7/19/10

Good afternoon!

I hope everyone is doing great! Thanks for the card grandma and grandpa! It was very much appreciated! I got it from the mission office at zone conference this week. I found out we will only be having zone conferences every three months now so if you send mail i would send it too my apt address or i may not get it for 2-3 months. I am doing well here. I just realized exactly 6 months from today i will be on a plane flying home! Holy cow! Time is going by really fast! We are seeing some success. The miracles we found turned out to be lame. They were still miracles but they just decided to harden their heart and not listen to the spirit they felt. We have had so many people really close and then fall through. We arent getting discouraged though. We'll find them. The golf tournament sounds fun! Great job on 2nd place! Today a 81 year guy took us to St. Augustine and we went to the beach and threw a frisbee around and then looked and some shops there. It was a pretty fun day. I have decided i need to live or at least have a house close to the beach. Maybe ill buy a small property in central or south america some day and then when im a pilot ill just fly down whenever i want. i am serious about going to Nicaragua though. My main purpose of going there is to perfect my spanish. I can get pretty good here but there are just a lot of aspects that are missing because i havent lived in their culture. I dont know how long i will go yet but everything would be free there. Eduardo will pay for my flight and ill just live with him. He has already talked to his wife and family about it and said they would love to have me come and stay with them. The longer i have been here the more fascinated i have become with different cultures. I feel like whatever i do in life it will have a lot to do with seeing and learning about other cultures and languages. I heard there is a sister missionary coming this transfer from Brasil! I hope she serves around me because i really would like to learn some portuguese.

Have you ever read the talk by Elder Bednar called, "Things As They Really Are"? It was in the May or June Ensign. It warns about being caught up in fantasy and cyber electronic worlds instead of enjoying "real" life and "real" conversation. You should have Rachel read it. Maybe you could study it for a family home evening or something. It was really good and changed my perspective on many things. I feel like i will never be the same after my mission. I have learned so much about what life really is and how to enjoy it instead of being caught up in the virtual reality of tv, movies, video games, etc. I was never as bad as a lot of people i meet here but i still used to skip more productive things i could have done for movies and stuff like that. I missed it for a while but now i really have no desire to watch tv or play video games or even text when i go home. I have so many more things i want to accomplish when i go home that i dont want to waste my life away on that. Ill probably still watch a few movies to catch up but i have several goals ive set when i go home. I would like to continue studying Spanish and also learn Portuguese. I regret not continuing more in music. I want to learn the guitar and piano as well. Will you give me piano lessons when i go home mom? Well i better get going. Ill share with you some more ideas ive thought a lot about throughout my mission next week if you want to hear them. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Carty