was a coincidence. It may seem like a rare thing for that to happen but no, it happens all the time.

Anyways as for fun stories this week week we met another drunk dude that said he was Mormon and was baptized when he was like 4. he wasn't. When we left we shook his hand and he said "you just shook the hand of satan". Weirdo's man. Don't drink, it messes you up. But since theres like nothing to do in Nebraska, drinking is quite popular.

My goodness I love being a missionary. I'm terrible at like... everything... but hey I got the lord with me so that's all I need. the rest will come. All I gotta do is keep living the rules. Man if anyone has doubts about serving because they don't know if they are prepared, get out and do it. In our weaknesses, we are made strong.

Gospel is true fam.

Love Elder Carter

Leap Day

Hi guys! what a glorious week its been!

You probably saw a ton of pictures from trainer/trainee meeting last week. That was a good meeting. We basically talked about how to get used to mission life in its various forms including getting along with your companions and learning to be outgoing etc. It was nice for us to be able to ask them questions about what to do and how to work things out. President and Sister Gardner care for us a lot. They are willing to do anything for us.

Another fun thing about Nebraska:  The stoplights are horizontal instead of vertical like in Idaho. Its pretty weird.

As far as investigators go we have one that im quite excited about. His names Edward. He's a super chill black guy that loves talking. Like.. LOVES talking. We will say like 4 things and he will go on for a good 10 minutes about it and what not. We've asked him to be baptized and he said he wants to be married to his girlfriend first which is AWESOME because now we don't have to tell him to do that (they live together). He came to church and was a little freaked out by a few things like sustaining new callings and passing the sacrament haha. But elder karl was able to explain what was going on so he was more comfortable.

You'll be happy to know that i've passed or blessed the sacrament EVERY week that I've been here. The ward I'm in is a lot like the ward at home. In the words of my bishop, its got only newly weds and newly dead's haha. Theres like 5 youth. so I have quite a bit of experience with this kind of ward to say the least.

My wonderful father asked a bunch of questions so I will include them in this email.

Do you eat dinners with members? Yes we eat with members all the time. We have only had like 1 or so days that we haven't had a member sign up for dinner. Everyone love feeding the missionaries, and they are all super chill people too. Most of them are in dental/law school.

What kind of foods do you eat? We eat normal food haha I don't know what else to say about it other than its normal. Not a lot of corn yet.

What is the crazyest thing you were offered? As far as craziest thing ive been offered... uh not much really. But when I was on exchanges we did get this super weird like bean patty. I should have taken a picture of it because I don't know how to describe it but basically it was a hamburger sized patty of black beans? it had something else in it too but I don't know what it was. It was... interesting. not good not bad just weird.

How far away are you from Omaha? We are about 45 minutes away from Omaha.

Do you walk very much or do you drive everywhere? So far we have driven everywhere mostly because its cold. But if we run out of miles (every area has a set amount of miles for a 3 week period, ours is 700 miles) then we will have to walk everywhere. But when it gets warmer, that wont be a big deal.

What do you do on PDay?On Pday, ball is life. We play basketball every pday. Other than that we just email wash clothes and go to like the mall occasionally. We are always with the other missionaries in our zone though it makes it a party.

Do you have a washer and dryer in your apertment? No. We use a washing machine in a members house. I don't know why but I guess they let us use it so we do. Its pretty nice.

What do you eat for breakfast and lunch? Breakfast I eat some cereal and oatmeal and bagles a lot. For lunch we eat out quite a bit actually. But if we don't I usually make sandwiches.

do you get to go to the temple often? No. We don't go to the temple unless we are assigned to Omaha. Then it'd be once a quarter.

Is the University in your area? ummm... Its not im my area but its in my zone. we are actually taking a tour of the football stadium today. The zone leaders are over the YSA ward and the campus of the university. So they are on campus a lot.

How many spanish speakers are you finding? We run into lots of Spanish speakers. we have a more "ghetto" area that has more Spanish speakers.

How big is the ward?  How many wards are you over? The ward is like I said about the same as the ward at home. We are just over the one ward. There are a lot of areas that do take more than one ward though.

that's all the questions! IF you have more then send em through id be glad to answer them

Mission life is great!

Love you all!

Elder Andy Carter

1 down 23 to go!

Hello fam.

Yes yes I know... Im almost home! my 1 month mark was on Saturday. Ill be back before anyone knows im gone.

So a few fun things about Lincoln:

They have BLACK squirrels here. Its super weird. They look like skunks kinds.

They also have a ton of bunnies everywhere. They just run around all the time. They aren't like jack rabbits that we have at home or whatever you call them, but like legit bunnies. Short little legs big floppy ears. Everywhere. Nebraska is weird.

This week went by so fast. It seemed like we had 2 P-days because we emailed on Tuesday so that was nice. We had our first district meeting. Which was eh. Its a lot of things we already "knew" but its definitely good to go over them again. Taught a bunch of new people this week. Still working on getting people to progress further but we got a lot of potential.

One dude we met is named ricky. We met him on accident actually. So we were going to a house that was supposed to be a sister that is less active in our ward but when we showed up and knocked on the door, ricky answered. apparently he had just moved in a week or so ago from Texas. He was like yeah I used to go to y'alls church. We taught him and his fiancé and they are quite interested in the gospel and such. Fun times. He's also a professional boxer so good to know we got him on our side now.

Funny story from this week.

We went to this one house later at night, and knocked on the door and he came out. He was so so so drunk. we could smell it through the door. Anyways he told us to have a seat and tell him what's going on. We started telling him about the book of Mormon and he said he knew it backwards and forwards. He started telling us a story about how the Mormons were supposed to be in Mexico but they came to winter quarters and they started a war with the Sioux Indians and Brigham Young paid for everything and fontenelle didn't want to go and then the Mormons snuck into Utah. We legit just laughed. Then we said hey want to be baptized, great, heres a book of Mormon, see you later man! And walked off. Probably the funniest experience we had so far.

So I don't have any pictures to post, but we do have a trainee trainer training tomorrow so im sure sister gardner will have pictures posted with us in them. I have no idea what the training will be but we are going to Omaha for it so itll probably be pretty good.

We are also going on exchanges this Thursday with the zone leaders. Hopefully that'll go well also.

Let me know if you have any questions or want to know/see pictures of anything!

Love Elder Carter

Valentines Day!

Hello family!

First of all sorry for not emailing yesterday! Presidents day closed all the libraries in Lincoln and that's where we email, so we had to postpone it til today!

But yeah Happy Valentines day on Sunday! Hope everyone's valentine left them something! Thank you to my Mother for continuing the tradition of leaving us gifts on Valentines day! She sent me some Gigantic cookies which my companion and I enjoyed very much!

Goodness gracious this week has been nutz. So In our mission the goal for new investigators each week is 4. But my companion and I have challenged another set of elders in our district to see how many new investigators we could find. At the end of the week we had found 15 new investigators haha. We saw our mission president at a baptism and told him and he was super impressed. Honestly we found more than that because a lot of them didn't speak English and we gave them to the Spanish elders. But yeah. We worked hard. Sadly the other elders beat us... by 10. They got 25. that's insane. they are finding MASTERS.

Cool/fun stories for this week:
We were tracting in an apartment complex that was outside and we knocked on the door but no one answered. We walked around the corner and on the top floor was a dude that was like "Hey are you guys Mormons" we were like yeah and he was like "well you should probably just leave then, we don't want you here" We were like whatever and knocked on another door. The dude came out and we started teaching him but they guy on the balcony kept chiming in with things like "just tell them to leave man." our investigator Was super chill about it though. He was like man that guy is closed minded and all this funny stuff. Then like we talked about the BOM for about 5 minutes and the guy on the balcony was like "HEY GUYS I just found some platinum plates over there! I'm the only one who can read them though but you should follow me instead." We just busted out laughing.

Next story was we were going to be short on our investigator goal for the day and we prayed to get another investigator by the end of the night to meet our goal. We walked into another apartment complex and we could hear these two people in their apartment being super loud, swearing like none other and sounded like they were fighting... so we ignored that door and did all the rest... no one answered. We walk back to that door and my companion looks at me and is like "this is gunna be funny, watch this" and knocks on the door. This SUPER drunk dude and his girlfriend answer the door. The guy had been to prison 5 times. Rough character. But they were so nice to us. They invited us in and offered us some vodka. They wanted to listen to our message, maybe because they were drunk who knows. But yeah we taught them and it went super well. Not what I was expecting but I guess the lord knows better than we do!

Lincoln is great I love being here. All the missionaries in the area are super chill. We all play bball on pday's and we go to lunch too so we've gotten to know them all pretty well. They are just like a bunch of college guys haha so its super fun. They are great missionaries too. Dedicated to the work. Glad I can be here with them.
I love being a missionary, spreading the joy of the gospel.

Have an amazing Week Everyone!

Love
Elder Carter