Elder Francis

Dear Family,


I will try to answer some questions first.

I recived the box! Safe and sound and I don´t think anything was stolen. It had shoes, ties, candy, kool aid, portuguese books and envelopes and stuff. I'm pretty sure it's all there.
Thank you very much. I am enjoying everything, however one of  the ties you sent me was fairly ugly. No offense, it's alright though because I will be able to give it to someone I baptize or something-hahah Also I said it would be just fine to send me some of Cameron's ties, he even concented too, maybe for Christmas.

Wow. Max got married! I guess it has been more than a year, but still.

Wow Your birthday, I know it's today and everything it just really snuck up on me. I can't believe we are already at the end of October. It still feels like August or something.

Anyway. I am now with ELDER FRANCIS. He is from Brookings, South Dakota, he just told me that his town is mentioned in the show "Little House on the Praire" so you know its legit.

He's cool, He went to BYU for a year before the mission just like I did. He is really intelligent. He is the first companion I have had that uses bigger english words than I do. He doesn't have very much Spanish experience but his Spanish is better than mine was when I started.  I´m sure he will learn really fast, just have to practice a lot so he can speak more fluidly.

So I have had an incredibly stressful week.  Having an oro (greenie) wouldn't be too bad  alone, but apart from that I have been sick all week. I have woken up every single day with a headache and stuffed nose. Also yesterday and the day before I woke up with gunk glueing my eye lids shut.... pretty sure I have Pink Eye. Conjuntivtis is what its called in Spanish.... It's been rough.... We have been working anyway. I have been taking a decongestent and ibprofen as well as doing what Sister Da Silva told me to do -  this home remedy thing using Chamomile for the pink eye. I think it must have worked because I woke up today and my eyes weren't glued together. Don't get me wrong I still had a fantastic head ache but poco a poco my symptoms are disappearing.  I only had a fever one morning and it wasn't very high. 


The main reason we just keep on working is because we are super busy.  We had a baptism on Sunday after church of the daughter of a formerly less active family and we had to finish teaching and preping her and have the interview and arrange everything for the baptism. Everything turned out good but the road was paved with problems. Sickness, and plumbing were the biggest pains.  The other elders in Estacion had a baptism on Saturday and after they finished filling the font , one of the pipes broke, so we didn't have hot water.  Oh yes and the spicket (i dont remember what its called, the thing you use to turn on the water) for the cold water was broken,  so we finally got the cold water fixed and fillled it with cold water and then Sunday afternoon we dumped pot after pot of boiling water to try to heat it up a little.  It didn't really do anything.  Oh well!  She got baptized, oh yes and for some mysterious reason the cold water came out mixed with a little dirt.  Fantastic so the font was a little more green than normal.  Then the baptismal clothing that we had set aside for the dad and his daughter went missing!!!!! Someone took it out of the closet we put it in.  We fixed that too but oh man what a nightmare.  It was litterally the hardest baptism I have had in my mission, baptism wise.

You are probably thinking , well this isn't a very uplifting experience he is sharing and that's true... but here is the happy part. So because of all the situational problems it didnt really feel, to me, like that special of a baptism.  It's hard to feel the spirit when you are runing all over the place trying to fix everything, and you feel like garbage from pink eye. Anyway after all the problems and the actual ordanice took place, they gave a moment for testimonies for anyone that wanted to.The father, Gustavo, (He baptized his daughter Daiana) got up and bore a fantastic testimony. It really really brought  the spirit and I knew that what we were doing really helped this family. Gustavo has been a member for a long time and he has been inactive for about his entire marriage.  His wife is a member but they have never really been active.  Anyway, he talked about how this is really the first thing that has happened since he got married that made him want to come back to church. It was a very rewarding experience. I´m also really glad that Elder Francis could get a taste of Baptism early on in his mission.

Even though there are some really stressful and dificult moments, I am learning a ton and loving every minute of it.

Love,
Elder Carlson

p.s. I dont have my camera with me but I will send a picture of us next week....  Elder Francis is about the same height as me and has glasses.