18 Months old and my last full Pday

I AM AN 18 MONTH OLD!!!
This is my last official full week of being a missionary. It is so scary!

For my 18 month mark we were given a gift card for a really expensive and Yummy Italian Restaurant

No special diet tonight... Its an all out food fest

My departing interview with President Alba is tomorrow. I am so excited. I am hoping that he will receive revelation as to the future of my life such as who I will marry, how many children I will have etc. But I have a feeling that isn't very realistic.

Being co-driver again is great! I'm loving the life of backing, map reading, and giving directions.

Last week 4 of us sisters went to a members house to chop wood. I have never felt more useless and girly in all my life. When we got to his house he walked us to the pile of wood, handed us a sledge hammer and a couple wedges and told us to go for it. We all took a good look at the pile of wood, then at each other, and busted out laughing. We were there for a while and barely made a dent in the pile, but I feel much more manly now... We assured the poor little old man that we would get elders to help him next time seeing as he did more work than the 4 of us combined.

Saying goodbye to Sister Whimpey was so sad. We had a good little cry. I love her so much.

Our conference with Elder Nielsen was so awesome. I received so much revelation for myself, my investigators and the sisters I am over as an STL. I had a good cry as I realized I would be taking off my badge soon and that being a missionary was coming to a quick end. There is truly no better substitute for missionary service. Being a full-time worker for God is so rewarding. If your thinking about it, pray about it! If God says yes, DO IT! That includes you potential senior missionaries. I hear nothing but good and wonderful things about being a senior missionary. The Seeleys have convinced me that senior missions are the only way to go, not to mention the missions across the world are in dire need of them. They hold our mission together. The mission was chaos when we were short senior missionaries.

Moment if the Week:
Part 1: Sister Petersen learned how to burp this week. She has been burping everywhere we go with a great big grin on her face. She even burped in front of our recent convert without even thinking twice about it. She kills me.

Part 2: Sister Petersen on the phone:
"Hi, we were wondering if we could come bless you? I mean leave a blessing with you?!."

Oops. Just a little bit of blasphemy that's all.

I am going to miss Sister Petersen so much!!!

Love,
Sister Carter

Here are Some Pictures with some great people whom I love....

Lost Biking Privledges

Just so the world can know how buff my legs are now, I snapped my bike chain in half while biking up a stupidly steep hill last week. I haven't known anyone to loose driving privileges AND biking privileges. Pray that my legs don't break next. Luckily we have our car back! After being on bike for over a week I discovered muscles I didn't know existed. Most nights I slept like a baby. Although babies don't really sleep very well so I would say I slept more like I was in a coma. It was great!

I handed the keys over to Sister Petersen and since then she goes around excitedly telling the other missionaries that she "holds the keys."

The other day I was reading a talk from this last general conference called "The Lord Has a Plan for Us!" by Elder Godoy. A line from that talk stood out to me, paraphrasing, it asked, "If I were to continue on the path that I am on now would the promised blessings in my patriarchal blessing be fulfilled?" I immediately remembered a line in my patriarchal blessing that promises music in my home. I longed to have that blessing fulfilled but I felt like the path to that blessing was unreachable and too hard. This week I was worrying a lot about where to study and what to study when I get home. The thought of it scares me so much. I was putting way too much time thinking about and it was taking away from me being able to be a full-time missionary. So I decided to go to my room and say a good, solid, and sincere prayer to God about it. I let Him know I understand that now is not the time nor place to be needing an answer about something unrelated to missionary work. So I'm my prayer I asked God to answer it in his own time but to please answer it. It was great then because I was able to get it off of my chest and focus on the work so much better. I had a few really great days with Sister Petersen working hard and seeing miracles. I had a pile of papers on my desk that I have accumulated from different conferences and meetings and I wanted to go through them to dejunk and study them one last time. I found the talk "Cast Not Away Therefore Thy Confidence" by Elder Holland in the midst of the pile. I felt too guilty to throw it away so I determined to read it the next morning. While reading it in my personal study I got an answer to my prayer. I had a complete assurance that I was supposed to continue my studies at BYU-I and that I was supposed to continue studying music. I had a good long cry about it because it was the answer I was hoping not to get. I am completely terrified out of my mind thinking about the long semesters ahead of me. The last semester I did exhausted every ounce of me emotionally, mentally, and physically. Throughout my whole mission I have been convincing myself that I am not going to go back to music in Idaho. It felt beyond my capacity to repeat. But the talk gave me a lot of comfort and I am so grateful that I have a direction and an answer way sooner than I expected. I now know immediately what I need to do when I get home. I am so grateful to learn that when I put the Lord first, he helps us with all aspects of our lives. I'm grateful to know that He answers prayers. He yet again has answered my prayer and I am also grateful to know that the blessings I desire are mine as I put God's will before my own. I am scared, but I know that he will be there to help me.

I AM HITTING MY 18 MONTH MARK THIS WEEK. What the heck! Today is my last full p-day :(

 

Gotta go.

Love, Sister Carter

The car accident

Fun fact:
Sister Petersen and I calculated how much time we have spent together
by the time I go home.
3 month
12 weeks
84 days
2016 hours
102,960 minutes
7,257,600 seconds

That's a lot of seconds. Good thing I love her. Missions definitely
produce best friends.

Our Last time together on the Northern California Beaches

So... I got Into a car accident this week... Pretty much the most
damage was done to my pride. I got a much deserved stern talking to by
President Alba, got put on bike and foot until our car is fixed, and
lost driving privileges for the last 3 weeks of my mission.
So here's what happened: I was on exchanges with a sister over in
Rohnert Park. She didn't know her area very well and wants really sure
where we were going. We were approaching a red light in the far right
lane and at last minute she told me we needed to turn left. So I
safely crossed over the middle lane to get to the turning lane. There
was a line of vehicles all stopped at the red light in that lane, so I
merged the front of my car in front of one of the cars a few cars
down, looked at the passenger and thought we had eye contact but I
guess not. We sat there for about a minute and when the light turned
green the other car drove into me... Oops
Let's just say I have learned lots of good lessons. The day before I
prayed for an opportunity to grow and now both my lucky companion and
I have been blessed with an opportunity to grow. You know when they
say never to pray for opportunities to grow? This is why. Heavenly
Father takes you seriously. It has been so much fun though! Sister
Petersen and I have had more fun on bike than we know how to handle.
We have laughed so much. We look so ridiculous it's great! We have
been so tired, so cold, so sore and so happy! We love the exercise and
we have been able to talk to people that we normally wouldn't have
been able to. It's awesome! We named our bikes the black stallion and
the squeaker. They are beautiful elder hand-me-downs that get the job
done. Not gracefully, but they work.

Elder Nielsen of the seventy is coming back to our mission for another
conference and is going to be inspecting random missionary apartments
this week so we were frantically cleaning every inch of our apartment.

Our Carpet shampooer barfs up hairballs.. yuk

Moment of the week:
I was looking at my tonsils in the mirror with a flash light and got a
Charlie horse in my mouth.... I didn't know that was possible but
turns out it is. Watch out for those mouth charlie horses, they'll
getcha!

Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Carter

Camp Liahona in the Redwoods

Soooo... I have 24 minutes to write this. Mom please don't kill me.

Okay so we had a leadership training camp out at camp Liahona in the Redwoods. It was soooo muuuuch fuuuun. All of the STL's and Zone Leaders went to the MLC camp. We had hours of sitting and training and camp fire and songs, and trust activities involving sending groups of missionaries over walls and falling from tall heights. I was asked to give my departing testimony and freaked out. I have seen missionaries give their departing testimonies my whole mission and never thought the day would come when I would share mine. I ate all sorts of gluten free food. The sisters all had "The Marriage Talk" from Sister Alba about what to look for in a husband after the mission. She pretty much made us all marriage trunky for a good hour. We did service creating 3 campsites in the woods. There are parts of my body that I have never felt sore before, but I loved every moment of it. There is nothing better than working out in nature and getting dirty!

We mad a mini missionary with us this week! It was AWESOME! We prepped her to invite our investigator to be baptized and she did it! She even set a baptismal date with her and everything. It was awesome! Poor girl she was so far outside of her comfort zone but she did so great, we were so proud of her. I am envious of her mini mission experience. She got to spend 2 nights with us doing everything a missionary does. Her name is Hannah Gerber-Kai but we called her Sister Gerber-Kai. She is half Hawaiian and has probably the worlds longest middle name on the face of the planet.

The Wilson's quit smoking this week!!!!!! They are on day 6 of quitting and Steve Wilson has been smoking since he was 6 years old! We are so proud of them! They are incredible!

Well... 24 minutes is over.
Love you,
Sister Carter