Happy St. Patricks day!!
Happy Birthday Jake!!! (You got something coming in the mail)
That's so cool to hear about Michael! He's gonna make a great missionary :)
It's been a great week! E got a job interview. K came to
Church!! She seemed to like it. This week has been really busy. The
iPad says that we have 13 new investigators this week, but we really
only have 7 or 8. I LOVE daylight savings! The sun stays up till 7:30
instead of going town at 5 - right when prime pross starts.
You remember when we helped an old lady move in last month? February
and 95 degrees outside. Anyway, she's a darling. She has stage 4
breast cancer and is moving in with her grandson so he can take care
of her. He was unfortunately hit by a drunk driver and can't do much
either. So we go over to help her out. She gave us Florida license
plates. She's probably 4 feet tall. Love her!
My poor companion...misplaced...her wallet. So sad. Don't know where
it went. We are now going about the process of replacing the contents.
Kind of stressful.. But we're singing lots of primary songs.
Not much else this week... Love ya!!
Sister Carlson

Dear Family,
That's so cool to hear about Trevor!!! The Philippines sounds pretty
epic. What do they speak there, Tagalog or something?
This week seemed really long. But at the same time I can't really
think of what we did. We called a bunch of people and set up
appointments and stuff for next week...
We did teach our first lesson on Skype the other day! Remember that
Jamaican lady who moved out of our complex last week? Well, this week
we taught the first lesson to her on Skype. K is going to read
and pray about the Book of Mormon! She's super sweet and I know that
if she does this with real intent, she'll feel the Spirit. She is way
versed with the Bible and knows what the Fruits of the Spirit are
already, and how to recognize its promptings. It was a really fun
lesson. Took us 30 minutes to set it up though. These Sister
missionaries are not the most tech savvy people of God around. The
Spirit can only guide you so far.
I don't know if I've written that much about my companion. Sister
Molly McCann is from Fairfield, California. Around the San Francisco
Bay Area. She is very easily scared, but loves banana bread. When she
thinks that something is cute, she calls it "tiny" in a weird baby
voice that makes me laugh. All of her friends at home are getting
married and she's kind of sad that she isn't going to be there for any
if their weddings.
Ward Conference was this past Sunday! There was "dinner" on the
grounds after the block of meetings in the cultural hall. So good!
Sister A came to church and E was there too. Bishop was
re-sustained interestingly. He kept talking about how he was going to
be released. I kind of feel bad for him. The food was really good.
We're going to drop E this week. He almost moved out last Monday,
but that fell through. It's basically just a waiting game until he can
more out. It's good that he is still going to scripture study class
Wednesday nights and goes to church every week.
I've got to go! Sister Clendon's hair needs to be straightened.
Love,
Sister Carlson

M'dear Family, In two days, I'll have been out for a year! It only feels like I've been out like a couple of months or something. We met this really nice Jamaican woman when we were dumping our trash. She asked us if we had another trash bag she could use. We quickly zipped home and got her two "fresh scented" trash bags that the Vans (the senior couple) had given us. We got to talking to her a little more. She'd never heard of the Book of Mormon before! Sister McCann has this great way of introducing the book with the pictures in the front that she did. We invited her to be baptized! She seemed really open to the idea! Totally elect! But then she's moving to South JAX, which is 45 minutes away. :( I hope she starts talking to the missionaries down there.

Sister Heckel

Jacksonville, Florida

Soo, don't have a lot of time this week.
updates...

won't be able to write much next week cause we're going to the zoo on p-day. The week after that we'll have the ipads so finding a computer wont be a problem like it was today :(

Ipads are so confusing. the Zone Leaders have them now and showed them to us. I got a headache in three seconds. cool note, if someone puts the password wrong a certain number of times, all the memory on the ipad is wiped.

Well, E is progressing towards his baptism! I'm so grateful that I have the privilege of working with him. He has really good questions and really felt the spirit when Elder Neilson spoke at the Regional Stake Conference this past Sunday. His bike was stolen this past week and he's been walking everywhere trying to find a job. Luckily, he doesn't live too far away from the Church, but I feel for him.

There's a girl we've been teaching named A who is preparing to be baptized next Sunday, February 2nd!! Neither of her parents are members, but her grandmother is and she's been taking her and her younger sisters to Church. We've taught A almost all the lessons and we just have a few of the commandments to go. But she's been taught by her grandmother basically everything. It's interesting teaching someone who has a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon in the first lesson. The most I think we've had to do is explain definitions of words she's not too familiar with like"Resurrection" and The reason she hasn't had a baptismal date til the week before her baptism is because she wants her mom to be there, and she lives in Atlanta. We're excited for Angel, she's certainly an example for her parents!

Loves,

~Sister Carlson

Hey Everyone!

Thanks for writing me mom, Julie, and Dad! 

So this week President wanted everyone to focus on Member Present lessons. So we tried extremely hard to get a member to every scheduled appointment! Blessings! I can't remember if I've ever had over 6, but that's what the Lord gave us! I don't know about other missions, but that's extremely good for our area. The Lord also blessed us to have more Other lessons that I've ever had before. Most of them weren't planned beforehand :) It's really cool when President wants us to focus on things. I can almost always tell an increase of that thing in my personal area and across the whole mission! Like when he had us focus on finding new gators, they just spring out of the woodwork! He's probably prompted that the Lord is going to have a lot of people ready, so he makes us more aware that it's going to happen, so that we can recognize the opportunity.

Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven! Because we tried our hardest at getting those member presents we were blessed with: a super spiritual lesson where Sister A quit smoking and came to church for the first time in forever! E is making friends and getting to know more faces at Church! Better relationships with members! Members becoming more missionary minded! More dinner appointments! Lessons with gators IN a member's HOME for FHE!! 

Speaking of Blessings the next thing that President wants us to focus on is giving more powerful testimony, specifically to promise blessings. In the scriptures the Lord had the prophets write down specific blessings we get when we keep a certain commandment. President wants us to be familiar with these scripture references so we can help people make keep their commitments. Yay! We need to get that on with Miss P. Goodness. She knows that the ball is in her court and loves what she's learning, but she wants to apply it somehow. But at the same time she doesn't want to come to Church. The last really solid commitment we left her was to pray SPECIFICALLY and ask if Joseph Smith was really a Prophet. It's our bad that we didn't follow up with her in detail about it last time we saw her, but if she hasn't done that the next time we see her, I'm thinking we're gonna drop her and give her more time to work out whatever she wants to do. She LOVES missionaries so I'm fairly confident that she'll be open for them to come by in the future, hopefully she'll be willing to take action then.

That lesson with Sister A was really powerful! It was the member who we took with us who basically committed her to stop. It was so awesome!! ....Sorry, I was going to write more about this but my train of thought was just de-railed by some unexpected information. Sigh. Oh well. I'll get over it. Maybe I can tell y'all about it later. Well, suffice to say that she came to church for the first time and talked with Bishop about what she has to do to be re-baptized (he gives her the baptismal date when he thinks she's ready). She's going to need a lot of support, but I think she can totally do it! The lesson after she quit smoking she was talking a mile a minute. Barely stopped to gasp a breath! Whenever she gets the urge she goes to the computer and plays National Geographic computer games like mad.

The other day we ate at a southern restaurant and Sister Heckel had to sign a waver to eat a medium rare steak. I had a whole catfish fried cooked well done. It was really good!

E is really coming along! He came to scripture study class Wednesday night and was taught the Plan of Salvation by eight missionaries. He loved having better understanding about Adam and Eve and how they needed to leave the Garden of Eden. We certainly have a lot more positive view on that story than anyone he's met :) He's also a lot more conscious about what he does in this life so he'll have peace and happiness in the spirit world. No regrets! No guilt! There's a ton of scriptures I want to link right here, but I don't have time - maybe Jess can link:
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/enos/1.6?lang=eng#5 (one of my personal favorites)
He's even more excited to be baptized!

We're really excited for this Saturday and Sunday! Saturday night is JAX West Adult session of Stake Conference and Sunday North Florida is having a Regional Conference broadcast from Salt Lake City! Elder Nelson is presiding I think. Yay!! I don't know why it took so long for me to write this letter... well, got to go!! :)

Love,

~Sister Carlson

Original MTC Group

November 2013 Zone Conference

Gainsville Area

Cambodian Christmas Meal

We had a really great Christmas! I can't stop thinking about that Cambodian food. You never had egg rolls until you've had Sister Son's egg rolls! The noodles and stuff were so good! They were unusually spicy for my taste, so I don't know why I can't stop thinking about it. So good!! We did a lot of Christmas Caroling! MAN does that soften hearts and open doors. I don't think anyone does it down here. We caroled to a referral, and they let all of us in (which was our whole district so there was around 16 missionaries). They said that the whole time they had been married, 30 years, they never had carolers! They told us to come back anytime we wanted! We also made another lady cry. I felt good about that. We got several more potentials from it as well. This week we got an unusual amount of investigators. Six! They are just coming out of the woodwork! The Lord is certainly leading us to those who's hearts have been softened. 

Yummy noodles!

Skype at noon Christmas Day.

Florida in December

Normandy District December 2013

There's an older woman in the ward who is a lot like Momma Odie in Princess and the Frog (that movie describes the South so well). She was a preacher in her previous church and was baptized two years ago. Her name is Sister M. She's not blind, but one of her eyes kind of goes off to the side and, like a lot of people here, has several teeth missing. She's probably one of my most favorite people I've met on my mission!! Anyway... in gospel principles class we were talking about how God knows and sees all... the teacher related a little joke: A robber who broke into a house. There was a parrot warned him that Jesus was watching him. When he turned on the light there was a huge doberman named "Jesus" just a few feet away! This reminded Sister M of an experience she had. There was a cat that she didn't like that kept sneaking into their house. One day she found it in the kitchen and she had had it. She buried it alive out in the backyard. It took several minutes to get back on track to the lesson, but it will be one I will never forget!

Florida Spring 2013

Summer 2013