The Atonement brings life, healing and improvement!

This week has been great, but with quite a bit of change. My new
companions are awesome. Elder Johnson really knows what he's doing and
is so motivated to work. Elder Wrathall is such a funny kid and has so
much potential. That's why he's here in this trio, to learn how to be
a leader. Being a zone leader hasn't been as bad as I thought, haha.
It's basically the same as being a district leader just you're over
more missionaries. Apparently there's quite a bit more traveling, too.
It was a long drive from Lubbock to Borger last Tuesday and we will
have to do it again and back on Friday (maybe it's Thursday, I'm not
sure) for MLC (mission leader conference).

Borger is a town of about 1500 people (quite a bit bigger than
Stanton) and isn't insanely flat and ugly!! The hills do make it a bit
more miserable to bike, though. We have some awesome people we're
working with, but we still do a lot of knocking and finding to try and
get new people to teach. The work is never done and never takes a
break. Also, it's in the Amarillo Stake, so I may hopefully meet the
stake president, Pres Vest.

Pres Heap and the assistants are going around the mission this
transfer and meeting with every single district. Recently, since the
change of not turning in numbers to mission leaders, every key
indicator in the mission is has fallen pretty dramatically. The hope
is that if we can help our missionaries realize this we can raise the
bar and work even harder than before.

I've been learning how much this gospel is about change. We need to
constantly be changing and improving because the world around us never
stops and the adversary never quits. Pres Heap talked a lot about the
Fall and how necessary that is. If we truly understand the Fall, we
understand how vitally we need the Atonement. While the Fall brought
death and pain and hard work, the Atonement brings life and healing
and improvement. He sent us this quote that I love: "Even if we’ve
been a conscious, deliberate sinner or have repeatedly faced failure
and disappointment, the moment we decide to try again, the Atonement
of Christ can help us." We just have to keep on trying and Christ will
make those efforts enough.

I love yall and hope you're never satisfied with who you are and so
continue to progress to the amazing people Heavenly Father intends us
to be.

Love,
Elder Carlson