Posted in General Posts by on 5/5/2012
Make sure you browes thru the photo section of my blog to see some new pics from Thailand
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Posted in General Posts by on 5/5/2012
Its been a while since my last blog, but the journey and everything I have been able to experience has been amazing. I want to thank all my supporters for this opportunity.
I spent the last month in a village called....... Mai ai, Thailand......... with my new team and one other team. The village was a lot better than what I expected in my head. I had imagined myself living in a hut somewhere with no electricity or running water. But I was suprised to find myself with my own bed with a toilet and running cold water. That was a great suprise. Each team was split up into twos....and we were split up among the houses in the village. So I lived with Zach, my new team leader, and our house was kind of like base camp for meetings and dinner at night. It was a nice house (by Thai standards) and the food was really good. I did eat some pretty crazy things while living there. I ate frog one day.....it was good and a little chewy,....but not bad. We ate ants and ants eggs one day which was a little weird.....ha. They actually didn't taste like anything and were pretty good when mixed in with some sticky rice and some soup. Over all....every meal was great and our "house mom" made sure we had plenty to eat. They would ask 50 times if you "want more" ....and she would not stop asking until you said " I'm gonna be sick if I eat another bite".....ha.
The ministry was a good experience while being there. We started out thinking our ministry would be towards human trafficking and the sex trade,....but it ended up being different since we were in a remote rural village, We were actually in the "recruiting fields" for the whole sex trafficking operation. Recruiters come to this village to try and entice familys to allow thier daughters to go live in "the big city" . We started out in my "house dads" farm pulling weeds. It was really hot during the day.......but not too difficult of work. It was really wild and I could not believe I was working in a rice field in the middle of rural Thailand every day!!.....it was wild. Some other days we would go work in a nearby fruit farm and do similar work "hoeing" weeds and clearing the land. That was a little more challenging and we would take shifts of 30 minutes which made the itme go by really fast. I loved Thialand a lot more than Central America......and I think it is because Thailand is new and interesting to me. The entire village was a Buddhist community, and I really enjoyed watching them and how they worship their idols. It is a little weird, but I was respectful, and they did the same for us. We had the opportunity to go the temple and see the monks in action, and it was a great experience. The temple was cool and a beautiful building and had a lot of interesting statues inside I enjoyed. The Thai people are very dedidcated to their religion and have enormous faith. I loved the time that I was in Thailand.....I had an enormous time.
I am currently in SIem Reap, Cambodia, awaiting my next ministry assignment in Cambodia. We have been here for 4 days and have been undergoing debriefings, interviews, team excercises, training, and a little sight-seeing. Saturday we were able to visit Angkor Wat........an incredible part of history. I will know my exact location for ministry in Cambodia in May soon......then on to Malaysia in June.
Thanks for your continued prayers and support.
Carter
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Posted in General Posts by on 4/9/2012
Hey all. Uploaded some photos in the photo section to give a glimpse of our time in Nicaragua. On our way to our ministry site in Thailand. Hope to have time to write soon. Thanks for all the prayers and support. Carter
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Posted in General Posts by on 3/1/2012
hey guys,
i want to thank everyone for all the support and just letting you know that i am doing really well and everything is going great here in honduras. time is flying by and cant believe that we only have a week and acouple days left here. its exciting to be already on month three and feel that the time that we have spent here has been good for everyone and people are getting more comfortable.
We have done a lot of manual work since being here and I have enjoyed it a lot. Last week we were doing some foundation work on a boy’s house that stays here on the property for his mom, and it was a good time getting to give the house some new and better support. We were in a part of tegusigalpa calles los penos, and it is one of the more dangerous and violent colonies here, but everything went really well and the neighborhood was accepting to us being there and we had no problems with anyone. This weekend tony, our mission host, is thinking about taking a group of people up there at night to experience that because it is supposed to be crazy and out of control with teenagers and just a big party. I don’t feel that I am going to go but I am looking forward to heearing about the excitement from some of the others that will go. I am just really nervous about putting myself in a situation where kids are shooting off guns and having drugs at the same time(cant be the best situation). Im sure that everything will be fine though for the people that go and will be a good experience. It is just not on my heart.
We have been working on the property all week and mostly just digging trenches for some water pipes to be covered. We had a free day yesterday and had a great day at the beach and it was fun. I had picured a busy beach and touristy, but it was a little remote island that had barely anything on it. Today has been a great day and doing a lot of racking outside and it was great weather. Not hot at all here since were up on a mountain so I have loved that.
Been doing a lot of thinking and figuring some personal goals for myself this year and really excited for the outcome and the journey of finding new discoveries in my life and looking forward to how I will have changed. So this month for me is going great and loving Honduras. So thankyou again for all of your support and everything yal have done to get me here.
Sincerely,
Carter
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Posted in General Posts by on 2/16/2012
hey everyone,
sorry it has been awhile since my last post, but we are having to pay for internet and took me a minute to get my cash switched over.
We made it through the first month in el salvador. i think that everything went well with our ministry and what the mission host was trying to accomplish. i can't really say that it was the best time of my life because it wasn't, but i think that being out of comfort zone with the new type of ministry was good to experience. we had no trouble with our travels from el salvador to Honduras and made it safely and smoothly here.
in Honduras we are in a great little location about fifteen minutes up the mountain from the capital city. i am really excited about the move here and it is definitely a great change and looking forward to everything we have planned this month. our host, tony, is a great guy with a great vision for what he wants to do in some dangerous parts of the city. He works with local kids that he takes off the streets and tries to slowly change their habits and their behaviors with positivity and love. At this moment he has seven kids that live here full time on the property with him and his wife and they take care and provide almost everything for these boys.
Our ministry is looking great for the month and i am really pumped for the manual labor of wiring around his house. we have plans to dig some holes for water pipes and building a flight of stairs in a poor colony that will help elderly people and little kids on their way to the store and market. I love manual labor type of ministry so i think that this month will be great for me and ill be able to be a big help.
thank you for all of your support and prayers,
Carter
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Posted in General Posts by carter on 2/13/2012
uploaded a few photos into the photo section. If you are on Facebook, "Friend" me on facebook, as I am able to upload photos onto Facebook easily, but find it hard to upload photos with my I-Pad onto the Blog site. One of the challenges of "Third World Internet"......thanks of your prayers and support. Carter
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Posted in General Posts by on 1/31/2012
Hey everyone,
Everything here is going great. We are still in San Vicente doing our ministry here. It has been good so far and our team is getting along well and seem to be growing closer everyday, so I am looking forward to seeing us become a stronger force and really impact everywhere we go.
The other day we were visiting a small little village about ten minutes away from our town. We were bringing speakers so that we could put on a worship service and sing songs and do some skits that we have been learning here. It was a lot of fun and went really well I think. I was helping victor, our mission host, out with the sound and getting the microphone to work and was sitting on the ground. The next thing I knew I was feeling something really warm on my back and I turned around to find myself getting peed on by a local dog ha. It was so nasty and kind of ruined my time there cause I could only think about how I had just got peed on. Thankfully we were not there for too long so got to go back to the house after and change. Crazy! All this past weekend we had helped and supported a revival for the church that we are here helping. I think that it was a success and started off slow the first night but had a really big turn out on Sunday. This young band played music for awhile and were really good and entertaining. It's difficult to sit there for three hours when it is in another language though. I was struggling keeping my focus for so long on the speaker but I think that it was impactful to the community and was a success for the church in what they were trying to accomplish.
That is a little bit of the past couple of days that have been going on down here. I appreciate all the comments that I have received and read all of them and take them to heart so thank you all.
Dios de bendega ,
Carter
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Posted in General Posts by on 1/22/2012
Today was a good day and we had a free half day where we all got to do what we wanted and just got some rest. And then at three we all piled up in a truck and set off to a little town up in the mountains about two hours away to support victors friends local church. It was a good ride with windy roads and a nice breeze cause it was ten times cooler up the mountain. So. Got there and hung out for a min getting to take some photos cause the view was really nice. We had no idea what are purpose was, we were just told it was to go and support a local church and do whatever they wanted from us, but that just ended up attending a church service that would be like one that I had never been to. They had a guest speaker that had lived all over the place and was from costa rica and had lived in the states for awhile. He gave his sermon and was very energetic and loud, yelling and repeating a lot. It went on for awhile and then after he wanted to pray and ask for anyone that wanted to be prayed for to come to the front. What happened next I am still trying to understand or just take in cause I have never personally seen or been in a place that was like this. He was praying and speaking in tongues and the people were all gathered up at the front of the room. People were crying and some doing more than others. One lady was shaking and looked like she was going to pass out and another lady did pass out, it was a shock I thought that she had hurt herself, but the speaker told us she was fine ha. I was like ok. This went on for awhile and I was standing off to the side kind of just trying to take in as much as I could and try to get a understanding of what was happening cause it seemed very odd and weird to me, to them normal and was very interesting to see. I guess it shows just how much the people here are desperate to need something to get t hem through the hard days and the times when they think that they will not make it. the service was good to experience, but kind of made me feel unsure on how to take in everything that had just gone on and don't really know if I can right now. I had never seen anything like what had happened last night so I was shocked.
That was a quick over view of everything that we did last night and hope you get a feeling of how strong these people worship and was a real eye opener for me and hope the same for you.
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Posted in General Posts by on 1/18/2012
Hey everyone,
Sorry that has taken me so long to get on my blog, if you can imagine it is difficult to get Internet here ha.
We are here in San Vicente, el Salvador having a great time and have completed our second day of doing ministry among the community. It is very beautiful here and I love the landscape with mountains and a volcano right behind our house that we are staying. We have gotten really lucky and are staying in a brand new house about five miles up a mountain from San Vicente. And I feel so lucky and honored that I have made it to this point and I am really excited and looking forward to everything there is to come. Our mission host, Victor, is very nice and helpful in everything we're doing and working hard to serve us and make us feel as comfortable as possible. I feel that our team is getting to know each other better each day and becoming closer, and feel confident that we will be a good fit and do great things while out here on the field.
We did our second day of ministry since we have been here. We drove about fifteen minutes outside out town to a little village where we walked around and prayed for the people and the place in general. We met a really nice woman, Pauline, that invited us inside her house and we sat down and heard a lot about her story and how she was sick and couldn't get out of bed with many different problems that she was fighting. And how she said that her daughter brought her to the little village and they prayed over her and how she was healed and is in still recovery but doing great and soon be hundred percent. It was cool to see how they live and how much they love the lord out here and really strive to know more.
So that a little of what we are doing so far and hopefully continue to do some more great stuff.
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Posted in General Posts by Carter on 10/22/2011
It is the last day of training camp and I have been so blessed while on this trip to get to know some of the best and most inspiring individuals that I have had the pleasure of meeting in my life. I found out my team and I could not be anymore excited or thrilled for who I got paired up with and I just thank God that he put me with the people that he knows will teach me and mold me while we embark on this new journey together. I feel like while I have been here, I have gotten the encouragment and the clearification that this is what I am supposed to be doing in my life and I could not be anymore fired up for what there is in store for us as we go on this new chapter in our life. I ask that you keep me and my team in your prayers as we we go back home for the next two months and just that we are kept focussed and headstrong in why we are here.
YEAAAAA!!!!
Carter R.
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