Monday, March 25, 2013

25 Marzo 2013, La Paz Mexico

Mi Querido Familia,

Hello! Well, this week has been pretty good. In the beginning of the week a lot of our appointments were falling through. We met a few new people and put appointments with them too but those appointments were falling through. Friday we went on divisions and I went to a different area with Elder Rodriguez. We started out the day very well visiting a man they had just met that week before. We taught him and he seemed to have a lot of good questions and we began to teach him and a family member there, who happened to be a member of the church, she was in town visiting him. He told us he had been to many churches before but was interested in finding out more and coming closer unto God. At the end of the lesson we invited him to pray and he felt a special sensation afterwards. It´s amazing to meet people who are prepared to hear our message like him.

When I got back to my area we were really hoping our luck would turn around, or that we could make some changes to see more success in the area. Elder Hernandez said ¨we´re not going to teach many lessons today¨ hoping that would make us teach more, because everyday he´d been saying it looks like we´re going to teach a lot of lessons and then it didn´t work out as planned haha.. Saturday we ended up having several great lessons and it definitely made up for all the slow days in the beginning of the week... We meet another investigator named Vidal. He´s from culiacán and he has been living in La Paz for a little while for work. A lot of the people we meet here aren´t from here, so it´s kind of funny. But anyways, he told us about his life and how he is seperated from his now ex-wife. He said he has a friend in culicán that´s a member and he´d talked with him about the church before and even went with him a couple times. He wasn´t really interested in the church at the time though. Then sunday he showed up to church with us and we´re excited to see how things go from here on!.. We had a great lesson with Ana Jazmin and her family this week too. We read together with them and they're progressing well. Hopefully her husband Carlos can get off work soon though and come to church with us again.

Besides that same old stuff going on around here. Next week there will be changes/transfers and my companion E. Hernandez is finishing the mission. I think he's excited to see his family but feels weird at the same time. I've enjoyed my time with him so far and it seems like it's gone by way fast! It's awesome how many people you get to know in such a short amount of time being on a mission.. We're starting to visit more members of the church to try and help strengthen the ward and get to know more people. We've been seeing some progress there and hope to plan more and more lessons with them! Our ward mission leader, Hermano Nieto, has been awesome and we got an appointment and family home evening activity he's going to go to with us... Glad to hear all is well at home. Have a great week and remember that Heavenly Father loves you!

Love,
Elder Carlson

Friday, March 22, 2013

18 Marzo 2013, La Paz Mexico

Mi Querido Familia,
Well yet another week has passed by. This week was pretty interesting and things are going well!
I ended up going on divisions in a trio (3 missionaries) for 2 days this week while my companion went to a part called comundu. It was pretty fun and E. Mejia, E. Hernandez (his comp), and I had some pretty good experiences. They have some great investigators in their area right now and we got to teach one of their investigators friends. He had a lot of good questions and is already eager to read the Book of Mormon and learn more about the gospel. He put a goal for his baptism right there in his first complete lesson too and it was pretty awesome to see how prepared he was! Those people always remind me how the Lord prepares people to hear our messages... I think one of the things I learned during those couple days is the importance of just focusing on the basics. We can talk a lot just about the nature of God being our eternal father and when people really begin to understand that, they know that they are important. They know that God loves them and that their a worth a lot more than maybe how they view themselves from a worldy point of view. For our Heavenly Father all things are spirtitual and eternal. He doesn't see things the way we see them sometimes, with their temporal and earthly attributes.
My companion E. Hernandez and I later on also got to teach a few of our investigators. Unfortunately not all of them were able to come to church for different reasons but Isaac went again and is progressing pretty well. He has a goal to get baptized this week and he's doing what he can to prepare for that goal and we're hoping he can read some more of the Book of Mormon this week. If not we'll read it with him! :) .. We have some goals to work a lot more with the members this week. Our ward mission leader, Hermano Nieto, is going to come with us to visit Ana Jazmin and her family. She's doing great and so are her kids, but we haven't been able to teach Carlos too much because of his work schedule he's had with his military service. They have a goal to get married this year and we're hoping to teach them the importance of being sealed together as a family for eternity in the next lesson.
I'm glad everybody seems to be doing well at home. Things are definitely always changing but I know that all our experiences are for the better. Challenges in life are just opportunities to progress and become stronger spiritually (also can apply mentally/physically). I'm glad that Heavenly Father has given us this opportunity to learn and is so very patient with us! If only we could all, remember to feel his love. Have a great week! You have all my love and prayers!
Love,
Elder Carlson

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

4 Marzo 2013, La Paz Mexico

Mi Querido Familia,

Well it´s been quite an eventful week and things are going very well. We started out the week going to a zone conference in Los Cabos and it was really cool. There were 3 couples of old mission presidents that had served in different parts of mexico. President Romney, Pres Jesperson, and I think the last one was named Pres Cole? One of them was a relative of Mitt Romney too. They all shared with us different advice and experiences about what they had learned in their own service as missionaries and mission presidents. Sister Romney talked about how there isn't much difference between us and Helaman's army of stripling warriors in the Book of Mormon. I liked the questions she had that made me reflect. "How would I treat my companion if he were one of the stripling warriors?" Would it be different than how I treat him now? How would I feel working with them? etc.. It made me realize that God really does expect a lot out of us and that we too can see just as many miracles. We should take after there example and be exactly obedient. Being obedient to Heavenly father brings blessings, but being exactly obedient brings miracles.. Another thing we learned a lot about is how when we give God everything we can we really come to know him and can see all the miracles that he has prepared for us in our lives. There´s an example about how water boils and 100 degrees celcius but at 99 it still doesn´t. The difference in us giving the Lord 99 percent of our effort and 100 is just 1 percent, but it´s that last percent that´s sometimes the hardest. After giving that last percent though we recieve the power of God in our lives. There was a lot of other good stories I heard from them and advice that I was able to take note of too, so I'm hoping to apply it all the best I can.

Later on we had to go fly back to culiacán for the concilio with Presidente Cantú on Friday. We got to work a little bit with the guys in the offices because we got their a half day early and didn´t get back to our area until late saturday night.. The concilio was good and we talked a lot about leadership roles this time. We need to always be trying to be more christlike and our purpose here is to serve others. We also talked more about how the importance of recieving personal revelation through our studies. There´s a quote I like that about how the salvation cannot be recieved through ignorance. We need to be seeking direction from our Heavenly Father through the spirit to be able to do exactly what he wants us to do. We have the opportunity as missionaries to recieve direction from God for the people we teach too if we are doing what we should be, like studying efficiently in the mornings.

The only hard thing about the week is we didn´t have much time to work in our area! We had just a couple lessons but yesterday we had a cool experience. We were looking for a reference named Fabriseo in this housing complex. Their neighbours told us they´d never heard of him and that the people in that house weren´t there. We started talking to the neighbour, Maria, and we asked her if their were other people that would be interested in learning more about God. She pointed us to some other neighbours and we started teaching this lady named Irma. She seemed pretty enthusiastic while we started teaching her and her kids. Her husband didn´t want to come and listen though. A couple minutes later a truck arrived of family members and they got out. We greeted them and one of them was Fabriseo. He was really happy to see us and told us about how he had meet some other missionaries recently. The dad ended up coming out and listening to us too, and we taught several of the family members right there.. We taught part of the restoration but didn´t finish the message. They all said their going to pray and we have an appointment with them on tuesday. It was cool to see how the Lord guided us to find Fabriseo though, even though it looked like nobody knew him when we arrived there.

Sounds like everyone is doing well at home and it´s definitely feeling like spring time here already. It´s cool at night but hot in the day. Have a great week and thanks for all the prayers, love, and support as always.
 

Love,
Elder Carlson

11 Marzo 2013, La Paz Mexico

Mi Querido Familia,
Well it's been a great week! Sounds like things are going pretty well at home too, and that's very good to hear. This week we were able to actually work in our area and it went pretty well! It was still very busy though, as usual haha.
In the beginning of the week we had our zone meeting and it turned out pretty well. Everybody left feeling excited about working harder and looking for miracles in our areas. I got to go on divisions with Elder Cruz we met a cool young man. He's 18 and his grandma is a recient convert of the church. We started talking a lot about what he hopes his life is like 10 years from now, and what he hopes for things to be like. We were able to apply his desires to the gospel. He realized that he wants his future family to be a God loving family, and to achieve that he'll need to put the example. His grandmother's testimony and just support in general helped throughout the lesson too.. In our area we got to teach a young man named Isaac. He's been going to church the last couple sundays and he's preparing to be baptized this month. He didn't seem like the church going type at first, from his appearance, but it looks like he is his changing little by little and we're happy to see the progress he has made.. The family we brought to church the first week was moving this weekend and couldn't come with us to church. Unfortunately we weren't able to get to teach them that much but we're planning on visiting them a few times this week.
Besides that there was an activity an Elder in our zone was planning that we helped out with. It was an activity about Lehi's Dream and the whole stake participated. Members and non-members came and it turned out really good. There was a rope that the followed that was the iron rod. Some other missionaries and I were helping people that were blind-folded to go around obstacles and other ones were telling them to go down wrong paths sometimes.. Everything has a symbolism and I really liked hearing peoples testimonies at the end and we got to compart our own about the activity and what we learned. We could see that Heavenly Father has one path to follow but a lot of people were getting lost or detained when they heard voices of the world telling them to do the wrong thing. At the end everybody ended up in the chapel with the Tree of Life, which represents God's love or eternal life. It seemed like everyone had a good time and left having learned something gospel related so I think it was a success :). Definitely was a good idea of Elder Mejia.
I'm feeling a little bit more familiar with the area now. There's still things I don't know too well but I've really enjoyed getting to know all the members. There really are a lot of people that are willing to support us here and we've been seeing more and more progress the more we try to work with them. I know that Heavenly Father loves each and everyone of His children no matter how old they are, where there from, what color they are, or even how obedient they are! I know that He really wants to bless us and I have seen many of his blessings. He'll never force us to do something though and every challenge we face here in life is for a reason and can be used for our personal progress or downfall. We ultimately make the choice, and the sooner we learn to trust in him, the sooner we'll know what true happiness is.
P.S. Photos: My Companion and I, Fancy views of my Area, The Zone: La Paz