Hola! 27 August 2012, Culiacan Mexico

Hola Familia,

Well this week has gone by quite fast yet again and things are going pretty well. We have been visiting some of our investigators like Elda (Senovía´s sister) and we found 2 more really cool people to teach this week. We met this one lady after we said a prayer and knocked on a few doors. Her name is Brenda and she works at this sushi place, she has a 6 year old son with a japanese name too that sounds like Yoshi or something haha. She isn´t japanese, but she said the dad is. We taught her about the restoration the first lesson and everything went really well, she had to work this sunday so she couldn´t go to church though. She said she´s going to talk to her boss to try and change her schedule for next week so she can go though.

The other really awesome person we met is named Dulce. We had seen her the other week after we were talking to a drunk guy in front of her house, we asked if we could teach her this week and we did! We´ve taught her like 3 times already and she went to church with us this sunday and brought her little 1 year old girl. She seemed to like the church service a lot and told us not to forget about our appointment we have with her this tuesday. So it´s awesome to see someone so eager to learn about the gospel! We´re going to pray that everything keeps going well with them and that we can help them with whatever challenges they are having in their lives.

Elder Collett and I seem to be more used to our new changes that we have had this week. I´m trying to give more opportunities for him to teach and talk because he´s really quiet a lot of the time. That´s what happened with me though too so I definitely understand ha. He got a little bit sick in the in the beginning of the week too getting used to the food here but is feeling a lot better now : ). We´ve been pretty lucky with the cloudyness and rain we´ve been having still too. There´s only been a few really hot days.

I completed a year of the mission on friday and I ate some sushi to celebrate. Besides that everything is about the same and we´re excited to keep teaching more people. We might start teaching english classes in the church and we´re going to talk to our ward mission leader and the bishop about that this week... Thanks for all the support, prayers, and love! Take care and have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Carlson

P.S. Photos- Pictures from the top of our house (2nd floor), Our District, and Sushi!

20 August 2012, Culiacan Mexico

Hola Familia!

Well it has been a really busy couple of weeks! Things are going well and I´m alive so that´s the good news. Last week we were busy with transfers and Elder Lopez, Elder Lopez (my big hearted old companion), and I were really busy running around seeing people. We stayed at the Staff House and the next day I said goodbye to E. Lopez and recieved my new companion E. Collett! He is from Vernal Utah and just got here in mexico so it´s been pretty exciting showing him what´s up here in Culiacán. I´m in the same area, so none of that stuff changed luckily.

Last week we had the chance to baptize Senovia, one of the doughnut ladys, and everything turned out really well! She´s been doing well and with thing that her sister Elda might get baptized soon too. She still hasn´t decided on a day but we were teaching her a lot about the Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit) the other day. They´re really cool and it´s been awesome to see the changes they have made in their lives now that they´ve been able to learn about the gospel. I don´t remember if I talked about Luis the other week, but there´s a couple kids we have been teaching that we met one night at a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) activity. He got baptized last week and his brother Isaac decided to get baptized on Saturday too. Both of them are doing well and we´ve been talking a little with the mom. She is really nice but told us ¨now don´t go thinking you´re going to baptize me next¨ or something like that haha. There´s a lot of cool people in that colonia we´ve been visiting and it looks like we´re going to teach their neighbours some too. They were asking us some questions about the church after the baptism and we got to explain a little about our purpose here in this life, and gave them a couple Libros de Mormon.

It´s pretty fun being with E. Collett and I´m sure he´ll learn spanish fast because he seems like a pretty smart guy. It´s funny though because it reminds me about when I just got here too. A lot of times he looks like he has know idea what´s going on and the same thing happened to me.. We ate with the Bishop yesterday and we want to start warking on a new mission plan for the ward. We´re going to try and have some of the members who live near our investigators come with us to visit them when we share lessons. It´ll be easier helping them to make friends and feel comfortable when they go to church on sundays. Hopefully we can plan it all out well because sometimes it´s hard passing for a ton of people by ourselves on sunday.

Aside from that things are going well and we´ve been really lucky with the weather this week. Pretty much everyday has been cloudy and it´s rained off and on, so we only had one really hot day. The weather is really random here sometimes but not as bad as I thought it would be either : ).

Hope everybody is doing well and it´s good to hear that everything is going well with those who are now starting school again. Thanks for all your words of support, prayers, and love! Have an amazing week and I´ll keep you all in my prayers too.

Love,

Elder Carlson

P.s. Photos - Baptism of Senovia, Baptism of Luis, E. Collet and I, and Baptism of Isaac

 

6 Aug 2012, Culiacan Mexico

Hola Familia,

Well another sunny week has gone by and things are going well here! It´s so weird because this will be the last week of our cambio, meaning next week will be transfers. I feel like I have been able to learn a lot with my companion, E. Lopez, and it´s weird to think that he´ll be heading home soon to Michoacan.. This week was pretty cool because we ended up finding some new people to teach! We visited a less active family and one of the kids there invited a friend over for the Noche de Hogar (family home evening). His name is Luis and he had assisted church before. The lesson went well with and we gave him a Libro de Mormon. We passed by to bring him to church with us too. We found a few other teenager kids over there that we started teaching too and they all seem to be pretty interested. We talked with Luis´s mom to to make sure she´s fine with him talking the mormons and what not. She seems pretty nice and we taught a little bit to her too.

It´s been raining off and on through out the week, which means the weather has been nice for moments and later really really humid and hot. Today has been pretty good though and we´re enjoying our P-day. We´ve got some more plans to try and find more people to teach this week and we´re going to try and keep working hard even though we´ve been really tired, haha. We´re going to have a zone meeting tonight and it´ll be kind of weird because we´ve always had them in the morning before now. Should be good to learn some new things though and they told us that they´re changing the way the have zone meetings in every mission now. It´s going to be more of a council instead of the zone leaders talking the majority of the time, so it´ll be cool to see how that goes.

Besides that things are going well. Both the Fernandos are doing good and got to recieve the priesthood. Little Fernando passed the sacrament for his first time on Sunday so that was exciting for us. The doughnut ladys we´re teaching came to church with us this sunday too and are a little sad that E. Lopez will be leaving us soon.

Hope everybody has a great week and that you all know that you´re loved! Thanks for all your prayers, kindness, and support! NOS VEMOSSSSSSSSS

Love,
Elder Carlson

P.S. Photos, 1. Elda one of the cool ladys who gives us doughnuts, 2. Last week when we went bowling! : )