Another Hand-Written Letter!

Hello family!

Thank you for the wonderful letter from Bear Lake! I will try to answer the many questions posed therein but I really enjoyed hearing from Jeff, Jacque, the Kozy's, and the girls. This is now September! I’ve been busy. Things have been pretty interesting this week. We were evacuated from Pensacola early Monday morning. I bet the question that happens to be on your mind is "what did you do in Tallahassee?" The answer is read. President Jensen challenged us to read the Book of Mormon all the way through while we were there. Many people tried – no one succeeded (we only had one day). I did get to Mosiah though. It was pretty cool. Today (Labor Day) is strange. Us missionaries don’t get holidays so it’s kind of messing things up but we’re dealing.

Spencer: It’s cool that you’re so talented as to your shotgun shooting skills. Elder B is pretty talented as well – but he’s from Utah. He can hit 23/25 or 24/25. (Now he tells me that was once). To answer your questions: My favorite area so far? My favorite is generally the one I’m in right then. I like Pensacola – or Alma. Both are good places with fantastic members. Has the past year gone slow or fast? Let me put it to you as it was put to me: “The days are like weeks and the weeks are like days”. It seems like a few weeks ago I went to Tally but it seems like just a little bit ago that I was riding in the van from Mobile to Pensacola.

Michael: Yay BYU! How are things? Write me a letter from your new address! How was button pushing? Are you sad it’s over? Any cool classes? I’m glad you sort of enjoyed the Super Mario Super Show. I saw that in a check-out aisle around March and it just screamed ‘Get me for Michael!” so I did. I felt a bit apostate buying a DVD but I got over it. Send me more pictures! Please?

Dad: Thanks for the letters! I noticed that my photo won the contest! What does that mean? Am I sort of famous now? Haha, just kidding. But to answer your question, “Do we get inspired to see members or less actives?” Yes. Particularly during weekly planning. There’s a part where we prayerfully identify families to go ask referrals from. We’ve had a couple of cool experiences – we were out tracting and I felt like knocking on a particular house. I noticed there was a plaque that said “The D's”. I thought “I wonder if that is the same D's who teach the Gospel Principles class during Sunday School?” It was. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet with some of their non-member extended family that recently moved to Pensacola. I’m hoping and praying. We’ve had a couple other experiences. We felt like knocking on another house and a small Asian lady stepped out and said “My Church!” It was funny. She moved here from Taiwan and didn’t know what the church is called in English.

Mom: Thank you for the letters and the sparkly stickers! My hand is doing quite well from the bike accident. The shirt is pretty ruined. The black stuff from our bike tires has this unique property of being almost absolutely permanent. I tried bleach, Tide, Spray-n-Wash, and other de-stain stuff but nada. It’s a suit only shirt now. I fell off a ladder – that left a small, nasty cut – but it’s healing up nicely. I was very lucky not to have been hurt much more. I’m quite convinced that something or someone slowed my fall. I liked the fact you mentioned the large quantities of smoothies on account of Mike’s wisdom tooth surgery. We used to have smoothies all the time. I say used to as there was an accident. I had washed the blender and set it on a towel to dry on account of the drying rack being full. I accidentally bumped it while turning myself and watched in slow motion horror as it tumbled to the ground and shattered. So did my smoothie based hopes and dreams. I got over it though. Thank you for the printed General Conference talks. I really enjoyed them.

Stephanie: Hello! What’s the new job like? Fun? mice related? I’ve told Elder B a bit about your research stuff. He said ‘Well, if mice die and save so many people – then good on mice.”

Auntie: I realized I hadn’t really written you a letter in a while. I just wanted to let you know I still think about you and miss you. I’m just a little busy and sometimes lazy and don’t pass the message on.

I love you all!
Elder Carlson