Yeah, so, because I forgot to send them last week, this week you guys get TWO weeks worth of pictures. I'll cut straight to the quick so that I can get everything written down in time. Holy cow. Crazy week.
INVESTIGATORS
Infro - Never met him. Right now he's in Veracruz, but he's going to be coming back next week. According to what Elder Luna tells me, he's basically a sure baptism
Juanita - We worked a TON with her, and she still has a certain doubt or something that doesn't let her get baptized... We still have a bit more work with her, but she's awesome. She reads the Book of Mormon and prays every single night, but still doesn't want to be baptized.... Who knows why.... We're going to be working to find her doubt this week. She says she's been praying for something specific, but won't tell us what it is.
They are the only two good ones. We found 4 news this week, but they really aren't that great... And they didn't come to church either.
COOL STUFF
Alright, this is where the letter is going to get HUGE, because I have a lot to talk about. First things first, the pictures.
1.) I got the package! It was awesome! These are the pictures, but I unfortunately had to take a backpack FULL of food just so I could eat the beef jerky, fruit snacks and rice chex. It was pretty funny.
2.) This place with rocks was near a guy's house, and it was pretty cool to take a picture there. The one with my arms outstretched makes me look SO gordo.
3.) Yeah. That sign says "Kids playing"
4.) The Carrito Loco! Basically, it's a promotion in a store called Calimax. Every time you spend 200 pesos in Calimax, they give you a scratch off ticket. It has 3 pictures behind the scratch surface, and if those 3 are the little cart, you win the Carrito Loco (Crazy Little Cart). That means that they clear out all the aisles of the store, and for 2 minutes, you are to grab as MANY things as you can, and the store gives them to you for free. In other words, you just gotta sprint and you gotta just shovel stuff into your cart. The store is your limit. It's pretty cool. Someone won it actually, here in the Calimax by our house, and we watched them do it. It's pretty awesome. I hope we win...
5.) We lost ALL light back in Primo Tapia, so we had to Mexicanize our light and shove a power cord into the neighbor's socket down below, and then move our fridge over to connect it so that we at least had that. Then, for anything we wanted to do, such as use the microwave, or iron, we had to disconnect the fridge and connect the thing we wanted and recconect the fridge again. It was pretty funny.
6.) This is a picture of me with Jesus and his sister, Monica. Jesus was with us with the Jones family from Christmas. Really cool guy. Looking forward to meeting him again. He is 17, so only 1 year more and he goes on a mission. He'll be the second missionary in all of Primo Tapia.
7.) I honestly don't know how well you can see it, but there's a car in that darker picture. Someone left a car in low tide, forgot about it, and then we found it down there. It JUST about went completely out to sea.
8.) This is a picture of Agustin and his familiy. The Vega family. That guy right next to me, in the grey shirt, he just started bawling when I said my last prayer at his house, and he even wanted to see me off in San Diego. Great guy. Love him to death. His mom started crying a lot too, and honestly, I just about cried myself.
10.) This is the Pech Family. The guy on the right is the only missionary that has left from Primo Tapia, and those kids are his nieces and nephews. I really miss them a lot. They are so cool. VP, the guy on the right (his name is Victor Pech) said he was going to visit me in Idaho and we were going to go snowboarding. We'll see if that happens.
11.) This is me on my last day in Primo Tapia. Bags packed and all.
12.) Me and Elder Rose in the bus station. Last day together. Cool guy. Elder Rose and I are pretty good friends.
13.) First picture in Ensenada! And YES! We have bikes. But I have to talk about those in a bit.
14.) GUESS WHAT I FOUND HERE ON MY FIRST WEEK! THE CARNAVAL CRUISE LINE! I took pictures of it! It blew my mind that I had been on that ship before! Ensenada was a lot smaller when we visited it....
15.) picture of my companion with one of the bikes stacked on the other. I'll tell you about it here in a bit....
16.) Panoramic of all of Ensenada from the very top of our sector. Pretty cool place right?
17.) Me on top of Ensenada. Just too cool.
18.) Last one is the Mexico Tijuana Temple right now. It looks so cool right?
Whew. That was a lot to write and explain, but now, it's the fun part. Now is all the cool experiences and stuff that have happened.
1.) First thing that happened was that my BIKE BROKE. yeah. On the third day of it's use, they berings popped out of place and the bike broke. We had to take it into the bike shop and there we left it overnight, while he gave me a small bike to use in the mean time.
Well, all was good until the next day, while we were heading to another appointment, wouldn't you know, MY COMPANION'S BIKE BROKE. This time, the axel on his bike just snapped in half, and we couldn't get it to work anymore.
So, when my bike broke, it was at night, so we didn't lose any time. We had to stack my bike on top of my companion's and then walk it back to the chapel and ask for a ride.
This time, when my companion's bike broke, it was in the middle of the day, and it was impossible to walk it back to the house. It was too far away, and we couldn't stack his bike on mine because the one I had was way too small for that.
Well, we called a guy who took us home, and we spend another hour trying to dismatle his bike to see what happened. Then we took the wheel the next day to the bike shop and got it fixed, and got my bike as well.
So now, we're riding on the same bikes as before, but they are both sold to other people, so we're using them until they come to pick them up. haha We want to get right of them right now before they break more. Friggin baikas.
2.) But wait, there's more! We are the ONLY SECTOR that has a hill in the WHOLE ZONE. Just imagine this: riding a bike up a steep hill. All day.
My butt was hurting SO BAD after a few days, that to go up the stairs in our house, I had to go kinda sideways, or else it just hurt WAY too bad. My legs hurt a bunch too, and my knees were destroyed.
I was honestly dead for about 2 days after going home, but that doesn't end the sad tale of death and destruction.
3.) I woke up a couple nights ago at around 3 in the morning, and my stomach told me it was time to use the bathroom. I went in, and SHOOOOOOM. It was like an explosion of water coming out of my rear end. I was in there for like, 20 minutes, just sitting on the toilet until I stopped.
I suddenly started shaking a TON, and I felt really cold. I finished up my business in the bathroom, and as I stood up,
I nearly passed out.
I was so close to falling to the ground unconcious that I sat back down on the toilet, and I just started praying. To top it off, our neighbors were still up, and they were screaming a bunch of swear words at each other over someone's boyfriend kissing another girl or something.
Anyway, I waited until I felt good enough again to stand, stood, washed my hands as fast as I could, and then practically fell into the room where we sleep and landed on my bed, and then I just woke up Elder Luna.
"Elder Luna, call Sister Garcia right now."
I was shaking so bad that my bed was trembling, and the matress actually moved with me. We called her, and my companion got some blankets and threw them on me. Then he pulled out some medication that he had and went downstairs, heated up some water, and gave me the pills. I just fell asleep, waiting for the morning.
Morning came, and I was in such bad shape that I couldn't get out of bed, honestly. I forced myself to do it, but it was terrible. I slept until around 1 because the sickness was so bad.
4.) Well, after all of that was said and done, I thought I was good. Well, turns out that I was. Except for the fact that I still had to go up hills and stuff with the bike... I hate bikes now. I'd rather die than ride a bike up a hill.
5.) General Conference! So many cool things happened. But a couple weird ones. First, president Monson only spoke twice... Once in Preisthood, and once on Sunday. And he didn't really teach, he just told stories. I thought that was so odd... But then, it was weirder with the new camera angles and stuff. What did you guys think about that format?
6.) Also, presidente Carreon, my old mission president, was sustained to the 4th Quorum of the Seventy! That was pretty insane. I was honestly kind of expecting it though. I mean, a very large majority of Mission presidents are later called as Seventies according to what I have seen and heard...
7.) Alright, well, last thing is that my companion and I are just awesome together. We're working super hard, and we like a lot of the same things. We talk a lot just about life and stuff and it's awesome. We're still working super hard though. Like, honestly, he works more than any other companion I've ever had on my mission. It's awesome. And here is the ward where I will finish.
Okay, well, that's a wrap. HUGE amount of text and stuff, but it was a pretty crazy week. By the way, even though we had a bunch of problems and stuff, we still gave out 66 cards for Because He Lives. That's only 4 less than the norm. Boom. And our District Leader STILL planches us for not having contacted on Saturday, the day where we didn't work because of the Conference... We just kinda laughed at him and ignored his lack of information.
I think that does it for this week. Thanks for the support. I've been really strengthened in the past few weeks. In fact, this General Conference had a few messages that were specifically for me. Honestly, I felt like theSaturday Morning speakers were almost ALL talking to me about what I needed to worry about now and in the future.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trunky, but I have been thinking about the future a lot. I'm only 11 weeks away from starting my life all over again, and I've got a lot of questions, doubts, and fears. But after listening to General Conference, some of them were answered, while others were explained a little more, and overall, it was a good conference for me. Coolest part was when I got to listen to 2 guys give their talks in Spanish. I love that I don't need a translator for them. haha
Thank you so much for everything. It's been a crazy ride, and I'm sure that it's been really tough sometimes back at home too, but I know that it was all planned. The Lord knows what I need more than I do.
Thanks again. Love you all.
Elder Carter
