Hey, I made it to Arizona!!! I got here early on the 10th - I woke up at 3:30 to make sure I had everything packed up and we left the airport that morning. It was kind of a rough flight because I have a cold and my ears didn't to well with the elevation, but I was super excited to get into that airport. It felt so surreal to finally be in Arizona and legitimately be in my mission field. The mission president and his wife came with the AP's to meet us, and they were all super nice and welcoming.
We went to a LOT of introductory meetings that day, and we were all pretty tired, so it was kind of an overload of information. We also did our interviews with the president, and he is just an absolutely amazing man. He's got a super strong missionary spirit about him, and he said I can't be just a good or even a great missionary. I have to be a super-star! We got to go to the Mesa Temple Visitor Center afterwards and that was a super cool experience. I don't think I've ever so thoroughly enjoyed a place like that before. We watched the Lamb of God and walked around an art exhibit, and I felt the Spirit so incredibly strong. I can't imagine how life would be without this knowledge and without having this hope and comfort in a loving Savior who wants to help us.
An English-speaking elder and I stayed the night at a member's house in Tempe, and they were a super nice somewhat older couple. I enjoyed talking to them about their families and missionary work and everything. The next morning we went to more meetings about everything, and met all the mission office staff. Then it was time for our transfer meeting!!!
I was one of the last to be called, and found out that my first area was going to be in Yuma, which is in the very southwest corner of Arizona. It's super hot here, but I guess it basically is everywhere in Arizona. My companion and trainer is Elder Cuthbertson, a wrestler from Alabama. He's a fairly quiet and soft-spoken elder, but he seems to be very determined and I think we'll do great together. So yeah, I got to take a long, hot truck ride down to Yuma yesterday, and get all settled in. We got to know each other and last night, we had an elder's quorum activity that members invited friends and investigators to. We played soccer and it was a really cool experience to meet everyone and kind of get started speaking Spanish. It gets kind of crazy, because so many of them just switch back and forth between English and Spanish, and I get kind of lost sometimes. I'm sooooo grateful to my teachers at the MTC though, because they did an excellent job teaching me and I understood almost everything that was being said. Speaking is a little different though, and that's going to take some practice. We do have a lot of appointments and a FHE to do tonight, so I guess I will have the opportunity to practice real real soon.
I've also met some really cool people from Nigeria yesterday - they don't speak Spanish, but they're super interesting guys who like to talk to us. They definitely make everything real interesting and entertaining. I can already see that I'm able to talk to other people so much easier than before, and it's easier for me to just get to know random people.
Oh, and the last week at the MTC was pretty wild and crazy. We were having departure meetings and zone leader meetings, as well as classes and teaching appointments and everything. We were CRAZY busy, but also incredibly excited to leave and get to work. My district was practicing a song (O Mi Padre) to sing for our last Sunday there, and I was practicing the duet I was going to sing with Elder Mitchell on Sunday (I Need Thee Every Hour).
Sunday was probably the highlight of my week. I don't know if I said before, but our branch president at the MTC had us write talks in Spanish every week. He would give us all a topic and then we would all write talks because we didn't know until sacrament meeting who was actually going to give one. Anyways, I was up on the stand after blessing the sacrament when he announced the rest of the meeting. He said that first my district was going to sing our song, and then after a couple sisters would give talks that I would give one, which would be followed by mine and Elder Mitchell's duet. I had no idea that I was going to be giving a talk or singing that duet, so that was kind of a surprise for me. Everything went way better than I thought it would though - the district song was better than we had ever sung it, and my talk went a lot longer than I thought it would. I didn't think I would have so much to say in Spanish! This was all interesting, because I was still sick and without a voice, but my duet was literally by far our best performance of the song. It was amazing, and when I sang that song it was like my entire body was surged with this power in knowing how much I need my Savior. So yeah, it was a pretty busy Sunday - some elders said they might as well have called it "the Elder Carlson Show" but I was just grateful for the opportunity to sing and everything.
We definitely said a lot of goodbyes and I'm going to miss my zone back at the MTC. They're all a fantastic group of elders and we got super super close to one another.
I'm loving everything here though and I'm excited to meet more people and get started teaching!!!
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