So many miracles!

It's been an amazing week this week! So many miracles! C finally wants to be baptized!!!!! We had been trying to set a baptism date with her for Feb 28th and yesterday she finally said she'd be baptized then, yay! We're not sure if she'll be able to because she had a drink of alcohol yesterday so we may have to bump it back a week. If not, though, this will be a hectic week trying to get everything ready for her baptism this Saturday! Please pray that she will stay strong until then and continue to have the desire to be baptized.

Another miracle was meeting our new investigator, M. He was born and raised Catholic and is the fiance of one of our other investigators who we were meeting with before. We finally met him and he loves it! After our first meeting with him he was saying how we already have him converted and was asking how he can join our church?! I think it's the first time I've had to actually tell an investigator to slow down toward baptism rather than dragging them towards it, haha! Unfortunately, he wasn't able to come to church this week because of the weather.

Also, a really funny experience from last week, actually, but I forgot to tell you about it. So we were at C and J's meeting with them and their 4 year old was showing us the papers they had colored in Primary that day. At the bottom of one was some lines where you finish sentences and one said, "The Savior helps me..." and he wrote, "button my pants." Hahaha! Kids are awesome!!! No wonder Christ wanted His disciples to let them come to Him.

Well, that was my week. It was great, as you can tell, other than when the weather went from perfectness to snowy, icy, cold in a day. I also had to give a talk in church, which wasn't too fun. I still hate to speak in front of a lot of people, unfortunately. Love y'all and miss y'all! 

-Elder Carlson

Seek revelation

Yesterday was pretty eventful.  C and J came to church again (only for the last two hours, though)! And Elder Evans had to give a talk. This less active member we've been working with came to church! And we found out he's gone the last two weeks as well just to a different ward!!! We were super excited! Not too much happened for the rest of the day, though because Evans wasn't feeling good so we just went back to the apartment so he could rest before our appointments we had to go to that night. He's feeling a lot better today, though, luckily. 

Oh, and we got new investigators this week I'd like to tell you about. We've been meeting with them for a while but we just haven't counted them as investigators until now. We knocked into them (I may have told you about them) and they were so friendly at first we thought they might be members we just hadn't met, haha.  They are super active in their church but love meeting with us. I still don't know why they let us in in the first place, but they just said they wanted to learn more because they didn't know much about our church. It's amazing how the Lord works because before now they used to avoid Mormon missionaries like the plague. Now C is reading the Book of Mormon and they ask us all sorts of questions, hungry to learn.

Oh, and here's a picture of me and Evans. It's not the best, but it's the only one I've got so far.

 

We are super close with C to setting a baptismal date with her! We brought it up with her and she didn't freak out as much as we thought, but she didn't want to set one because she says she's still not sure.  She's progressed so much! It's amazing how much of an impact going to church has on people. 

This Sunday we had ward conference and it was really good. One thing that stuck out to me was our stake president said, "don't run on old revelation". We need to continually get new revelation every week and even every day. If we always have a prayer in our heart and keep our hearts open to revelation we can be guided by the Holy Ghost even more. I have been thinking a lot about how to be a better missionary and during ward council yesterday I got an answer that I need to focus on asking better/more questions while teaching. The more I get the "learner" participating and show them how to find their own answers the more converted they will be able to become and they don't have to be spiritually dependent on me. 

During zone conference this week we talked about the Holy Ghost and how he communicates with us. There are so many different ways we can receive revelation and it's cool to think how even our "conscience" is a form of revelation. A lot of the time I think we focus more on the revelation that's like hearing a voice or someone says exactly what you need to hear, when it's much more common that God will give us revelation through our common sense and just things seeming right to us. I'm not sure if I worded what I wanted to say there right, but it makes sense in my head. I just don't know how to say it.

Anyway, that was my week. Oh, and signing up at the hospital as clergy this week went good. We haven't really done anything with it yet. I guess they're just supposed to give us a call if we're needed, but I'm not really sure how this works. We have sweet official badges, though, haha! I love you all and hope y'all will continue to seek to build your faith every day and search for revelation to guide your everyday actions so you can continue on the path toward eternal life!

Love,

Elder Carlson

Small miracles

It's been a really awesome, busy week this week! It doesn't even seem like a new transfer because I didn't have to pack up my bags and move, haha. We've had a lot of people to try and keep contacting this week so we've had back to back lessons some days, particularly this weekend. It's been awesome, but we've kind of been slacking on finding new people that are prepared to hear the gospel.

A pretty neat little miracle happened this week. Our investigator J has been having a hard time recently. He doesn't have a job and so his dad's paying for his apartment and someone stole his car and phone and he lost his drivers license and pretty much all identification he had. But then on Saturday we were out trying to meet with some potentials and this random guy calls us. I have no clue how he got our number, but he was wondering if we knew someone who needed some money that could help him move some office cubicles out of this office building. J was so happy to be able to get a little money to be able to get him back on his feet long enough to get a solid job. Plus, after we told him that, he said he wanted to start coming to church! The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Oh, and C and J were both at church this week with their kids. I think it's the first time their entire family has been at all 3 hours of church since I've been in this area. Also, we found out today that there's a Cabelas here in Lubbock! Elder Nelson bought an elk bugle there, haha! Poor Elder Hastings isn't going to have any peace and quiet this transfer. I can't remember much else exciting or interesting that happened this week. Love y'all and I hope y'all can see God's hand in your lives this week. Keep looking for those small miracles that happen every day.

- Elder Carlson

Service and Sacrifice

I'm going to do my best to remember what happened this week. We got transfer calls but Elder Evans and I are both staying here. Elder Geverts is leaving to Ruidoso, though and so his companion, elder Nelson, who's still in training, is getting a new companion, Elder Hastings.

It also snowed here this week, but now it's all gone and warm again, of course. We did some service this week, which was great! We helped this member's daughter move in one day and later on we got to go to a less active member's house (the guy who's house I skyped you at) and helped him dig up his backyard. We were looking for his sewer line and dug up almost half of his entire yard looking for it but never actually found it. 

We haven't had too much progress with any of our investigators. We got in contact with J again, finally, but he still won't come to church for some reason. M only wants to talk about the super deep doctrines and isn't really progressing because he's so focused on that. C, on the other hand, is doing great! She's been trying super hard and is keeping all of the commandments we've taught her. She has had a couple hurdles to get over, but it's amazing how much it helps when investigators have great member support! She was our only investigator to come to church this week again, too.

Yesterday in church we talked about sacrifice and service a lot. The Lord sometimes requires a lot of us; more than we think we can give Him at times; but I know that everything we have is a gift from Him. All we have to give Him is our hearts and be willing to serve Him. I know when we do give up our time, energies, and/or possessions to more fully serve the Lord, He will bless us with exponentially more than we gave to Him. I love y'all and hope you have a great week!

- Elder Carlson

Elder Bednar!

So before I tell you about our meetings with Elder Bednar a crazy thing happened today. We were shopping at Walmart this morning and right before we were able to buy our stuff all the power went out! So they kicked us all out and we found out it was out for at least a couple blocks because all the traffic lights weren't working. Luckily Tech still has power, haha. First world problems, huh? Everyone freaks out when there's no electricity.

But Friday and Sunday, when we had meetings with Elder Bednar, were awesome! On Friday was the meeting with all the missionaries. He didn't give an actual talk but first he asked us what we learned from the talks he gave us to read to prepare for him coming. We all could raise our hands to stand and answer. Then he opened it up for us to just ask him questions. It was really cool and he had us focus on just listening to the Spirit and writing down what we learned that wasn't said rather than just writing down our "large plate" notes of what the speaker said. Then he had us look for a pattern in how our meeting went and what we learned from that pattern and how we could apply it to us as missionaries.

The whole mission was together to hear Elder Bednar!

On Sunday we were hoping to get a ton of investigators there but only C was there; she loved it, though! It was really neat because Seminole Branch is in our stake and so I got to see a lot of the members that were able to come up from Seminole for stake conf! There Elder Bednar talked a lot about baptism and the vital importance of it as well as all other ordinances we perform. He also talked quite a bit about Joseph Smith. He was saying how everywhere he goes in the world he takes Lubbock, Texas with him because he shared an experience he had while living here that really strengthened his testimony in him. He even said that this is one of only about six places in the world he can call home. It was pretty cool.

I know that the priesthood of God is on earth again today. I'm so grateful for the blessing priesthood ordinances are in my life and that I can be out here, called of God to bring these blessings to God's other children.

Love,

Elder Carlson

Have Faith

This week's been a little warmer than last week. I think about two days have been warm enough to wear short sleeve shirts if it weren't for the wind. Texas wind sucks, but I think I've mentioned that before, haha. The other days have been freezing, as usual. Texas weather is all over the place. You never know what it'll be like from day to day.

Our zone this week has been focusing on getting new investigators since last week was focused on morning finds. We were able to get three new investigators this week because of that! We even set bap dates with two of them. Unfortunately, neither of them came to church on Sunday so we have to bump their dates back. 

The only older investigators we've really made progress with this week is C. We taught them some commandments and she has quite a few issues with one in particular, but she's received an answer that this is what God wants her to do. It'll be a process working with her through this, but God will give her and us strength. She's really in tune with the spirit and has gotten some pretty solid answers when she has prayed to Him.

 

Our ward mission leader is finally back from being in Utah for 3 months and he's been awesome. He's really pushing our stake family mission plans, which has been a struggle for me on my mission so far because I've never even heard of a family mission plan before now. I guess we don't really need them in Utah, haha. But he's taught us a little more about them and we're going to focus on that a lot more with members now.

Elder Bednar is coming this week on Thursday so we've been given a couple of his previous talks to study to prepare for meeting him. I'm so excited for it! Not only to meet and hear from him, but to see all the missionaries in this mission in one place at the same time will be awesome. The talks he gave us are really neat and I've learned from them how essential it is to ask in faith when you pray. A vital part of faith is action. When you pray you need to constantly remember what you've prayed for and put in your effort and your "trial of faith" so you can receive your answer. I hope you all can have the faith you need to overcome anything the Lord puts in your path. He will always help us through and we will see many miracles if we only have the faith to fuel those miracles.

Love,

Elder Carlson

Freezing rain

This week has been good, but pretty crazy. Monday we got a new car! It's really nice and I'm not used to all the fancy features this car has. I'm used to manual roll-down windows, haha! New Years Eve we didn't do much. We just got to get off at 6 and go play games and sports with the other missionaries in Lubbock.

The freezing rain this week has been so crazy! Because of it, the ZLs banned us from using our cars and even our bikes for a couple days. We have crashed a couple times on our bikes even on the days they let us use them, haha. No really bad ones, though. The first day of the freezing rain we headed off to an appointment and before we got there my glasses had a sheet of ice on them so I just didn't wear them for the rest of the day, haha.  Here's a picture of them. This was after they had melted a little, but you see how crazy it was!

When we have appointments we'll lock up our bikes and when we go to get them afterwards they'll be completely frozen over. We had to walk them home once it was so bad. 

As a zone this week we've been focusing on getting 40 morning finds for each companionship. It's taken a lot of knocking doors because no one's outside and most people when they answer will just tell us, "come back when it's warmer". We made it though! And we've met some pretty awesome people, who we'll hopefully be able to see again! 

Not much has happened with our investigators this week. J was supposed to come to church, but wasn't there when we went to pick him up. He gave up drinking, smoking, and tea pretty willingly when we taught him the word of wisdom, though! 

I think that's about it, but I'm super excited for Elder Bednar to come speak to us! I'm not sure if you remember me telling you when we skyped that he's coming to talk to us missionaries as well as the Lubbock Stake. 

Oh! We also got to go to the temple last Saturday! This family invited us to come to their sealing and it was really cool! This guy in our ward did the sealing. The spirit was so strong! I love the temple and am so grateful for the blessing it is. For the opportunity we have to be sealed to our families forever and to be so close to God when we go there. I love and miss y'all.

-Elder Carlson