Well I do have to say life is considerably less wild and exciting right now than it's been for the past few months. I feel like before I could just go on and on even about every single day because so many crazy things would happen. Needless to say life has calmed down a little bit and we're still working as hard as we can. More than anything we're still really working on finding people to teach. We know that there are people in our area that are prepared to hear and accept the gospel but we have to know where they're at first! So we've been going by a lot of member's houses and sharing messages with them, teaching and exciting them to talk to their neighbors and everyone that they know. We've also been stopping by a lot of former investigators, trying to see if things have changed since they last met with the missionaries. That's still in the process and there haven't been necessarily crazy cool things that have happened just quite yet, but something's definitely going to happen soon. I can feel it.
So one thing that was pretty cool was this last Monday we had a lesson set up with this guy named Juan Jimenez, who we've been trying to get ahold of more often and teach but it's super hard because he has crazy hours and is never home. Our ward mission leader and one of the ward missionaries who were going to come with us to that lesson called us a little bit before it and told us that they wouldn't be able to make it! (This happens ALL the time in Spanish work). We weren't 100% sure that Juan was going to be there but we showed up a little late and he showed up literally at the exact same second! It was pretty cool. I asked him if we could make a call, so I called up Hugo, our very recent convert who doesn't live terribly far away. I asked him if he could come and he said he could so he came over. Since he doesn't have a phone and people are generally not fantastic with directions we actually went out by the road (the lesson was in these apartments) to make sure he made the right turn. He finally got there and we had an incredible lesson. Right off the bat when Juan asked Hugo to say the prayer, Hugo said an awesome prayer where he asked specifically that Juan would be able to make it to church on Sunday - this Sunday. We testified about the Book of Mormon and the importance of church attendance, how we receive revelation and get the spirit more abundantly in our lives. He paid a lot more attention than usual, and Hugo bore a pretty powerful testimony about how he's seen the Gospel bless and impact his family. It was crazy to see how everything changed in the past two weeks. Super recently, Hugo was saying he wasn't sure about getting baptized and here he is now, literally days later, bearing powerful testimony to someone else about the truthfulness of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He also came with us to a lesson with Andrew Fuentes later on in the week and loved it. Johana is solid as a rock as well. The other missionaries said that in Gospel Principle she basically taught everyone about the priesthood, its importance and how it's received. She just latches on to truth and loves everything that she's learning. Her crazy friend was continuing to put wild stuff on Facebook to her but she was unfazed and said that was enough. She also is loving what this is doing for her family! She said Hugo is a 100% different person now. I guess on Monday he also paid the rent for the whole family (they live with Alberto and Adriana) and did all this other stuff for everyone before he came to the lesson with us. He said he just felt really good :) So they're also working with people that they know and are inviting them to church.
Some of our goals that we've set for the week are "Cultivating potential" in the Dobson Ward and "Get the ball rolling" in the Liahona 5th Ward. We've seen a lot of cool things and a lot of people working with friends and things in the Dobson Ward, but it's been a lot tougher to figure out how to really get things working in the Spanish world.
And we found out about some pretty sweet things with Jeff and Kendra. So while Lois is still kind of struggling with tithing, Jeff and Kendra are gaining a crazy testimony of it! They were figuring how much tithing would be and they knew it would be way close (Kendra was still stressing out about it but Jeff said that they might as well just do it and not stress) but they decided to take the leap of faith and do it. I guess just a couple days later they got a letter from the IRS and they were super worried because they thought that could not mean anything good. Apparently it said that they forgot a deduction and it returned them a decent sum of money! They have never gotten anything like that before, so they already have a solid testimony of tithing! They also went to the temple this last Tuesday to do baptisms for the dead and I guess they were just in awe with the whole thing. It's been a big week for them.
And Elder Cox and I had an adventure when we were on exchanges on Saturday. We got a ride out to a musical fireside out in Gilbert but realized that it had been moved to a different building...At the building we went to, there was definitely a huge wedding reception. A weird place for missionaries to be. For some reason, we had our bikes with us so we started biking and (after realizing we were going the wrong direction and turning around) got there just a few minutes late. So our ride didn't have a cell phone and didn't know to pick us up at this other building. By the time we biked over afterwards I guess he had come, didn't see us, and went home. So we're calling all kinds of people, trying to get a ride as we're stranded out in Gilbert and finally our ride called from his home phone and came back out to pick us up. Oh, the exciting situations missionaries get themselves into...
So that's most of the excitement for this week - it's crazy to think that Elder Matheson (who actually extended a transfer) will be going home next week. I've been around him my entire mission, and now we will be the oldest missionaries in the mission.... There's like nobody going home next transfer. AHHHH! I never thought I'd get to this point, and it definitely gives you a sense of urgency like nothing else. Our days are numbered. We're expecting big things this next week tho!
Love y'all! hasta la proxima,
~ Elder Carlson
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