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, January 30, 2012

After 10 Years Rosa Was Baptized!

Hey guys...

Well this week was really good, lots of problems, but in the end everything got worked out and Rosa got BAPTIZED!!!!



Rosa, in white.  The little girl is Valentina who was recently baptized.  The other girl is a cousin.


Rosa Cardozo, She had been investigating the church for about 10 years.... yeah, She almost always was living with someone without being married. She has had the desire to be baptized for a long time but when she wasnt breaking the law of chastity she never was around the missionaries, for some reason the missionaries only ever found her when she couldnt get baptized. Anyway after years and years of
waiting, She finally got baptized!

I'm sure there is a large list of missionaries that were waiting for this day. I have been working with her for about 5 months, my whole time here in Asamblea.  
Her daughter Valentina got baptized the week
before I arrived.

Anyway, our zone and my district had a fantastic month, As a zone we baptized 21 this month which is awesome because before that the best month we had had was 16, when I was here in Florida zone for the first time we were baptizing like 5 or 6 as a zone and they were mostly mine..... The zone has exploded, In My district every companionship
completed their goal. Its amazing.

We don't have any baptism planned for this week but we are going to give it 100% and see who is prepared to be baptized this Sunday.



This Alba, the little old lady we baptized last week.


Ím really enjoying being around the elders in my house. I get along great with my comp and it's fantastic being back together with Bush! Guex is hilarious, broke but hilarious. Wow we are all broke right 
about now - end of the month. We were hoping that we would have our monthly money today a few days early but it didn't come and I have to go to Montevideo today to sign immigration papers finally. I'm super illegal here. Anyway my comp has no money and I have to spend my last 500 pesos to get us both down and back. I'm going to have to use my card to buy food down there and McDonalds :)

Anyway everything is going great, glad to hear the Cam and Riley are doing well.  That sounds uncomfortable about dad's checkup. I hope everything goes well with Spencer's test, and I forgot to wish Whitney a happy birthday even though she even wrote me a letter last week. Sorry Whit. If it's any consolation on the 24 I actually remembered it
was your birthday!

Love you all!
Elder Carlson

Monday, January 23, 2012

Dear Family,
HaHa, that's amazing. I can't believe that Paul and Jared are already home.... That means Zac Harmon must be coming up any day now.

Wow, I That's really awesome about Christian Peterson, I didn't even think about how he would be doing. How are the other young men?  Who is going to be the next missionary?

About what you said mom, I'm not sure where you got that idea, maybe I don't express myself very well through email. It's hard to guess what tone of voice I am using when I say these things... but for real, I'm doing great, I really love Florida, I love the house I'm in and I love the elders I am here with..... I actually was thinking about what it would be like to stay for a 5th change. I promise you don't have to worry at all.

So this week we had a Baptism! It wasn't Rosa like we were thinking at the beginning of the week because she couldn't come to church this week. It was Alba Carbal. She is awesome. She is a lady about 65 years old. Super stud. She arrived at church before everyone. She even came this week in the pouring rain. About a fourth of the members showed up. We had very few problems with her, but quite a few problems with the baptismal font. We filled it half way with kinda cold water with buckets using the faucets from the bathrooms. At the same time a member was trying to fix it. He was able to get it mostly fixed and we finished filling it with warm water.  I was really worried because I didn't want Alba to have to go into the cold water. She is a little old and she has had two heart attacks before.....  Anyway everything worked out in the end. She is awesome.

So recently because of the heat inside of our house we ahve started to sleep outside. Its nice. Nice and cool.  Today im going to try to make that bean dip, They don't have refried beans here. I'm going to invent.

I hope everything is going well!

Love,

Elder Carlson

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Elder Sevilla

Dear Family,

Well I"m still in Florida. I'm really not that upset. I like changes but Florida is a really good place. My companion is named Elder Sevilla. He is from Honduras, It seems like we are going to get a long just fine. Elder Bush is now in my house,  that is awesome. He is from my group.

So here is the story about Elder Luke. He has been in California for the last 6 weeks more or less. I keep forgeting to bring his email address for you but I will get it next week.

So I don't have that much to say today.  We committed to baptize someone this week, so we are going to do it. We have a pretty good idea who it will be, but there is always a chance that will change. Someone is going to get baptized this week.

Today we are going to clean a ton and I am going to try to make that bean dip. I tried the lo mein but it turned out terrible. no sé que pasó.

Other than that,  thanks for all the letters.

Love,
Elder Carlson

Monday, January 9, 2012

Changes

Dear Family,
Wow. So Im really tired, today has been a crazy day.


First off, tomorrow we have changes, we received the change calls
last night. I have been in Asamblea 3 changes, Elder Francis 2, so it
was really logical that I would be leaving. Logic has nothing to do
with change calls. I am staying, Elder Francis is leaving. I will be
here in Florida another month and a half, making my  total time here
in this house 10 and a half months. Almost half of my mission.

My new companion is named Elder Sevilla, I have no idea who he is, nor
does anyone I have talked to. I heard he might be from Honduras. He
has about 9 months in the mission so he isn't new or anything. I am
going to be district leader again. It was a big shock that Francis is
leaving. Also the other companionship in my house changed, Elder Bush
is going to be living with me. Thats fun. We are from the same group,
he is the one that I talked to on facebook before the mission. We will
see how everything goes. I'm not going to lie I was ready to  move on
to another area, but I guess I still haven't done something here that I
was supposed to. So another 6 weeks wont kill me I guess.

That's too bad about Cameron's car trouble. I don't have to worry about that for a while. I hope it will all get sorted out.


We have a lot of people right now that are fairly new investigators,
but we also have some people really close to baptism with just a few
small things stopping them. If we can get those problems out of the
way we will have a baptism anyday now.

So Like I said today was a crazy P-day. We decided to have a big Zone
Barbeque, to celebrate the end of the change. We all put in 5 bucks
and we bought....

15.5 pounds of Ground Beef
42 Buns
Onions
tomatoes
Lettuce
I made a double batch of Potato Salad
Lots of Chips and Drinks
I made Root Beer
and Cream Soda

There were 13 of us, needless to say we have extra meat leftover. I, of
course, was in charge of cooking everything. The potato salad turned
out great, I made it the other day so I wouldnt have to worry today.
Then last night I took 7 Kilos of Carne picada, and made a ton of
hamburger patties. Except when I started cooking them they didn't really
want to stick to together, I'm sure there is a trick that I didn't know
about. I just did ground beef, a little onion and salt and pepper.

Anyway clean up from this party is going to be a nightmare. I was cooking so everyone
went to the computers while i cooked now hopefully everyone is
cleaning while I use the computers.... Luckily I don't have to pack
anything. :)

Thats about it.... Hope everything is going great over there!

Love
Elder Carlson

Monday, January 2, 2012

Happy New Year!

Dear Family,
Thanks for the recipes mom.  Last week's pday I made milanesas, it's like a deep fried chicken or steak patty, not uncommon in the united states but they are different. I did it completely from hand so I will be able to make them when I come home, They are yummy, I  also made a curry, it was really similar to like terriyaki sticks curry bowl.

Thats interesting about the Provo airport. I have never heard of any useful flights leaving from there.
Hopefully things went well with Cams car.

That is just crazy to me that Riley is already home. Zac, Paul, and Jared are going to be home before you know it as well. I have a ton of friends that will be getting home soon.

So it's hot today. It was hot yesterday and humid, really humid. So you said you think it might be easier to get people to come to church during the christmas season. Maybe that would be true if christmas wasn't actually on Sunday because due to the culture no one came to church. we combined for both christmas and New Year with both branches and we had a little less then we normally do just as one branch. This week neither of the branch presidents came to church. Pretty much no one we were expecting came, however we had one person come that we weren't expecting - that is fantastic.

Basically what people do Christmas and New Years here is start shooting of fireworks at 1200 at night and then get really really drunk and stay up, if you are an older person till maybe three or four in the morning, if you are a younger person then you stay up till about 9 or 10 in the morning of the next day. When we went to Church at 1030 we saw people returning to their houses from the parties.... so that's why I said we might get more people in church if the holidays hadn't both fallen on Sunday. That has been a problem for getting people to progress toward baptism, but we are still working hard to find people that can get baptized. We have a few coming up in the next couple of weeks.
Right now we are working with 4 investigators who really like to drink. One of them is an inactive member. None of them are progressing very well, I think the parties and stuff aren't helping so hopefully they will get better now....

 One Request. Could you please send me a good excersize band, I'm sure dad has one laying around that he got off some infomercial or something :)

I think thats about it for now....

Love,

Elder Carlson