This is a hand written letter we received from Matthew. It had a giraffe sticker at the top so that seemed like a good title for this post.
Hi family!
Things are going good. I’m probably going to be in Alma a little while yet. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. We’ve been doing some good stuff. We haven’t seen a whole ton of success but it’s looking up. We’ve been working hard. We taught 31 lessons this week! That’s less actives and member lessons included, but still.
We’ve been working with a really nice young man named R. He’s been reading and praying. He’s planning on being baptized February 15, 2010! I’m really excited.
Today marks two months in Alma. It’s weird to think I’ve been here for two months now. I know it’ll be weirder in a year.
I can already see the great and dreadful day approaching. Great because I miss ya’ll :-). Dreadful because my mission means a lot to me already. I can’t imagine what it’ll me in 13-21 months. But we’re going shopping soon. So I close my letter.
P.S: I melted a toilet!!! I sprayed a disinfectant on the seat and I came back a few minutes and it was melting! Sort of. It looks really weird now. It has little dots that are really white and if you try to wipe them away they smear. It’s gross!
P.P.S: Thank you for the letters from you all! And the package. I loved the notes in the box and the stuff inside.
Thank you for everything!
Love you and miss you!
(that includes everybody)
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Beat the Heat
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!
Sorry about that. I felt like holding some keys down.
This week has been a most interesting and tiring one. There are some days that the first half of my journal entry for that day is mostly non-sense. I would try to write in my journal, but would be so tired and half asleep after using the last little bits of my brain that were still working to plan; that I would just write stuff that makes no sense. I wrote for a few minutes, read what I wrote, and gave up. I would brush my teeth and crawl to bed. I then finished the rest of the journal entries the next day during lunch.
Some of the week highlights include but are not limited to:
Contacting bunches of less active members. They are 100 something people who are members here in Alma. Only about 30 come to church. So we talked to a good number of them. We explained to one lady that we don't pray to Joesph Smith. We tried to find some address that, as far as we could figure out, doesn't exist. We persevered and found one addresses that had been previously lost. It was abandoned and very dusty. I'm pretty sure that no one has lived there in several years.
Dinner with the W's. We drove out to Nichols. We followed the directions which were "the first store you see on the right by the church". We stopped at the first store we saw on the right, which was a diner. Elder F explained that store in the south is anywhere you spend money. While we were waiting since Brother W was running late, we received a call from him. He asked where we were. We then saw his giant black truck roll by and he stopped and picked us up. He flipped a u-turn and drove to his house. It turned out we were supposed to stop at the store right after the diner. There was a large church in between the store and the diner. We had a great time at the W's. They are a wonderful family and fed us fried deer. In cubed form even. It was actually pretty good. Brother W made a "secret" sauce that was actually really good for the meat (it's just Worcestershire sauce and ketchup mixed together but I don't know the ratio).
Dinner at the P's. They are another wonderful family here in Alma. They're the ones we spent Christmas with. D has several samurai swords. Elder F couldn't resist (see picture #1). Brother P is hilarious and he's really nice.
We found an attack helicopter. It's mounted on a stick downtown (see picture #2). There wasn't really a plaque explaining why there was a helicopter there. There was a memorial of all the people in the various wars from Alma. I don't know why there is a helicopter there.
We helped out an older widow prune her grape vines. I got stabbed many a time by the briers that were plaguing the way. They haven't been maintained in several years. She is a very nice lady who is the aunt of a member in the ward. She fed us spaghetti for our reward. She has many pets. She has literally a dozen cats, some alligators, and a peacock. I'm sure she has more but those are the ones we know about. We saw the peacock right there and we got our cameras out of the car but it ran away. We chased it and I got just the tail end of it as it disappeared into the trees (see picture #3). It was a beautiful bird. I got another picture but it's blurry and the peacock is very far away.
We've been working with Brother J a lot this week as well. He has a smoking problem and we have been working with him to help him quit. It's hard for him since it helps him relieve stress and he has a lot on his plate. He's making steps though.
I don't have any really crazy or funny stories this week. At least not off the top of my head. It's been workity working work this week.
Fun fact about Alma. There is a dog food plant. You can see it here (see picture #4). It's cool that we have a dog food plant and all but it smells bad. It's smells like dog food like nothing else.
Today, I asked the post office for the Pixar stamps but all they had were Christmas ones. I hope they get some new ones by next week or you may get a Christmas themed letter in late January.
Life continues to go on and get a little better every day. I think it's awesome. Missionary life is just getting better and better. The other day it was thundering and lightning and it was AWESOME! They was a flash of lighting about every 10 or 20 seconds. It was so cool. Not really any in the way of thunder. We weren't too badly soaked by the time we got home as it was only drizzling. Getting better all the time!
Thank you all for everything you do. Even you too Michael (Dad told me about how you've been helping out with mah blog).
Love you all,
Elder Matthew Carlson
Sorry about that. I felt like holding some keys down.
This week has been a most interesting and tiring one. There are some days that the first half of my journal entry for that day is mostly non-sense. I would try to write in my journal, but would be so tired and half asleep after using the last little bits of my brain that were still working to plan; that I would just write stuff that makes no sense. I wrote for a few minutes, read what I wrote, and gave up. I would brush my teeth and crawl to bed. I then finished the rest of the journal entries the next day during lunch.
Some of the week highlights include but are not limited to:
Contacting bunches of less active members. They are 100 something people who are members here in Alma. Only about 30 come to church. So we talked to a good number of them. We explained to one lady that we don't pray to Joesph Smith. We tried to find some address that, as far as we could figure out, doesn't exist. We persevered and found one addresses that had been previously lost. It was abandoned and very dusty. I'm pretty sure that no one has lived there in several years.
Dinner with the W's. We drove out to Nichols. We followed the directions which were "the first store you see on the right by the church". We stopped at the first store we saw on the right, which was a diner. Elder F explained that store in the south is anywhere you spend money. While we were waiting since Brother W was running late, we received a call from him. He asked where we were. We then saw his giant black truck roll by and he stopped and picked us up. He flipped a u-turn and drove to his house. It turned out we were supposed to stop at the store right after the diner. There was a large church in between the store and the diner. We had a great time at the W's. They are a wonderful family and fed us fried deer. In cubed form even. It was actually pretty good. Brother W made a "secret" sauce that was actually really good for the meat (it's just Worcestershire sauce and ketchup mixed together but I don't know the ratio).
Dinner at the P's. They are another wonderful family here in Alma. They're the ones we spent Christmas with. D has several samurai swords. Elder F couldn't resist (see picture #1). Brother P is hilarious and he's really nice.
We found an attack helicopter. It's mounted on a stick downtown (see picture #2). There wasn't really a plaque explaining why there was a helicopter there. There was a memorial of all the people in the various wars from Alma. I don't know why there is a helicopter there.
We helped out an older widow prune her grape vines. I got stabbed many a time by the briers that were plaguing the way. They haven't been maintained in several years. She is a very nice lady who is the aunt of a member in the ward. She fed us spaghetti for our reward. She has many pets. She has literally a dozen cats, some alligators, and a peacock. I'm sure she has more but those are the ones we know about. We saw the peacock right there and we got our cameras out of the car but it ran away. We chased it and I got just the tail end of it as it disappeared into the trees (see picture #3). It was a beautiful bird. I got another picture but it's blurry and the peacock is very far away.
We've been working with Brother J a lot this week as well. He has a smoking problem and we have been working with him to help him quit. It's hard for him since it helps him relieve stress and he has a lot on his plate. He's making steps though.
I don't have any really crazy or funny stories this week. At least not off the top of my head. It's been workity working work this week.
Fun fact about Alma. There is a dog food plant. You can see it here (see picture #4). It's cool that we have a dog food plant and all but it smells bad. It's smells like dog food like nothing else.
Today, I asked the post office for the Pixar stamps but all they had were Christmas ones. I hope they get some new ones by next week or you may get a Christmas themed letter in late January.
Life continues to go on and get a little better every day. I think it's awesome. Missionary life is just getting better and better. The other day it was thundering and lightning and it was AWESOME! They was a flash of lighting about every 10 or 20 seconds. It was so cool. Not really any in the way of thunder. We weren't too badly soaked by the time we got home as it was only drizzling. Getting better all the time!
Thank you all for everything you do. Even you too Michael (Dad told me about how you've been helping out with mah blog).
Love you all,
Elder Matthew Carlson
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