I Received the Box!

Dear Family,
So spencer is car-less. What is he going to do? I guess it is almost summer  there, and he still has his motorcycle. Seems like a typical carlson experience selling it and all....

So yes I have read the Hunger Games, actually I listened to it on the drive home from Houston. I liked it but not a ton. I never read the other two. I had the second one but I didn't listen to it. I remember the third came out a week or so before I left.

Talk about trunky.... Yes, I do know when I'm coming home, September 19th.  I know I'm going to miss fall sememster but I will still be able to do block classes, at least a couple. Ask spencer if I have to register for them soon, and find out when so I can talk to my president and get it done. 

So ya I'm super excited about conference. I have been reading the Liahona a lot recently, I used to never read it but just today I read a really good article about Tender Mercies, it was great. It's in the Feb. 2012 liahona by Elder Bednar. It made me realize how many tender mercies I receive as a missionary. For example yesterday we were in ward council in the morning before church and we ran to our house 15 minutes before church to call Sebastian to see if he was ready or on his way already, I was expecting him to be ready and waiting for us to come get him and we were going to tell him to go with a member that lives near by. When we called his mom said he had already left with that very member. Just a lovely little blesssing having investigators that want to progress.

Unfortunately The Bishop doesn't want us to baptize Sebastian. It's really a difficult situation, I even called the mission president to get some advice and in this specific situation, my mission president is really good friends with my bishop and so he just told me to do what the bishop says.... so we are just going to have to work harder to get the bishop to see that Sebastian is ready to get baptized.


So good news..... I RECEIVED THE BOX!!!!!
I love orange chicken.... I made some and it turned out just like panada express... basically I just cut up chicken and breaded it in flour dipped it in egg and in flour again and fried it and then coated it in orange chicken sauce it turned out really well!!!! 

I know you just sent me the box and all, but an opportunity has presented itself. I told you about the Chappe Family from my ward that is currently in Utah, Well they said they would be willing to bring us some stuff, I gave them your cell phone number and Spencer's number, They supposedly speak English but I gave spencer's number too just in case.

They are going to be in Utah until the 1st of April I believe. If you could go meet them somewhere and give them these things for me I would be eternally greatful.... They are for me and for another elder that lives in my house.....

• Peanut butter

• 2 cans or bottles of Dr Pepper (Please just do it :) I love you and one is for the other elder)

• Sensidine toothpaste (The whitestrips make my teeth sensitive)

• Preach My Gospel in portuguese (Pregar Meu Evangelio (The distribution center has them)

That's it, I don't want to overload them.... I'm sure they will be completely fine with bringing that.

One question, Why did you send coffee flavored Werthers candies?
Other than that I'm doing great.

I finally feel like the area is starting to take off, It shouldn't be long for some baptisms. I get along great with my comp and with the elders in my house. They change is almost over, we get change calls this Sunday. Ideal situation. There are two Brasilians coming and I want one of them to live in my house and teach me Portuguese.

Love you guys!

Love,
Elder Carlson

Pictures!

Dear Family,

Still no box!  The mission box arrived, without my box so now there’s even less hope. I did however get a lovely letter from Elder Coulsen Phillips! He is doing well.

Anyway, prepare yourself. Im going to send some pics of the house... or try at least.... 

The first is of my companion, Elder Segura and me.  The rest are of our apartment. 

So I’m a little sick. My throat hurts. It started yesterday, I hope it doesn’t last.  It is still fairly hot here. We hit a cold patch for like 3 or 4 days but now it’s back up there.

So guess what? There is someone from My ward here in Uruguay going to  Provo today. His name is Elder Chappe. He is an area 70, He went to Provo today with his wife. I don’t know how long they are going to be there. I think it is for a meeting or something. They told me yesterday and offered to take something to you guys but it was really late and I couldn’t think of anything to send you guys so I didn’t. I didn’t tell them any information about where you live or anything so I don’t think they will be in touch, but if you see some Uruguayans walking around byu or something it’s probably him. He is fairly tall and white. He looks American. Anyway that would be interesting if you saw him there :)

So the work continues here in Melilla. (Its pronounced Melisha just so you know.... Don’t listen to the lies that Spencer might try to tell you about the pronunciation) 

Sebastian came to church, he isn’t going to get baptized on the 23^rd because the Bishop wants (requires) to have a interview with his parents before he announces the baptism. It’s not really in his rights as a bishop to demand such a thing, but its not a bad things. Man alive. Working here in Montevideo in my first Stake and established Ward is really different than the little "anything goes" branches of the interior. That’s not to say the we just did what ever we felt like in the branches but there was a lot more trust in the missionaries. I’m not going to lie, if Sebastian lived in Florida he would definitely be baptized already. Anyway we will just deal with it. It’s better to deal with it then have an angry bishop for the next 4 months. Sebastian’s a really cool kid, He always wants to go to every activity in the church.  He has already been to 2 mutual and 1 activity of the primary because he is actually 11 but he turns 12 in a few weeks. Anyway maybe between conference sessions we will baptize him.

We still aren’t finding very many new investigadores but now we are working more with the members, hopefully we will be able to get some good references, Other than my little illness we are doing great.  

I’m getting really excited for Conference! I cant believe its already here. It is my last conference in the mission.... Lots to learn still....

Anyway that’s about all for this week.

Love,

Elder Carlson

Rats

Dear Family,
Hey so about that box you sent..... I would be holding your breath or anything..... I recived some bad ish news. Apparently the mission box that gets sent out every week by the secretaries hasn't arrived here in my area for like the past 2 months eventhough they send a new one every week.  I'm not really sure why the elders never said anything don't know when or if i will ever get that box, but thanks for the effort :)

And thank you for the bank statment, honestly I had no idea how much $ was in there now a days, but more than I thought so that's good :)

That's awesome about Spencer's internship opportunities,  I hope he gets the best one.

I can't believe that school for you guys is almost winding down already. It seems so weird. My internal long term clock is really messed up. With all the season changes and stuff it seems like school just barely got started here. 

Today is a really rainy day, We started out our day breaking our shower knob faucet thingy, So hot water was just pouring out of the shower head, but we are pretty handy we got it fixed up in a jif. Then we walked over to a members house in the rainy rain and got some lunch, Normally we don't get lunch on  PDay from the members but they signed up for that day and we aren't complaining, it's just inconvenient sometimes. Oh yes I might have mentioned this but those boots that I bought in Sportsmans Warehouse were a fantastic buy, I love them. I don't know if you remember they were really expensive but were on clearance sale and I got them for $70, They are really water proof!   Side note, pretty much all my clothing is doing well. I get compliments from other missionaries because I look like a new missionary with my well taken care of clothing. My pants are the only things that are suffering, but they will last I'm pretty sure.

Anyway so we had a pretty good Sunday. After the meeting of Executive Commitee in the morning (8:45) like 15 minutes before church we were scrambling to pick up an investigator, Sebastian because we said we would pass by at like 8:30 to walk with him, We ran back to the house to call him and when we called his mom she told us that he had already left with a member that lives near him. It was awesome, it saved us a bunch of time, and it was a blessing knowing that he was all ready and he took the inititive to get to the church. He is a twelve year old, he will most likly be getting baptized the 23 of March. He has already come to church twice. He is progressing really well.

Monica is having schedule issues. She is trying to get a new job and she wasn't able to meet with us this week, but we are hopeful still, we are going to try and involve her boys and get them excited to come to church in order to motivate Monica a little more.

We are still having some difficulty finding new people. It seemed a lot easier in Florida, but we are still working hard and trying to involve the members more in what we do.

So ya, I didn't bring my camera today.... sorry, but the house.... yeah, its... lets just say the President and Hna Da Silva want us to move as soon as possible. We haven't had any time to look for houses, and today with the rain I don't think we are going to be doing much searching. We have some nice leaks in the roof that drip on my things if i dont move them.... And we have rats :) We have a really funny video of the rats.... But I bought poisin and I don't think there are any more now.

I think that's about it for now.

Thanks again for the box :) I hope i get it!

Love, 

Elder Carlson

Monday March 5, 2012

Dear Family,
So I still havent gotten the box, it should be coming this Thursday to the elders in La Paz and then I should be getting it friday from them. but who knows, they have had some problems getting us stuff here.  I don't know why since we are a lot closer to the offices  Anyway we didn't receive a mission box this week like we should have, so no one even got letters.... I might call the secretaries or something.

It's really easy to know how many memebers there are in the ward, they just have to check on MLS the church computer program. That would be the number of membership records in the ward, it should be fairly up to date.

We are still working hard here. we still don't know that many members but we are working on it. Sebastian didn't come to church so we won't be having a baptism this week but we should be have some baptisms soon. I don't know who but ya..... we have a few investigators.  There is this lady, Monica, she investigated for a little bit about a year ago. and I feel like she is way more prepared now, before she had a lot of problems with her partner but now he is gone and she is just with her two kids.  We had two really really good charlas with her, in both leccions someone cried.  We brought our lider missional becuase he is her neighbor, really good guy with a great testimony. She failed us on Saturday so we couldn't talk to her about coming to church but our Leader missional called her and she said she would go but then didn't come in the end. oh well.

Today we completely wasted the morning.... we went to La Paz about 20 minutes away to play soccer but then no one showed up that was supposed to and so we didnt even play at all. we ended up losing about 2 hours..... now we have to hurry up and type and get over to a members house because they are giving us lunch..... I feel like there are a lot of typing errors in this letter but I'm too lazy to fix them. I can't wait for the chinese sauce. :)

Could you pass a mesage on for Bryan Gurney.... Tell him that Elder Robertson from Riverton UT is serving here and is in my district.

I was talking to E Robertson and we found out that his dad is really good friends with Darin. And he knows Curtis Hickman and apparently Curtis is getting married..... Wow.

I think thats about it for now.

Our apartment isn't worthy of a picture. It's kinda crappy.  President wants us to move but it's really hard to find new place to live.... this will be my third time moving if we end up finding something.

Anyway I'm doing good, loving the mission. I hope everything is going well there!

Love,
Elder Carlson

Elder Segura from Chile

Family,
So I'm down here in Montevideo and my new companion is.....Elder Segura!
He is from Chile, Santiago to be precise. He is brand spankin new. He talks really chileno. It's actually kind of hard to understand him sometimes. He will just randomly drop off some letters in the middle of a word and he talks really fast and uses words that are exclusive to Chile. But he is really cool, he is a bigger guy, funny. He is going to be a good missionary. Also, Elder Francis, my first "oro" is also training! His oro is from New Zealand!  We are in the same Zone as them so we will be seeing them once a week ish. It's fun.

So Melilla. It's a fairly small area, but they have a lot of members, the Ward is actually called Lezica, There are 4 elders for the Ward, so we only have half the ward. The memebers are studs, at least that's what it seems like so far. They have an attendence of about 130 so it's a lot bigger than normal.... How many people are in our ward? how many are active? I have been asked so many times but I never know what to say.  So they are working to split the ward. They are pretty close to being able to do it and only need a little more priesthood on our side of the ward.

So this week was really different. White Washes are weird. The two elders that were here before us were both in their last transfer so they are in there houses now. They kinda got tired at the end of their missions and slowed down quite a bit.... There weren't exactly investigators when they left..... that was new. But that didn't slow us down.  We looked through the area book and wrote down the name of every single former investigator that had been to church and started visiting them. We also had meetings to get to know the bishop and ward mission leader. They are really good, they actually work here and that is going to be helpful. We ended up doing a lot of contacts this week and we were able to find 4 new investigators, and we were even able to help one to come to church this Sunday, a real miracle.

Anyway we still have a long way to go to make this a normally progressing area, we are still just walking around in the street talking to people and knocking on doors the greater part of the day because we don't have very many future investigators or progressing investigators.

That's awesome that Whitney got into BYU!!!! So she is going to start in summer?

I hope Spencer's ankle is getting better, we don't want a Bryan Gurney infection starting!

That's good that cameron sold again. Is Spencer going to sell for a little bit too?

That's about it for today, I don't have my camera with me because we went to downtown Montevideo today to do medical checks for elder Segura.

Oh ya and my area is a suburb, there aren't any tall buildings or anything, it's like a 1 hour bus ride or 30 min car ride from downtown.

Love,
Elder Carlson

A New Area... Melilla, Estaca Norte

Dear Family,

Yes I remember chicken spaghetti.  Don't you worry mother, I will never forget your food. I tried making a cheap off brand of that casserole once, it didn't turn out good so I didn't say anything.

 

Sounds like things are pretty normal and busy at home, thats good....

 

The family that we found is doing really well, Sofia the youngest daughter got baptized this Sunday, The rest of the family is progressing as well, a little slower than her but they are great. It's too bad that I'm not going to be around to see their baptism.

That's right, me voy, my comp is staying and training a new elder.  I'm am leaving and going to an area called Melilla, Estaca Norte. Its in Montevideo, my first time going to the big city.  It's going to be a change. Also a little twist was thrown in. I'm going to be training again! but this time I'm doing a "White Wash" because neither of us know the area.  That is going to bring some new challenges.

 

I'm excited, its going to be interesting. There are 20 new elders coming to the mission so there are a lot of people training.  There is an elder coming from from New Zealand and another one from Australia.  I have been packing all morning it's been crazy. I'm going to miss Florida but I'm also ready to go.  

 

Other than that it has been a pretty normal week.

 

Oh yes, ALBA, our convert from 4 weeks ago is a stud! She went to the temple the other day and did baptisms for the dead with the ward! She loved it, she is growing a ton spiritually, she is super faithful, ever since we met her she has fufilled her commitments, she always is the first person at church every Sunday, she is just a stud!

 

Anyway I hope all is well!

 

Love,

Elder Carlson :)

 

P.S. Could you please email these talks in english AND spanish :)

"Saftey for the soul" Elder Holland Nov 09

"Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ" Elder Kevin Pearson May 09

Sleeping Outside at Night

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