29 Julio 2013, Guasave Mexico

Mi Querido Familia,

Hey!!! Well things are going super good here! I´m really excited and happy today for some reason haha.. We´ve seen some good progress here in our area and I can tell that the Lord is blessing us. I pray that we can continue to progress spiritually and help out as many people possible to follow the path of the gospel.

This last week we were able to visit several less active members. We had some special experiences with them and I feel like the Lord put them in our path. We also are continuing to find new people to teach and are working with the familia Loredo. They´re doing great!.. We had a Family Home Evening last week with them and it turned out well. We were able to watch a video about the family, and everyone talked about how they could contribute to be a more unified family. The role of each person in the family is very important. The next visit in the week we planned on verifying how Beatriz has felt with her testimony of the church and inviting her to be baptized. We had a good conversation about the spirit and how it testifies to us, and she told us she believes that this is the only true church. She had been a little afraid of the commitment with God after baptism, but she told us on monday she was going to tell us she wants to be baptized. She just felt a little embarassed about saying it front of one of the members that was there with us. We asked her if she wanted to be baptized this week or the next week, because she is already living the commandments necessary and she decided to be baptized this last saturday! The baptism turned out great even though we had to fix everything up pretty fast and didn´t have much time to invite people. Several people attended the baptism and everyone gave Beatriz a warm welcome to the ward.

Besides that, the youth continue to be really motivated lately. Fernando bore his testimony on sunday, it was short but sweet. It´s great to see the progress people make and you can definitely see a new spirit in people after their baptism when they are baptized with a broken heart and a contrite spirit... E. Casimiro and I have had some good conversations this week. We´re setting more goals together to live up everymoment we´ve got. We´re going to help the ward organize a ward mission plan, so that everyone can get a little more involved. We´re starting to invite families to make lists of people they would like to share the gospel to, and are helping them learn how to compart the gospel.

I´ve felt very greatful with my Heavenly Father this week. I know that he is control of everything even when the world seems hecktic to me, and this week was a good reminder of that. We´re trying to follow the will of the Lord, and we are going to ask Hugo and Uva how they´ve felt about marriage lately. They seem like they have made a lot of progress as a family this week, and we´re trying to figure out where they´re at.

Thank you all for you love and support. I love my family! It´s really helped me throughout my mission and continues to help me. I pray that all is well at home and that we can count our many blessings. You´re in my prayers as always.

Love,
Elder Carlson

Photos: Celebrating 23 months, Baptism of Beatriz, Hot Dogs!