Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Sister San Diego

GOOD AFTERNOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How ya'll doin?
Good? Good!

A week, it has been! And yes, we have a pet spider living behind the mirror of our car. He only comes out in the evenings ;) Pictures to come! 

Just to clear up some things, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about all those I teach! So first and foremost is K! I'm sure I've mentioned her the most! She's our 17 year old investigator who lives with the Knobloch's, an amazing family in our ward. She has a sad back story but is completely full of life and ready to feast on the Gospel every time we're there. She has to wait until she is 18 to be baptized (November 28) due to some permission issues. I'd say going over to the Knobloch's is literally my favorite part of the week because I feel so at home. It's like a spiritual, mental, and physical recharge. We sometimes visit Kate when she's working (in the crazy candy store). AH! She's just amazing. Sister Knobloch is the mom bomb.com! She has become our "mom away from home".

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Photo's of our house and yard.

If and when I get old, and have to move away from my home, I want to look at photo's of where I spent most of my married life raising our family. 

Halloween 2002
Halloween 2010

We've had many gatherings under the big shady trees. 
This is Jake's missionary return luncheon with his childhood friend Chris.

My oldest brother Kent and his family.
Paul and Diana and their cute little boy.
Jen's missionary companion who came to hear her speak at church.


Back Yard
2004

2015
Planted a Norway Maple tree last fall. .  I got it free from the city.

Front door

Jake's Birthday Party 1999

Family Room
New TV 2014

Christmas Past
Probably around 1997. I know we had someone who was tiny that year because the tree is only decorated half way.

2011



Kitchen
Where most my fondest memories have taken place.





Living Room
Jewels is a little blurry.
My new couches 2014

Mike Carson has been a wonderful teacher throughout the years!

Bedrooms
Jess and Julz's room.
This used to be Jake's old room and his red bunkbed.



Jewels changed Jake and Jessie's old room into her own original bedroom.



Jen's room
One day when I wasn't home, the girls talked GW into moving our old entertainment cabinet into Jen's room. They wanted to be able to watch movies in bed and play video games.



I usually always make my bed better than this.

My mother made the quilt and GW made the cedar chest in high school.


The view outside my bathroom window.

My unfinished bonus room.
This is where I store all my stuff as well as the kids stuff. If I need to get away and organize, this is where I go.  The windows also have the best views.



Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Sister San Diego

MY PEOPLE! :D

So many fun things to talk about this week! To start off, OH MY GOODNESS THE WEATHER! It's been amazing :) Saturday, we woke up to a HUGE thunder storm. Lightning was flashing and thunder was booming every few seconds. It was so cool! We all just kind of stared out the windows like zombies all morning, halfheartedly trying to exercise, eat, dress for the day etc.. It died down a bit but by the time it was Language Study it built itself back up! What was intense was that we were reading in 3 Nephi 8 (tempesets, earthquakes, whirlwinds) while it was all happening ha! ahhhh it made me so happy! The rest of the day it was pouring cats and dogs! BLESSING! AND SUPER FUN! I was able to use my rain coat ;) Glad we aren't on bikes yet.....


Our Temple shifts have been such a blessing. We get to meet HUNDREDS of people everyday. (especially Fridays.. all those weddings haha) While there are a bunch of members that visit, there are also many non-members that stop by! The temples of God draw everyone :) And I get to tell them how special they are! I think the most interesting thing that has happened to us so far was meeting a family of 16! (14 kids) It was a cute family from Arizona and man oh man... Sister Saedan thought they were crazy.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Mia Shilom

Photo's taken by Tamra Ockey and Michelle Tuinei.
















 Jen and Brooke

Bishop and GW with a bunch of happy girls.


Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Sister San Diego





Good morning! :D

This week has been a little crazy! Just getting into the swing of
things without Sister Starr. At the beginning of this week, the AP's
gave us a call and told us they were taking our car! Haha and the best
part is we don't know when 😆 "the next couple weeks" is all we got.
They're taking 20 cars from the mission and it just so happens one of
them is ours. This next transfer is going to be totally different!
Bikes, iPads, etc. we started transferring records online yesterday
and man oh man is it interesting trying to figure out this new app.
Not only will we be using the iPads for people's info now, but for
everything. Planner, calendar, task list, you name it. And it's just
interesting trying to figure out... How.. To do it.


Something fun!!! The Battalion sisters are going to be short on people
for this next few weeks, so they asked us if we would be willing to
take one of their Temple Shifts! The San Diego Temple doesn't have a
visitors center so the sisters assigned to temple shifts walk around
giving out info, handing out cards, taking down names and such.
10-noon!!!!! I'm so excited just to be around the temple in the
morning. We always have 5 hours of study everyday (1 hour of personal
study, 1 hour of comp study, and extra hour of comp study because I'm
in training, language study for sister Saedan, then transferring
records) so I never really see the morning sun.  We normally don't get
out and about until 2! BUT NOW I GET TO SPEND MY MORNINGS AT THE
TEMPLE! Ahhh :) but of course we'll have to do all that studying
after... 😅

OH!!! Sister Starr was transferred to Pawee! She's now our Sister
Training Leader hehe! She went from being me Mom to my Grandma ;) it
will be nice. She can still come on exchanges to this area. Fun fun.

Story time! We had dinner this Sunday at the Clark's again! (It was
like thanksgiving dinner... So good... AND THEY HAD THESE GLUTEN FREE
ROLLS THAT TASTED LIKE HEAVEN! I'll try to get the recipe for Jen) I
was talking with one of their girls about things that she likes. She's
12 I believe and the question came up of "what's your favorite thing
to watch"? She told me she liked Star Wars and I was really surprised
haha! I told her I like Star Wars too and she flipped! "YOU'RE THE 4TH
GIRL I'VE MET THAT LIKES STAR WARS!!!!!!" It made me smile 😆

We had another amazing Dinner at Sister Seegmiller's. If you can
imagine the most classy older woman living in a beautiful home
decorated with antique furniture and pictures, that is she! Her
husband died a few years ago but she always has her kids or
grandchildren visiting her. She's the nicest women in the world. I
just feel this overwhelming love for her and I'm not too sure as to
why 😊 I just do. She came to one of our lessons for R (our 84
year old investigator) and made both him and us cookies! Sigh... I am
just starting to really fall in love with this place. La Jolla is
amazing.

Well! 2 months down! Thanks for all the support! I love you all!!!!

-Sister Carlson



Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Sister San Diego

Familia!!!

Transfers are tomorrow! :😢 Sister Starr is leaving our trio *sniff sniff*..... I will no longer have two trainers! Wa!!!! It's going to be interesting.. This is Sister Starr's first area so it's sad to see her leave. She loves the people here sooooo much. AND SHE KNOWS THIS PLACE LIKE THE BACK OF HER HAND! I have a feeling as the new designated driver... I might get Sister Saedan and I lost XD

The weather here has been crazy! (For San Diego..) we normally have over-cast every morning, but in the last few days it's been raining! Blessing! It's so dry and a lot of members are concerned about the drought. After emailing you guys last week, we drove to a multi-Zone activity and it was getting pretty stormy :) it made me so excited and I have no idea why! The thunder and the lighting... Ah! I guess I just missed summer storms.

Right now I'm waiting to get my hair trimmed 😉 sister Saedan as well. We're getting it done at a members home, Sister Jack! She's so nice to do it for us. She trimmed the mandarin Sister's hair a few weeks ago. Sister Saedan has some pretty interesting beauty techniques hehe. every night she rubs lime on her elbows, knees, and feet 😁 she tries to get me to do it but... I don't know..

Our teaching pool has increased this week! 3 new investigators! All committed to baptism but aren't too sure about setting a date.. Meh. One of them is a girl named H! I might have mentioned her in one of my other emails, but we met her when one of our members (Sister Agnew) brought her to the Madarin Sister's 3 baptisms. We taught her for the first time this week and it felt like the perfect lesson. She mentioned how she had been looking for something like this and none of the other religions her friends take her to made her feel the spirit. SHE RECOGNIZED IT RIGHT OFF THE BAT! She's about our age and goes to UCSD. 

Not only was her lesson perfect but the last few days have been practically perfect. Especially Sunday and Monday. Sister Starr was joking around about how God was blessing her with a few last days here in UC 2nd ward 😭 Everything just went so smoothly and fun! Yesterday morning we went on a "Temple Run!" We woke up 30 minutes earlier so we could run to the temple and back. Round trip it's about 2 miles but it just felt so good! The weather was perfect, even a little misty and lightly raining. We took some fun pictures. That same day we also had lunch at the temple. It was so nice. Especially just hanging out with the YSA sister's as well. Everyone's really sad about Sister Starr leaving... She was kind of the head of the household. Been here the longest so.... Ya. I'm kind of scared XD

The 4th of July was FUN! We didn't get to see any fireworks... During the morning we had a ward activity that was pretty great. A lot of the people we invited though didn't come... So we left a little early feeling sad about no one doing what they say they'll do. There's a lot of that. But that evening, we came home @6 for safety and watched assigned mission videos while eating pizza. After completing our assignments, we made rice crispy treats and a flag cake! (Well... I watched the other girls make the fun treats haha) we sang a bunch of patriotic songs at the top of our lungs and just hung out. It was weird..... We've never really had free time. Everyone basically caught up on journal writing while snacking and watching Mormon messages! There are a TON of really good ones! Go watch them! :D

Well! I've made it through one transfer! 11 to go! It sounds like everyone back home is having fun ;) Tell Hanna, Molly, Heidi, Syd, and Tuinei's to write me!!!!! Family too! Mom's doing a fantastic job of keeping me updated on things ;) multiple times a week haha.  Same with Boo and Jen! Yo male people in the fam bam.. Love me.

Love all ya'll!!!!
-Sister Carlson