Life seems pretty surreal right now... We finally just got transfer calls an hour ago, and I am indeed leaving. I thought I wouldn't spend much more time here, but I just never knew when I was actually going to take off! Now that the time has come though, it's going to be kind of difficult to leave the only area I truly know in the mission. Our wards are awesome, the members are incredible, and there are so many solid people that we are working with! We have 3 people getting baptized this Saturday and then another one scheduled next weekend that we're pretty excited about.
It was actually pretty crazy, because I found out that I'm the only one who's moving down here - everybody else is staying, and a lot of them have quite a bit of time down here as well. So our district leader in the foothills is coming to replace me and be with Elder Oliver and my guess is that I'm going to go back to Mesa and possibly be companions with Elder Twitchell, my MTC companion. And another thing that's pretty cool is that Elder Matheson, who I've been around all my mission, is now an assistant to the president, so that'll be sweet. But yeah I guess I'll find out everything that's going to happen on Wednesday at the transfer meeting (it's funny - I really haven't been to that meeting all that much - mainly because I rarely leave it seems). I definitely have loved the time I've spent here, and it has definitely been my favorite part of my mission so far. I've learned a lot and we've had a lot of success in our different wards. I definitely know that the English work we've done here has really enhanced my abilities as a missionary and it also really helps to relate to English missionaries and say we know where they're coming from. I definitely have seen that being a Spanish missionary has made me a WAY better English missionary than I ever could have been without that experience.
This week was definitely a good one though, and I loved conference! I don't know if conference has ever been quite that good before... The priesthood session was incredible and one of the best parts about it was how Jeffrey R. Holland started off the meeting (very strong). We thought it was funny because he started off by saying that he was going to speak very candidly (he always is very candid - so we knew this time he especially meant business). But it was good, really emphasizing the need to have strong, powerful, virtuous young men who are ready and prepared to serve a mission. I also really liked what he said about senior missions! I already want to serve a bunch but I guess first I need to have a family and stuff like that... So there were just a lot of things that really stuck out to me - A lot of emphasis on prayer, the Book of Mormon, genealogy, and welfare. I do have to say that as missionaries we were pretty glad that the focus was taken off of marriage and put on these other topics... It just helped us a lot more.
The good thing is that I've been kind of anticipating the move so I don't have an incredible amount to do or pack up - everything seemed to just time out right and I guess I just knew it was my time to leave. Maybe I found the people I needed to find or learned the lessons I needed to learn (well I hope I did!)
So we had a pretty sweet lesson the other day - Jacob is this 17-year old guy who we've been teaching for a while now, and he comes to church every single week. He lives with his aunt and uncle because his mom in California is kind of crazy and can't really support them. But we had this really good lesson and when we invited him to be baptized, he took a long time to really think about it. He said that he wanted more than anything to get baptized but his mom was super against it and that he's been trying to get permission from her for a really long time. But he's an incredible kid - on Sunday when the bishop asked the priests for volunteers to go and give people the sacrament he volunteered to take whoever was going to do it (when he found out that he couldn't actually administer it quite yet)! He's probably more solid than a lot of the members...
Other than that, life is going great and it's too bad I'm going to miss the 3 baptisms this weekend - Jadin (our 9-year old Native American guy) and Nick & Katie Cavenee (2 kids that just got adopted into the Cavenee family) are all getting baptized and they're all super excited! Nick is so funny - somehow the answer to every question to him is baptism so that's what he always says, even if that's nothing close to what we were trying to teach. Goodness teaching kids is fun :)
So yeah, we'll find out what happens! We'll see if I go to Mesa or if the Lord has different plans for me. I'm doing great though and love you all!
~ Elder Carlson
I don't know where I am going yet, I won't know until Wednesday morning.
· Oh man, and I forgot in my main email to talk about my exciting exchange with Elder Monforte, an elder straight from Yucatan, Mexico. He still doesn't know English or his area very well and we were out in the foothills on Tuesday (which i obviously don't know his area that well either). So the whole evening was quite the adventure, and we definitely got lost more than once...plus since he doesn't have a license I got permission to drive - it has been a long long time since I've driven. But it was pretty fun, and we ended up teaching this awesome family in the middle of nowhere and it was just really good. Plus this guy that they had been teaching (his name is Lee and I guess he had just been looking for faults in the Book of Mormon) totally changed and became super solid. He asked all these really good questions and talked about how much he wanted to come to church and take his family with him! I guess he watched every session of conference as well and just ate it up. He's committed to re-starting the Book of Mormon (this time looking for truths) and reading it every single day. It was just one big adventure, and a big learning experience for both of us.
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