Carson's Missionary Blog

Hey All, I hope everyone had a good week. Here in Paraguay things are going well. This week started out super hot and then it poured rain Saturday Sunday and this morning. Definitely slows down the work but we are doing okay. I really don't have a lot to say for this week sorry. I guess I will just let everyone know that I do miss you guys a lot. The holidays down here in Paraguay are a little strange but tons of fun too.  Love, Elder Seibert Pics: Got sunburnt last week playing volleyball (because I wear pants all day every day and not shorts) Also, I got a super cool jersey for the ward that I am serving in right now FC Ybera

Hey Everyone, I hope you all had a good week. I am on a day late today because of the holiday. Our president asked us to change this week because he figured it would be more strategic with the holiday festivities. I think it was a good idea. This past week has been super good. First, because of all the food we have gotten, and of course because missionary work is very rewarding. This week we found a man on the street who called us over and offered us water. We asked him how his Christmas was and he told us that it wasn't quite the same since his wife passed away about a month ago. So we started into a short little gospel lesson and then his 20-something year old son came out and we talked to him for a little while too. They were super nice. We will be visiting them again probably tomorrow. Anyway, things are going well here. I really cant complain. Love you all! Elder Seibert P.S. Shout out to Uncle Reed and Aunt Debbie for the Christmas package, and the sweet slippers....

Hey Everyone, I hope you all had a good week this week. We have been working hard and are very excited for Christmas. It is fun to celebrate in a different country and see how other people like to celebrate. Especially being in the Southern Hemisphere and having Christmas in the summer is a good experience. Of course I miss the family traditions at home. But the memories here and the people I am meeting make it all worthwhile. The one exciting thing we had this week was the baptism of Luis. He has been listening to the missionaries for a few months now and finally got baptized. Elder Jensen did the baptism and it was his first one here in Paraguay. It really was a good service and I can tell he really likes the church. Ill keep it short this week. Hope you all have a very merry Christmas. Don't forget to keep Jesus Christ at the center during this busy time of year. Love, Elder Seibert Caught my companion sleeping and also we got Pizza hut to celebrate his birthda...

Hey Everyone, As always I hope you all had a good week. This week for me was pretty good. The highlight was a little light your community activity we did as a ward. All the members gathered up old clothes they had and we gave them out for free in this super poor neighborhood in the area. Elder Jensen and I also prepared some juice to give out to the people to come by with a little reference table in hopes that we could find some more people interested in learning about Jesus but we didn't have very much success. Its all good though. we are just experimenting a lot right now with different ways to find people because we have been getting rejected a lot and are investigator pool is dwindling. So keep us in your prayers, we will be working hard and we are always happy to see some miracles down here.  Love, Elder Seibert Picture that I just got from the Elder Gong visit plus our 2nd capilla abierta and some fish we saw in the little creek that runs through our area ...

Hey All, Hope everyone had a good week. This week was a little crazy, I spent a lot of time outside of my area. I went on splits with the Zone leaders this week and then we had two open chapel activities in other wards that we had to help with. They were super good and part of the program was a play about the Nativity of Jesus. There were some missionaries who had been practicing their parts and who sang really well. It brought the spirit super well and then afterwards we were able to guide people through the church to teach them a little about what we believe. It was a lot of fun to be able to change things up and work in a different way. really a nice program. That being said, we have a lot of work to do in our own area. We have recently started teaching several new investigators and we need to get them progressing as soon as possible, December is the month of miracles here in Paraguay and we have been praying hard and working hard to try and get some. Love, Elder ...

Hey All, Well I hope everyone had a good week. Here in Paraguay there really is not too much to report and I feel bad. Really just a week full of finding and teaching, but nothing really stands out to me. I guess the one nice experience we had was with this guy we met named Alcides. He is friends with some members in the ward and we talked to him about The Restoration. Right after explaining the first vision, I asked him if he had any questions and he asked why did people believe Joseph Smith. Like what did he do to demonstrate that he had power and that he really did have a vision. It was a perfect question to introduce him to The Book of Mormon and explain a little bit about what it was. It was so nice to be able to give the evidence that this message is real. We can hold it right in our hands and if we open up The Book we can know with a surety that Jospeh Smith really was a prophet and that Jesus Christ's church is currently on the earth.  Love, Elder Seibert

Hey All, Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Here in Paraguay not too much happened. Thanksgiving unfortunately does not exist, however there are some members in my area that know about it and said they were going to invite us over for some extra food. Well, they forgot and we never confirmed so that was kind of sad, but it was alright because Elder Jensen and I ordered ourselves pizzas (pictured below).  Other than the other big news of the week is that we made a big 5 gallon jug of juice to give to people free on the street this last week to try to meet some new people. Tip for all missionaries, current and future, if its unbearably hot where you are serving make juice and make the people come to you, don't go to them. Its a great service and makes the work seem much less difficult. People are usually very happy to get free juice. Things are going well in Paraguay. We are trying to stay cool and we are trying to keep it fun. Love you All! Elder Seibert ...

Hey Everyone, I hope it has been a good week for everyone, and I hope he smoke in Napa isn't too bad for everyone back home. This past week was super good down here in Paraguay. We got a visit from Elder Gerrit Gong from the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. He was super nice and I actually got to talk to him for a few minutes because he had the mission divide up into their districts and all the district leaders got to introduce their missionaries. He talked about how improving companionship relationships improves missionary work and asked us all to study 2 Nephi 31 with our companions and look at patterns that we can find in the word use etc. It has been a very interesting study although Elder Jensen and I have not yet finished analyzing everything we want to from it. But it basically talks about what we need to do in order to be worthy to gain our salvation, have faith, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the holy ghost and endure to the end.  We also found some cool n...

Hey All, Hope you all had a good week. Down here in Paraguay things are heating up while most of you guys are probably cooling down. But Elder Jensen and I are doing great. We are enjoying our time together and I think he is doing alright, he's been in Paraguay for 2 weeks now. the big thing that happened this week is that we had a Capilla Abierta, basically an Open House at the church for anyone that wanted to come by and see what we are all about. I would say it was a success, we wanted a ton of investigators but we only had 4 there that lived in our ward. However those 4 are showing a lot of promise. They are named Leticia and her daughter Sofi who is 10, and then this guy named Guillermo who is like 28 came with his mom. Elder Jensen and I were dressed in white showing people the baptismal font and explaining why baptism is important and how we do it. It ws a pretty cool experience. Other than that just a lot of talking with people in the streets and teaching them les...

Hey All, I hope everyone had a good week because I did! I started training Elder Jensen and he super cool. I am super excited for these next 12 weeks with him and cant wait to see what exciting things happen with him. These next couple of months in the mission are supposed to be months of miracles. We have the goal to baptize 100 people as a mission in the months of December and March. And in January and February we want 80 baptisms as a mission. We have never baptized that much but it is a goal that our president as well as all the missionaries have decided to take on. The reason for the different number during the months is because we normally baptize on weekends and there are 5 weekends in December and March so that is why it is higher during those times. It will be a lot of work to get there but as a mission everyone has decided that we want to take on the challenge! So be praying for us because we need all the help we can get. We want to save as many souls as possible....

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS MISIÓN PARAGUAY ASUNCIÓN NORTE                                                                                                      Avenida Santísima Trinidad Nº 1280 C/ Julio Correa Casilla de Correo 1871                                          ...

Hey everyone, Hope you all had a good week. As my subject line says, the exciting news for this week is that I am going to be training a new missionary starting tomorrow. It feels like a lot of responsibility but I am excited and the area here is really picking up so I am happy to be bringing in a new missionary to a relatively productive area, haha.  This last week was super great too. We some some miracles happen as new investigators have basically come to us. we had a couple come to church yesterday and afterwards we were talking to them and they said our church was way different than anything else they had experienced before and they felt like it was a good place to be. I am super excited to see their progress and help them learn about the gospel. Have a great week everyone! Love, Elder Seibert Pictures from the conference with President Nelson (I am in the next to back row, weird right?)  And this bottle that a member has filled with snakes, scorpi...

Well I hope everyone had a good week this week. I don't have a ton of time to email this week because we had a conference with President Nelson and Elder Stevenson and a 70 Elder De Hoyos. It was super good, we got to shake their hands and then they all spoke to us as well as their wives. They talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how important it is for us in these days. Especially how important it is that we share it with others because there are so many people who have no idea that Jesus visited the Americas after his death. really only those who have read it know how important it is and we now have to responsibility to share it with others. Well thats all I have time for today sorry, love you all! Elder Seibert PS cockroach pics

Hey Everyone, I hope you all had a good week. This week started off a little crazy for us but quieted down as e went on. Overall super good. Anyway, last Monday I was in Asuncion at the mission home for a dentist appointment, don't worry I am fine. the real news came after when we got back at about 5 that evening. So to start the story I should say that the house we live in is pretty big here in Ybera. Well in the hallway to the kitchen the floor sunk into the ground probably about 4 or 5 inches. So on either side there is exposed dirt in between the tiles and the wall. Well when we arrived, due to the hug amounts of rain the night previous and extremely hot temperatures during the day, about 200 to 300 cockroaches invaded our house. Luckily they were mostly all dead because of this insecticide stuff they give us here that is super strong that we spray in the house, but needless to say not a happy surprise. The obvious next step was look for a new place to live which we did...

Hey All, I hope everyone had a good week. Here in Paraguay it has been raining a lot which is good because it means it isn't too hot but it also means no one wants to talk to us so we had a few slow days this week. But on the flip side the work overall is really picking up. We have found some super good people that are interested and have started to progress. there are always bumps along the way but I am super happy here.  I really loved general conference and always love hearing from the prophet. Which I guess is good because word has it that he is coming to talk to our mission on October 22 with Elder Stevenson. And then like 6 weeks later Elder Gong is coming too. So either we are about to be super blessed or we are in a lot of trouble here in Paraguay, who knows. Anyway, love you all! Elder Seibert

Hey Everyone, Hope you all are doing well. This week was pretty good. Although it has been a little slow in the area since I have gotten here we are starting to get things figured out and working. The ward here is super good and well organized. It has existed for a long time and the boundaries are small so it seems like even the non members know who we are and a lot of them don't want anything to do with us unless they have friends in the church. So we have been doing everything possible to get references. Although it is harder than my last area I am still loving it! Love Elder Seibert

Hey everyone, Well this week has been pretty good. I am in a new area called Yberá. It is right in the middle of a city here, so a little different than my last area. I really like it though. I can walk the distance of my area in about20 minutes so that is kind of cool, i have never been able to do that before. I have always had huge areas to cover. The members here are great and I really like my new companion Elder Toro, he is from Chile.  The only hard part is that there are 4 catholic churches in my area and the people are not really interested in talking to us. Not a single person we talked to this week waited even 20 seconds before telling us they weren't interested in what we had to say. Also a big change from my other areas where most people were at least open to listening. But all is good here, I am happy and healthy. Love, Elder Seibert

Hey All, I hope everyone had a good week. due to technical difficulties i have basically no time. So sorry no pics. The news is that I am being transferred but I don't know where. More on that next week. This week was good though. I gave a talk at church yesterday because they found out is was my last week here n the branch. I cried, pretty embarrassing. I realized that I really care for these people a lot more than I though, haha. I mean I always knew I loved them but it was actually harder than I thought to say goodbye like that. Being a missionary makes you a baby. Love, Elder Seibert