Dear mom,
No box so far.... I’m a little upset, I guess they pick up boxes on Thursdays so it came one day too late for me to get it this week. Next week is going to be complicated because of changes, so I might not even get it for two weeks.... we will see.... but I’m not scared of the mail system, every missionary has told me it’s reliable just slow sometimes.
You’re getting an iPad for school? You would.
Do you want to send me a recipe for M&M cookies, they don’t have chocolate chips down here but you can get M&Ms.
So I’m going to talk briefly about a few things that I haven’t told you guys about:
· I started reading El Libro de Mormon.... it’s slow going, but I’m understanding quite a bit just because I have read Nephi so many times I think.... we will see how it goes, one good thing is that I interpret the verses differently which helps me find new things!
· This very well could be my last week with my trainer, he has been in the area for 3 changes which in our mission is usually ripe for changing. It’s going to be really weird with a new companion especially because I’m going to be responsible to know where everyone lives, all the stuff about our investigators and stuff like that.
· I don’t know if I ever told you about how much money we get.... every month on the first we get 3000 pesos, or about 150 American. They gave us each a credit card to take to the atm and use it to withdrawal the money, and with that money we buy food, pay bills and stuff like that, but some stuff is reimbursable, like bills, so right now I’m about to get 3000 for giro and then another 2000 for reimbursables. It’s really plenty of money for us because we get lunch every day, but for other areas it’s a lot harder.... before Presidente Da Silva they had 4000 pesos...
· Down here professional soccer is everything. It’s called Club football. There are like 5 Uruguayan club teams. 2 major teams, Club Nacional de futbol and Peñarol. It’s a huge rivalry and everyone has to choose a side, I chose Nacional because my trainer did, haha, people always talk about it.
About this week…
The other day we were talking to this inactive returned missionary who is now like 28, he has an older brother that is really active in the church and two younger brothers that are inactive. Anyway he told us that his younger brother Martin was talking to him about serving a mission because he knows its something that he has to do. Apparently a lot of stuff lined up and things happened and it really opened his eyes. So we talked to him about it and he talked to the president of the branch and got his papers for the mission, he has been inactive for about 3 years and he came back to church for the first time this Sunday. It’s really pretty awesome, he is going to start coming to lessons with us, he won’t be leaving for a while but it’s still really neat.
Olga and Alfredo. So Alfredo has been working out of town for the past week practically, and this was supposed to be the week of their baptism, but it didn’t happen. The week before is always the hardest week for investigators, thank you Satan. We didn’t really have any opportunities to talk and meet with him but we scheduled a lesson for Friday around 1 and then they were going to have the interviews after that. We started the lesson and he told us that he wasn’t going to get baptized. I’m almost positive now its because of the word of wisdom. We found out a little later that he drinks wine with his lunch almost every day. The worst part is that we had been visiting Olga almost every day and she was super excited to get baptized, but she hadn’t talked to Alfredo either that much this week and so it caught her off guard and she ended up not getting baptized either. We don’t know when we are going to be able to baptize them but it looks like we might try to baptize Olga alone and take more time with Alfredo, it killed us both because up until then they were the perfect investigators, never a single problem.... we will see
Oribe is kind of dead as an investigator as of now... we are not going to visit him for a little while to try to spark something again. Turns out a long time ago he fell in love with a girl missionary... great. He is just a book full of surprises.... we will see
The silver lining is that we have found 3 more pairs of two to teach... a mother son combo that are really awesome, a recently re-married couple that have talked to missionaries before, and new young unmarried couple that is at least willing to listen to us... we will see...
oh yes funny thing that hapened in church....
During the closing song we sang There is Sunshine in my Soul or whatever it is and apparently we weren't singing happy enough, because the 1st counselor of the stake stopped everyone mid song and chastised them for not singing happy enough. Then after that it was even worse because the piano couldn't get back on track because it's a computer controlled piano thing... it was classic.
That’s all for now!
Love Elder Carlson
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