Jan. 26, 2009

NOTE: We got a short note from Bryan early today that said he only had 5 minutes and only wrote a quick note. We were glad he got back on later in the day. Here's what Bryan has to say this week:

Okay we found another computer; it only took us 4 hours to get one that was available. So now I'll try to answer all of your questions. Don't know about Hans's surgery because we haven’t seen him yet he got home on Friday and we haven’t had a chance to go visit him yet but we're going tomorrow. Ironically enough I was going through the area book and found his name in there twice already but no teaching record just a contacting record. So he's at least seen the missionaries at his house before. Ed and Vicky are doing magnificently! We had our lesson with them on Friday and they're both really progressing quite well. Ed's 13 days without smoking now and Vicky has gone just over a week with no cigarettes. The tough part is that they want to be baptized together and Ed is an ex-communicated member so he needs another disciplinary council or something through the Stake Presidency and we A) don’t know how long that will take to get the ball rolling, and B) we don't know what the outcome of the council will be. It's been over a year since he's been ex-communicated and he's really changing and ready to do anything it will take to come back into the gospel so hopefully it will be soon. The longer we wait on getting Vicky baptized at least the harder its going to be. They're both really great though and most importantly they're progressing.

My foot is 100% better no problems at all, I have a picture of it that I'll send home with my next memory card, it's pretty intense. I got the coat liner and the thermals and they came just in time. It was about 65 degrees on Thursday, then I got the package on Friday just in time for it to drop below freezing. Then we're supposed to have some freezing rain tonight and tomorrow. As for my bike, I do have it but it's not put together yet because we need to take it to a bike shop to make sure that the warranty is still valid, we're taking it tomorrow. So I've been riding Elder Pearson's bike for this past week. He was Elder Hansen's last companion and he went home to California and is now at BYU but he left his bike here. We actually do bike in the cold quite a bit because we have some investigators at the far reaches of our area. I live in a small apartment that’s not too bad at all.

As far as the people in the area we have a variety. There's a small neighborhood here that the locals call 'little Brentwood' because apparently Brentwood is like the 4th richest community in the United States or something like that and this small lakeside community is like a little version of that. Ironically enough about half of the doors that we knocked in that area were preachers of other local churches. There's probably more churches here in about a 15 mile radius then there are in Sandy! The difference is that they're all different denominations.

The members here are CRAZY!! Yet pretty good. They're all really really nice but lazy as well. It's a mostly working class area and a lot of people are either out of a job, or struggling to keep their jobs. So that stands as an excuse for people to not do home teaching, not go on exchanges, and not do member missionary work. All the baptisms last year came from part member or less active families in the ward. We receive nearly no member referrals and the home teaching percentage is if I were to venture a guess 8% completed per month. Elder Hansen has been here for his entire mission and loves the ward too much to speak harshly against them. Luckily I'm brand new and like everyone here so far, but I'm not afraid to ruin friendships that don't yet exist. So using crucial confrontations skills I can speak 'boldly' using 'hard words' against them as it calls them in the Book of Mormon. So far no one has gotten mad at me yet and we still have a calendar full of dinner appointments, for the past two days the only meal that hasn’t been provided for us has been breakfast. It's actually kinda sad and kinda funny when I talk to the members about home teaching and missionary work, I did it yesterday in our correlation meeting. Because everyone is really nice and talkative and happy until I start asking them questions on how they can do better then they'll all answer promptly and use the exact answers that I'm looking for, then I ask if they already had known how to do member missionary work then all the smiles fade and it gets quite and no one looks at me. I love the members here some of them don't have a strong enough testimony yet for me to push, others don’t need me to push they just do what is right all the time and help us out whenever we need it, but most of them are just lazy and need constant reminders. Things have already started to get a little better Elder Hansen is getting bolder with the members and they're starting to be more helpful and we're all coming together and hopefully it will continue to get better.

As far as sending things just make sure you send them standard mail shipping no UPS or anything because then the mission home can't accept them, but for now mostly because I don’t even know my address and because its liable to change and the mission home can get them out the next day just send them there. My mission e-mail rules are I can't stop anyone from e-mailing me, in fact I got an e-mail from Harrison today, but I can't write them back, I can only write immediate family. So I wrote Harrison a letter explaining all of that to him.

So just an insight to how the ward members are crazy here. The man who drove us to and from the transfer meeting when I got assigned to Hendersonville was Santa. His real name is John Gladden and he's an older retired man who works as Santa during the Christmas season. He's got Alzheimer’s and forgets things like his name so he puts it on the ring he wears. He has a neon green box of a car that says Santa's Green Machine on the front. His house is decorated with life size coca-cola Santa advertisements and he hasn’t had a clean shaven face for 30ish years and he only cuts his hair once a year. However he's the nicest guy you'll ever meet we had lunch with him today and he rocks. He also buy's copies of the Book of Mormon in different languages off eBay. Then we have another recent convert (recent being 2-5 years) who works freelance as a Andrew Jackson lookalike. He's going to be in a PBS program coming up about Andrew Jackson. He still smokes and struggles a bit and we visit with him quite often but he's a really nice guy and me and him really connect. However he's still really insane, maybe that’s why I connect with him.

Thanks for sending me all that stuff its been awesome to have it, I sorta feel bad because every time I write I ask for you to send something else and this time is no exception. If I could get a CD copy of those talks on the sacrament, and any other gospel talks that you've liked. I already have all the Lectures on the prophet Joseph Smith, and I have all of the House of Glory ones as well, and the Noah Blindness, but if there's any other good ones can you send them to me in CD format. Along with that I have my old CD player, if you can find it, I'm pretty sure its in my room by my stereo, if you could send that as well. Then along with all that stuff could you ask Matthew to burn a few CD's with some of the gospel music that he got on his mission. I know its a lot and again no rush just send it at your convenience. In the two weeks I've been here we've already listened to all of the Joseph Smith lectures, all of House of Glory, and all of Noah Blindness.

I love you guys so much and I love the work. I'll talk to you next week!!

Elder Carpenter

Jan. 19, 2009: First week in Tennessee

Hey, so you were right, my P-day is Monday. I got the jump rope and everything else, thanks for all that, including the letter. I spent the first day, last Monday, at the mission home and the mission office just sorta sitting around. Then Tuesday was transfer day and we got assigned our trainer and our area. My trainer is Elder Hansen from South Jordan, Utah, and I'm serving in the smallest area of the mission, and the area with the least baptisms, 3 last year. It's Hendersonville, Tennessee. It's comprised of two peninsulas and a little bit of mainland before it turns into Gallatin, Tennessee. Elder Hansen and his last companion, Elder Pearson, pretty much depleted the teaching pool here in Hendersonville for two reasons, the first being that President Hutchings was going to shut the area down if they didnt get 'enough' baptisms and because Elder Pearson was going home. So this week we've done a LOT of tracting. I'm pretty good at door approaches now because Elder Hansen lets/makes me knock all the doors. It's good experience and I'm willing, so it's not bad at all. The big tracting story of the week is that I knocked on Taylor Swif'ts door, if you know who she is. Her mom answered the door and said that they weren't interested in hearing about Jesus Christ... bummer.

So in our finding efforts we got 8 new investigators last week. One of them went into knee replacement surgery this morning and I gave him a blessing last night, and we met him on Saturday. His name is Hans and he's Catholic, part of the Knights of Columbus order. Then we're teaching Ed & Vicki. Ed is an ex-communicated member of one year who wants to get re-baptized and Vicki is his wife. They've both committed to stop smoking and are doing really well it seems.

Mom was wrong; it's cold here. But I still love you :) If you wouldn't mind, I'd love it if you could send a few things for me. First of all my jacket liner. Then if I could get some dark solid color sweaters with a V neck that would be awesome as well. They need to be solid and dark so they go with my slacks, and they need to be a V neck so they can see my tie. If you could also send some thermal pants that would rock as well.

Streets here in Tennessee are messed up!! I have yet to find a single road that goes straight. Not only can they not go straight but they're not based off any organized numerical or name system! Its completely random! There are even several streets here in Hendersonville that have up to 6 names, and then there are two streets in different parts of the town that both have the same name! It's ridiculous. So president has recommended that we get a GPS. Elder Hansen has one so we're fine for now, but speculation is unless they whitewash Hendersonville I'll be taking over the area next transfer because Elder Hansen has been here since the beginning of his mission in August. So if you could price some quality but cheap GPS systems for me, that would be fantastic as well. Elder Hansen has a Tom Tom and I really like that, but I also like low cost.

Thanks for your support and prayers. I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week.

Love,
Elder Carpenter

On to Tennessee

We haven't received a letter or e-mail from Bryan this week, but we did get to talk to him on the phone on Monday. He called from the Salt Lake Airport on his way to Tennessee. He was very glad to be leaving the MTC and getting to his mission. We are anxious to find out when his preparation day is so we know when to expect e-mail from him.

Bryan told us an interesting story when he called on Monday. You may remember in his last message that Bryan told about having an infection in his foot. When he went back to the doctor on Friday for a follow up, the foot was still quite swollen. The doctor said that if the swelling didn't go down by the next day, he would recommend that Bryan delay going to Tennessee for a week. Bryan did NOT want to stay at the MTC for another week while the rest of the missionaries in his district left for their mission areas. Bryan received a priesthood blessing from some of the other missionaries on Friday. When he returned to the doctor on Saturday, the swelling was completely gone from his foot; it had returned to normal size. The doctor was surprised and gave Bryan clearance to leave for Tennessee as scheduled.

I'll post Bryan's first e-mail from Tennessee as soon as we receive it.
(posted by Bryan's dad)

January 7, 2009: Last MTC E-mail

So this week has been really quite slow. Probably the most interesting
thing this week was Matthew's visit.  It was really nice to see him and
talk to him, and have him harass me about my tie.  He does seem to be
the same old person. I thought he'd be a lot different but it was weird,
he looks the same, sounds the same, and talks the same. It was almost
like he hadn't even left at all.

Still no word from Harry, I'm thinking maybe he wrote down his address
wrong, not that it matters much. By now he's probably already down to
SUU and his address is different anyways.

So I was assigned to be the flight leader person for our group that's
flying out on Monday. We've got 7 missionaries in our group, 6 from
my district and one more whose a Spanish speaking elder.  We report
at 4 a.m. to the travel office on Monday morning and our flight is
scheduled to leave at 7:05, so if I were to guess what time I'd be able
to call it would be around 6:00-6:30, but since I'm the flight leader
I want to make sure everyone else gets to call home first. If I don't
get to call from SLC I should be able to call from the Atlanta airport.
We fly from Salt Lake, to Atlanta, to Nashville.

I'm totally pumped to get to Nashville. I'm a little bummed that I lose
Elder Wright as my companion but my excitement in getting out to the
field outweighs my anxiety over a new companion that probably won't be
as cool.

I got to play the violin yesterday. They replaced the strings on it and
I got a chance to practice. I still remember pretty much everything and
I can play 4 hymns on the violin. I've gotten incredibly better at sight
reading hymns on the piano.  So my goal this week sometime is to rent
out the cello and see if I can still remember any of that.

Well, my laundry's done and I've gotta run, but you'll be hearing from me
on Monday sometime, most likely in the morning. If anything changes I'll
probably jump on e-mail really quick and send you a note about it. 

Love you all!!

Elder Carpenter 

We just got some photos from Bryan at the MTC. Here he is!

MTC E-mail: Dec. 31, 2008

Here's the most recent e-mail from Bryan, sent on Dec. 31, 2008. He also sent
a letter telling us that he got to meet and hear from Elder Bednar on Christmas
Eve and Elder Holland on Christmas Day. He said, "So, Elder Bednar has really
small hands, and Elder Holland has really blue eyes." Now on to his recent e-mail:

"Okay so here we go!  I've got 14 min left on my timer and 20 min left on my
laundry so I'm going to try to fit everything in that I need to.  First of all
thanks for the e-mail and Dad's hand written letter, it's the only piece of mail
that I've gotten all week :(. 

"So I can't remember what area of Ohio the women was from (who he commited to
baptism over the phone in the referral center), her name was Cynthia, ironically
enough, she is 42 and got baptized yesterday!! I called her last night to see
how she was doing and she told me that.  I spend about 4-5 hours in the RC every
week.  Elder Wright and I have decided to center our goals around the referral
center because they're real investigators and not pretend ones like everyone
else in the MTC that we teach.

"So this week was quite uneventful.  I've heard the MTC referred to as a tunnel.
You start out great and you can see the light, then the longer your there the
harder it is to stay focused, then you get to your last week and you realize that
your not ready for the field yet and then you study like mad, and all of a sudden
you're out of the tunnel into the field.  So my district is starting to lose
focus but Elder Wright and I do a pretty good job of separating ourselves from
the group when we need to for study and we get a lot more done.  So the most
eventful thing that happened this week was in the RC yesterday I called 59 people
and got hung up on by 58 people, and the one person who didnt hang up on me,
bless her heart, yelled at me first and then hung up on me.  :)  Awesome!!!
It was discouraging but I'm glad to have those experiances now because I know
it'll be happening in the field but face to face and with a door instead of a
phone.

"Thanks for sending the package. I'm excited to get it and hopefully this week
will be more eventful.  I love you all and hope everything's going all right back
home.  Send my regards to Matthew when you pick him up from the airport.

"Love you!!"

Elder Carpenter