10,000 Hours

Yes everyone, you read the title of this email right, I have been a missionary for 10,000 hours, which means somewhere along the way I became a professional at it. The famous saying is that once you do something for 10,000 hours you will be a pro... I definitely don't feel like a pro at being a missionary but I'm getting there!

So to start off I just wanted to thank everyone for all the birthday wishes. I was overwhelmed with how much love I got from you all and it made me feel so special. So thank you for making my birthday something special!!

On the topic of my birthday it was absolutely wack and a half. Most of the day I spent in regular clothes because it was jam packed full of service. Our whole district went out to a member in Wellingtons home and did a service project there. Honestly it was INSANELY fun. We just laid fabric and mulch down and then raked it around, they even fed us pizza... one of my favorite things. AND CAKE obviously the cake was the highlight. PLUS this member sells women's defense things... now you all might have been worried about little 5'5" Sister Carter wandering the street of Fort Collins, but no need to worry any more... I am fully prepared with a rape whistle necklace, *actually really pretty not gonna lie* pepper spray, AND A STUN GUN. Yes yes.... I am fully loaded.

I also had a very special visitor come and take me to lunch, if you've tuned in for a while you will she her cute face and recognize her as my previous companion.... I love her, it was so good to be able to see her again!

I also had in person exchanges for the 1st time in 2 transfers last week!! I was with Sister Gibson and it was SO good to be able to get back to some sort of normal again. She is a baller missionary so I was honored to be able to learn from her this week.

Sister Petter and I have decided to make a more focused effort on the sisters we are over so we set goals for all of them and decided it would be good for all the sisters in the zone to do more mini exchanges with them so they feel more comfortable with us and vice versa so I'm sure y'all will be hearing ALOT about the sisters I'm over. I love them all and every single day I thank God for allowing me to help them, even if it's in a small way.

We also had the legendary MLC. Little do y'all know but we've been having virtual MLCs all the time but we got approval to do it in person and OOOOO it was good. We talked a lot about what we want our mission culture to be. We want to make this mission culture incredible and the first steps to doing that starts with us. My mission president talked about how the sisters I work with will never work harder than how they see you work. Which is a concept I never considered. So if i want my sisters to work hard I have to work much harder so they will reach higher and expect more. I left MLC so energized to step up my game I'm pretty sure I baptized like 30 people on the way home.... okay I was being modest it was 46 people.

Sister Petter and I have been doing SO much service. Not even joking we have a limit of doing 10 hours of service a week, which I have never hit before, and we did all 10. Most of the time it has been weeding. I'm not sure why but so many people have insane weeds. Like HUGE weeds. So they call us and we pull them, well, we decided that we actually like weeding. Its relaxing and its rewarding and all that fun jazz. Well flash forward to Thursday and Sister Petter and I had about 15 minutes to kill before we had to pick up some sisters for exchanges. So we pull over and start texting some members to get lessons set up or checking in with people we are teaching, things like that. I look over to the side of the road and see TONS of weeds. Bit tall juicy looking weeds.... very tempting. So I casually joke with Sister Petter and say.... should we pull those? She immediately says, if you're not joking I'm not joking. And all of a sudden we were pulling weeds in some random park on the side of the road for fun. I think I'm deprived of fun as a missionary.

Also with all the service I've been doing I really messed up my back. My nurse gave me a couple stretches to hopefully help with it all but sitting for 4 hours in a gym with metal chairs definitely did not help. So if I end up in a back brace don't be surprised. Hopefully it'll get better but I'm definitely still doing more service than I should.... pray for my back?

Before I end this email Sister Petter and I had a conversation on my birthday I wanted to share. I asked her if she thought that Christ would tell me happy birthday if He could. She immediately came up with the perfect response. She said, I think that 50 percent of every happy birthday I get is from Him because every good thought is given to someone through Him. So I took that a step further and decided that 50 percent of every nice thing someone says is from Christ. He is helping people to help each other because we are His hands. He wants to take care of everyone but He can't so He puts good thoughts and ideas into our heads so we will do it.

Well I love you all and I hope that you had an amazing week!!
Remember God is in the Details!!
Sister Carter

The boys are back

Alright these past 2 weeks have been absolutely insane so y'all better take a seat and prepare yourself for the long ride ahead of you... don't worry, I'm your host so you'll at least have a couple of laughs here and there.

First of all, I WAS TRANSFERRED *kind of* so I was originally assigned to the Westfield ward in Fort Collin with Sister Robinson, we had been there for about 4.5 months and so I fully expected that with this new transfer I would stay in this area but just get a new companion.... but I was for sure definitely wrong. It turns out that they instead had me move to another area in Fort Collins, the City Park Ward. AND my old area now has Elders....how sad. But the weirdest part of all of it is that I'm actually still living in the same apartment.... so it's like I wasn't really transferred.... I just have different people in the ward... mega weird...

BUT with transfers... it's been even more crazy. I LITERALLY had to go to the mission office 6 times last week.... SIX TIMES.... yes that means we had to take a 30 minute drive there just to pick up some people or drop of someone or drive someone somewhere.... it was a lot.... so let's just all assume that for about a week it was hardly able to do missionary work, but I survived, don't worry.

Then last Wednesday I picked up my new companion Sister Petter.... holy cow we have honestly had a blast. She makes me DIE of laughter all the time. I have to admit I was kind of nervous about  this change but it has been so much easier because I get along with her so well.

Also this week I "hosted" the live video for our Facebook page. Yes you heard that right, I am now a news anchor, kind of an epic transition from Missionary and I'm so ready for it. I honestly think I killed it but if you want to watch it just go to Facebook, type in Church of Jesus Christ in Fort Collins and scroll to find the live video and there I will be.... you'll be impressed I can almost guarantee.

As for missionary work, this new area doesn't have a lot of people being taught so Sister Petter and I working really hard to build that up so please pray for us to find new people to teach!

We did have a cool miracle that might end up really long BUT I'll just give y'all the cliff notes version.... so on Saturday we were teaching Robert, who's African, at a park. Robert is amazing, hes basically a missionary even though hes not a member and he talks to EVERYONE so every person that walks by he talks to. So we were just sitting there and this guys walks by with a REALLY cute dog, like REALLY cute. So I obviously am watching the dog walk by and Robert turns and says, "Hello, How are you" the dog owner then says, "Do you guys like dogs," to which I obviously say, "Of course" then he says, "will you pet my dog? So we pet his dog and find out his name is Joe. We talk for a while and then Joe leaves. The whole scene was hilarious for a lot of reasons but for the sake of time let's stick with, Joe is an interesting guy. Flash forward to the next day we are teaching Robert Sister Petter and I were joking about seeing Joe again while we were there and guess what.... I'll let you guess.......

That's right!!

Half way through our lesson here comes Joe. I about died laughing so we talk to him a little more and he says he has a lot of questions. So we gave him a Book of Mormon and ask him if we can get his number and meet this week to talk about it. He says, "Well let me go home and get my phone and some drinks but I'll be back" obviously Sister Petter and I assumed we would never see Joe again but about 20 minutes later he walks back with Drinks, snacks, his phone and his dog. So now we are teaching Joe. What a guy, if you want more details email me and I'll spill some more tea for you!

It's been a busy week, we've had to skip dinner 4 times and we missed a lot of days of studying.... but we are busy so that's good? We are expecting that things wont slow down for a while, probably even until I go home but I'm ready for it.... it's honestly kind of fun!

Well you'll probably, maybe, possibly hear from me next week.... mostly because ITS MY BIRTHDAY NEXT WEDNESDAY... yup I'll be 21... I'm slowly getting older...


I love you all!!
Remember God is in the Details
Sister Carter

Tongue Tied

Hey everyone!! Today was incredibly busy because I WENT TO A BUFFALO FARM (see pictures below) .... yes you heard that correct, it was an insanely epic moment in my own personal history so this email might be a little short.... just a warning. But also is everyone aware of how MASSIVE buffalo tongues are?? Well let me tell you, THEY ARE HUGE. They wanted the treats we had so bad they just stuck their long freaking tongues out and waved them around until we stuck a treat in there.... easily the coolest thing ever

This week we got permission to start contacting people in person!! Which is a HUGE success!! We even got in contact with a few of the people we were teaching who we thought were dodging us... turns out their phone is broken but she's getting a new sim card soon, don't even worry. DON'T WORRY

Also this week I got to have interviews with my mission president, I always love talking to him and I realized I only have 3 more interviews before my exit interview *woah* so I'm trying to soak up as much information from him as possible. I always feel so much love from him and I know that he was called of God to be my Mission President, forget everyone else, he was definitely called for just me... I can feel it.

Sadly we had another 3 hour long virtual MLC on Monday... it was BRUTAL... I'm not even joking I was mega tired of the whole thing. A Zoom MLC is ROUGH because it's just staring at a phone forever with very little interaction...  the good news is that if everything keeps moving as well as it currently is, the next MLC should be in person *YAYAYAYAY* All I want is to see my friends in person, God can do it, I believe in Him.