It's been a pretty sweet week and we've been able to get lots of things done! We had a couple awesome baptisms this last week as Maureen Miller (our Native American - her tribe is actually Quechan) and Maribel Soto got baptized. It's cool to see baptisms in different wards and branches, and to see the support that everyone provides for these people as they take this important step. Maribel actually got baptized on Friday, September 16th, which is Mexican Independence Day, so I guess there were some pretty huge celebrations going on in Mexico during that time. But she is incredible and everything went really smoothly. I actually got to baptize her! And it's funny that you mention "keep singing" in all of your letters because that's all I did this last weekend. I sang for both of the baptisms, and then also sang for the 4th ward on Sunday, and all of them went really well - it's just fun trying to find music for all of these musical numbers!
It's actually kind of crazy - we've been analyzing how things have been going lately in our little 10-man (well there are 2 sisters I guess) zone, and it looks like we're actually doing a lot better! We're seeing more people baptized, more lessons taught, and more people with baptismal dates than we've seen in a long time.... We actually set a couple zone records this week as far as member-present lessons go. So our conclusion is that Spanish missionaries are a special breed, and our experience in Spanish work has definitely increased our capacity to do English work. Working with the members and coordinating lessons was is so crucial to everything we do, and it seems like it's been a lot easier in our English wards to be able to do that.
Church was pretty fun yesterday...So we've been doing this competition in our zone to see who can talk to the most people outside (OYM's) and we've got this whole point system worked out. It was cool because it motivated us to really open our mouth and talk to more people, to go out of our way and search for people we could talk to. We established standards of excellence not only in OYM's but all of our key indicators such as people at church, people with a baptismal date, new investigators, etc. We needed some more OYM's yesterday afternoon so we were outside trying to find people to talk to and we see this car on the side of the road with the hood up and decide to go talk to them and see if we can help them. They did need a jump-start, and we thought it was interesting that they were all dressed up just like we were. We started talking to them and found out that they were all Jehovah Witnesses (another car pulled up as well so there were a bunch of them!) and we ended up inviting them to our church, and they invited us to theirs... They were actually super nice, but I just found the whole situation a little bit entertaining. A whole bunch of Jehovah Witnesses around 2 Mormon missionaries is kind of a funny sight. So that was kind of fun and exciting.
Yesterday, church in 4th ward was fun. We had Maureen's confirmation, I sang a musical number, and then Elder Oliver and I did the opening and closing prayers. I actually didn't remember that I was supposed to be saying the prayer. I was so satisfied that everything went well with the song and I guess just wasn't worried or thinking about the prayer. So after the closing hymn, I was all reverent and in my prayer position until Elder Oliver nudged me and told me to go up there! So I walked up there super quickly (it was pretty impressive) and everyone found it amusing...
So it's pretty awesome - October's looking like it'll be a really good month. We already have 3 people with a solid baptismal date, and a whole lot more that are close to one. The only problem is transfers happen right after General Conference so we're not sure what's going to happen and who's going to be here for all of that... Katie and Nick Cavenee are 2 adopted kids that we just started teaching a couple weeks ago and they're going to get baptized soon (Katie's 13 and Nick's 9). Nick is the coolest little kid and came to the baptism all dressed up in his sweet little suit and looking like a missionary. He says some of the most random things that are just so entertaining. I was sitting with him at the potluck after the baptism and somebody asked if the elders were teaching him. He said yes and they asked if we were nice to them. He said that he liked me but that Elder Oliver kicked him in the face! He looked over at me and said, "Right, Elder Carlson?" Of course I had no choice but to agree. I don't know where he got that from but it was pretty funny... and he said that he liked me because I gave him $50. Goodness, teaching kids can be really fun sometimes.
We're also teaching another 9-year old named Jadin that's a little more difficult to teach because he doesn't seem to capture or understand the things that we teach. We'll say that the Book of Mormon teaches about Jesus Christ and then ask him what the Book of Mormon teaches about....no response. That's taken a little bit more creativity and simplicity than I'm used to. But hey, I guess it'll help us to simplify things to the utmost degree! That's one thing that being a Spanish missionary helps you to do - teach simply. First of all our vocabulary isn't incredibly massive and we don't really have any choice. Second of all, just because of who you're teaching, they won't understand a thing unless it's super super simple.
We're pretty excited because we're going to have a big baptism on Friday! Damaris and the 3 little girls Iris, Jessalyn, and Milly, are all getting baptized on Friday in the 9th ward. Their fellowships are incredible and it was definitely the right choice to take them into the English ward. We were worried because the family just seemed to disappear for a couple weeks and we thought we had lost them. We kept coming by all of the time, and thankfully we found them and they're doing great! We were worried that we had wasted time in trying to keep stopping by, but thankfully we didn't give up on them. So that'll be an awesome day.
And it was an interesting day on Tuesday going out to the foothills with our district leader out there. He'd been really struggling with depression and discouragement and it was weighing down on us and the rest of the zone. So I went with him and did my best to stay super happy and optimistic, and it just didn't seem to be doing any good at first. He wouldn't really respond and nothing seemed to help. I guess he had been stressed out with responsibilities and stuff, but as time went on he seemed to be doing better and better, and now things seem to be going great!
We actually went out early this morning with these members in 2nd ward here that are biologists and joined them in some lizard hunting out in the desert right by the Mexican border. We became pro at lizard-finding and ended up finding desert iguanas, flat-tailed lizards, zebra-tailed lizards, side-winders (rattle snakes), horned lizards, and all kinds of exciting creatures. We actually caught them with this stick that has a little noose thing at the end of it - you just have to get it around the lizard's head and pull. It was actually super fun and we caught a bunch of things they had been looking for. It was actually pretty crazy how much work Sister Donaldson had to do to get the activity approved by President Howes...but it worked! It was pretty sweet.
So yep, that's what's going on here! The zone is doing great and hopefully pretty soon here we'll have some sweet zone t-shirts!
Love y'all! hasta la proxima,
Elder Carlson
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