Whoo! Short time with so much to say! 04-30-08‏

WOW! This past week we've set 3 baptismal dates. One is more solid than the other two but still! They're all desirous to know that this is THE church of Jesus Christ. It's absolutely exciting to see the transformation from some of the most hopeless and sorrowful people, into those trying to be disciples. It's so much fun! Andrew Legaspi, Cyrille Chwampka, and Robert Lasseter are our baptismal dates.This last week there was one miracle in particular. Our teaching pool is growing rapidly. We're busy as can be! As we were driving from one appointment to another a bus stopped in front of us. It was a bluebird school bus. The little kids got off and crossed the street as usual. A man on the left side of us hollared to us. Luckily our windows were down because it's finally warming up! He asked what we were selling. Elder Winn responded "We're not, we're handing out free copies of the Book of Mormon." The guy nearly sprinted to us! I got out and Elder Winn pulled the car over. I discussed breifly what the Book is. He was SO excited to take one. He gave us his information and we're pretty sure there's lots of potential there. What a miracle the Lord worked!Moral of this story is... ride with your windows down and you never know what neat things may happen! ha haHonestly though, the Lord blesses us all in our respective callings. He's eager to enable us. We're all called ultimately to live worthy to return to our Father. The way we do that is faith in the Lord, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end! We can all do it. It takes some effort and some diligence but the reward is Eternal life which we learn in D+C 14:7 (<- Kylie Taylor ring any bells?) is the greatest of all the gifts of God!I love you all. If I can do anything from another country for you I will try as long as It's in line with Gods will! :D
I hope the best for each of you.
Take care of yourselves and I miss you each.
Love,Elder McCarty
P.s. the rains are coming and I'm loving it! Elder Keaton says each raindrop makes your wife more beatiful!

Another week! What a relief. 04-23-08‏

Whoo! It's been an intense week! Last Thursday we got our transfer call! I'm staying in Kingsway and Clareview. Elder Beer went back to Castledowns and got a new companion named Elder Skousen (related to Cleon Skousen for those who know of him.) Elder Winn is still my companion. They're keeping me under the watchful eye of someone in authority! ha ha He's District Leader and I'm constantly learning tons from serving with him. We have a sneaking suspicion I may be his last companion. He only has this transfer and one more left! Intense (like camping.) Ok bad joke. In tents, Intense? Anyhow it should be an amazing 6 more weeks we're just about guaranteed to be serving together. We get along well and work fairly unified. Serving with a group of three really helped us each appreciate the simplicity that a companionship gives rather than a tripanionship. The work is definately rolling forward.MONDAY. Elder Russell M. Nelson from the Quorum of the Twelve came to visit. AMAZING. When he walked in we all stood. President Rhodes led the way and we followed suit. (<-another bad pun maybe?) It was amazing to see a man I respect so very much (President Rhodes) interact with a man we all respect so much (Elder Nelson.) When he spoke my pen could not fly fast enough. I studied up on 2 of the scriptures he mentioned this morning and it took me nearly 1 hour. It was amazing. He's a brilliant man. Much more though he is an Apostle of the Lord. We all felt that as we shook his hand and heard him speak.The work is progressing. We're able to fill more time with finding and appointments with members now. For the past 3 weeks we had to drive all over the city, and we had tons of appointments. It was good, and busy, BUT it's good to go back.Today I feel a strong testimony of the gospel. I wish I could carry to each one of you the feelings I recieve when I pray to know the truth of it all. Ultimately though, I cannot. HOWEVER, you (each and every one of you) can allow the Holy Ghost to carry it to you. Live the gospel, seek to understand it and then, pray for a spiritual witness. It will be there. I've seen it in my life. I've had the pleasure of seeing it in the lives of investegators. I desire the pleasure of each of you seeing it in your lives, even if it isn't the first time. We can never have too many witnesses from the Holy Ghost.Well family and friends I best move on to my other e-mails. I hope all is going well for each of you. Remember a quote that one of my Zone Leaders has hanging on his wall. "If you're not happy, you're not living the plan of happiness." It's there for us all. Christ's hand is extended, will you take it?I know we can.Take care, stay safe, and roll on (mormon 8:22)
Love,Elder McCarty

Good DAY! 04-16-08‏

Canada is nuts! It snowed the other day! It was nuts. I can't believe it. It's been positive 20 degrees! Man this country is nuts.The work is amazing! Andrew Legaspi is probably the most rapidly advancing. We taught him last night and he knelt and prayed afterward. We asked him to give the spirit a few seconds to answer his prayer. The spirit was in the room. He knelt and after struggling to find the words to ask about the truth he just kept his eyes closed. Elder Winn and I were praying hard in our minds that God would send him the spirit. When Andrew opened his eyes and said "I feel really good" we were blown away. I can see his seed of faith sprouting. It's going to be fantastic. He's committed to be baptized when he knows.Apparently he has a bit of a Smoking problem. Almost everyone in Canada does. He's got a great heart and sincere desire.The tripanionship is going well. Our teaching is slightly disarrayed. The point gets across but if it werent for the spirit I think people would be confused sometimes. God is with us. I'm loving this work. I can't believe how much time has gone by already. Yesterday I was told that it's all down hill from here. I can't believe that! I need more time! Ha ha I'm just soaking it all in.
Love,Elder McCarty
P.s. Kiley! I know you ladies didn't get the chance to see the priesthood session but I was asking because I figured one of you could ask him for me.

To whom it may concern! 04-09-08‏

Today is a pretty good day! The tripanionship as we call them is going well. I'm getting along with both my companions and we work hard all the time! Word on the street is that President may leave us in this threesome for a while. Obviously it all happens with revelation and we can't really predict it. People a lot of the time just like to pretend they know what's happening to get a rise out of people. I'm fine with whatever the Lord inspires the president to do!The work is progressing tons! We got 3 new investegators the other day. Two came from tracting and one was a referral. We have 3 investegators that have agreed to be baptized when they recieve their answer that the Book of Mormon is true. We will soon find out if they are keeping commitments because whether or not they get their answer all depends on that! There are many humble and kind people here. Tracting is much more fruitful. Those we find are not always golden and they rarely have a support system so they're more difficult to work with. Ultimately though it's what we must do when we don't have referrals.Conference was absolutely amazing! I would have to say Jeffrey R. Holland's talk on christianity was definately among the favourites (<- that's how they spell it here) for me! I also loved priesthood session! I think I saw Jace in the choir. Amy, Sarah, Courtney, Lindsey or Kiley, maybe you know whether or not my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was a choir from the ogden and logan institutes so I figured it was definately possible.I'm loving the hard work. We've got a lot of promising people here and soon I expect to see some of the fruits of the labors that have been going on here for so much longer than I've been here. I'm learning to be increasingly bold with as much charity in my heart that I can muster. Even with the hardest of hearts and the most stubborn of wills there is a glimmer of hope in their eyes when I stand up for what they often try to trample under foot.For instance, Denise is a woman likely in her 60's. Now often those who have been around a while are those most stubborn. We were talking with her and mentioned Joseph Smith. She (almost cursingly) said "Pff, Joseph Smith!" I stood as tall as I could and I said in essence "Denise, you can tell us you think we're wrong as much as you want, you can insult us and you can even try to shake our testimonies. We KNOW in our souls that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and we'll not stay here if you chose to talk of him in that way." Her eyes softened. I proceeded to tell her how the restoration can affect her life NOW and for a moment I could see in her she felt the truth. Quickly she realized what had happened and returned to the offense to tell us that the bible (of which she doesn't read and has no copy) is the only word of God. She's a nice woman but is caught in a state of blind faith. I loved the talk given on blind faith this last conference and how we do not believe it to be beneficial. We don't practice it. Our faith is rooted in the Lord. We only trust so purely in Thomas S. Monson because we have seen that he is indeed Gods mouth piece.I do love this gospel and the work is as marvelous as Doctrine and Covenants says!Stay strong, Trust God, Don't worry.
Love,Elder McCarty

I'm exhausted but I'd have it no other way! 04-02-08‏

Well this Preparation day is more relaxed! We are starting to get into the swing of things again and I'm really enjoying the work. We're three Elders covering three areas. There's a lot to be done. It's a literal juggling act to get everyone in. For now Elder Beer is the Senior companion for Castledowns and Elder Winn is in charge of Kingsway and Clareview. We usually have appointments all day. The people around here have been very fun to work with and I hope I'll stick around for a good while.We're teaching a man named Daniel Blanco. He speaks minimal english and just came up from mexico. He met missionaries in Calgary and they referred him to us! He's a very humble man, Catholic in religious background. He's eager to learn (english and religion) and we're eager to teach. We've got a translator in the ward named Sister Marez. She's very kind hearted and does well. Tonight we have another appointment with him and we hope to show him the restoration video. We taught the restoration to him last week and he seemed to understand. I look forward to working more with him. Sister Marez being available was an absolute miracle. WE didn't get a hold of her until 10 minutes before we were supposed to meet there and she made it! She was having a headache so she had planned to stay home. She decided doing the Lords will would help her headache and by the end of the lesson her head was soothed.Cyrille Chwampka is a man from Zimbabwe! He's worked for around 6 years to be able to bring his sisters to Canada and be reunited with his mother. He's extremely humble and eager to learn as well. WE teach him as much as we can and he is looking to find work in Fort MCmurray which is bad news. The climate up there is not cultivating for religion at all. The Lord will provide.The list goes on and on! I love the people here! Not all of them are as humble but I'm growing an appreciation for the kind people of Edmonton.I'm loving the work and we're ever busy! This is my first preparation day that I get to do much preparation! We even got to play some basketball. I had some really lucky games so it was double fun!Elder Melchin (I believe of the 70) came and had a question and answer session with the whole zone. He's a brilliant man. His answers left no room for doubt and I took notes feverishly! I couldn't write fast enough. I'm SO excited for general conference! WOO!I hope all of you at home are loving life! I know that the Lord will guide us and lift us up when we cannot for ourselves! I love you all! Elder McCarty

Ok everyone 10 minutes... I'm so busy! 03-26-08‏

Perhaps I ought to write this email first from now on. I think I will because that's the reason last week it didn't work. The server was down and we luckily got in breifly but it kicked me out as soon as I wanted to send! So last weeks email got erased.Elder Winn is my new companion. He's from Taylorsville Ut. The hood. ha ha I love the man he's teaching me rapidly and we're working very VERY hard. We always have a million things to do. I've yet to take a preparation day which I actually have time to play basketball. Maybe next week because today that won't happen.We cover two wards. Kingsway and Clareview. Now we cover 3. Elder Croft was in our district and will be going home tomorrow for medical leave. His companion is in CAstledowns and will now be converted to our companionship. For the rest of this transfer (about 3 1/2 weeks) we'll be covering three areas. Today we drive down into the heart of edmonton to pick up Elder Beer (our new companion) and swap our car. Today is going to be a very hard and busy one. Worst of all we may find it hard to get much missionary work done. Hopefully next wednesday we'll get to have some time for basketball and laundry and everything we should be doing.The work here is absolutely amazing. The members generally are not crazy about missionary work but we have been finding a lot of people through street contacting and tracting. I've given out at least 20 copies of the Book of Mormon in the short time I've been here. Our teaching pool is growing and we're likely to see some serious progress.Cyrille has got to be our most promising new investegator. He had a friend back in Zimbabwe that was a member and refused to play rugby on sundays. He admired that faith and it always stuck with him. Since then he's worked very hard to bring his family back to live with their mom in Canada. They're very humble and hard working. They love Jesus Christ and are not afraid to commit to any religion. Our first lesson with him will be this friday! He'll likely become a member.In my last area I've been told that Dan Jahraus is being baptised. They don't have a date but he has committed! Life is amazing. The weather is warm and I'm loving this work. I'm learning rapidly and am increasingly motivated. Time is flying very fast and we're accomplishing as much as possible. We're constantly exhausted but I wouldn't like it any other way!My new address is Elder McCartyC 208 14511 77th st.Edmonton AB T5C 1E7Canada I love you all and hope that you have the best experiences. I've got under 2 minutes left and I don't want this to erase so I'll wrap up.I'm so grateful for the opportunity to serve and the love that I'm being shown. Continue to be examples of righteousness and God will bless you. Keep in mind what is really important.Love,Elder McCarty1:00 left! Love you all!

AH! Time is short! I'll hurry though 03-12-08‏

Ok family and friends we've got about 15 minutes so I'll try to make this good! Transfers have indeed come! I am serving in the big city of Edmonton! The area is called Kinsway and Clarview. We cover 2 wards (one is a young single adult the other is a regular ward.)My new companion is Elder Winn. He's an absolute stud muffin and I've really enjoyed the time we've been together (currently grand totalling less than 24 hours.) He's a very smart Elder and has told me he likes to work hard. I'm excited for that. I expect we will do very well together. We get along superbly.Saying goodbye in Rocky Mtn. House was difficult. We survived it but It was pretty heart wrenching. It's almost like leaving home again because I was starting to feel very much at home there. Nevertheless the Lord has called me here. 1 Nephi 17:9 is during the story of Nephi building the ship. He inquires of the Lord where he must go to make ORE for TOOLS. Now Often as missionaries we're referred to as tools in the Lords hands. This was the last scripture I read before getting the phone call from President Rhodes informing me of the transfer.Family and friends I want you to know that I'm now finding that ore. I'm being made into the tool that our Father in heaven would have me be. I'm excited, uplifted and very much eager to get out and do the Lords sacred work.I'm in the Edmonton North zone and about 20 minutes from the mission office. For now send things there. Next week I'll be sure to get our home address so that I'll be prepared to recieve some letters ;DI've had a lot of good first impressions up here and I think I'll really enjoy the time I'm going to spend here. I'm shorter on time now that we're at a different library but I'll be trying to alternate who I am replying to so I'm getting to each of you. Have the best day you can!Elder McCarty