Hola! Well, I'm pretty sure Yuma's never going to be able to get rid of me... we got transfer calls last night, and we found out that there were only going to be a couple small changes in our zone and most everything's going to stay the same. We're going to get 2 new district leaders and a greenie in the zone, and we'll get to meet them tomorrow. It was kind of interesting, because we make recommendations for what happens in transfers and it happened almost exactly how we recommended so that was pretty cool. I'm way excited though, because the missionaries here are awesome, good things are happening in our branch, and Elder Oliver is definitely one of my favorite companions. He's a goofball but really helps me to not stress out and we have a whole lot of fun.
The past week has been a little rough in terms of investigators, because we've had to drop quite a few and a whole bunch are moving out! Some are going to Mexico, or California, or other cities here in Arizona. So our teaching pool has decreased a lot, but hopefully we can really work on changing and improving that this week. At church we still had a few people come which was cool, but one of the most interesting things was I was actually the organist!! I'm still a little rusty, since I haven't really played the piano for quite a while, but it was a fun experience trying to figure out the organ and it's getting a lot better. I still don't use the pedals that much, but it's definitely a work in progress. I always kind of felt at some time or another I would have to take over as pianist at some point in my mission but I didn't know I was going to try to learn the organ! So that was an experience and we'll see how that continues to go.
Meantime, it's been super warm here as always (generally between 110 and 115 degrees) with a lot of humidity, which is actually rare for here in Arizona. So when we go outside and especially when we go out on bike, we're just drenched and sweating like crazy. That makes life interesting and we get a whole lot of water wherever we go.
And yesterday was a surprisingly exciting day as well. So we had district meeting like normal and gave the zone a prize for everyone meeting a challenge we had issued last week (the prize was some way delicious costco-size muffins) as well as said goodbye to an elder who is currently home right now, Elder Bradshaw. He's quite the character though, a super obedient guy with the most interesting sense of humor and the most intense part I've ever seen in my life. But anyway, after district meeting we went to do service at this lady's trailer and it was rough... The bugs and creatures we found as we were cleaning as well as some super intense smells coming from the fridge definitely made it difficult. It was actually somewhat funny - Elder Oliver kept on trying to come in, but would get overwhelmed and have to go back outside again. That actually happened quite a few times before he finally made it. I definitely teased him a lot. That and there was no air conditioning, which we always enjoy. Anyway, we finished that up, and then yesterday as we were walking around in this trailer park a huge group of little kids between 5-12 years old (there were probably 12 or so of them) started following us around because they first wanted to play soccer. As we were going around they ALL followed us and asked if they could come with us. I asked if they wanted to come teach with us and they said yes!! So we have our own posse now and some kids that want to be like us and do missionary work! It was pretty fun. So there was that, and we also saw a pretty intense police chase yesterday with 10 police cars! I thought that was probably a little bit ridiculous - a few too many cars - but it was exciting to watch nonetheless.
So more exciting news is that our branch finally has a branch mission plan! We sat down with the branch council a couple weeks ago and figured it out. So we presented it to the branch this past Sunday and we're pretty excited. One of the goals in this mission plan is that every active family in the branch gives us one referral every month, which would be incredible - especially considering what we're getting right now. But everyone liked it, and hopefully we can really get moving, and be able to be more full-time teachers while our members can be more like full-time finders (like President Bednar says). So that should be sweet.
So yeah, we've been making a lot of trips to and from Tempe for leadership meetings and so forth and we're going up again this Thursday - I can't count how many times I've made this trip...It's so cool though because we always learn so much! President Howes is amazing and has the most incredible insights (By the way, Elder Cuthbertson is an AP now and Elder Rappleye is as well - we were all together in Yuma when I first came out). So what we say is that Yuma is Zion's camp because so many of the missionaries that have been here go leadership, especially zone leaders and AP's. And because Yuma's not the easiest place in the world to do missionary work, but it's definitely doing a lot better!
Life is good though, and I'm excited to stay down here! Love you all!
~ Elder Carlson
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