Current Address

Elder Jordan Carlson


Send emails to: urumontemission@gmail.com with ELDER JORDAN CARLSON as the subject line. The mission home will print the email and send it to Jordan.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Proselitismo

So that is super awesome about Stephan! He is going to love it! I´m sure I will see him around once he gets out into the mission field!
Anyway i will try to remember everthing I wanted to say.
Thanks for sending stuff, but I haven´t recieved any mail from anyone just so you know. I think I gave you the right address but there could be one small change. it should be
Elder Jordan Carlson
Argentina MTC
Bonpland 2349/55
(c1425 FEW) Buenos Aires
Argentina
The only thing that I think might have got messed up is the ´FEW´ i might have put ´FWE´ because there is a paper in my room that says that, but its a missprint.
Anyway some crazy stuff has happened here. Not too crazy. Our water supply is currently cut off, we haven´t had fresh water in like 3 days, but its no big deal we just drink a lot of orange juice during meals and stuff. We weren´t able to shower either for the past few days but just recently they filled up the tanks for the building with river water so we can at least shower and use the toliet. They are supposed to have it fixed by tonight I think though, but that's what they said yesterday too so we will see.
It rained for the first time. It was crazy it was really strong rain and it was like the entire day, on Tuesday and quite a bit on Wednesday too.
Thanks for forwarding those letters, I also sent one to mark, make sure he knows the correction to my address, you can use my phone to get his phone number or just send him a message on facebook or something.
Everyone is allowed to email me so you can post something on my facebook wall or something or on my blog telling everyone to email instead of write letters, Also I have heard the Dearelder.com takes like 14 days to get to me so you will probably want to avoid that as well.
We have our first transfer coming up this next week, we are going to be losing 50 Latinos and 15 North Americans, right now we have 50 latinos and 26 North Americans, then we have 2 days of only 11 missionaries in the whole CCM and then in exactly one week we get 40 Latinos and 3 North Americans, the 3 white guys are going to Montevideo West, but its still cool.
I don't think i have ever mentioned it but all the latinos here can't say my name, really they just can't say the L so they always pronucne it Carson, I eventually just started saying it like that too for simplicity sake.
We are going to have a really weird schedule for G.C. on Saturday and Sunday, first off we are still going proselyting which is cool and then we are watching a recorded session after that, and priesthood session live, which starts at 9pm our time and goes to 11, so we will be going to be a little late on saturday, then on Sunday we are watching the other Saturday session and the Sunday ones. I am really excited for it. Especially because its in English!!! We have had a few firesides and things and most of them are in English but when ever we have a Spanish only meeting I don't really get very much from it, just a small nap.... haha
By far the coolest part of the week has been Proselitismo.
Saturday they bussed us out about a half an hour into Buenos Aires into an area called Itzango or something like that and we went off in our companionships and preached the gospel, in Spanish, or kind of in Spanish. haha It wasn´t scary or anything like that becuase we had worked out before hand what to say to people when we first found them, the hard part was trying to understand what they said back, and formulate a response that even remotely related to it!

We ended up talking to a lot of people mostly just walking on the street, We were able to have quite a few meaningful contacts and passed out like 16 or so folletos (pamplets) about the restoration, or plan of salvation, anyway if nothing else we planted a few seeds... But even better than that 3 people accepted an invitation for Baptism! jk, no but for real three people agreed to have us come teach them more!
The thing is... I think the first guy that agreed was just trying to get us to stop bothering him, I'm pretty sure he gave us a fake address, But the next guy was legit interested, he was a younger guy like 25 ish and he was on his way to visit his sister, his name is Luis. The only problem is he live really far outside our area so we just gave him as a referel to the real missionaries in the area. The last guy is named Martin, He is the only one that we will actually teach, We set up an appointment for saturday morning which works perfect for us, haha there is this one question we would always asked people while we were talking to them trying to spark some interest ''Que es lo más importante en su vida?'' it just means what is the most important thing in your life? Anyway usually people say, family, health, or God. but this guy said something and he was the only person we didn't understand! perfect right? any way we are preparing to teach him the first lesson! We will see how it goes!
We also got to go buy some candy and stuff and little stores that are in our area. It was pretty cool especially because all the guys here are always raving about the Panarias, Bakeries. Down here they put this stuff called ''Dulce de Leche'' on everthing! its like a chocolate carmel stuff, its way good! They put it in bread, in cookies, all sorts of stuff... we even get it during regular breakfast in the CCM... anyway I'm running out of time oh ya and there are dogs everywhere. just running around or chilling, I'm not a fan.
Proselitismo was one of the most humbling expirences. I was constanly reminded how blessed I really am. I need to remeber that. Its just amazing. Oh ya and everyone we talked to was really nice, even if they didn't want to listen to what we had to say.
I Love you all!
Elder Jordan Carlson IV

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Life at the CCM

Hey mom,

Things are going pretty good so far. The food isn't bad but its cafeteria style so its not that great. We had this french fry casserole thingy today which was actually really good. So far the worst has been the chilly stuff we had the first day. Anyway, I have realized while writing in my journal/emails. that my mind tends to wander. Its like A.D.D. for writing stuff, but it will try to stay on task, and i think i mentioned this but my mind is already being corrupted by Spanish, so my already bad spelling is about to get worse. Thank goodness for spell check.

Spanish is hard, its definitely going to be a challenge. When ever i think i´m doing good, one of the Latinos asks me a simple question, and i have no idea what he is say. It´s all very humbling, which is good i guess. haha. But honestly its hard to believe its been a whole week, but at the same time, It feels like its been forever. Its weird, i´m really excited to go proselyting on Saturday, but its going to be almost useless cause i don´t speak or understand near enough Spanish to do any good. haha. In classes they are trying to prepare us to go proselyting by making us memorize a bunch of stuff, and learn how to bear our testimonies. Basically we are going to go out on the street, ask some one how they are doing today? have no clue what they say back, and then bare my testimony to them! i´m excited because we get to go out somewhere in the city. Its crazy some of they guys have gotten really far with investigator just visiting them a few times and only on Saturdays, One companionship has a baptism date set for a investigator!

The thing that i don´t really like about the CCM, (Argentina MTC) is the days just blend together, kinda like working for APX because you don´t have anything to look forward to except leaving. On my mission i will be doing the same thing all day but i will have people that i am working with and progressing towards baptism which will make it a lot better. Its alright though because i am having a lot of good experiences while i have been here already.

For example,
One of the things the teachers have been stressing a lot since we have been here is the importance of having the spirit when you are teaching lessons to investigators, even if its just a fake investigator. One time we weren´t taking the role playing very seriously and we got chewed out by Hermano Zanzi, he is one of the teachers. Anyway, so we have all been working on that, and like the next day i was teaching with my companion to our fake investigator, and we had the spirit with us and the lesson went way smoother and you could feel the power of the spirit when we testified even though it was just a few memorized lines of Spanish!

Another cool thing about the CCM is that all of the ''North Americans'' (ha ha that's what they call us) are going to Uruguay Montevideo, except three of the guys are going to Montevideo west. its great because I'm getting to know these guys pretty well and I'm excited to see them and work with them later on in my mission! The Latino elders are only here for 3 weeks and they are all going to different Argentina missions, I have no clue where the Uruguayan Elders get trained but i hear i´m going to have mostly local companions once i get out there.

My district is made up of 8 of the 9 guys that flew out from Dallas with me. The 9th guy was from Louisiana but spoke perfect Spanish, so they paired him with the Latinos and he is only staying for 3 weeks as well.

My companion´s name is Elder Spilsbury, he is from Henderson, NV. He is a pretty cool guys and is picking up the language a lot faster than I am, side note, every single one of the guys in my district has had Spanish in high school or something for at least 2 years, except me. I took German. cool right? haha anyway, he is doing well with the language so hopefully our proselitismo wont be a waste. All the guys that have been here for 7 weeks always talk about the awesome candy they buy when they are out proselyting so that is fun, but i´m just looking forward to leaving this place for a while and full on practicing what they have taught us. We will see how it goes.

I can´t remember everything i wanted to tell you, but i feel like Ive done a fairly good job so far. oh some of they guys were saying that it takes like 3 or 4 days for a letter to get from me to home, and like 2 weeks for one to get from home to me? not sure why but we will have to see! I might have mentioned but they said large padded envelopes usually make through, so if you wanna send me something feel free! I like most candy.

And so you know, I´m only allowed to receive letters on Thursday, I can only write letters on Sunday and Thursday and emails only on Thursday

Love
Elder Carlson IV

Thursday, September 16, 2010

9/16/10 Jordan Made it to Buenos Aires!


Hey mom!
Well they are letting us email you now and it sounds like every Thursday! This place is pretty cool, its really flat, no mountains. The Temple looks really cool but they are completely renovating and adding a huge piece onto it. The MTC is fairly small, it looks like an apartment complex or something, but inside it looks just like any other church building. We haven't done all that much, ha ha but these keyboards are a little different, i couldn't find the apostrophe for like five minutes! I got assigned a room but i don't know who all is going to be in it, but it looks like 6 or so to a room, two of the white guys i met in Dallas are in my room but that's all i know for now. I don't really know what to say... Customs and immigration was a breeze i was kinda worried about it but it wasn't a problem at all. It kinda seems like anyone who pays the $140 entrance fee gets to come in. Anyway, I have already had an interview with the MTC president down here, he seems really nice. His name is President George and he is white! thank goodness. I was just waiting for another interview thing with his wife and i was in a room with two other guys both are from Buenos Aires and don't speak any English, haha this is going to take some getting used to but i'm up for the challenge. And i have 8 other gringos to do it with! Oh ya! and i already ran into a guy from Timpview! Grant Holden, i haven't had a chance to talk to him so i don't know if he is going to Uruguay or somewhere else. Thats about all i have to say for now
Love
Jordan
ps. They said we are not allowed to take any pictures our entire stay at the MTC until the very last day. So don't be expecting anything for a while!