Carson's Missionary Blog

Hey Everyone, I have to apologize for last week's letter. This week I will try to do better. First of all I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, I was able to spend Christmas Eve eating tons of food with members. Everyone in South America knows how to throw a party for Christmas. As a missionary of course I kept it low key but it was fun to participate in some traditions all while sounding like World War 3 all around us. Turns out these people love Fireworks and buy more than they can use for Christmas. So overall, pretty good experience, Other than that, we have found some super good investigators this week that are definitely going to progress. We still have a lot of work ahead of us with them, but we are hoping to see some miracles in their lives in the coming weeks. I definitely love the work. Anyway, hope all is going well for you guys. Happy Holidays! Love, Elder Seibert

Hey Everyone, Well this week was hot, and everyone says that I am going to die in January and February, if you stop getting emails from me you'll know what happened haha. Anyway, the work here was slow this week but we are working through the slump. We had our end of the year christmas party in the ward which was fun. The ward put a lot of work into it and it ended up being very nice. Other than that, not too much to report. Sorry guys. Much Love, Elder Seibert

Hey All, This week was challenging. We have been working with a small pool of investigators and been spending too much tome walking around in the sun. However, yesterday at church we got 2 super good refences we need to contact this week as well and a kid in our ward brought a friend who is interested in learning more to church. So we got three investigators handed to us. A small miracle becasue we havent been very successful these past couple of weeks. Christams season is starting here and people are starting to put up their fake pine trees everywhere and lights in the mango trees. Definitely different but I love it. They all think it is funny that snow is a thing around Christmas time. They see it in the movies, but here we are headed in the hottest part of the year in what I am convinced is the hottest country in the world. Humidity included. Anyway, things are going well. I really love everything about this place other than the climate. The people are incredible, super ...

Hey Everyone! This last week I got a new companion. His name is Elder Ollero and he is another Peruvian. He joined the church 3 years ago and has been on a mission ever since. When he joined the church his family basically told him that he didnt want anything to do with him. So he sold everything he had to serve a local mission in Peru becasue he didnt have money to do anything else. He served in Peru for a year and a half and left directly from there to Paraguay. Now he has over a year here in Paraguay. He has a strong testimony and knows te scripture super well. He is going to help me a lot I think. He is determined to make me an incredible teacher and make me fluent in spanish. But I always feel bad for him. Everything he owns is in our apartment and he hant talked to his family  in 3 years . And I know he is dreading the day he has to leave Paraguay to go back home. It really puts into perspective my own struggles. It makes me think about how valuable this gospel is and has...

Hey Everyone, Well we had a baptism this week, unfortuntaley this computer wont let me downlad pictures. The lady's name is Amada and has a crazy story, but I can tell she really wants to change and I think the Gospel will really help her (becasue who hasnt it helped?). I was so happy to see her get baptized and I can tell she is changing her life for the better. The other crazy news for the week is that this morning for p day we were going to play soccer at our chapel, but when we got there our whole church building had about an inch of water all over the floor. Something in the roof was leakig and some of the ceiling tiles fell out. Fortuntaley we had a clean up crew (the ward) come pretty quick. All the kids are out of school right now so we had a good group of people helping get the water out. Its always fun to see members of the church come together to serve one another. Fortunately our entire church building is tile floor so damage was super minimal. Just a few books ...

Hey Everyone, I hope everyone had a good week. Here in Paraguay we have been very busy working with our investigators and less active families. This week a lady in a ward, who has been a member since missionaries first came to Salado, gave us a list of 55 names of people who don't come to church anymore. We are slowly finding out where they live and talking to them to see what's up. The big news this week is that we had a special stake conference at an indoor soccer field this week with Elder Mark A. Bragg. He split our Stake, the Luque Stake, and now we are in the Limpio Stake. This means that there are now 11 stakes in Paraguay with 9 Districts I believe. The bad news is that our Bishop got called to be first counselor in the Stake Presidency and they didn't call a new one, so this week we have no Bishop until Sunday when hopefully they call anther one. It is cool to see the growth in Paraguay though. The people here are ready to accept the gospel and are so humble...

Hey Everyone, Well as everyone knows, you see a lot of strange things on your mission. This week we had one of those experiences. We were at home studying in our room when we got a call from the Bishop of our ward. He told us that there was a lady we needed to talk to who was ready to be baptized. Well we went to talk to her and it turns out that she is an older lady who has been attending church pretty regularly for 5 years. We have seen her a few times at church. I guess what happened was that she found the church and knew that it was true. All her kids who are older and out of the house are already members. She never got baptized though becasue she is not married to the man who is essentially her husband and he does not want to get married. Well I guess something happened last week and her boyfriend got arrested for I don't know what and will be in jail for a long time. Well that means shw can get baptized now! Well it is a strange mix of emotions becasue obviously it is har...

Hey Everyone, This week was super good. We had zone conference last Tuesday in Luque and we talked a lot about how we can do better at finding people. One thing that we emphasized a lot was the upcoming Christmas season. (Sorry Thanksgiving doesn´t exisit here so I feel like I can skip over it). Anyway, we talked about the light the world campaign. I am not sure that the video is up for the public yet but we got to watch it and it is pretty powerful. ou can watch laste years video though if you want to get into the spirit.  Other than that, we have met some amazing investigators. We found a family that is so prepared to hear the gospel. When we showed up the first time the whole family sat down immediately to hear what we had to say. Then on our next visit, the dad told us that he knew the Book of Mormon was the Word of God becasue he feels the same way when he reads it as he does when he reads the Bible. He said its like his heart and chest are warming up. It is such a ble...

Hey Everyone, This week it rained a lot, which I am super grateful for. I dont necessarily like walking in the rain, but when the rain comes it gets significanlty cooler and I much prefer being soaked from the rain instead of from sweat. In case your wondering what the heat and humidity are like here, just know that as of now, when it is sunny and warm I cannot keep my missionary planner in my front shirt pocket becasue it got soaked from sweat one day and I couldnt read what I had written in it. Oh and it isnt even hot yet, I'll keep you all updated on how January and February go (remember Im south of the equator). But anyway, I appreciate the rain and the break it provides. This week we continued to teach several investigators, but it is so hard to get people to come to church here. I want to talk about one of our investigators we are teaching named Karen. She who is 19 years old and she has a baby that is a few months old. It is strange teaching someone sho would be my p...

Hey Everyone, I don't really have a lot to say this week. It all seems like kind of a blur. The big news was that we had a baptism for this kid Lucas. His family is a part member family and we have been teaching him becasue his mom wanted him to get baptized and start coming to church. It was a good experience and he a super fun kid. Other than that, I am writing on Tuesday this week because we went to the temple today as it is closed on Mondays. We worked yesterday and took our pday today so that we could go. It was super cool and I am a little bummed that I wont be able to go again here becasue they are closing it at the end of this week for 2 years for some maor renovations. But I was so happy to be there today. It truly is the house of the Lord and we can learn so much while we are there. It is defintiely a blessing in my life. Love, Elder Seibert