Dear Family,
Wow Spencer, that ankle doesńt look to good.....
That's cool about Zac, It's so incredibly strange that everyone is finishing their missions. Mom, Portuguese only sounds different to the untrained ear, but it's not like your ear is very atuned to Spanish! But really there are so many things that are the same with Portuguese and Spanish and reading portuguese is even easier. It's crazy how much I understand
just from Spanish.
Anyway, yikes I hope you guys get the computer things worked out. I had something similar happen to me when I was in Houston but I got it fixed. Luckily there was a mac store like five minutes from our house in Houston. In Utah there is only one in salt lake. But it is a good idea to back up the computer.
So this was a pretty good week. We had some success finding new investigators. We found a complete Family! That doesn't happen a ton.
Mauricio and Nacy are the parents, Camila, Martin, and Sofia the children, Camila is 17 Martin 15 and Sofia 14. They have some things to get over but they are cool and they accepted baptism well. Sofia is honestly the most interested, Martin not so much but he said he would get baptized too so there has to be some hope. The parents aren't married so it's very likely that the kids will get baptized before them. They have been together for 19 years so I imagine they won't have
too many problems with getting married; it just takes forever down here. The kids have gone to church before a couple years back in a
different branch but they went several times.
We also found a young guy named José, He is 20 and he understands really well. I don't think you guys know how often the people just don't understand. I'm not sure why it's so hard to understand sometimes but luckily with José he just gets it. When we talked to him for the first time we talked about the necessity of baptism. A common response to
this is "I have already been baptized in the Catholic church". He, however didn't say that, he realizes that the decision that his parents made to baptize him as a baby has no real validity for himself. He also asked us at the end of the lesson, "Well, Who is it that has the authourity to baptize? And how am I supposed to know for sure that they have it?"
Really good questions. Questions like that make me so happy because I know we have the answer for anyone smart enough to ask that question:)
It was a little disappointing because we didn't have any real
investigators in the church, just this crazy lady that isn't baptized but comes a lot. Her name is Santa. She has a few problems, not so many that she couldn't get baptized but she smokes and drinks and isn't going to stop.
Juan kinda disappeared, we went by his house and his mom came out and told us that we couldn't talk with him today because he just came back from the hospital because he had been using drugs so his mom took him there. We knew he had problems with The Word of Wisdom but we didn't
know that he uses drugs..... We will see what happens.
Anyway so its been fairly hot here, so about two weeks ago we started sleeping outside of our house on mattereses. Its really nice, Last year I just suffered inside the house all summer, this is a way better idea. Sometimes there are a few mosquitos that bug us but i actually tried that net that you sent me and it worked like a charm. It's just a
pain to set up and take down and stuff. But the last few nights it has actually been cold at night. Not that I'm ready for another winter or anything but I am looking forward for a little autumn....
So my final week here in Florida starts today, Its like a 5% chance that I will stay for a 5th change. It very rarely happens. I think that Elder Sevilla will probably train here. There are 20 new missionaries coming this change. That's a rather large group.... Elder Sevilla is a good elder and he has been junior comp for a long time, I'm positive that at the very least he will be senior comp.
Knowing that I'm leaving here doesn't affect how I work (In a negative sense), o sea, I'm still working just as hard, especially because I want to baptize this week because it's my last week here. But I have noticed it's harder to do a really good job planning for my investigators and thinking about the long run of the area. But I'm going to give it my all and at the same time give more responsibility to Elder Sevilla to prepare him to take the reins. That's what I did with Elder Francis and it did him a lot of good. But then he didn't even stay. haha.
Im reaching a rather strange point in my mission..... In two days I hit 17 months.... that's weird. But I'm sticking to the positive, and making new goals to try to get the most out of the short time that I have left, Now that I am where I am it starts seeming unfair how short of time I have left, oh well that's just the way it works! The new missionaries want to go home and the old missionaries want to stay in
the mission.....
Thanks for all the support and prayers, I hope you guys get everything worked out with the car and spenceŕs ankle, and the computers.
Love,
Elder Carlson
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