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, April 30, 2012

The Church is our Bathroom Now!

Dear Family,
Thanks for the picture of Spencer and Hannah!


Don't worry about last week's letters mom,  you mostly just distracted me Monday. I forget things quickly.

That's nice about Cameron's car.... We just have to have it happen with the sentra now right before i get home.

So ya I talked to Pres. He told me that I would have to talk to the new mission president aobut it because pres da silva wont be here. He also said it was my decision. He expressed his opinion. I am not going to make a decision until the new pres gets here. but I'm going to keep my options open. So I talked to pres about registration and I'm going to register just in case, for normal Fall classes. As if I were for sure going to enroll for fall semester. I can always drop or change them later. 

Anywyay this week was good. Just so you know my fingers are really cold so that's why there are so many spelling errors. 

Its getting cold here. Not full force yet but it's definitely chilly. Still no news about the new house. News about the old house:  the bathroom broke..... we are using the church's bathroom. So the church is our bathroom now! Hopefully this will be the last week of that.

Yesterday we had a Family home evening with the family of Sebastian. It was really good. We watched the Restoration video. I made brownies. They are good people.... The suprising thing from the night. The mother.... she is a little bit crazier.... She told us that she had given up drinking. Smoking is a bigger problem for her but it's still big progress.

Sebastian is really excited for his baptism. He has told all his neighbors. 

We are really working hard on finding new investigators... We have found lots of people but they have a hard time turning into real real investigators. 

Okay now the good stuff.....Mothers day

May 13th. We will be doing the Skype video call for Mothers day. I want you guys to tell me the times when you can do it.... also tell me the time change i think it's only three hours right now.... for example it's almost 11 o clock here, then it would be 8 o clock  over there.... I'm guessing that dad will not be there? maybe he will. Oh well if not he will just have to wait the extra 4 months to see me.
We have church from 9-12 (6-9 your time.) figure it out and tell me what you guys want to do!

I got a letter form Kylie! she sent me a 1 dollar or peso bill from guatemala. sounds like she is doing well.

That's all for now

love Elder Carlson!

Monday, April 23, 2012

A New Apartment - Soon!


Dear Family,

Tomorrow I have Interviews with President Da Silva, so I will be able to talk to him about BYU and everything else you all mentioned in your letters. Wow. It sounds like you have had quite a week.

Man. So this week was great. We have made some real progress with Sebastian and his family, First they all came to church. So the Bishop was able to talk to them and it put him not completely at ease but better. We are hoping to baptize Sebastian either the 5th or the 12th. The parents are really nice but they just don't want to stop smoking and drinking. haha, maybe with more time. The mom even promised that she would come to church with Seba every once and a while.

Other than that I don't know what to tell you guys, I'm finding it hard to remember anything. Its a good thing that I have the rest of the day to get focused again.

We got the apartment aproved, they are just doing the papers. 
Oh ya mom when I got robbed it was a missionary not a uruguayan.
Anyway it's a safe area I dont think we will have problems, the house in Florida was ridiculiouisly not safe but we never had problems....

Hope you guys get everything figured out and have a great week.



Love Elder Carlson!

Monday, April 16, 2012

It's a Good Thing We Shower With Flip Flops

Dear Family,
Wow, you bought a car and you didn't even send me a photo!

So, I didn't really forget about dad's birthday, it just slipped my mind to wish him a happy birthday..... It's the 13th right?

So ya I read that article too in the Ensign about studying the conference talks.... The conference Ensigns that we have in our houses are always marked up and studied to the max. 

Well this has been a really calm unexciting week.... Nothing really out of the ordinary happend.

So today President Da Silva is coming at 2:00 to see the new house and hopefully approve it... I thought it got approved already but we will have to see. He called us last night and said he wanted to go see it. But its a nice house I'm sure it will be fine.... The only thing that worries me is that it doesn't have bars on the front windows  but my house in Florida didn't have bars either.... I don't know if it will be a problem.  We have never had a problem with thefts. Our current house has sooooo many problems! Currently the toliet has broken and when we flush everything and a little more comes flooding out the bottom of the toilet and covers the floor.  Not really sanitary - It's a good thing we shower with flip flops....

Sebastion is still going strong. We aren't really sure what we are going to do. The Bishop hasn't changed his opinion. We are still working with the parents but they didnt come this week to church, I dont really think that they are going to get converted any time soon. Basically because they have told us that they don't want to stop smoking and drinking and they don't want to go to the church. I dont know,  we will see what happens. This week to fill a little bit of our time we started visiting a bunch of less actives.  Hopefully we can find some families to complete!

Thats about it. 

Love, 
Elder Carlson

Monday, April 9, 2012

Sebastian is Still Progressing

Dear Family,


Wow, you already sent out my box, what a blessed boy I am.... I hope the Dr pepper doesn't explode and ruin everything else.

This is a picture of 6 of us missionaries out for dinner before conference....



So Easter. It was really good here too. We had some pretty awesome miracles. So we had a charla with Sebastian and his mom and Sebastian of course promised to come to church, but the suprising thing was that the mom said she wanted to go this week especially for easter, So we tried to get her to commit to coming.  She explicitly said she wouldn't commit to come but she would try to wake up and go to sacrament meeting. So we were pretty sure that she wouldn't be coming. Anyway Sunday rolled around, Sebastian came without problem, He is completely fine finding a member now to bring him and the members that live near him are awesome and take him when ever he asks.... Its not like its an inconvenience since they are going to the same church. Anyway, When sacrament meeting started Sebastian's mom hadn't shown up.  As I was having that thought and realizing that they weren't there, I looked behind me and there she was, siting in the back, with her husband. They both came, it was awesome! I still don't think that they are super interested in changing there bad habits, (Drinking and smoking) but who knows. Anyway it helps to show that they support Sebastian.  We are going to have a little talk with the bishop this week to set up some plans so he can get baptized. We are shooting for the end of this month. Anyway it was just an awesome blessing.
Hahah, I don´t know about you guys but they didn't have fast and testimony meeting this Sunday because of Easter, but i didn't know that, so we fasted. oh well!  Fasting isn't too bad in the mission, except in summer, then it's horrible.

So on a cooking note, I made some delicious Teriyaki Chicken with rice, turned out great. I also made a very invented pumpkin cookie. Technically it's not pumpkin, it was squash, almost the same. I made it with fresh squash because they don't sell anything like pumpkin pie filling here. They turned out really really well.... The second time..... The first time I did everything the same but I mis-read the recipe and I put 1 CUP of milk instead of 1 tsp.... it kinda changed it a lot.... I ended up making a sort of grease cake because they also don't have shortening here so i tried using pure fat, not a great idea. When I made the cookies i just used butter, it worked fine.


Other than that, things are going well here. Elder Rodriguez left last week and Elder Davies came. He is from the group above me. He is a cool guy, Oh yes speaking of the house. We actually found another house. the only thing is that we aren't sure if we got it. We talked to the guy and he said that he has someone else interested in it too, so we will see, we should know this week. It would be perfect, a lot bigger, recently fixed up. A nice backyard, oh yes and granite countertops! :)


Wow that sounds cool about the new car. I have seen a few of those down here.

Im still thinking about Conference, we had a nice big discussion about the talks last night, it was great it made me remember all the fantastic talks.


I Think thats about it!


Love you guys


Elder Carlson

Monday, April 2, 2012

Conference

Dear Family,
Conference was fantastic!!!! I really enjoyed it a ton. I think it flew by faster than any conference in my life.  I really liked a lot of the talks.  Holland's was great. Ballard's was great, Uchtdor, and Bednar. I really liked them all, those are just some of the ones that stood out to me. 

I noticed a big emphasis in the family, especially a call for the Men.  There was also a couple of seventies that gave good obra misional talks. You might have also heard the term "Real Growth" That's a term we heard about 4 months ago from our mission president because the First presidency trained the Area presidencies about it.  It is just a focus on the family. One interesting thing that they didn't talk about was pornography. Maybe the Church as a whole is getting better? That would be great.

One thing that I thought of during the conference - could you please email me my Priesthood line of authority (tracing my authority back to Jesus Christ).

 So we received Change Calls. The normal excitement of Change Calls was swallowed up by the spiritual feast of General Conference. We didn't even speculate very much about the possible changes. Anyway I already knew that I would be staying because the trainers have to stay with there newbies for two changes. So Elder Segura and I are staying put. The other elders in our house are changing... Elder Rodriguez is leaving and Elder Davis is coming, Davis is from the group above me. So I first met him in the CCM, he is a good Elder. 

We are still unable to find a new house. but now that I am assured another 6 weeks here we will probably look a little harder. Our house is super crappy but you just get used to it and stop caring. 

Anyway I hope you guys paid good attention to Conference. The most important things to listen for are things to change. Don't you worry I have a big long list for myself. Elder Uchtdorf´s talk should give everyone something to fix.... :)

Love,
Elder Carlson