11/30/09

Hello!

Im glad you were able to understand my letter! I sent
a quick one in english later that evening after we found
out about transfers but im not sure if you got it cause
it looks like it came back to me. Just in case, Elder
Smith was transfered and im still here. They did transfers
a little crazy last week. They didnt tell us till the night
before, who was leaving and where they were going and then
we had to get there the next day which was tuesday and we
didnt have a transfer meeting. So Elder Smith packed up
and a member took him 50 miles south to a small town
called Chiefland. My new comp is Elder Price from St.
George, UT. He came out one transfer before i did and we
started our mission in the same district so i already knew
him pretty well. We have been on tradeoffs together in
Gainesville. He is sweet! Though he doesnt speak a lick
of Spanish. Elder Smith actually got pretty good at
Spanish by the end of the transfer but he's still an
english missionary. He wasnt afraid to just say what
he wanted to say, even if most of the conjugations
werent right. But they understood what he said. He
had taken classes before which helped him a lot but
my new comp hasnt taken any Spanish before so hes starting
from scratch. Hes still an english missionary but he
really wants to learn spanish so ill be teaching him
i guess. It will help improve mine a lot im sure. I
feel like my spanish has improved a ton last transfer.
It helped me really step out of my comfort zone cause
i couldnt ever rely on my comp to help teach till
towards the end of the transfer.

Oh yeah! Happy Thanksgiving!!! Hope you guys had a
delicious meal! We had a lot of fun on Thanksgiving.
An inactive/part member family i had met once before
invited us out for the day. They had a bunch of
relatives there too. We thought it might be really
awkward cause i didnt know how many members there
would be. She had like three sisters and their husbands
and a brother and his wife and they were all members.
They are all half Korean. It turned out to be a blast!
Their whole famaily was awesome! They were all laughing
and cracking jokes and having fun. We all played 2 hand
touch football for a while, had a ton of southern food,
including smoked deer and turkey...mmm..., went on a
tractor hay ride, and had a camp fire with smores that
night. They sent us home with a ton of leftovers!
Thanks for the postcard! How much have you rafted down
there? Is that where you usually go rafting? I dont think
we are doing anything special in the work for Christmas
unless i havent heard about it yet. Im not really sure.
Our mission is so close to reaching our goal of 1050! As
of sunday we are at 980! Only 70 more to go! We have like
7 people who are so close to baptism but little things
keep getting in the way like not coming to church or
they live so far out that we can only see them once a
week which makes it hard for them to progress very fast,
or they cant afford to buy a marriage license so they can
get married and then baptized. They all want it but these
little things keep holding them back. Pray that they will
all be able to be baptized before the end of year. The
member work in this ward really isnt very good. Ive only
gotten like one member referral since ive been here and
it was from a less active. Everyone lives so spread out
that it hard to get members in on lessons and theres not
that many active members here to begin with. The other
wards ive been in were a lot better as far as missionary
work goes but i still love all the people here and am
slowly getting used to the southern country accent, lol.

I could always use more ties! Im not sure what else i really need
for christmas. Did you find that sweater? I could use like
a v-neck sweater or a zip up one cause its getting a bit
cold at night and it gets dark at 6:00. As long as my tie
isnt covered up i can wear it. We have a fireplace in our
house and its finally cold enough that we've been having
fires inside every night this week! I am loving the cooler
weather! How did you guys like the movie New Moon? I was a
little disappointed in the first one. Was this one any
better? Anybody have plans for Christmas break? Cant wait
to talk to everyone! Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Love,
Elder Carty