October 12, 2009

Hello family!
Things this last week went pretty well. We were on exchanges for most of the week, from Tuesday to Friday. I stayed in Clarksville and Elder Furrows went up to Hartford, KT. It's about a 2 hour drive up to Hartford, and we went there on Tuesday morning to drop Elder Furrows off and pick up Elder Wurston to bring him back with me. We got up there around noon and we had a 2:30 appointment with Vanessa and Maurice, a couple that we're working with in Clarksville. Anyways Elder Wurston and I got on our way and we realized that Elder Furrows sill had our phone. So neither of us had a phone, and no matter where we are we're supposed to have our phones with us so President can get hold of us at anytime. We had a grand adventure trying to get the phone back without having any way to contact the other Elders. They immediately left Hartford to drive to Liechfield, about another 30 minutes away from Hartford out in the middle of nowhere. So we drove to Liechfield and went to a gas station and asked if we could use their phone. Elder Wurston is being trained right now he has only been out about 2 weeks, and he didn't know where any members lived, nor did he remember his phone number. So now we needed to find someone who would let us call a Tennessee number. We had 2 gas stations tell us that it was a long distance number, but then the manager at the 2nd gas station said that it actually wasn't and let us use their phone. We got hold of Elder Furrows just as they were getting ready to ride their bikes to the post office to express overnight mail the phone to us in Clarksville. We met up with them and got the phone back, we ended up driving around 270 miles that day and getting back to Clarksville around 5:00. A grand adventure.

Vanessa and Maurice are a great couple who are going through some hard times. A few years back they really hit rock bottom and were homeless. Now they've worked their way back up a bit and are living in a duplex. They have word of wisdom problems but they both have been taught the first 2 lessons and agreed to be baptized. I'm a little worried about them because they were really excited to go to church on Sunday and the promised me twice that nothing would keep them from coming. On Sunday they didn't make it, the ride we had arranged for them said that they werent home, and when we went by later their car was still gone. Now I'm up in Hopkinsville for another exchange. This time I'm staying up here, so I won't know anything about what's going on with them until Wednesday. Hopefully they're alright.

Cody is doing well. He came to a "Songs of the Savior" last night and really enjoyed it. He wants to be baptized for a remission of his sins and really likes the church, he just doesn't agree that Joseph Smith is a prophet or that we have prophets today. His date is for this weekend, so hopefully Elder Furrows will be able to help him understand before this weekend. Gordan's date dropped due to word of wisdom problems. He's been having trouble with work. He works at Burger King and isn't getting enough hours to support his family (don't know how he planned on supporting a family with Burger King in the first place) so he's been really stressed about that. However his wife called us and told us (his wife is Crystal who just recently got baptized) that all he does is sit at home and play computer games until he crashes, then he sleeps for a day and then stays up for 3 playing more computer games. So he's not even looking for a job. So we're still working with him on a few things.

Those are our big top investigators right now. Then just helping the zone out. The Hopkinsville Elders are having trouble with their ward leadership. The leadership thinks that they are lazy and thereby don't support them. They think that the sole purpose of ward leadership is to support them in everything that they do. So we've had a bit of a conflict. It's hard for a lot of missionaries because they don't really understand that a bishop has 5 and a half million things to do, and he's super busy taking care of active members, and less active members that he can't always provide a lot of time to work with non-members. They also have trouble remembering that since their not full-time missionaries they have other responsibilities like a family to care for and a job to maintain, and other church callings. It's important for every member to do everything they can to share the gospel, but it's important for missionaries to realize that they aren't the top priority in everything. It'll be a fun exchange figuring out the missionaries side of things. Anyways I love you all! Have a great week, I know I will.

Love Elder Carpenter