Mennonites in Uruguay

Dear Family,

Wow, sounds like everyone had a pretty good week. Thanks for all the letters and photos!

I noticed that Spencer is enjoying my clothing.... that is my shirt.

Also the fire pit looks cool! That will be fun with the new patio.

So I feel a lot better, illness-wise, I still have a cough kinda but I’m a ton better.

We have a baptism planned for this week; it’s a cousin of a recent convert. Hopefully everything goes according to plan, She came to church just fine.  We were expecting a lot more people but only two came. We have been finding a lot of new people to teach so our prayers are being answered. Now we have to just get them to start progressing towards baptism.

So last p-day we were on the bus from Montevideo to Florida and we noticed that there were two men talking in English, and one of them had a macbook pro, Americans.  Anyway we started talking to one of them and found out that they are part of 4 Mennonite families that were asked by their church to come down to Uruguay and start their church.... It was a very interesting conversation. He is a really good respectable guy - he lived in some small town outside of Ogden for a few years and has a lot of good friends who are Mormon. Anyway, It was just a really interesting encounter. They are farmers. He knows Spanish, and so does his wife, but his younger children that are with him are learning.  It’s always interesting to see the truths that are in other religions and also to see what it is that they are missing. It seems like a very respectable religion, I asked him about it a little.

So i have been helping my oro to learn Spanish and I have been studying Portuguese. It’s really interesting. I’m enjoying learning it because its way easier to go from spanish to portuguese than it was from english to spanish. Its funny because the pronunciation is the biggest problem.   It’s like someone took the english alphabet and then mixed all the sounds up.... di makes a J sound, ti or te makes a ch sound.... l makes a w sound... all these weird things to remember.

Everything is going really good with Elder Francis. We get a long just fine.  He went to BYU as well before his mission. He is really smart! Anyway, he is getting spanish pretty well, but there is still a lot to work on obviously.  A funny experience.... the other day we were teaching about the restoration of the church and he was going to recount the story of Joseph Smith’s first vision, so we usually say something along the lines of "and in Joseph’s own words he describes...." and my companion accidentally said "and in his own sins he describes..." Also he said "Pecados" instead of "Palabras" it was really funny. hahah He wasnt embarrassed or anything. I had a similar experience when I was an oro but mine was during a prayer! haha

That’s about all for this week!

Love,

Elder Carlson