Pensacola Nights, Like Pensacola Days

Shalom and good evening to you my friends! Welcome to my letter, center of stories and wonder.

Haha, I'll stop now.

Hello to all of you. I didn't get a letter out last week but I here's this weeks (complete with pictures). Before I start, a bit of humor.

This story is from Brother R who was in the airforce for many years. He hold us of one time that he was flying a top priority scramble. He and his copilot hopped in the plane and got in the air. After a few thousand feet he noticed a bee in the cockpit. After mentioning this to the copilot, the copilot explained rather panicky "I'm deathly allergic to bees! If it stings me I'll die!" He wanted to land but Brother R wasn't going to abort a high priority mission for a bumble bee. "Just keep climbing. I won't agitate it." So they kept climbing and once they reached about 45,000 feet. He hit the depressurize cabin button. The bee was hovering right above his face and he said the bee grew bigger and bigger and then popped! It was hilarious.

Things have been good here in Pensacola. Elder B and I are continuing to do our best and find those who want to listen. If I could, I would just serve and teach all the time. But alas, I do other stuff. Like meetings and contacting potential investigators, and tract. We're hanging in there and having some fun as we go.

We were helping the old people play bingo and Elder B had this one lady who was really funny. The employee would call "B 15!". This lady would look at her card and notice she had a ten as well as a five (her column was something like this 3-7-10-5-12). She then asked if she could move the 5 and put it in the 10 to make 15. Elder B laughed and said no. We have some fun stories about the bingo people.

I don't have much longer, so on to pictures!

We were biking across the street when I heard a loud bang behind me. At first I thought it was a car backfiring but I realized it came directly behind me and the only thing directly behind me was Elder B. I rationalized that bikes don't backfire and was confused. I looked back and saw Elder B in the middle of the street, stuck. It turns out his bike had indeed, backfired. One of his gears split in half and his bike locked up. He got off and wheeled it off the street to inspect it. That's when we saw the damage (see the first picture). It's fixed now but it remained like that several days since it was a bike from CTR Bikes. Their customer service is terrible. Elder B gave up and paid for it out of pocket.

Elder G and I (see the second picture) together for almost the last time. He's doing well in Madison and is enjoying his new companion.

We were biking the other day and stopped for a water break and I spied a really cool cloud with the sun coming through. The camera actually did it some justice and I enjoyed the effect (see the third picture).

I never sent any pictures of the naval air museum so here's one of me in an airplane (cockpit)! (see the fourth picture). I'll send the rest of the pictures home on an SD card here pretty soon.

I love and miss you all!
---
Elder Matthew Carlson

Pen-sack-c​ola

[We were able to talk to Matthew on the phone for Mother's Day which was very, very nice]

It was wonderful to talk to you all yesterday. I enjoyed getting to talk to everyone. I got to answer some good questions and got to ask some good questions (even though some of you were a tad hard to understand =] ). I'm glad that Mom had a good mother's day and all went well. I did enjoy the wonderful card and I enjoyed the funny little duck on it. I'm excited to get mail again this week! =)

This week has been an interesting one. I found out I was leaving Mobile, packed up, said goodbye (see the first picture), and headed off to Pensacola on Wednesday. The rest of the week was mainly just getting familiar with the area and doing work. The hardest part was adjusting to everything. It's all unfamiliar and I don't have a routine or anything so it's kinda hard. I'm working up a routine and figuring things out, so that's good.

Pensacola is a dense place. It's the second largest place in the mission (the first is Mobile). Before President Jensen sent me to Alma he asked if I liked small towns, I said not particularly but I'll go wherever I'm sent. So maybe I'm being sent to all the big cities. There are several wards here and I'm serving in the Pensacola Ward. It's a nice ward and there are many ward members who are happy to help us in whatever way we need. They don't always feed us (I've only had one dinner appointment so far and Elder G said they get about 1 or 2 a week) but they're willing to help us, which I prefer. The ward council is great and the bishop here is a nice guy. The ward has an excellent mission plan that is measurable and I think it will really help. I think that good things are going to happen in the Pensacola area, slowly, but surely. Elder G my companion (see the second picture), is a really nice guy. He has a strong testimony and is doing things for the right reason. We get along quite well.

We had the chance this week to go to the old folk's home and help them out. I always thought bingo was just a joke in the movies and the older people in rest homes didn't actually play bingo as they had much better things to do like watch TV, go for a walk, enjoy the clouds, that sort of thing. It turns out they do actually play bingo. I don't mean they just play, they play. There was an atmosphere of intense competition. The announcer lady was shouting at the top of her lungs and when she wasn't talking it was silent in the room expect for the clatter of markers and the steady beam of monitors. Most ladies had two or even three bingo sheets to maximize their chances. My job was help them put the markers on the right numbers. Some ladies were very hard of hearing and would shout "What did she say? 29?" The lady I was helping had only a little trouble. She would sometimes put it on the wrong square or have trouble finding the right square. It took forever but soon enough we finished bingo.

Pictures! I have a wonderful picture of my district. We had done a serious pictures before so we decided to shake things up a bit. As you can see, (see the third picture) we shook things up quite a bit. It was lots of fun. I miss those guys a lot. From me (top right) clockwise is Me, Elder H, O, L, N, and W. I also have a picture of one of the members in Mobile. His name is A and he's awesome (see the fourth picture). He's preparing to go on his mission and we taught many of his friends with him. His cat Champagne, is the silliest cat I've ever seen.

That's all I have time for this week, but I love and miss you all!

-Elder Matthew Carlson

Saying Goodbye

Elder G

The District

A and Champagne