Current Address

Elder Jordan Carlson


Send emails to: urumontemission@gmail.com with ELDER JORDAN CARLSON as the subject line. The mission home will print the email and send it to Jordan.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Getting Ready for Christmas

Elder Guex(He is Uruguayan), Elder Baxter (Without his tag, he isfrom Idaho), Elder Francis, and Elder Carlson


Dear Family,

We will be doing the video call from a members house. I hope the
internet is up to speed....
The Member (Matias) should add you as a friend or whatever so we can
skpye.

We are trying to call the member right now to get the schedule figured out. but im thinking that I will do mine at like 3:00pm which hopefully is 10:00am your time. If there are problems we can always call you the day of and trying to figure it out real fast. It will be about 40 minutes like last time I believe.

The Christmas conference was great. It was really fun to see all my friends and former comps. The food was fantastic, It was sadder than last year... I think that president is getting sad because his time is just about up. He has less than 6 months left. He leaves in July I think. But it was really good.

Thanks so much for the letter. I was really good. I noticed that some had more time to write than others. hahah.

So it rained every day this week. Not fun. The umbrella is standing up to the challenge.

I can't think of anything to write.

Well That's good about Spencer. I hope he gets it. Would he have to move to Chicago if he did? That would be weird.

Also I'm jealous of the Christmas party.  But I will just have to make my own christmas party I guess.

So I made cinnamon rolls yesterday. Turned out delicious.

Also on Tuesday I made a chocolate pin wheel cake for Elder Francis' birthday. It wasn't as fancy as mom's because I didn't have the thing to squeeze the frosting but it was delicious. Also the frosting turned out wrong..... I think the problem was that I didnt beat the cream
long enough. because it never got stiff. So it was really liquidy so I decided to try to fix that by putting it into the blender. It worked but th
en I over blended it an it separated from the pudding and I think turned pretty much into butter. But I ended up boiling it and making pudding pretty much and then adding some more cream properly whipped. It tasted good at least......

Thats all for now.

Here is a pic of the mini apple pies and vanilla ice cream i made on Thanksgiving.....




Love,

Elder Carlson

Monday, December 12, 2011

Dear Family,


Wow, thats really exciting about Spencer. I hope everything goes well.

Thanks for the recipes, I'm sure they will turn out delicious. I need a whisk. I think it would be helpful for all the whipping I will be doing. 


Anyway, sounds like things are going well, I was aware of your trip to England, you conveniently planned it for right before I get home.... oh well, sounds like its going to be lots of fun.

So things are going well down here. We had a fairly good week. Nothing out of the ordinary, we had a really good day on Saturday, we found a lot of new people so we are excited for that. Beatriz is kinda in wonderland. we don't really know whats going on with her. She works a lot and hasn't been able to come to church since we started meeting with her. We haven't been able to set a date for her baptism either because he just haven't met with her.

We received a reference from the other elders in a different part of the city, It is a guy named Carlos, He is an older guy, a little crazy but really good guy, we contacted the reference on Tuesday I think, we have had several charlas with him already and he came to church yesterday! He has a baptismal date planned for the 24 of December. We are really excited, he is keeping all of his commitments. He is reading and praying and is always ready and waiting for us when we have appointments with him. He has to give up smoking but im confident he will be able to do it.

I made a delicious Peach Cobbler this week, and also that box of holiday swirl Toll House Cookies. They both turned out quite yummy. I haven´t told Elder Francis that I'm going to make him a cake. I might try to make it a suprise if I can..... The thing is we aren't going to be here for his birthday this Wednesday, because we have our yearly christmas conference with President Da Silva and the whole mission. I´m looking forward to it. It was really good last year. Good food too.....

Well it's getting quite warm here. I´m sure looking at the Florida weather report to you guys it looks quite comfortable, but it's not to us. Sun and all and not having air conditioning. Oh well.

Oh yes I realized the other day that last year I was in Florida for Christmas and New Years Day, same story this year. That doesn't happen too often.

Well thats about it.

2 Questions....

Did you download and make a Skype account.... If so did you do it with your normal email address....? If you haven't made your account yet, use your provo email address that way I will be able to add you so we can chat. I will make sure that we figure everything out this week so we can tell you all the details next week. What is the time change right now....??? is it 3hrs or 5? I always get confused.....

Also could find out and tell me the exact name of the mission that Kylie is in.... and the name of the mission that Zach White is in....

Thank You.

Love,

 Elder Carlson

Monday, December 5, 2011

Inviting Everyone We Meet to Get Baptized

Dear Family,
First off mom, Thanks for notifying me that you typed your letter on your iPad, I feel like it really added to the letter. haha, You guys are all so spoiled. Cameron told me that everyone except whitney and I have iPads now. Oh yes, speaking of iphones,  an iPhone 4 down here costs $999, thats right, one thousand dollars. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I did receive the Christmas Boxes, thank you very much. The umbrella is very nice. I hope it stands the test of time. It hadn't rained for at least 6 weeks but rained the very same day that my box arrived, that was very convenient. It looks like you did a nice job stuffing those boxes full. p.s. I guessed about half of the things without even opening them. Syrup, Bisquick, I'm also pretty sure there are koolaid packets and slippers. Oh yes,  and the ping pong balls ripped open in transit.
Anyway, Thank you very much. I'm not sure when I'm going to make the cookies but They look yummy.

So Elder Luke is in America. He told me that he was planning on going to California for a little bit first and then coming back to Utah, He has a box for you guys that has some Uruguayan treats! Alfajores.... and some Dulce de Leche. Yum.

This week was good. It cooled down a lot. Thank goodness. The rain made it a lot nicer weather. We are having some difficulty getting our investigators to come to church like they know they should. But we have found a few promising investigators that could get baptized soon!   They are people that were investigating earlier but then never got baptized. We will see how it goes. One is a lady named Beatriz. She was investigating for about  3 years but wasn't married and couldn't or  wouldn't get married, but now she is separated from her partner. She has always wanted to get baptized so we think there won't be too many problems. They only thing is she works every other Sunday.

There have been a lot of little changes taking place in the mission. We have always been really focused on  baptism but now we are trying to focus even more. Our new desire, at least as a district, is to invite everyone we talk to in contacts to be baptized. It's interesting. Its literally like the second sentence that comes out of our mouth. We invited 61 people to be baptized, but our zone leaders invited 140, so I guess we have some room to improve. Obviously not everyone says yes, but a lot more than you would think say yes.  Even the people that say no usually have a better doctrinal discussion with us rather than just saying "no thanks come by some other day".

Just like last year, I feel very little of the traditional, I guess you could say commercial, Christmas spirit. I think it's because it's so hot out, and it's still bright out when we go home and there are no Christmas lights. However I think I'm going to try to focus my studies and thoughts on the Savior so I can get into the spiritual Christmas spirit.

Thanks for all the love support and prayers

Love Elder Carlson


P.S.   My companion's birthday is coming up and I was thinking about making a chocolate pinwheel cake, not as fancy as mom's but the same ingredients.... Could you send me the recipe for the pudding frosting.
And since Christmas is coming I was thinking Cinnamon Rolls.  If you could send a recipe for that as well.... :)