Buenas dias!

Hows it goin? This week was just ok... Except for the
fact that we baptized 3 people!!! This week was sweet!
And we have on on tuesday!We are seeing miracle after
miracle here in Live Oak. We baptized a guy from Mexico
named Alejandro and then 2 kids of a lady we found last
week. She was really sick yesterday so we just baptized
her 11 and 8 year old kids and she will be on tuesday.
We are also working on her mom who lives with her. The
mom is Jolena, the grandma is Joanna and the kids are
Tino and Gabriel. She also has a 4, 3, 1, and 2 month
old kids. Its chaos trying to teach them!

So we found out that all the trees in our backyard are
pecan trees. All the nuts fall to the ground in the fall
and there is a place that buys the nuts from you. We each
collecting a whole sackful this morning and are going to
go see if its worth much money. We'll probably only get
like 5 bucks but we might buy a Little Caesars with it.
I looked up a recipe for pecan pie and am going to try
it out. I made pumpkin pie last night and we had it for
breakfast this morning. Delicious! Some hispanics drove
up to our house and started walking around the backyard
collecting nuts right after we did. Thats the second time
we've seen people out there so we called the owner and we
had to tell them to leave.

Are you excited for your birthday next monday Rachel? Any
sweet plans? Oh what i would give to still be in high
school. I miss a lot of things about it. Hows school goin?
Ill write more in a letter for you this week.

Be careful on that pogo stick dad! Sheesh! Thats crazy
about the flight that went 150 miles too far! haha. Today
we are going up to White Springs to a part member family
and the guy is going to take us gator hunting! At least
thats what he said. I think we are just catching the really
young gators that are small. Maybe we'll have some gator tail!
Ive heard its actually pretty good. Ive had to do some
translating this week for one of our zone leaders investigators
and for Alejandro's interview. The Lord is helping me out a lot!
How is work going dad? Anything exciting going on at the
hospital or a lot the same? I have missed home a lot the past
few weeks. A lot of things here keep reminding me of home.
Everything else is going very well though. The mission is
pushing really hard to try and reach our goal for 1050 baptisms
this year. I think we are almost to 900 right now. Sometimes i
feel like we push so hard the first few days of the week that
its hard to keep up the same desire to work as hard on fri and
sat. On wed we tracted for almost 5 hours straight and literally
ran from door to door. I was exhausted! This week really wore me
out cause i was dragging a bit at the end. Its a lot of work
getting baptisms together and still squeezing in enough time
to visit everyone and tract. We did a lot of Spanish work this
week also which drained me quite a bit. Its hard to teach a whole
lesson in Spanish without help. But i think i am learning and
growing a lot in this area. Hope everything goes well this week!
And Happy Halloween! I really want to carve a pumkin but im not
sure if my comp really does. I still might anyways! Love you all!

Elder Carty

Hows it goin y'all? I am back in the country of
Live Oak, FL! Here's my new address:

10208 109th Dr.
Live Oak, FL 32064

Its in north-western florida almost to Talahasee and is a
pretty small town. Everyone here has pretty thick southern
country accents. I love it here though! Its so nice to get
away from the city. Our place here is sweet! We live
outside of town in our own house on like 50 acres! You
can only see one other house from ours. Crazy sweet! The
ward mission leader owns the house and all the land and
lets the missionaries stay there. Its not too big of a
place but its decent size still. Theres a lot of trees
out here to so i almost feel like im at home. Theres a
barn, a chicken coup and a big shed that are either empty
or filled with junk by the house and then a giant tower
with a windmill out back that you climb up. Its like 60
ft! Apparently previous missionaries have named it the
Rameumptom (from the Book of Mormon). haha. Our area is
huge because we cover all the small towns around it. It
covers like 30-40 miles in all directions and touches the
Georgia border. You can tell Doug that there is a big
mining community up in Jasper, FL. My new companion is
Elder Smith. Hes from Seattle, WA. My third comp from
Washington! I like him a lot. He gets pretty excited about
the work and is excited to get a good comp he said cause
his last one didnt like to work much. Oh ya and hes an
english missionary so we are a bilingual companionship!
Im the only Spanish missionary in the entire zone here.
i was pretty nervous about that but im discovering that
i know a lot more Spanish than i thought. Its really going
to be good for me not having a comp to rely on because
then im forced to speak it a lot and listen more carefully.
They havent had Spanish missionaries here for a couple
transfers. Last transfer the english work didnt see much
success but i think it was probably because of his last
comp. We are already seeing some miracles though. We found
a guy that had been taught 1 lesson last time there was
Spanish here and we set a pretty solid baptism date with
him. His name is Alejandro. We also found a sweet family
with lots of kids! Only 2 kids are baptism age, 11 & 8,
and theres the mom and grandma that live there. The dad
is Mexican and lives in Mexico for now so shes going down
there to marry him in a couple week (interesting situation).
The kids are awesome though! The oldest reminds me a lot
of Aaron and the 5 yr old reminds me a lot of Caleb! Then
theres a 3 yr old girl and a 3 month old boy. I feel really
bad for the kids cause they all live in a small trailer
which is disgusting. There barely room to walk and the whole
thing is really filthy. I worry about them getting sick
there. I think they all just moved in though. Please pray
for them all and especially that the mom and grandma will
be able to come to church. We brought a ride for them
yesterday but only the 5, 8, and 11 year old came so we
had to watch them for half of church. lol. It was a blast!
I also had to translate half of sacrament for Alejandro
till the guy who usually does it got the translator device
working. Translating is really hard. I basically just
summarized what the speakers said cause i couldnt think
fast enough. The weather out here has been much cooler
since i got here. Actually, the last to night have been
freezing! The humidity makes it a lot colder than normal.
It has been really nice the past few days except the heater
at the house doesnt really work well and i discovered that
my one blanket was not sufficiently warm. I might have to
ask a ward member for one. I can probably get socks at the
store here. My garments are all mediums, tops and bottoms.
And i couldnt take it with me cause it would have sat in my
suitcase for like five hours in the sun. Its alright though,
i used some of it before i left. Well its about time to get
going. Today has been pretty relaxed which is always nice.
Have a great week! Oh and i may need some extra prayers if
you dont mind. Just that i will be able to speak Spanish
very well. Oh yeah and congratulations to the undefeated soccer
champs Aaron and Steve Carty whose team is clearly Superior!
Ha! Ha!  Get it!  Okay, bad joke. . . .Great job!!!

Thanks!

Love,
Elder Carty

October 12th, 2009

Fam,

Sounds like an awesome weekend! Lucky you with cold
 weather! I am getting extremely sick of the heat!
 It wasnt my suit pants dont worry. But it was one
 of my nicer pair. I should be alright with what i
 have. I was actually given a pretty decent pair
 of pants recently anyways. But i do need like
 5 more pairs of socks. And maybe like 2 pairs of
garments. Actually i could use another short sleeve
shirt probably. i would probably need to try it on
though.

Transfers are this week and im leaving again! I
really wanted to stay here for a while but thats
alright. I leave thursday. This area was spilt in
two before with 4 missionaries but they havent had
enough missionaries the last 2 transfers. We are
getting 3 more now so they will probably send 2
more here so i could end up in the same branch
but a different apartment. I have a bunch of
frozen meat i have to leave behind. You'd be
proud of me mom, ive been cooking a lot this
transfer. Im slowly learning how to make different
kinds of hispanic food. Ill have to miss our
baptisms this weekend as well. We are baptizing
Yave's daughter and 3 Cubans who are the parents
of the kid we baptized last week and the sister
of on of the parents. They are awesome! We ate
at their house last night. The only problem with
Cubans is you cant understand a word they say!
Most of them i can understand about half but
the dad, i literally couldnt understand a word
he said! He mumbles and slurrs his words together.
Even Elder Peck who has spoken for almost 2 years
didnt understand a lot.
Today im at Hermano Pinto's house emailing. We
did laundry here and they fed us this morning.
My companions wanted to go to the library after
and email and then just hang around so im going
with Pinto to play soccer with some other
missionaries and hispanics. We already played
a little this morning.
As far as books go for Spanish, i just got a
work book that i ordered that they should
have given me when i started but the office
people didnt know about it. I should be fine
with the materials i have right now. I feel
like i keep improving. We had 3 trade offs
with members on thursday and we each went to
different appointments. I prayed really hard
to have the words to express myself and the
Lord really blessed me. i was able to think
perfectly clear and recall every word that i
needed to say. It was a very good learning
experience that i need to trust more in the
Lord.
Good job playing soccer Aaron! Thats awesome
that you always win! Keep it up! Do you like
dad as the coach? Thanks for the letter and
the picture last week! Well, time to get going.
Dont send anything till i tell you my new address.

Love you all very much!

Love,
Elder Carty

Oct. 5th, 2009

JOSEPH'S LETTER:

The Fam,

Sorry I couldn't email much. Busy, busy, busy... The Lord's work never ceases. How's everyone doing? Thanks to the sister that gave me the honey. It's delicious! It's actually on the oatmeal I'm eating right now. And thanks for the pictures! There are a couple really good ones of Aaron and Caleb that I might hang up. So about that funny story about being "tarred." We've had to ride bikes for the past week and a half cause we ran out of miles on our car. I was following Elder Peck on the sidewalk and he decides to take a shortcut down a short grass hill (maybe 15 ft. long and kind of steep) and then through an asphalt parking lot. I was probably following a little to close and all of a sudden on the hill he swerves to miss something and by the time I saw it, it was too late. There was a foot and a half deep hole right in front of me in the grass, just big enough for my front tire to sink in and get stuck. I was standing up and immediately launched face-first over my handle bars. At this point I am about 6 feet off the ground because I flew from the hill and am over the asphalt. Of course, I had to land in this particular stretch of asphalt which had been recently fixed, and it's about 2:00 p.m. and probably 100 degrees. I now fly through the air, landing on my hands and then my whole body slides (on my stomach) across 10 ft. of melted tar! It was crazy! Luckily, all I had was a small scratch on my knee. I think the tar was probably a blessing because it absorbed my fall as I slid. Needless to say, I ruined an entire pair of clothes, including a tie! We had to bike to our branch mission leader's house and get some grease remover. It took me like 3 hours to clean it off me and all my stuff!

Now that you're all laughing hysterically at me, I'll share a miracle from this week. It was incredible! We were waiting for church to start and watching for our investigators when a man comes wandering into the church. We start talking to him and find out that he is from Cuba. He has been living on the streets for a month looking for work. We taught him a quick lesson and asked him to be baptized and he said yes. He is really excited, and I'll be the one to baptize him tonight! He said he had a dream a few days before that he went to church and woke up and really felt like he needed to go this week. He asked a friend, who happens to be an inactive member, where he should go, and he recommended our church. Including him, we have 5 solid baptisms this week! A guy and his daughter who have been investigating for 2 years are finally getting baptized, an 11 yr. old Cuban kid, and a girl who's 13 from the Dominican Republic. Both of their parents will be baptized the following weekend.

Well I better end this letter so I can get ready. Oh real quick, do you remember when I got that Hep. B shot in the MTC? They said I had to get another one after 6 months. I'll call Sis. Newman to have her find out if I need to do that, and i'll let you know on Monday. Anyways, hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Carty

October 5th, 2009

Greetings earthlings,

haha. Hows it goin? Im glad you got my letter! I was
 worried for a min that you didnt get it. Wow!
 Miracles this week! And 4 baptisms!!! We had
Gerardo on wed.(the guy i wrote about in the letter),
 a daughter of a lady who we've taught for a while, an
 11 yr old Cuban kid, and another guy named Yave from
 Peru. We are going to baptize his daughter this
 coming week. Those 3 were baptized on Sunday
 between conference. Man conference was awesome!
 I especially enjoyed Elder Holland's talk in the
 last session.

Today we wemt and toured St. Augustine which was
 really fun. There were a lot of cool shops and
 historical sights. Ah! How do i keep running out
 of time! We have to go to be at a dinner in 10 min!
 Oh a girl from Gainesville just started her mission.
 She is in the Las Vegas, NV mission! Her first area
 is in Reno. Whats Aunt Carol's address? Maybe they
 are in the same ward or she could have her over for
 dinner! Her name is Sister Cockrell. Sorry to cut this
 email short. Everything is going well. Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Carty

September 28th, 2009

Hey!

I can only write a quick note because we ran out of time today.
 I will be writing a letter tonight instead. Everything is going
 great! We have 5 solid baptism this week and 2 more hopefully!
 All the hard work is paying off. We had an amazing miracle happen
 on Sunday! This week has been kind of crazy. I have a funny story
 to tell. I can now say that i have been "tarred" on my mission.
 Dont worry ill explain everything in the letter. I wrote Alayna
 a letter as well and sent Grandma and Grandpa a postcard. I sent
 Doug and Nat a postcard a week or 2 ago. Do you know if they got
 it? We were going to go to the zoo today but we ran out of time
 for that too. Our laundry took forever today. I bought a soccer
 ball with some of the money you sent. We found some Mexicans on
 the beach and played for a bit which was fun. It was extremely
 hot today though. Next week we are hoping to go down to
 St. Augustine which is supposed to be really cool. I think its
 the oldest city in the U.S. Hope everything is going great
 there! Its 6:00, time to get back to work!

Love,

Elder Carty