•ya se esta acercando la Navidad...11/28/2011

Hey hey!

So it was fun to have Thanksgiving this past week! We got to have just about the entire day free, so we went to a big park and played a bunch of football and frisbee, and it was actually decently chilly for Arizona. We had dinner that evening with some recent converts, and it ended up being fairly American, except for the tortillas and the spicy salsa. It was super good though, and I was just happy as I long as I have my pumpkin pie :) Then that evening we got to relax and play some board games (probably the funnest game of Apples to Apples in my entire life) with a bunch of the missionaries here. It was nice to just de-stress for a day, and enjoy some time together. On P-Days we usually have all kinds of things we need to do and have a very full agenda, so it ends up not usually being incredibly relaxing. It is funny to celebrate Thanksgiving with Mexicans though, because they could care less for the holiday, but it's a big deal here. One thing that was kind of cool with the whole Thanksgiving dinner deal, was that the ward helped out our part-member family that we're working with, and actually provided a couple delicious cooked turkeys and just a big dinner for them. Luckily they didn't have any big plans or anything cooking, so it worked out perfectly.

It was kind of crazy this weekend, seeing Elder Burgos (now David) come back from Florida to visit everyone and say hi. We actually ended up doing a musical number yesterday at church, which was sweet. It's just strange to see someone you serve with come back to that exact same area and be with them not as a missionary. It was cool to see him though, and I'm already getting excited about coming back to visit everyone after my mission!

So we had a couple pretty awesome experiences this week with finding new investigators. So ever since I came into the area, we have been struggling like crazy to find new people to teach. We talk to everyone we see, we go through former investigators, and potential investigators, and everything we get seems to be either in the other missionaries' area or in the Mesa Mission! But...we're glad that we're nonetheless finding people for somebody to teach. But this week, out of nowhere, we got 5 new investigators! We had a super good lesson with Ramon and finally got his rebel 14-year old son to participate! It was a pretty huge step of progress. His son has been getting better and better, and thankfully now he's starting to get more involved. It's still difficult because you have to be constantly working to keep his attention, but he is doing better. Earlier, we were working with this part-member family list and contacted ALL of the families in our area and only found a couple that have any potential. We found, at one of the houses, a girl about our age (she's a girlfriend of one of the boys) that was super interested in coming to church! She was excited, but it seemed like every lesson that we set up got cancelled! She also had these crazy situations that came up and prevented her from coming to church. So we finally taught her on Friday, and we had a way spiritual lesson. We asked her if she had ever gone to see the Christmas lights at the temple here and she said she did last year. When we asked her how she felt as she was there she said that it was honestly the happiest that she had ever felt in her entire life!! She has a rough background and her parents were both drug addicts, but she said that day she decided to start changing her life so she could feel more like that, and has been starting to see blessings ever since. She was actually excited about getting the whole family active as well! That would be pretty cool. It's so cool when people already have a really spiritual experience like that, where they were able to truly recognize the spirit and see the potential that it has to truly make them happy. And it was funny- we were going to give her a church tour last night, but she ended up going to the temple and visitor's center instead (everyone gets the temple confused with the chapel) so we told her to stay there and enjoy it - she said she never wanted to leave.

Another cool dealio was one day as we were going through some records, I saw a family name that I recognized because I had taught them once when I was on exchanges. We decided to go by, even though I remember recently talking to a way rude, totally not-interested guy outside the house. So we went in, set up a lesson, and then came with a member and had a way solid lesson! The mom was incredibly sincere as she was talking about the fact that she really did want to know which church was true, and we found out that she would need a large-print BOM which worked out well because we had accidentally picked up an extra just last week! Their family is way cool, and we're excited to just have some new faces and people to work with.

Alberto and Adriana are still doing great - they came to a fireside last night and loved it. They had a scare earlier this week because their oldest son went to the hospital (interesting story...our fellowship went to take her to the hospital to see him, and we got stranded - it was fun finding a way to get home), but everything is good now. Alberto loves his large-print BOM and now reads it all of the time. I'm always impressed at how much they remember from what they read - it's pretty incredible. So we're still working with them and getting everything prepared for our Christmas baptisms. It's going to be the best day ever!! President Howes and a bunch of people at the fireside last night told us to let them know when they get baptized, so they can be there. Families are the best :)

So that's about it for this week. I'm excited to start getting into Christmas stuff!!

Que todos tengan una buena semana! ~ Elder Carlson

•Hay que empezar de nuevo....11/21/2011

Hola a todos! Hi all!

Well this week there were transfers, and although there weren't an incredible amount of transfers for us (we stayed the same), there were some pretty interesting changes. Elder Ricker left and Elder Silos came in, a native from Mexico and we're super excited about that. He's a walking dictionary and is able to help us so much to be more correct and be more legit Spanish missionaries. Speaking of them, Elder Silos and Elder Wheeler had an awesome baptism this past week! So with this one way active family, the mom's brother has been staying at their house for a while and I guess he had been kind of interested about the church but he had never really been invited and they had never really talked to him too much about it. He came to our ward activity (for Dia de la Raza - Colombus Day) and when Elder Ricker came up to talk to him, he said he was totally interested! In their first lesson, they gave him a baptismal date and he just got baptized this last Saturday. It's kind of crazy thinking about the number of people that can be so prepared that can be all around us - how are we going to know if we don't share the gospel with everyone? So there were a lot of people that came to the baptism, and there was a little stress. Our ward mission leader (who has the keys to the font) was in Idaho - we didn't know - and we weren't sure anyone from the bishopric was planning on going, so we were scrambling last minute, trying to help out the other missionaries here and make sure everything worked out. Thankfully it did, and I guess Abel (who got baptized) had an incredible experience when he got baptized. When he came out of the water he saw a pillar of light and he said he literally felt the Holy Ghost enter in him (like when Jesus Christ got baptized). I think it's interesting how the Hispanic people are such a visionary people, and are able to have such faith-building experiences. But yeah, we feel like Elder Silos will be able to do super well in this area and really get things done, so that'll be cool.

Other than that, we had some other new people come into the zone, including an elder who just stepped down from zone leader to train before he goes home. He has a way cool companion from Tonga who's learning English and this is his first time off of the island! Crazy... And I guess temporarily here, we kind of have 4 AP's - 2 are the more typical english AP's and Elder Matheson and Elder Johnson (my boy - who I trained) are I guess more of traveling ones that do exchanges with spanish missionaries mostly. It's interesting - I'm not sure how long President Howes plans to have it set up like this. But I'm glad I did at least an okay job of training Elder Johnson.

Other than that, there hasn't been an incredible amount of excitement this week... Our 2 families are still on track to get baptized on Christmas and we're working out all the logistics. We've noticed something that's kind of interesting with Hispanics...when it comes to parties and especially birthdays, they seem to throw absolutely everything else out the window. We've been working and making such good progress with this family, and because of his birthday and the celebrations Saturday and Sunday, they didn't come to church and broke the Word of Wisdom a little bit. So yeah, we're still working with them and solidifying everything we've taught them, and it'll all work out. More than anything, I'm just excited for a white Christmas :)

I do like being with Elder Twitchell - we've made a lot of really cool and important realizations that help us to better help our zone. One thing that we notice not only in our zone but in general with a majority of the missionaries, there is a definite lack of confidence. There's a misconception that humility is not thinking you're good at anything, but that definitely does not help you to reach your potential. It is important to recognize where our talents and abilities come from and not try to do everything alone, but we have to have confidence as we do missionary work and we have to have a testimony of who we are and why we're here. When we're truly converted, we're going to be obedient and we're going to do the Father's will, which includes us becoming like Him! That is going to involve having faith in who we are and what we're capable of. It's just something really cool that we've been thinking about lately. Oh man, and our zone once again got so close to our goal of 50 member-present lessons. We got 47!! We're going to get it sooner or later, that's all I have to say.

So yeah, it's been a good week - we're still really searching for new investigators and doing our best to figure out how best to work with the members and help them do missionary work. As far as Thanksgiving, that is when our real P-day will be, so that's when we'll have time to actually do stuff. So far, we only have 1 dinner appointment (and a couple options for desert - that's like my favorite part), but we'll see what happens. I did have a pretty incredible pumpkin pie this week...

Life is good though, and we have a really good feeling about December. It's going to be a good month! Plus I can't wait to listen to Christmas music!

Love you all and hope you have a great Dia del Pavo! (turkey day)

~ Elder Carlson

•No muchos cambios...‏11/14/11

Well it's already that time again - goodness transfers go by so fast. We just had transfer calls last night and a lot of it was what I expected. Elder Twitchell and I are staying together here, but they're taking out a lot of our solid senior companions and putting them into leadership. There are a whole lot more people leaving than we thought would leave, so we're interested to see what happens and who comes. It's going to be sad to see Elder Ricker leave - he's way musical and we had all these plans for musical numbers and everything around Christmas time.

It was a pretty exciting week though, and we have a lot of momentum going into this next transfer. So I issued a challenge to the zone here to get a certain number of lessons with a member present. These are by far the most effective lessons, and when investigators have true fellowship they're able to progress so much faster and be so much more solid in all of their commitments (and in getting retained). I could tell that there was a lot of room for improvement so I said if we got 50 as a zone I would treat everyone to pizookies at oregano's here (pizookies are these big cookies in small pie pans with ice cream on top - they're incredible). So all week long we really pushed everyone and worked together at it but at the end of it we found out we got...48! Ahhhh, we were so close, but it was almost twice what we got some weeks and way higher than we've had for months here. I don't know why, but it's super fun for me to look at past statistics and really get pumped and excited to do way better than what's been done before. It gives me something to really push and stretch for, and we've seen some cool things come from it. So we'll see if the zone can get the challenge within the next couple weeks - still a prize on the line.

We also did some pretty crazy back-to-back exchanges this week as we finished everything up for the transfer and had some pretty cool experiences.

My favorite was actually with this brand new missionary that I was with on Thursday, and I was in his area (he still didn't know it all that well). It was just not his day. So we got lost in almost every apartment complex we went in, and when he made pancakes it went terribly wrong. He turned on the wrong burner and smelled something burning...he saw that the pan had burned through the handle of the spatula that was sitting on the other pan, so there was just a chunk of the handle sitting there on the stove and melted plastic all over the pan. It was just a little bit entertaining. One thing that made things kind of interesting was this black guy we talked to at a gas station. I was airing up my shocks and this guy pulled up in a bright red sports car from the car dealership right next door, and he comes out to talk to us (his "brothers"). I found out that he had this LDS-mobile back home, a way fixed-up old car that he had bought from an older member of our church. It had LDS on the front and back license plate and it was decked out with pass-along cards and any other kind of church material. He came over asking us if we had anything we could give children so he could help keep kids occupied who came in and teach them what's important. This whole time I thought he was a member but then he was talking about how everyone asks him that and he says, "No, not yet!" He's sure that this all happened for a reason though, and it wasn't coincidence that he had this LDS-mobile. He also said that one thing we had going for us (mormons) is mormon women. I guess he worked in a gym a while back and lots of members would go work out there. He said there is just something about them - they have a glow, a purity, a light about them that nobody else has. He said, "Don't get me wrong, I love my lady. But there is something special about those Mormon women." So that was actually pretty sweet - we are definitely a light to the world.

I think that was about it for excitement this week. We're still working a whole lot with this legal issue and all of these families that want to be baptized but can't because they can't get married. We've decided to take the passport route and we're setting up appointments today with the Mexican consulate to get that taken care of. It'll probably be a couple months, but it's the only way to do things legally. Our families are still super solid though. They have overcome word of wisdom issues, and have some pretty incredible desires to be baptized. People are definitely out there, prepared and ready. It's just up to us to open our mouths and let them know we have what they're looking for! We're excited to keep inspiring the zone and really keep things rolling here. I love the work and am looking forward to another 6 glorious weeks in Mesa!

Love y'all!

~Elder Carlson

•Al final tengo frio!‏!11/7/11

Wow, I can honestly say I never thought that 50 degrees would feel so cold to me! A couple days ago it rained pretty hard here and the next morning i was legitimately cold... I've been seriously fighting this sickness the past few days so that just makes it that much more fun! And because we bike in the mornings to go to this track (to run) it felt super good on those bikes... So yep, I guess I've kind of temporarily turned into an Arizona pansy, because I consented and wore a jacket the other day, when it was probably around 60 or so. I don't know what to do with myself.

So Halloween was pretty fun, nothing overly exciting. We got together as a zone and did some pumpkin carving and that's a story in itself. So we hadn't thought to buy pumpkins a week in advance (a huge oversight on our part) and we went to Wal-Mart, expecting them to have some good size carving pumpkins. Not the case. They had these itty bitty ones with faces painted on, and they had these ridiculous big ones that you could totally not carve. So we went over to Fry's and...no dice. All they had was these little ones that were pretty hard. We were feeling pretty desperate so we ended up just getting those (my companion, Elder Ricker, and I) and then showed up to the activity that night. All I have to say is that experience was much more like carving into stone than a pumpkin. We super bent all of the little saws and things we were using and even super sharp knives took an incredible amount of strength and skill (to not cut myself). I was pretty scared for my companion since he can be pretty crazy sometimes. But I made this sweet ghost (face) and I'll have to send pictures.

Oh, and random news - something that was pretty funny. The other day, Elder Ricker and Elder Wheeler were biking along and I guess they saw eyes of this huge stuffed animal sticking out from the dumpster. So they salvaged the thing and it turns out it's this HUGE blue stuffed dog (named Pouting Pete) like the kind of thing you would get at the fair or something. So they wanted us to come pick it up and left it on the porch of a member's apartment nearby. We went by and there was definitely no dog...so we asked them about it and it first they had no idea and just looked really confused. Then they remembered and called back their kids who were going door to door, trying to figure out whose stuffed animal this was or where it came from (they thought it might have been to their daughter from a secret admirer). So we have this huge stuffed dog now that is our zone mascot and it's pretty cool.

Also this week, as the other elders were biking by the church they saw a fire! They got closer and found out that the dumpster there was on fire and had flames at least ten feet high coming from it - so they had to call 911 and get the fire truck over there to put it out. Kind of random.

Other than that, life has been pretty normal. Things are really progressing with a couple of the families that we're teaching (Ramon and Jazmin, and then Alberto and Adriana). We taught Ramon the Word of Wisdom and have been going by every day to help him and give him support. He came to church yesterday with his neighbor and his little girls and absolutely loved it. He said a really sincere thank you to us yesterday for all that we've done, and that alone just makes everything worth it. Alberto and Adriana came again with us to the Visitor's Center and really enjoyed the art and focus on Jesus Christ. There really are some pretty amazing paintings by artists around here in the valley. They're also happy because their 20-year old son is getting more involved and is starting to come with us and listen. So that's awesome!

And oh man, life is always interesting with the Castillo's... There are 5 people in the family that aren't members but that house is LOCO all the time. There are kids running around, people in and out, and they are always trying to feed us even though they're struggling financially. Plus all of the kids are super loud and opinionated so it's a good thing we're able to take control sometimes. They've been coming to church every week and it's only a matter of time before they get baptized. We're really trying to get them to read everday from the Book of Mormon because that's the only way long-term conversion comes about.

Last night was also pretty cool - we went over to teach our Dominican family and there was a friend there instead! We taught her and found out she was actually from Columbia, and she was super interested. So we're excited to see where that goes! Ultimately, our investigator pool hasn't grown tremendously (it's still pretty small) but we teach them a whole lot and they're really going places! Our current problem is still getting those 2 couples married - they already have substantial families - and it looks like our best option is going to be getting them over to Nevada, because the law is way strict here in Arizona. So that's our major obstacle right now and we're working through it.

Oh and we had Zone Leader's Council this week and made a pretty big decision. We decided to stop reporting our OYM's (the number of people we talk to and testify about the gospel outside of teaching and tracting etc.) with our weekly statistics and are really focusing on doing it because of individual conversion. We have to be opening our mouths and sharing the gospel because we're truly converted and feel the urgency and need to share it! So that was interesting, being a part of a big decision like that. Our mission hasn't been doing quite as well as we have in past years so we're really amping everyone/everything up and making sure we're all committed to achieving our goals.

So yep, that's what's going on here! Always busy, and Arizona's finally starting to get cold(er)!

Hasta luego! ~ Elder Carlson

P.S. I'm pretty sure I'm staying but we should be getting transfer calls again on Sunday night.