Wow, I've decided I basically have had the craziest mission ever...starting in Yuma (staying for a long time), going to Mesa, going back to Yuma, and now coming back here to Mesa! It was a pretty exciting transfer meeting - that's for sure. I thought it was 100% sure that I was going to come back here to Mesa, but then I heard that my boy Elder Johnson got the ZL call so I figured he must be staying in Mesa, since normally they wouldn't take someone out of spanish work so young... So I thought it was a toss-up and that I could go anywhere but alas, here I am again :) And I'm with my MTC companion Elder Twitchell, which is pretty interesting. From our very first day together in the MTC, he's talked about us being companions out here but I didn't really know if it would happen. And now here we are again! So I'm in the same ward as before (Liahona 5th ward) and I'm just here in the other area now. Elder Johnson did end up getting taken out of spanish work (he was super sad - definitely didn't want to) and he's in Gilbert now. Elder Ricker and Elder Feller are new district leaders here with us, and it's funny, because they both served with me for quite a while down in Yuma. And not only that but half of the sisters here also were down in Yuma with me a couple of transfers ago. So in all of my time being a missionary, I haven't really branched out and gotten to know an incredible amount of members or missionaries. I keep serving in the same zones with the same people! It makes life interesting. And another thing that's crazy in our zone right now is that 7 of the 9 companionships are training!! So we have 7 greenies in the zone, and with fairly young zone leaders, we're just a super young zone. So this will be an adventure.
I do have to say this area is a lot different than anything I've served in before... I came here and they were only teaching maybe 4 people (2 couples that need to get married - they're illegal, so it's a tricky situation) with not really any potentials or anything to work off of. They've really been struggling in this area ever since I left in May. But the good news is that we've been working with referrals and part-member families and two of those families came to church on Sunday! They're kind of crazy families with all kinds of kids running around, but we do what we can to keep lessons focused and make progress.
So I've spent a lot more time outside on the streets than I have in a long time... We don't really have investigators to visit, so we have to go out there and find them! I think of this more as old school missionary work. We're working as closely as we can with the members, but we know that when they see the results that come from our efforts, they're definitely going to get excited about it as well and be more willing to share the gospel with their friends and family. Speaking of which, we had a really good evening yesterday and set up appointments with all of the people that we contacted and stopped by! I had talked to this girl from the Dominican Republic on the street the other night and we met her family last night and they're awesome! They had been to our church before in Santa Domingo, and they were excited to go to the activities and church here. They're just super cool and have really funny spanglish.
But yeah, that's most of the excitement from this week - there'll be more in the near future!
Love you!
~ Elder Carlson
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