First Baptism!

My First Baptism!

Dear Family,
Haha mom, do I have a car?  Ya right, haven't you learned anything from your missionary moms email group? Only the assistants have cars, a few areas have bikes though, but not us. Yes it is hot here so far it's like 90 ish with humidity. And no one has AC.

Dad, on p days we go to the ciber (cyber cafe, to do email).  We can go to stores and stuff, I bought a sweet Uruguay jersey last week.  We play sports, almost all the chapels have sports courts with basketball hoops and soccer goals. We do play soccer but most of the time there are only 4 of us so its not that fun so we don't play a ton. Oh yes and they have ping pong tables in all the chapels.

Here is another picture of our apartment

Anyway, This week was pretty fun. Not too much happened, but one of our baptismal dates got cancelled because our investigator moved away. It stinks but there is a bright side. We had already kinda counted her out because we recently found out that she was still together with the father of one of her daughters, and therefore not living the law of chastity. She had wanted to marry him but he wouldn't because his mom forbid it because our investigator (Andreina) has another older daughter from another guy. Anyway we had a little milagro because after our law of chastity lesson she pretty much told us that she wasnt going to be able to live this law because she couldn't get married, so we kinda counted her out. But a few days later we talked to her for like 30 seconds at her mom's house and she said she had a special invitation for us, we assumed it was to her going away party or something, but really she was going to ask us to be witnesses at her wedding! It was awesome! She is still moving but she is going to get married in like Feb or something and then the missionaries in San Ramon will baptize her if all goes as planned.

I feel like I have left out big parts of Uruguayo culture in my letters, I think I have never really told you about mate. In Argentina we would always see people drinking mate in their houses and stuff, but here in Uruguay it is EVERYWHERE! Everyday we see people walking around with their mate cups and a thermos full of hot water. We see people on bikes and motos carrying their stuff and drinking it while they drive. It's crazy how addicted everyone in this country is to mate. Ha ha good thing it's not against the word of wisdom. But missionaries aren't allowed to drink it, mostly because drinking mate is kind of a social thing where people sit around for hours talking and sharing the mate, and that would be a huge waste of time for us. 

Oh ya, yesterday I had my first ayuno (fast) in Uruguay! Its easy to fast down here because we never eat dinner and breakfast is pretty small, so they start their fast after lunch on Saturday and fast until the closing prayer in sacrament meeting (which is the last meeting of church) they they go eat another huge lunch!

I don't know if i have mentioned it but Elder Skyler Stilwell is my district leader, It's the elder from my high school, and his dad is a salesman for Action target. I think you guys knew he was out here. Anyway I went on a companion exchange on Friday with him, it was fun. we talked about action target and provo and stuff.

Anyway thats all for now.

Love Elder Carlson IV