Loving Mescalero already!!

I was just going to start out by trying to say how much I love Mescalero already, but I don't think I can find words, haha. It is gorgeous out here, especially after being in dry, barren West Texas. It's kind of chilly up here already so I'm getting some more sweaters today when we go shopping. I hope we get snow soon. Getting out here kind of sucked because it's clear on the edge of the mission, but it was worth the long day of driving. Our apartment is really small and I had to sleep on the floor the first night because we were waiting to get a bunk-bed so we can all fit, haha. It feels kind of like we're camping because we're up in the mountains and living in a little cabin.


It's been such a drastic change from Midland. We have so many people we're teaching, it's crazy! There's about 160 people in the branch here, but only 15-30 people come each week. So we have a lot of less active work to do. Missionary work here is pretty different than what I've experienced before so far. We can't knock or ride bikes (I had to just leave my bike in Roswell with the zone leaders) and people are a lot more open to the BoM because it's about their ancestors. It's strange having a car, too and we can't live on the reservation so we have to drive a ways to get onto it.

We have one investigator who's super solid and he's getting baptized this Saturday!! He was an ordained minister of a Judo-Christian church and so he knows a lot about religion and it's so cool to see things just click when we explain it to him. We're still working with his wife and had one of the most amazing lessons I've had on my mission so far with her last night. It was great because we were scared for a while that if he got baptized he'd get kicked out and then he'd have to leave the res because he's not Apache. But now she sees that she needs to be baptized too!

My companions are great. Elder Murray is from Murray, Utah (awesome, huh? haha) and Elder Darby is from California. They are both great missionaries. Darby is the DL and is super in tune with the spirit and is great at finding new investigators. Murray is still in training, but is already a great teacher.

Elders Darby, Carlson and Murray

 I'm so happy I get to be here serving the Lord and bringing His gospel to the Lamanites. I hope y'all are doing great too and are happy and serving others. I love and miss you.

 
- Elder Carlson