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
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