Lorena

Dear Family,

So I’m going to try and call you guys at 2 o clock Uruguay time, which should be 11 your time, I think. If that doesn’t work out I will probably call at 8 o clock Uruguay time. But plan on 2.

I will call you like last time, and then you will call me back.

We will have around 40 minutes like last time. The time limit doesn’t seem to be a huge deal this time. It really just depended on my Zone Leaders, last time my ZLs felt like president Da Silva said "Not a second more than 40 minutes" this time my new ZLs says it really doesn’t matter as long as you aren’t talking for three or four hours.... President Da Silva has yet to release an official stance on the matter....

Anyway, I really cannot believe it’s time to talk to you guys again. It seems like a month ago or so that I called last time.

Well we got Change Calls last night. I’m staying put, with my same comp. Nothing is happening different for us. It’s kinda boring. but oh well.  My comp almost definitely will be changing next change though... we will see what happens, this last change went really really fast. It’s crazy.

So last night, since it was "change night" we decided to have a nice family dinner together. On Sundays we have to be in the house at 8 o clock instead of 9, so the offices can get the numbers for the week, so we had a little extra time so we prepared a full chicken, we baked it in the oven marinated in sprite and BBQ sauce.  I made those oven baked potatoes of yours that you sent me the recipe for a while back. They turned out really good. We don’t have celery seed down here in Uruguay but we didn’t really notice the difference. We also made a side of Alfredo sauce and noodles just to make sure there was enough food, and then had some ice cream for desert. You can buy these pouches of powder that you mix with milk and just freeze and it actually makes some pretty good ice cream, it’s not hard or like a block of ice either. Anyway everything it turned out really good, so we are going to start doing it every change day night. Next Sunday we are going to try making hobo dinners in the fireplace.

Chicken dinner!

So, we had another Baptism this week! YEAH! Her name is Lorena, she is a 13 year old girl whose entire family is less active members. She is actually really smart. She is friends with a few of the other YW in our ward and with Romina the girl we baptized last week, so I was thinking the reason she was going to get baptized was just because her friends are members, but when we went over the interview questions it surprised me how serious she was about it all, she had really good answers to all the questions and there was a member girl that was there with us in the charla who even said something like "What happens when you guys leave and the missionaries stop visiting her and she goes inactive like this other girl I know" and Lorena was just like "What! I’m not going to stop going to church! I want to keep learning and stuff!”  It was just really cool, Honestly she probably doesn’t understand the true importance of the church and baptism but she is really demonstrating true faith by her willingness to follow the commandments, even if its a little blind obedience. Kinda like Adam making sacrifices even though he didn’t know why.... Anyway it was just cool.

We are teaching a bunch of people right now that are at the point of getting baptized, so we could end up getting like 10 baptisms this change, it all depends on how they use their agency.... but we are going to get like 3 or 4 for sure.

Love Elder Carlson!