Girls Camp

Hey Ya'll!!!!!

I hear that Sister Crowton came by! I got all the pictures that Jess sent. Love it!!

This last week has been kind of slow. We did great on getting and contacting referrals, but that was just because everyone canceled on us. We received 15 and contacted 10. Elder Jenkins contacted us last night and challenged us to set a goal of 20 and 10 for this next week since it's the last week before transfers.

Monday was so fun! For Memorial Day we went to Lake Alice. A kind of wildlife reserve in the middle of UF campus. Saw my first Gator since coming to Florida! We saw two kind of smaller ones (4ft long) and a bunch of snapping turtles. The Zone Leaders have an investigator who is also named Sister May (who was born during World War II, but looks like she's in her 50's) who fed us a picknick that was wonderful! There was this really cool church nearby that could be in the Lord of the Rings. Or Zelda. The walls are all glass and the roof has got some really cool architecture.
Today we are going to have a Zone P-day and have a BBQ and play games.

We didn't do much on Tuesday except take an MTC survey and have two lessons. We read with the G family 3 Nephi 12 and a member, Brother Davis, explained line of Authority. We also met with M and took our beloved Sister O. They connected immedieatly. Sister O used to be baptist as well and shared part of her conversions story. M also gave us a little background of why she loves meeting with us and why she wants to be baptized. Before Sister Crowton and I knocked on the door she was babysitting at, she was thinking about her best friend in Elementary School and how she was so happy back then. She decided that she wanted to try and find that church while she was babysitting and BAM! Sister Missionaries at the door. She even asked us at our visit, "why doesn't everyone else realize that Joseph Smith was a prophet?" Once school ended this week, she got really sick and we haven't been able to see her, but I don't think that a little sickness is gonna be able to stop her!

Wednesday was our last District meeting as a District. It was kind of sad. Elder Jenkins has only been our District leader for one transfer and he's doing really well. We didn't do much Wednesday. We met with a less active family and went to Bible Study afterwards.

Thursday was ok. We had an appointment fall through but we got to go see Sister M. I don't know what to do with her. She is still really uppedy about the fact that we won't recognize her baptism. She thinks the Book of Mormon is great, but doesn't like Joseph Smith and the First Vision stuff. She doesn't think there was an Apostasy and that as long as you're baptized by someone, and are a good person, then you're saved. She doesn't want to keep committments or read from the Book of Mormon. What she wants to read are these pamphlets about interpretations from the book of Revelation and the last days. She kept asking us what the Seven Churches are and trying to get us to read the pamphlets with her. :(

A miracle Thursday night, Sister W (a former Jehovas Witness who burned her first Book of Mormon and investigated the church for 6 years) took us to see a friend who is investigating! Afterwards, she and her husband fed us dinner. That was a miracle because we hadn't eaten yet! Everything was bunched together and we just didn't have the time. They are such a sweet couple! They met in the Provo Temple in their later years of life and got engaged three weeks later! They both told us their conversions story. I love listening to Sister W. She's from Germany and lived in Ireland when she was a Jehovas Witness missionary for 18 years. She went to BYU Idaho and was baptized in Idaho, then transferred to Provo. They are so sweet!

Weekly planning was on Friday yet again. Two weeks ago we had a FHE with a lady in our ward. Her daughter's friend went to the FHE and mentioned she wanted to be baptized. We knocked on her house and met her Grandma on Friday. It was a longer conversation and Bonnie (the girl's grandma) cried two or three different times. We set up a tentative time we could see her in the next week.

Friday night as we were going back into our apartment, Sister Pettingill was kind of disheartened. Earlier that day she said that all she wanted at the moment was to be at a member's house eating ice cream. We stopped by at a member's house 20 min before 9pm. The Lord loves us. They were eating some ice cream sandwiches and some cupcakes! It was a good end of the day.

Saturday was kind of a bummer. We got a text from an investigator basically un-inviting us to her graduation. It taught us a lesson that we always have to make back up plans even if you think that something is going to happen no matter what.

But Saturday night was amazing!!!!!  Mr. S, one of the first people I contacted on the street when I first got to Gainesville, was baptized by Brother John Anderson, a former 70. It was a wonderful baptismal service. The G family went to it! One of the first things Brother G said after Mr. S got baptized was: "that looks scary". It was really fun. We got a lot of the leftover fruit and refreshments after it was over too!

Sunday was amazing! Even though we didn't have any investigators there (M has strep throat or bronchitis or something serious) I had a wonderful time. Sister A(Miss A’s mom, the new RS president) gave a really good lesson on Prayer in RS. We broke our fast at the Nances (Bishop couldn't be there since he was still at the church) which was really fun. Then we headed over to Sister O’s house. She had one of her best friends over, Pearl, who is one of the most amazing people on the face of the earth. She practically had to raise herself. She was thrown out at the age of 13, started her own business cleaning houses and by the end of high school, she had six employees. She has got several degrees, working on becoming a plastic surgeon to fix cleft pallets on babies, and is the nicest person ever! Sister O's put on Elder Uchdorf's talk about light this last conference. It went really well.

Anyway. Time's up. Got to go! 

Love,

Sister Carlson

Memoir from Me "Plants by Mail"

This is the first time I’ve ordered plants by mail.  I was very hesitant at first because when my plants arrived they looked very dead. I bought three trees, two rose bushes, and three perennial grass bushes.  After a month of being in the dirt two of the Red Maple trees are coming to life.  The roses have always looked healthy and I only have one grass plant showing green so far.

Pink rose bush to hide ugly pipe.

First perennial grass bush.

I spend $25.00 every year for three annual grasses.  The magazine said my perennial grasses should survive our cold winters.  (we’ll see)

When the maple trees came in the mail they all looked like dead little sticks with roots on them.

#1 Red Maple Tree

 # 2 Red Maple Tree

 #3 Red Maple Tree
There’s no sign of green yet; it still looks dead.

This is what they are supposed to look like someday.

Summer

Fall

The exciting part was that the trees were only $1.00 each, Pink Roses were $3.00 each, and the grasses were also $3.00 each.

I did have to pay a $12.00 shipping fee.

So if I don’t succeed in bringing back all of the plants by mail to life, I won’t feel too disappointed.

BYU Young Dancemakers

 Julz is in the back with her mouth opened.

 Deliverance

                                                    Julz

Newsies

Mother’s Day

Dear Family,

This last week has been crazy! Since there are a lot of last minute missionaries who's Visas didn't go through our mission gets to house some of them so there were a lot of last minute changes to transfer instructions. I actually wasn't originally going to get Sister Pettingill! Instead I was supposed to get Sister Carrigan. I know this because the Assistants hadn't changed my transfer instructions when President had made the last minute adjustments. Because there were no other Sister Missionaries left in our Zone, I got to ride the Transfer bus with Sister Crowton all the way up to the Mandarin Building in Jacksonville that was the fulcrum of the transfer. It was kind of a long ride, since we stopped at two other places to pick up missionaries on the way up, and to drop off on the way back. I'm miss Sister Crowton :(

Oh well... Sister Pettingill and I are getting along great! She does not want to waist ANY time. Thursday was kind of a tough day since I was the only person who can plan, and we spent a lot of the time trying to tract, which we realize that we're both very bad at the CONTACT approach. That first part of the day was really awkward. Chasing after people who are walking their dogs. Makes me laugh looking back on it. But the day got better when we had dinner with the Ward Mission Leader, Brother Salmon. After dinner we went across the street to see if a potential was home (her name is M and she's a high school-er who is really into tennis - she's really good at it!). We had first met her while tracting the Town of Tioga subdivision (a very fancy neighborhood) and she was babysitting at one of the houses! Well, it was a miricle in the making because it happened that she was home, had some questions on the Book of Mormon, and loved the For Strength of Youth pamphlet!

Friday wasn't as awesome. We had two Conference Calls, one concluding our 6th week of training, and another to all of the missionaries who have Elders and Sisters in the same area (which number is increasing every transfer). On top of that was weekly planning. Sister Pettingill doesn't really know anything about the area so as we were going through I had to talk about everyone and everything and it kind of took all day till it was prime pross time. We still haven't gotten Companionship Inventory done - but we're not really worried about that. At least we got a lesson in with Charlie later that evening. The Ward Missionaries here are great! They come to Missionary Coordination Meeting on Sunday and they come with us all the time to go to lessons! Sister Chapman came with us to C's lesson.

Saturday was a day of miracles! We headed out to Newberry (an outlying town next to Gainesville that's in our area) to teach a lesson and during the course of the lesson I realized that I had forgotten my name tag!

Florida

Hello yall.

It is so nice to read all of your letters! I did get Julie's email with a few pictures attached - nice outfits Julie and Josie ;) I also got Dad's letter that was sent April 24th. I'm gonna write her again next week about another kind of bug that's coming out as it gets warmer.

I think it is ironic that it is right after I leave that yall get trees for the yard. We've never had trees. I leave and go to a place where I'm practically buried in trees, and yall get two trees. Interesting.

Well, the reason I'm writing to you on Tuesday instead of Monday is because my first transfer had ended. They call the Missionaries Monday night and tell them if they are being transferred, and give them Tuesday as a P-Day to get everything washed and packed. Wednesday they pick everyone up in transfer buses and move everyone around. Sister Crowton will be leaving me tomorrow morning. Sad day. Yesterday we met with the Relief Society President so Sister Crowton could spill out her brains about the women in the Ward that she has visited since she got here in February before she leaves. Sister Davis is the one who drove us down after I flew in and she also gave us a lot of stuff for our apartment.