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

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

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

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

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 then 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

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

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.... :)