26 March 2012, Mazatlan Mexico

¡Hola Familia!

 

¿Cómo estás?.. Everythings is going pretty good here. We had another pretty awesome district meeting this morning. We talked about the ways we can help our investigators to come to church more and practiced challenging people to come to church. Probably the most important part is bearing your testimony about assisting church and talking about all the blessings they will recieve. Most people aren´t going to do something new without hearing about what they´re going to recieve for doing it. The goal then is for them to understand that Heavenly Father really blesses us everytime we follow his commandments. Every commandment equals a blessing, if you want more blessings you obey the commandments. It´s really that simple, but the world will always tell us otherwise.

 

We did find some more people to teach and that was pretty cool. We were teaching a family, 3 kids, and they all were very excited about the gospel. Unfortunately they told us the last time that they visited that their parents don´t want them to go to our church because they already have one. We want to talk with the parents this week (haven´t met them still) and hopefully get their permission to keep teaching. I could understand how people might be hesitant to have their kids talking with a white guy in a shirt and tie and his companion ha.

 

Sounds like everybody is doing well at home. The weather is starting to change here but it isn´t normal at all. Probably the most exciting part of my week is one of the kid´s in our ward recieved his mission call sunday. He´s going to Massachusetts Boston! How awesome is that?! Anyways, I was pretty excited for him and told him how he´ll get to eat a lot of cookies in the Provo MTC and hear some cool devotionals... As always you´re all in my prayers. Thanks for all your prayers, love, and support!

 

Love,

Elder Carlson

 

P.S. This is my district, the big guy is my companion. We ate ice cream today for like my second time in Mexico!

March 19, Mazatlan Mexico

Hola Familia,

 

This week has picked up a little bit but our work with the ward is moving slowly but surely. We had a lesson with the bishop´s family in the beginning of the week with our investigator family. It went pretty well, and the bishop and his wife got to talk about the blessings that their family has recieved through living the gopsel. It was really good because we´re trying to help, Alba, the wife see the blessings her family will recieve when she follows the example of her husband.. They´re an awesome family though and they cooked some food for us this week too : ).

 

We found a few more people to teach this week but we´re still seeing if things are going to progress with them. Sometimes it´s really hard to figure out what we should do to find new people. Ultimately we need to be humble and rely on the help of the Lord though. Then whatever it is we feel like we should be working on and improving, to just do it!.. We had a good District Meeting this morning and it helped me think about the things I can change to improve myself as a missionary. One of the most important parts is what we study in the mornings. We need to study specifically for the people we teach. Not just for our own benefit. Also, to pray to recieve revelation about what our investigators need to here.

 

Also during the week we had divisions with the Zone Leaders and it was pretty fun. I was in Central Mazatlan with Elder Frias and we taught some pretty cool people. After that he had to interview a couple people for baptism.

 

Hope everybody has an awesome week! Thank you for your support, love, and prayers!

 

Love,

Elder Carlson

March 12, Mazatlan Mexico

Hola Familia,

 

This week was pretty good. I feel like we´re beginning to gain a little more momentum but we still don´t have many people to teach, which is a bummer. But we did find a couple more people this week. We had a couple references that might be potential progressing investigators. We had a zone meeting today. The Zone Leaders are really stressed because we have hardly any baptisms and baptismal dates in the zone right now. The mission also is having the lowest numbers it´s had in years they told us to, for this month that is. So we need to change some things. It´s kind of odd though because last month we almost broke the goal of 27 baptisms in Mazatlan, we had 26.

 

The family that we are teaching, Familia Meza, is doing pretty good. The mom, Alba, promised us to pray if the book of mormon is true and about the church. We´re going to see them tomorrow and they wen´t to church so it looks like things are going good. Hopefully we can help her to progress more in the gospel because she appears to have a lot of faith already. We´ve been looking for whatever doubts she might be having right now.. Besides that my spanish is definitely coming along more. I can understand just about everything people say to me now but still am learning new word everyday. You definitely don´t learn a language in one day, it´s step by step, but I´m not too worried about that like I´ve said. I want to work more on improving the way I teach the lessons this week.

 

Hope everyone keeps doing well. Thanks for all your support and prayers as usual!

 

Love,

Elder Carlson

March 5 - Mazatlan Mexico (area 2)

Hola Familia,

 

Well things are going pretty good here. I´m still getting used to the new area but it´s nice getting to know all the knew people here. I had a good day at church yesterday and all the ward members seem really nice. We don´t have a ton of people to teach right now so that kind of bummed me out at first but we had a really good Zone Meeting this morning that got me more excited. Things are going well with my new companion too. Elder Rosales is from Veracruz Mexico and he is a pretty hillarious guy. I´m glad I got another mexican companion this transfer too and it´s kind of fun to move even though I didn´t move very far.

 

There´s a lot of missionaries who got sick this week and I was a little sick too. I feel better already but it was just a little bit of a cold that´s going around.. For fast sunday we did a special fast for the health of the missionaries and that every companionship can baptize this month in the mission..The weather has been changing a little bit but it still feels pretty cool and not to bad to walk around in the day. We have one family that we are teaching right now that is pretty awesome. The daughter, Olivia, seems like she is ready for to be baptized but her mother doesn´t want to be baptized yet. Her Dad is a convert of E. Rosales and E. Lopez from a month ago or so. He´s really awesome too and it´s always cool to see a new convert with such a strong testimony of the gospel. He wants his family to be baptized also and he seems like he is putting a good example for them right now.

 

Besides that not much is new! Thanks for all the support, prayers, and love! I hope that everybody has a good week.

 

Love,

Elder David Carlson