Me voy a quedar en Yuma!! 1/26/2011

Crazy week and crazy transfers... The transfer meeting is actually going on right now, but I found out I didn't have to go because I'm staying here in Yuma!! We got a call from the AP's late Sunday night and got the news that our area was going to be white-washed and that both Elder Johnson and I are leaving. It turns out that I've been inter-zone transferred and that I'm going to be companions with an elder that was in the area right next to mine. Everything is still kind of crazy because we have no idea what the area or boundaries are. It does look like we'll probably be covering all of Yuma though, which is a super massive area.

So out of the 6 missionaries that were in our little Spanish branch, there are now 2 of us still here and we'll see what happens when they bring down the other missionaries. So yep, I'm already moved in and ready to go.

Oh, and another thing that's pretty exciting is that we're finally getting the branch more involved in missionary work. We went over the branch list with the branch president and got it all organized into those who are active, less-active and so forth, and which families are part members. They're finally going to get started with the branch council process and help us teach these people! We all got together last week and went on massive splits. There were 5 of us missionaries, so we each went with a member and visited investigators, less-actives, and inactive members and got a whole lot done. I love it, because the members know these people so much better than we do, and people are way more likely to go to church when they have a friend there.

That was another thing that was quite interesting this week...An elder waiting for a visa got his last week, so his companion joined us and we were one big companionship for a couple days. Teaching was sweet, but people on the street were way intimidated when we stopped to talk to them. It was definitely fun though.

One highlight is that we have a new family to teach that might get baptized in the next couple weeks! One of our members gave us a referral to one of his neighbors and we stopped by to teach them. The kid is particularly awesome, he's this big 16-year old, and he's already reading solid in the Book of Mormon. They all said yes to baptism and were wondering what all you have to do or know in order to be baptized! It was pretty sweet. I definitely have a testimony of working through members. We have done a ridiculous amount of work here OYM-ing on the streets and tracting, and out of all the hundreds of people we've talked to, the only ones that are solid and are progressing toward baptism are linked to members. There's no way around it - members are the way to go, and when they refer friends, their friends already have a support and help when they go to church.

It's been a tough week for eating though... EVERYONE fed us tons, and we had multiple meals a day. Good thing is, we ran and didn't eat much else, so we're all good. Well, I'm really interested to see how everything is going to work out here and I'm super excited for this transfer. There's a lot of people that might potentially be baptized and I would love to be a part of it. My comp Elder Lindquist is another wrestler, a way hard worker, and a super good missionary. He's from Vancouver, Washington, a way funny guy, and I am just nothing but excited right now.

Love y'all!

A ver si ya me voy 1/19/2011

Bueno!

Well, things are going good as ever down here in Yuma - everyone's starting to get a little more excited and scared as transfers come up. You never know who's going to go or stay or train or get a leadership call. We've had a visa-waiter here Elder Harris that has been here a few months with me and he just got his visa yesterday so he got jetted out today. We were pretty tight, so I'm going to miss him.

Well, this week was pretty interesting.. I went on exchanges Monday with our district leader that's about to go home (Elder Hulka) and actually did English work! So that was my second english exchange I think, and it was interesting to see how it's all done because it's SO different from spanish work. They work with a lot of older people, the snow-birds, in their area, and it's crazy just seeing how many wards they cover. One thing that is a little different is the people that they do teach are a lot more likely to keep commitments and go to church. We're still kind of having a tough time with that. But it's a whole lot easier to OYM and talk to people on the street if they speak Spanish. It's just interesting to see all of the differences in working with the different cultures. But yeah, it was also funny because we ate a dinner at a guy's house who was from Juneau so he talked about Alaska the entire time, and had apparently been wanting me to come over for weeks, since he knew I was from Alaska.

It was kind of a rough week for lessons (we didn't have as many as normal) but the ones we did get were good! We realized how vital members are to have in lessons with us when the only people that came to Church on Sunday was a family that we visited with members. The whole Wilson family came to church on Sunday, a total surprise, and they were all dressed up and loved it! It was so cool to see them there, and I just wish the dad's work schedule was different so they could go every Sunday.

That, and we've had an interesting time since our branch mission leader disappeared for the last few weeks. He owns a newspaper business and somebody apparently hacked into his bank accounts so he's been figuring that out for the past while. We're just trying to really unify all the branch leaders and get them on the same page. We had a really good fireside on Sunday and got a lot of members pumped up about mission work. It was cool because all 6 of us were up there together talking to everyone, and I thought it was pretty powerful.

So yeah, we've just been still thinking about how we can be more effective, and how we can use the members more. Investigators that have really good fellowship simply get baptized, and we need these members more than anything.

But wow, it's been a warm week, around 85 degrees every day. Can't believe it's January! So the work is going forth, we're continuing to work harder and harder, and we'll find out what happens with transfers on Monday night!

Love y'all!

Investigadores a la iglesia!!‏ 1/13/2011

Buenos Dias!

The email was all messed up yesterday and we weren't able to do anything.

Well, this week hasn't been terribly crazy and exciting but I do have good news. We finally got investigators to come to Church!! We've been really struggling with that the couple months, and it's a culture thing that we have to overcome. We're right on the border here, and almost everyone goes to Mexico on the weekends. That, and they're not used to going to Church. It's just something most don't normally do.

But it finally happened! We decided to do something a little different, since nothing we did in the past had worked. We have testified, promised blessings, passed by Sunday mornings, and nothing had worked. We took a little time to make some cookies last week (Elder Johnson has a super good recipe) and made some sweet thank you cards for all of our investigators. They all appreciated and loved it, and we saw a huge difference in the very first house we visited! The mom joined in on the lesson (she never had before) picked up a Book of Mormon, and it was just a complete turn-around. We got new investigators as more family members came in, and ultimately this all resulted in a family coming to church on Sunday! You can't imagine how happy we were and how much better church was with them there. It was amazing! What's also cool about that is that we're teaching another family that's related - the moms are sisters. And apparently one of the kids was all indignant that they didn't go, and got mad because they said we didn't invite them! So hopefully all of the family comes together and we said they can all come as one big happy family!

So other than that, there hasn't been all that much going on. We're still finding new people to teach, and we've been teaching the Wilson family a lot, which has been pretty cool. It's a family where the dad's less active (he's a fire fighter and can't make it to church most Sundays) and the mom is Mexican. They're awesome, and the mom and daughter have been reading in the Book of Mormon! That's another thing that's incredibly hard to get people to do. They're all about praying, but the reading is tough.

Other than that. the only really exciting thing is I learned how to make tomales! They're a pretty big deal here, and everyone talks about how long they take, but I totally learned so I'll be able to make them when I get back.We felt pretty legit, because we had sweet aprons and everything.

Anyway. that's it for the week!

By the way, I forgot to mention that Sunday i got to go to a camel farm, see all kinds of crazy animals, and pick some MASSIVE grapefruit things - like the size of basketballs.

Os amo! [I love you ](totally just used vosotros [yourselves] - something Mexicans never use - straight scripture language).

Happy New Year!!‏.....1/5/2011

Bueno!!

Well, the holidays are finally over, and life is starting to get back on the same track (not that we were celebrating necessarily...but we can visit people like normal again - they're not all in Mexico). It's been fun, because I was sick all last week and then Elder Johnson joined me over the New Year's weekend. He got it a little worse though, so we had to stay in for New Year's Eve and the entire New Year's Day. President Howes told me not to work him so hard... But no, the weekend was good and we got some sweet study time while we stayed inside. We're both reading the New Testament and it's cool to pick up new insights all the time.

We did have a couple sweet experiences though! We went over last week to teach one of our investigator's, Oscar, and found his brother there. We talked to him for quite a while, and he was giving us his view on religion and everything. It was actually super cool, because he's really thoroughly studied the Bible and just about everything he said was exactly what we believe in! It literally makes it SO much easier to teach people when they've read the Bible. Everyone says they believe it, but absolutely nobody reads it. Anyway, he said he had read the Bible once and didn't get much out of it. Then he read it again after praying to have the spirit of understanding, and he says it was all clear and he saw all these things in the Catholic Church that did not fit with it. We told him that's exactly what he needs to do with the Book of Mormon - read it and pray to have that Spirit with him so he can know. These kind of things definitely strengthen my testimony - that's for sure!

Earlier that day, we had been out tracting, with nobody answering the door. We tracted into another ward's mission leader and got a referral from his wife, who said they would probably say no. We walked by the house, and found the dad outside with the kids. We asked him how he was doing and the first thing he said was,"Come on inside. Let's pray." We were way surprised but hey, that's perfectly fine. So we went in and ended up giving him a blessing, because he needed his shoulder to be healed to finish his training in the Police Academy. He was a way cool guy, and totally open to us coming over and teaching his whole family!! That was pretty unexpected and it was just especially cool because we didn't even say anything! He just invited us in to teach him!

We're still really struggling with getting people to church, but we're finding a lot of new people still and have a lot of people to teach. I got to talk about it a lot with President Howes, who came down Monday for interviews. He said sometimes you have to change in pace a little bit, and go according to your investigators. My companion and I are both A-type personalities that just like to get things done and work hard, but that's not the case with our investigators. We have to make sure they know we're here for them to teach them at their speed. But he gave me a lot of confidence and boosted me up a little bit. It can be frustrating not to see success at the moment, but I do know that we are learning a lot and setting the foundation for a lot of people to come to Christ and join His true restored Church.

We also had some luck finding people off of just OYM's on the street again! We taught Humberto, this stud 40-ish year old guy, who talked about how he went to his church, but didn't feel in his heart like it was what he needed. He felt like something was missing in his life. We gave him a Book of Mormon, promised blessings, and assured him he would find what he needed through reading and going to Church - having that true intent to know. Sadly, his wife is incredibly opposed to us, but we gave him everything he needs to find his answer.

So yeah, missionary work is going good - we're teaching a whole lot of people and just trying to get them to act and go to Church! But it's all a work of progress and we're learning a ton! That and we're wearing pretty thick coats and gloves when we're biking now, because Yuma's kind of made us pansies...

But yeah life is good! Living the dream!

Love y'all! ~ Elder Carlson

Well shoot, I've got to get going...we've got lots to do. Love hearing from everyone! Tell everyone, I say hi!

And yeah, I got christmas cards from a whole lot of cousins and aunts and uncles and friends. Wish I could write them all back and say thanks, but there's just not enough time! I do appreciate it though!

Semana perfecta :) pues, casi.....12/29/2010

Buenos Dias!

Wow, this was quite the week... with Christmas and programs and calls home - it was pretty busy, to say the least. We started out last week by having a full mission conference for Christmas, which was pretty awesome. There was a big musical program and a general authority to give us an inspirational message. It was pretty crazy because the elder in our quartet that sings the high tenor was sick, and I ended up having to sing this insanely high part for our performance. It was in the song "Mary, did you know?" and I was so glad I had some voice that day. But we definitely represented Yuma well. The 4 of us sang 3 songs at the fireside and they all turned out really well. It was cool to see everyone there, including all of my MTC district that came out with me and everyone that used to serve here in Yuma. It definitely just felt like one huge family. That and it was cool to find out that my MTC companion is now training too! He's training in English and apparently is covering the whole New Mexico part of our mission. There was a sweet story about Sister Donaldson, who was in my district, and her companion in Tempe, who found an incredibly prepared Jewish lady. This lady had been really actively searching for the true church for 20 years and had been introduced to our Church. She had studied the Book of Mormon alongside the Bible, Gospel Principles, anything she could get her hands on. The sister missionaries felt prompted to go to her house at 8:30 Friday night. She invited them in and to make a long story short, she got baptized the next morning at 11:30. She was leaving for several months, so it needed to be done right away. A pretty sweet story!!

Christmas Eve, we got to have a huge breakfast with our branch president, and the highlight of our day was an unexpected lesson. We taught the mom of this younger kid we just started teaching and they were all super open. She and her 2 kids all accepted a baptismal date in January and got all excited when we promised them blessings. What was pretty sweet is when we mentioned baptism, the kid (Ramon) said he'd already been baptized. His mom immediately told him that if this was the Lord's true Church, they would all have to be baptized again - into this one. Concern resolved! I was way surprised and could definitely see the difference between them and people that just aren't ready to hear the Gospel. Then to finish up that night we had a massive Mexican dinner, with tomales, rolled tacos, carne asada, rice, beans, and some of the American stuff. Probably one of the best meals I've ever had...

Christmas was sweet - we opened up our presents, which were all awesome by the way. And then studied and proselyted like a normal missionary day. We visited members, less actives, and investigators, and sang them Christmas songs to wish them a merry christmas. I definitely saw the power of music when we sang to one of our families we're teaching. They lit up when we sang and were really wanting us to spend Christmas with them. They opened up, and we're going to teach them tonight, so we're looking forward to that. We all got together (all the missionaries) and made a big Christmas brunch. It was nice to just relax and enjoy time with all the missionaries. I got to call home and it was sweet to hear everyone's voices - all the fam back home. And then for our Christmas dinner, we actually went to Golden Corral! So that was actually surprisingly good, and surprisingly packed!! That place was full.

Sunday was a rough one for people at Church. Hardly anyone came, but it was good because all the other missionaries besides me talked and we all sang. It was funny because my companion was sharing the scripture and like 3 verses into it, he realized he was reading from the wrong chapter! He apologized in English and then continued on. I'm pretty sure he had absolutely no idea what he was reading...

So last night was another big highlight of the week. We had an incredibly long, unproductive day of tracting. We went everywhere, it seemed, and people would shut us down and say they weren't interested before we even had a chance to talk! We did meet some interesting people - Buddhists, atheists, a lot of people from foreign countries that couldn't speak English or Spanish... But it just seemed like nothing was working out all day long. Somehow everyone had today (P-day) open though, which was weird. So last night, at like 8:30 I decided we would try one more house before we went home to get jackets (it was pretty cold for Arizona and I've got a nasty cold). We stopped by a new investigator's house. This 20-ish year old woman opened the door before we even approached it (it was his sister) and asked if we had knocked. We said we didn't but we could if she wanted. Anyway, we took that as a good sign, and started to teach her. Basically we had a bomb awesome lesson, and because she's leaving like January 15, that's her baptismal date. She had worked with members and heard nothing but good things about the Church. We felt the Lord had prepared her, and really tested us during the day to see if we would continue to work hard through discouragement. It was probably the most exciting night of my mission, and we felt so blessed - that the Lord led us and will continue to lead us when we are righteous and obedient.

So yes, sweet week, and life is good :) HAPPY NEW YEAR!

FELIZ NAVIDAD!‏ 12/22/2010

Feliz Navidad a todos!

Wow, this has been an AMAZING week! I don't even know where to start! We've been getting new investigators almost every single day the past couple weeks, and the Lord has been blessing us with people to teach. It's definitely a testimony to me that He prepares people everywhere to hear His Gospel and that if we just have the faith to find them, we will! When we stay busy doing what we're supposed to and being obedient, He provides the rest and shows us what to do - who needs us. We've discovered a couple families lately that I'm pretty excited about. We just finished teaching the Wilson kids, the kids with a less-active dad, and things are looking good! They asked a bunch of questions and were really thinking about it and considering what we were teaching. What was cool is that the 15-year old daughter was telling us how she didn't really like a bunch of the stuff in her Church (she's Catholic) and I was so impressed by how observant she was! She noticed all these things that just didn't seem right, and she loves to read so she's going to be reading the entire Book of Mormon in not too long.

We talked to a lot of people and it just seemed like we seemed to come at the right time to lots of the places and were at least able to teach someone there. It usually wasn't the person we initially talked to, but hey, that's how the Lord works sometimes. We're just supposed to be at that place at certain time. We're also pretty excited because this last week we found a "Little Mexico" where it's 100% Mexicans living in all the apartments. The only problem is they work all the time, but they have Sundays off so this last Sunday we taught a few and they are way excited to go to Church! So that'll be pretty sweet.

But yesterday was the best day ever. We started off this morning going tracting and chose to start at this random house down the street. This teenage guy answered the door and totally let us in! The very first door! So we went and taught him, and hopefully we'll teach the rest of his family next week. He was way open and accepted the baptismal challenge, so we'll see how everything works out as we continue teaching.

That afternoon, we were visiting places of people we had just talked to out on the streets - OYMs. The son of this lady we talked to let us come and just teach him right there on their porch! And then we went over to this family we had talked to a couple weeks ago and they invited us for dinner and a lesson!We got to teach some of their cousins too, which was a surprise.

And then, to finish off the night, we taught the mom of one of our new investigators, to find out she had been taught 10 years ago by missionaries, and she accepted a baptismal date! We had all these unexpected lessons, and we were just super surprised and happy :)

So we're all having P-day on Christmas and we're excited to talk to the fam!!

FELIZ NAVIDAD!!!!!

Me voy a quedar en Yuma!....12/15/2010

Buenos Dias!

Wow, I'm pretty excited right now! I was scared I might get transferred right before Christmas, but thankfully I'm staying here in Yuma through all the holidays so it will be fun doing it all with missionaries and people that I know. There actually weren't that many changes here- only 2 missionaries in the zone are leaving today. But what's kind of crazy is those 2 are the ones I came to Yuma with, so I've been here long enough now to see every single missionary in the zone get transferred that was here when I came in. So that's been pretty sweet. And what's also pretty awesome is I'm no longer a greenie!! I hit 6 months last week and I can't believe how fast these months have passed by.

Well, Elder Johnson and I are super excited we're staying together because we've about got everything figured out now. We've been 100% refocused as we realized some things we can do that will make us better missionaries. We've decided to do just the missionary work-outs every morning since we were getting too caught up in waking up way early and working out a ton. We're running a lot more and just going to do simple work-outs in the morning. We feel like we'll be more effective and focused this way. It's definitely going to be nice getting more sleep! :) I need that. We're definitely trying to be 100% obedient and have the Spirit with us as much as possible.

But we've already noticed some important changes and improvements in our lessons and everything. We're teaching more simply, getting the investigators more involved, and teaching shorter more focused lessons. It can be so easy to drag things out and teach long lessons, but usually that doesn't really help the investigator that much. Shorter, more powerful, lessons I feel are more effective. In fact, last night we had one of our best lessons so far, and I don't think it was more than 10 or 15 minutes. We had talked to his mom out on the street, and were going to see if we could visit. He came to the door and said they were Catholic and couldn't do it. We showed interest and talked about how much Jesus Christ has affected our lives, and testified of the blessings and happiness that can be found in His restored gospel. He really opened up and we taught a quick lesson about some basic doctrines, and just introduced baptism right off the bat. He really got to thinking and it was just amazing to just see the change that came over Him when He felt the Spirit.

We also had a pretty amazing opportunity this past week - last Thursday we had a General Authority, Elder Evans of the Seventy, come visit us and give us some very specific and helpful training on the Fundamentals of Preach My Gospel. We got some pretty amazing promised blessings and a big focus was on issuing baptismal commitments. We should be committing people to be baptized our very first lesson with them, and what will motivate us to do that is the very doctrine of Christ. When you understand the pure and simple doctrine, that alone will be enough to drive us to help them and want this for them. There's definitely a fine line between being bold and being over-bearing, but I think the vast majority of missionaries are not bold enough when it comes to baptism and commandments. Our investigators need to know our purpose immediately, and need to know where our visits are headed. So Elder Johnson and I have been making a very concious effort to do that, and it's become so much more comfortable even in our OYM's on the street! We bring it up very naturally and we've noticed a lot better responses (well, in general).

Oh, and we've been doing a lot of music around here too. I sang at a baptism last week (I Will Not Be Still - didn't sound half bad!) and then we sang a bunch on Sunday too, at a stake fireside. With 2 other missionaries I sang a cool medley of Christmas songs, and then "Mary did you know", which is now my favorite Christmas song of all time. We sang a barbershop arrangement of it and it sounded pretty awesome. It was nice doing this fireside that was just pure Christmas music - purely songs about the Savior and His birth. The Spirit was definitely strong there and I just loved being there and being a part of it.

Another highlight of the week is that we helped out with the baptism of a less-active's 8-year old daughter. She really wanted us to do it, so we fixed up everything, and worked it all out. We ended up talking, doing a special musical number, and then I baptized her. It was definitely a small baptism but had a nice feel to it all. The entire family was so happy when she got baptized and I know they could all feel how special it was. The dad hasn't had anything to do with the Church in over 3 years, but he came to the baptism and expressed a very sincere thanks to us for helping them out. Hopefully we can get the whole family back in Church again! Elder Johnson did his first confirmation in Spanish, and he was surprised because he wasn't planning on doing it! But everything turned out very nice, and we were glad we could help out. It seems like a lot of our call here in Yuma has been to re-activate families and work with recent converts.

So we are still on bike for now - hopefully we get a car soon! At least it keeps us in good shape... But we're loving it here, excited to stay in Yuma, and excited for CHRISTMAS!!!

Feliz Navidad a todos!