No Time to Write

Family,
Thanks so much for everything.... sorry I don't have time to respond, but I did get an overwhelming amount of emails this week.

I love you guys a ton and I'm so glad you guys could have such a fun time on your trip....

Love, 

Elder Carlson

P.S.  I sent dad an email for Father's Day

An Interesting Week

Dear family,
Wow, that sounds so awesome. I would love to be there sharing those awesome memories, and I cant wait to share some of the wonderful expieriences from my mission.  Important question! WHAT WAS THE NAME OF YOUR MISSION, DAD? There are three elders here from England and i mentioned that you served there and they always ask me what mission but i never could remember... Their names are Elder McClucky, Wilkey, and Liddle. 

 Why is it that you guys have never had any jobs south of Equador? You need to find a job really quickly for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay or South Brazil so you can be near by to pick me up from my mission! haha that would be awesome. We have to make some plans to come down here, or at least to Brazil for the world cup or something....  I´m jealous. Its getting pretty cold down here and you guys are enjoying some nice summertime weather. Our house is a lot nicer that the last, but its also probably colder.... becasue its bigger.

 This week i went on a companion exchange with the elders from La Paz. Elder Dinkel and I were together... Elder Dinkel is from Nephi, and he came in the group one change younger than me. We had a great day and got them a baptism for that week. A kid whose whole family are members, he lives with his mom, aunt and grandma. The moms not super active but the grandma and aunt are really active, Anyway this kid is 9 years old and they have been wanting him to get baptized for a long time now. A lot of missionaries had tried before so he already knows all the lessons really well. He is a really smart 9 year old, that is part of the problem because he is kinda rebelious and wants attention and he gets bored easy. But we had a great lesson where we repased all the lessons by asking him the baptism interview questions, he knew almost everything perfect. Then we asked him when he was going to get baptized, he said he didnt know, so we said. "This Sunday?" At first he was hesitante because he thought that he had to bear his testimony after the baptism and he was scared to do that. we told him that he didnt have to and then he gladly accepted to getting baptized. His mom and grandma were shocked because they had been waiting so long for him to say he wanted to be baptized and it finaly happend so quickly and unexpectedly.  I came back a few days later and did the offical interview and it went great. He got baptized Sunday after their sacrament meeting.  Also on the same intercambio Elder Dinkel and I went to another investigators house. In the house the mother wasnt home so we decided to have a little lesson outside of there house. The brother is a recent convert he is 13 the girl is  11 and they have a little sister that is 3 ish. And they were home alone without adult supervision. We start the lesson and the little 3 year old started acting weird and the 11 year old girls started freaking out saying that she was pretty sure that the little girl had put a two liter bottle cap in her mouth and had swallowed it. The little girl definitely was acting strange kinda like she was choking. We both immeditely got up and Elder Dinkel went into Super Dinkel mode and did the proper manuver. It seemed to help but the girl was acting strange and we kept trying to get her to make noise but i think she was scared and so she didnt say or make any nosie or anything with was kinda alarming, but then she started making noise and we calmed down. Anyway Elder Dinkel had been a lifeguard for 4 years in Nephi and had never had to use his lifesaving skills until then. That was pretty crazy.

 In my area Elder Alvey (My comp) and Elder Tampellini (Brazilian) had a pretty interesting day as well. With one of our investigators some doubts about the book of mormon and modern day prophets came out. Then the lady just started saying things she had no idea about, kinda showing off her ingnorance, saying things like There has never existed any prophets except Jesus, My comps mentioned Moses and she said something like Moses is the prophet that baptized Jesus. Just plain nonsense. Elder Tampellini jsut went to town on here with the bible. Its probablly a good thing because they arent really progressing, they didnt come to church and they need to be dropped for a time. Then they went over to Sebastion and his families house. And i ahve mentioned that they arent exactly normal people. So they had got everyone good and focused and they were teaching about the Gospel of Jesus Christ when someone from outside started yellling the dads name. He kinda got weird and started looking all over the house for somehting. and then he grabbed a big kitchen knife opened the door went out side and slammed the door. They couldnt really hear much from outside but when he came back he was covered in blood.... just kidding. No there was no blood or anything. he was acting kinda weird an the mom was really worried but he explained that it was someone from work and they ended up calming down, at the end of the lesson they said "oh ya! we have a gift for you!" They reach in to the freezer and pull out a huge frozen full chicken. and gave it to us. Ya they ususally give us something. I swear they always have a cake in there fridge and they always send us home with a big slice. It usually really good cake but sometime it has been in the fridge for a while and has started to suck up the some from their cigaretts. Anyway their gifts always come from the heart. One time the mom insisted on giving us some food, and we really didnt want it but she gave it to us anyway. and like 5 minutes from leaving there house we were walking and we some guy came up to us that was dressed pretty bad you could tell he wasnt a very well off guy and he was with a little girl on his shoulders and he asked us if we could give him some money, I said i didnt have any but i asked if he was hungry and he said ya, so i gave him the food  that sebastions mom had given us.... it all worked out perfect. :)

 Anyway we had a kinda intersting week. We are seeing some progress with some important investigators and we found areally cool kid this week. His name is Brian, he is  16 his brother that is  18 lives in a different city but  got baptized last Saturday. Brian knows all these weird things about the church. like he said he had read most of the book Our Heritage. He told us about Joseph Smith as a child getting sick and having the operation and then the first vision and he included such details as satan trying to stop him and he mentioned that the enemies of the church stealing 1016 pages of the book of mormon (116, close enough) it was really cool. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted :) we are pretty excited about him!

Everything is going great, lovin the mish, just a little cold is all! Thats about it for now! Have fun for the rest of your trip! I WANT TO SEE PHOTOS!
 Love,
Elder Carlson

Called to Serve

Dear Family,
I expect to see some pretty awesome pictures in the next couple of weeks. Im super jealous of Italy, I do think i would understand some italian, its a lot more similar to spanish than french is. Any i didn't know that this is a like a anniversary trip, that makes me less jealous, That's great 27 years... wow. You guys are getting pretty close to the big 30. That will be a fun party. 

 So this week was pretty normal. It was good. I had a really good Sunday. We had Stake Conference. It was completely focused on Missionary Work. They gave every family a book of Mormon. Our stake president talked about some really cool things in the book of Mormon, interesting statistics.... Also we did a special musical number, all the missionaries and all the valients the older boys from primary and the young men of the stake. We sang Called to Serve. The missionaries started in the back and we came into the big hall from the two sides in two lines singing Called to Serve, then they had asked all the boys that were going to participate to sit on the edge of the rows so they could easily join the line after we passed by. It turned out really good. The congregation sang the last 2 verses with us (in Spanish there are 4 verses in English only 2) Then we stood there and the Stake president started his talk and we all just stayed standing. He gave some really sad and drop cane statistics.  I don't know if they were statistics from the stake or from Uruguay but he told everyone to look at the primary children and young men and said something about how they are really important and that in the stake only 2 of every 10 deacons ordained are ever ordained priests and of those two priests only one of them goes on a mission. "Which of them are we willing to lose?" he asked. It was really powerful.  The transition from youth to converted adult member is a really tough one especially here. Really the only adult members are either returned missionaries or people that got baptized  as adults. Then he went on to talk about the power of the book of Mormon, it was a good talk.

 Our investigators are doing más o menos. So-so. But we are excited because we were able to find some new investigators that have potential. A younger couple, and a well established family. The family is really cool, they are super good people. I'm sure they wont have problems with the commandments because there is a really good chance that they are already living most of them. The big problem is their schedule. Its a little harder here than in Florida everyone is just busier. I loved Florida. Maybe its just because i was there for so long. 

 Oh i got kinda sick on Tuesday, but i felt better by Wednesday. I hope i don't get sick this winter. i feel like i was sick a lot last winter. Maybe it was just that time i got really sick when i arrived in Minas.... anyway, i feel fine for now! That's about it for today! Have fun in Europe and be safe! 

 Love,
Elder Carlson

Macumba...Black Witchcraft

Wow so Whitney is finally done.... You know what that means. 

You guys are official old as can be.

Viejazo in Spanish

Doughnuts. Yup they were yummy but really fattening, we probably won't be making those again. We invited the whole district, 8 of us in total. So I decided to make a double batch. it used like 2 kilos of flour. almost 4 and a half pounds. And it made a ton! I got sick of making them and baked a bunch as rolls in the oven. It turned out ok, just kinda a sweet roll.

Anyway. Sebastian and his family are doing great. Seba came to church like normal. but this time his mom came with him. She said she might, but we weren't really expecting her to show up. They are a good family, they are just progressing really slow. It's ok though. We have to keep visiting them anyway to teach Sebastian the lessons of Retention. 

We also had Arlene come to church. We are excited about that but she might be leaving to work in Rivera.  It's a city that is on the border with Brazil.  She is a doctor and used to work there for a long time but then she started having problems with anxiety and they made her stop working for a little while. But we will see what happens.

We found a really cool guy this week. He is about 23 ish, his name is Federico. He is really receptive and we have had  two really good lessons with him. The only thing is that he said he would come to church and he didn't. But thats pretty normal. It usually takes most people some time to gain the faith to come to church. I wish it wasn't so hard but hey, es lo que hay.

Anyway other than that everything is going well. Elder Alvey and I get a long just fine. He is a Ute fan but its ok, I believe in the power of repentance. 

I got to do an intercambio with the Brazilian elder in my district, it was really fun, I got to learn a lot of portuguese :) 

Also weird little things happend.

We were walking on this dirt road and we saw some lights in the some tall grass that was on the side of the road. and we were  like, why are there lights right there?  My comp thought it was a fire, it wasn't flickering so I thought they were just some little light bulbs.  Anyway we got a little closer and it was about 8 candles in a circle around some weird looking thing in the middle. We realized it was a sacrafice from one of the weird religions down here, Macumba [black witchcraft practiced in Brazil]. It was dark out so it kinda scared us away but we went back the next day during the day, the sacrafice was a plate covered in uncooked popcorn with a large piece of uncooked meat with a row of tiny baked potatoes and a hard boiled egg cut in half in every corner of the plate, it  was carefully prepared. It was kinda weird.

Anyway thats about all for this week. Hope everything is well.

Love,

Elder Carlson

Sebastian's Baptism

Hey everyone!

So this week was good. A little crazy but... Sebastian finally got baptized!!!!!

Here are some pictures from his baptism:

It stinks a little though becasue my other comp Elder Segura didn't get to see it. So we had changes this week. Elder Segura is in Melo now. I am here with Elder Alvey from Ogden UT.

He is really tall. He is 2 meters. thats 6 ft 6.

So fun news.... This change 4 Brazilians came to our mission. These are the first brazilians that we have had in our mission my whole time here.  The weirder thing.... We were talking about what the changes could be. We guessed that I would probably be District Leader again and I also guessed that Elder Dinkel would be training. In Elder Dinkel's ward the bishop's wife had a dream that a brazilian would becoming to the area. And well it came true! it was really crazy. It's funny because they are the only elders in the mission  that don't know english or spanish. The good thing is that spanish and portuguese are super similar. They were in the MTC in Brazil for only 6 weeks. Elder Tampellini is the elder in my district. He is from Sao Paulo. He speaks spanish fairly well, mostly just has a very obvious Portuguese accent. And every once in a while he throws out a portuguese word. But im excited to get to practice for real now. 

So the baptism was great. We had a lot of problems, all of which I will not tell here but in the end everything was great, his parents both came and they loved it. It really might help them to start progressing.

Today we invited our district over and we are going to make Krispy Kreme Doughnuts! :) yum....

I can't believe that school is almost over, that's crazy.

Love, 

Elder Carlson

Dear family,
The Holmes' dinner sounds really delicious. I would love some BBQ ribs. I did make BBQ chicken once, it was yummy. 

Anyway, The biggest news (and only news) since yesterday night..... Change Calls

I am staying here in Melilla (Melisha) My new comp is Elder Alvey, I already know him because I was in his zone when he started the mission. He is really tall, like 6 ft 4 or 5 or 6 or something. He is from Bountiful Utah. He has about 6 or 7 months in the mission.

My comp, Elder Segura is going up to Melo its close to Brasil. 

The other two elders in the house are staying put. I´m the district leader again. And the other elders Elder Robertson and Elder Dinkle are both training. Robertson is leaving in a white wash and Dinkle is staying and training.

So I will be going to Changes tomorrow and I will get to see a bunch of other elders, including Elder Moffit. I will talk to him about going and visiting you guys. 

Well that's about all I have to say.

Love You guys

Elder Carlson

Sebastian's Getting Baptized!

Dear Family,
No box so far, but I'm sure it will arrive sometime.

That was a great picture mom,  nice snooping :)

For Mother's Day - I'm almost positive 2 o clock your time will work. 5 o clock my time.

I think google+ will work, you go ahead and jump on my account  and add everyone as a friend and everything.... that way when I jump on it on Sunday I won't have to do any of that.

So Sebastian will be baptized this week! :) We announced his baptism and he is all ready!

We talked to the Relief Society and got him some clothing and I gave him a tie so now he looks really sharp in church.... Here's a picture of him:

Ya it was a really good Sunday, I think maybe for the first time in my life I enjoyed my fast. Not that I wasn't hungry, I just enjoyed it. I think it helped that I studied the law of the fast on Sunday. Isaiah 58 is a great chapter about fasting.  

I am really scatterbrained, thinking about a lot of stuff right now. Anyway thats about all I can think about....

Today we decided to do something fun. There is a homeless man that stays near our house and we all ways see him and he talks to us every once and a while. He is a religious man and has a lot of faith in God despite his dificult circumstances. Today was are going to make lunch and go and eat with him in the park. It's a nice day and we have had the idea for a while. It's going to a nice experience.

Other that that I think I will clean and make some bread or something. Yesterday night I made a apple crumble it was very delicious:

Love you guys. Talk to you Sunday!

Love, 

Elder Carlson