Amazing week!

It's been an amazing week! I don't even know where to start...

First off, we've been seeing a lot of progress in some of the people we're working with. We set a baptismal date with one of our investigators, R (he's 18, doesn't have much religious background so is starting his faith from scratch, and has a baby on the way)! He is very humble and wants to learn and understands the scriptures better than most, if not everyone I've taught on my mission.

We also had 3 less active families and one investigator at church yesterday! The A's (they've now come 5 consecutive weeks; the first time in about 15 years), the D's (the first time since I've been here), and the B's (who are also working to go back to the temple in March and their daughter, A, was the investigator who was there). A is really progressing as well. She's never been interested in the gospel before now, but when we gave her a Book of Mormon, she read the chapter we gave her and prayed about it. When we asked her about it, she began to cry as she described her experience and the Spirit was so strong! It was probably one of the strongest I've felt in a lesson. The Spirit really is the only teacher and the gospel can change lives.

On Wednesday the world-wide missionary broadcast was about our doctrinal purpose for missionary work: teaching repentance and baptizing converts. I learned something cool that wasn't really said in it, but I'd like to share it with yall. So forgive my dumb video game analogy, but you know how in Super Mario Bros there's parts where you have to walk on sand? You can hop around on top of it and get across, but if you stop for only a second, you start to sink and it's harder to move and get out. It's the same with us. In life, we need to continue to change and progress. If we don't improve ourselves constantly in the gospel, we soon get into a rut and may even start to sink into apathy, being comfortable with where we're at and not ever reaching our full potential. I hope yall will continue to become better and look at how you can better serve others. That's what we're here to do.

Love,

Elder Carlson