Monday, July 7, 2014

Week 2 in Texas

It's true what they say that once your first Sunday is past time flies by. This week has gone by so fast!

Seminole is kind of a smaller town. Our area actually encompasses a few other towns, but they are impossible to get to on bikes unless we bike through the farmland and oil fields literally all day, so I haven't been to any of those other towns. P-days we don't do much. We go shopping for food and come here to the library to email and do laundry just in our apartment because, luckily we  have a washer and dryer in our apartment. We cook a lot of our own food because Pres. Augustin made a rule that we can only eat at a members house three times a week, but we don't even get fed that often.

Yesterday we had an interesting experience. We were biking down a busier street just after leaving a members house when this big tattooed guy on a motorcycle comes up next to us and yells, "Hey, pull over up here for a minute!" My first thought is, "We're going to get beat up or mugged or something" but we pull over and so does biker dude. He turns off his bike and says, "How are you Elders doing?" That really threw us off, haha. It turns out that he just moved from Utah, is a member and was wondering where the church is. That doesn't happen to often in Texas, haha.

We didn't do much on the 4th because they called us that morning and told us we ahd to be back in our apartment at 6:00. So we ended up not having the BBQ until the 5th and we just sat around and listened to Christmas/Disney music from 6 to 10, haha. For some reason that's what Elder Christensen wanted to listen to. I really like him. He;s funny and goofs around sometimes, but knows what we need to do and is a great example. He graduated the same year as me and is from Odgen and has been out for 7 months. I'm the first person he's ever trained and since his last comp "died" (went home) and I was immediately "born" (got to the mission field), he calls me his phoenix, haha. I like that a lot better than being his greeny or trainee. Also, some members brought us some pie and icecream that night because they knew we had to be in really early because of the holiday. They're awesome.

The BBQ was great! They use a lot of peppers in Texan BBQ, but it's really good. We had these things called "armadillo eggs", which are jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese, baby shrimp and bacon bits (or whatever you want to put in it with the cream cheese) and the whole thing is wrapped in bacon and BBQ'd. They were amazing! ahah! They're kind of hit and miss, so occasionally you get a really hot one and I did. It was so hot!! We actually went out to the farm where we had the BBQ quite a while before we had it and helped the man who's farm it is weed. There were so many weeds, but it was pretty fun and I didn't get as burned as my comp did which is reallly good, haha.

Sunday there was almost nobody there so church was only two hours. Right after, though we taught this family who has been coming to church, but they aren't all members. Our goal is to get the dad to be able to baptize his kids. It was the most amazing lesson I've taught so far, because we didn't even do that much teaching! the mom and dad were talking a lot and really teaching themselves. i'm pretty sure I almost cried a couple times and by the end, their dad was even tearing up.

I'm loving it out here! It's hard work and I don't exactly love Texas, but I love all of the people, even when they're straight up ignoring you or dodging your questions and telling you for the fifth time that they already have a church. I love you all and  hopefully I can figure out how to send some pictures, although most of them are just from the MTC.

Love,
Elder Carlson

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