What a fun season and time to be a missionary.
To
catch you all up, Halloween was a blast. I was thinking about my first
Halloween on my mission with my Trainer in Livermore and was able to
look back fondly! It is even more exciting to be training Sister Riggs
during the same time that I was being trained.
President Mella said that
unlike last year, we did not need to go home early on Halloween night,
so we were able to participate in some Halloween activities. The zone
decided to go to a haunted house....WELL, Sister Riggs and I weren't
really feeling up to it, so we went to a family in the Alum Rock Ward
(the family ward that I use to cover) house instead, and helped with
their Halloween festivities.
After we put the food together for the
party, families started trickling in. I started laughing because I felt
like I was actually in the haunted house. I was looking around at all
of the (cute) but huge families, with babies running around, children
screaming, actually--mostly crying, and I couldn't help but laugh. Maybe
it's because I've been in YSAs for so long, but all of the commotion
freaked me out. We should have just gone to the actual Haunted House
instead...ha
Since Halloween we have been setting high
goals and working hard. We are acting on our faith and doing our best to
fulfill our purpose.
We had the AMAZING experience of
being able to host the BYU football team when they played San Jose State
on Friday night! Although going to the game has been high on my wish
list hopes because we've known about this game for a while, we all
figured we would not be able to go. Butttttt being the missionaries that
serve on SJSU campus does have it's perks!
On Thursday
night before the game, the football team hosted a fireside. They do this
at all of their away games. It gives them an opportunity to share their
testimonies of the gospel and help people understand better who they
all are as football players and what they represent begin in the
program.
President Mella said the only way we would
be able to go to the fireside was if we had an investigator with us, so
Sister Riggs and I made it a priority to find someone to take haha.
Sadly, nothing was working. We were calling everyone, EVERYONE that we
were teaching or ever had taught, we even were asking members to ask
and invite their friends.....nothing was working. After almost starting
to stress out over the lack of an investigator, we just decided that
maybe we weren't suppose to go, and that was going to be okay. Football
is not our priority anyways!
We decided to try our new
investigator Irean and call it quits if she was unable to go. After
inviting her, she was clearly not too interested in going because she
had a lot of work to do and it was starting to get overwhelming for her.
After our visit with her at around 4:00pm we left, having invited her, and said we would be back to pick her up around 5:30. The fireside started at 7:00pm but we were told that it was going to be PACKED so we needed to get good seats.
We ended up getting back to Ireans house at 6:00pm
and weren't expecting too much. In all honesty, we had just come to the
terms that we weren't going and we were pretty content with it. We
knocked on the door practically holding our breath, and she answered,
and instead of her saying "no, I can't go, I have too much work", she
looked at us, said "hold on" walked to the back of the apartment to get
her jacket and walked straight out the door to us! Wahooooo.
We
got the fireside, sat next to our Branch Mission leader Deano Motes who
actually is ON the SJSU football team! ha and had a wonderful
WONDERFUL time.
I'll be real for just another second
again--I wanted to go because, well, it's the BYU football team and I've
never seen them play or really anything, but truthfully, I was
expecting it to be a bunch of football players talking about
well...football. BOY, was I wrong. I don't know if I got a testimony of
the gospel or the BYU football team! ha. What a spirit filled meeting it
was. We heard from two of the football players who talked about faith
and charity as well as a two musical numbers, "I Know That My Redeemer
Lives" by about 8 of the team members, and then "We'll Bring The World
His Truth (Army of Helamen)." I didn't know if they were football
players or missionaries! To say the least, the spirit was strong, and I
am grateful that Irean decided to come so that she could feel the spirit
that comes with putting the Lord first in our lives.
On
Friday night Sister Riggs and I, as well as a couple of other
missionaries got to participate in the BYU tailgate at the Giants
Stadium! It was SO fun!! We were each in charge of games and got to get
the BYU fans excited.
Fun times!!
I'm grateful for the work, my companion and certainly my Savior.
I have a testimony of this church and will continue to sustain support the leaders, Apostles and living Prophet.
I know that the Lord truly does love all of His children,
Sister Carter
