7/30/2013 Casoy :)

• Casoy :)‏

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Dallin Carlson

8:10 PM

Hey everyone!
another awesome week in Toledo! when we were up in Casoy this last
Sunday for the group sacrament, we had higher attendance than
apparently they've ever had- 32! Even an elderly couple, Brother and
Sister Rico, came from Bagakay! from what I've been told, they and
some others come to Casoy sacraments sometimes but only one member
from Bagakay has ever come all the way to the church in
Toledo....once. but all the members and investigators from Casoy
always do! So that's why we're holding the sacrament meetings in
Casoy. One of our investigators there has taken a long time to pray
to know if it's true, and in his prayer he asked for a sign - if the
church was true, have the lizard there (called tuko in Visaya) make a
noise (croak type of sound) three times, and if it wasn't true, have
the rooster outside crow three times. To give you an idea, it's
almost always the chickens and roosters making noise and hardly EVER
the tuko/lizard. But apparently when he prayed, the tuko sounded, and
the chickens were silent - that hardly ever happens, but he already
had the faith to finally pray about it, and for him, this church is
definitely the true. Of course I already knew that, but I'm glad i
could assist someone else in finding that out for theirself.
We're also getting a ward plan set up! We've got plans started for a
ward fireside about the how and the why of referrals, setting up a
church tour, and other stuff! We're even gonna train our ward
missionaries on how to extract referrals because we can only do so
much on our own. I'm not sure if we're starting a wave here or if
we're catching on or starting the catching on here - either way, it's
awesome!! We've got plans to help the investigators and recent
converts and less-actives, as well as the active members - and helping
them to help others! so we're going to do our best to help everyone
come unto Christ and build their lives on that sure foundation
"whereon if men build, they cannot fall" (Helaman 5:12)
hope you have a good week! Next saturday we should be having a
pentuplet (5 people being born[in Christ] again through) baptism!
It's all people from Casoy and they all seem to be ready for baptism,
and they will be interviewed this weekend!
a kugihan sulugoon sa Ginoo,
Elder Dallin Carlson

7/24/2013 Hey Everyone!

• Hey everyone‏

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Dallin Carlson

9:12 PM

To: Christine Carlson

• 

kamusta tanan!
how's everything where you are? I am doing pretty good here with
Elder Gaerlan, he's super kugihan(diligent)! our only obstacles are
the people using their agency to not recieve our teachings. But he's
awesome and I hope we can do wonders here - I went from no baptismal
candidates to 5 which will maybe be baptized on august 10th! The only
problem which might arise is that we can only teach the husbands once
a week because they're working most days, but it's going pretty good
overall. one of the husbands used to be a born again - he is starting
to accept the Book of Mormon, but he still asks for bible verses for
everything we teach - I'm not sure yet why, I'll try asking him and
teach him how to find them for himself when he has time. apparently
he's even reading Jesus the Christ!
I'm glad I have this chance to work with Elder Gaerlan on my language
a bit - everyone says I have an accent that makes it a bit harder to
understand me, and my grammar's a little off - I'm still working on
how to take care of that so they can focus more on the message and
less on the way I say it - I'm seeing more and more how we should do
language study throughout the mission like so few missionaries seem to
do here.
anyways, I've gotta go! I guess next time I should print off emails to
me so I can write more and use the time on the computer more
effectively.
gotta go! talk to you all next week!
Elder Dallin Carlson

7/16/2013 Transfers Na!

• transfers na!‏

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Dallin Carlson

9:18 PM

To: Christine Carlson

• 

Hi everyone!

stuff's going pretty good here in Toledo - it's different with Elder Ursenbach not here anymore (he's a Returned Missionary now) but it's ok because my new companion is Elder Gaerlan!  He's from Davao Philippines and he's really kugihan(diligent) and we've been getting some good work done!  It's pretty easy to get along because he was in the other half of our branch's area - The Lord's plan was perfect for our area - we needed sisters in our part of the area, so he assigned an elder in both companionship's in Toledo 2nd branch so their companions could become a companionship, and so it worked perfectly!  It'll be interesting to get the sisters to where they know the area and the people - I think we'll have them use the area book and ward missionaries as well, because we won't have much time for that.

My new area (the other half of Toledo 2 area) is very very remote!  just yesterday we went to  a part of the area that took an hour ride mostly along a dirt road to get there!  the view was pretty awesome though, and we got to have some coconuts from this guy we're going to start teaching next week!  It's pretty awesome.  I'm excited.  Even though there's gonna be a TON of walking that might somehow make me lose even more weight.

anyways, g2g now and try to get stuff done!  

a servant of the Lord,

Elder Dallin Carlson

7/09/2013 Natiwas na nako Ang Basahon ni Mormon!‏

• Natiwas na nako Ang Basahon ni Mormon!‏

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  Dallin Carlson

  7/09/13

  

  To: Christine Carlson

  

  • 

  I just finished the Book of Mormon!  Every other time I've read it, it was to "Go through the Book of Mormon" and not for "It to go through me" like Elder Ardern talked about during the mission tour.  At the beginning of my mission, I started it and just took my time, trying to "unpack" it like you've talked about, with understanding the doctrine in it and all the different aspects of it which we can learn from.  and now, almost a year later, I've finished it through once, and it definitely went through me!  but I'm going to continue reading it, because we can always learn more - no matter how many times we've read it.

  I loved the workshop the Zone Leaders gave from the things they learned in the Zone Leadership Conference with the Mission President; it was exactly what I need!  I'm always hard on myself for making mistakes and then just try hard as if I can do it all on my own.  That workshop about "the merits of Jesus Christ"  was incredibly needed and eye-opening.  No one else could have done what he did, and there is no other way to get to the Celestial Kingdom besides doing our best AND relying on the merits of Jesus Christ.

  The other day, our Branch Mission Leader made a funny comment about how he was reading in "that new manual, Preach My Gospel" ...  I told him to take a look at it because he thought we were still doing the six memorized discussions - But now he's actually reading it!  I feel like it's a major accomplishment.

  Oh yeah, and last week going towards our activity I rode on top of the jeepney with some other missionaries and a ton of other people because the inside was full:P  It was a pretty awesome experience.

  and a funny thing that happened was that we asked a new investigator if he had prayed about the Book of Mormon, and he said that he had - I was suspicious of that because we hadn't taught it yet - and He hadn't even found out what that was yet!   He was just telling us what we wanted to hear and not even paying attention to what he was saying yes to. Lets just say that we won't be focusing much on him anymore - he seems to really want to stay catholic.

  but I'll keep searching the field to find the elect ready to be harvested!

  love you all!

  -a servant of the Lord,

  ~Elder Dallin Carlson

7/02/2013 Kalihokan para sa among district ikahuman niini!

• Kalihokan para sa among district ikahuman niini!‏

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Dallin Carlson

7/02/13

To: Christine Carlson

• 

It's another extremely hot humid day in Toledo...but I'm not sick this time!  I think I've got this water thing down finally... mostly all filtered water from the 5 gallon things at our apartment, and lemon oil in anything else.

Anyways, as for the area, we picked up the numbers for our FTEs and then our lessons.. now we're going to try and get both of those sets to the amount they should be at already.  One other good thing we've done is caught up the area book and now updating it nightly!  It's so much easier when we're keeping it up regularly when it's fresh in our minds.  

We learned something really good from Elder Cox as he taught the district meeting this last week.  he gave this really cool analogy where we're rock climbing and we're hooked to an anchor above (Jesus Christ) and the other members should be hooked onto the anchor, but they're not really and their mainly hooked up to the missionaries.  imagine a whole branch, a bunch of people, almost all of them hanging off of the missionaries.  It's not fun.  We need to pull them up so they can cast up their lines and make Jesus Christ the anchor of their soul and so through their support through us and Jesus Christ, they will always have that line they need in Jesus Christ even when other lines get severed or anything.

it stinks, but I'm at the end of my email!  I've gotta go.  Hope all is well there!

Elder Dallin Carlson

6/26/2013 Locked IN the church!

We finally got the mission standard of excellence for FTEs (Finding The Elect - like Open Your Mouth or Invite 2 Learn but more focused) here in Toledo 2nd branch!  For some reason, it's been really hard here.  I don't know what it is about this area - we always seem to have bad luck. For example, I haven't even heard before of someone getting locked in the church before!  We were teaching an investigator there, and then the member setting up for a meeting left (with the keys for the locks on the gate things in front of each door).  and if we don't have a kuyog, almost everywhere we go, we can't teach because there is no adult male there.  But we still try to do our best and help people despite the bad luck.

The investigator who we were teaching when we got locked in the church is called "Napjohn" and out of all our investigators, he is progressing the most.  The only thing is, he's 17 and so he'll need to be interviewed by the mission president once we finish teaching him everything.  But he loves learning the gospel and he's keeping commitments!  

We have some other investigators, but most of them just don't seem as committed or interested, but we've got some that while they aren't at that level, they're definitely headed in that direction.  

anyways, we've gotta go and get the other stuff done for Preparation Day!  Hope you're all doing well!

a servant of the Lord,

Elder Dallin Carlson

6/17/2013 Different P-Day

• Different p-day (just this week)‏

Dallin Carlson

6/17/13

To: hellofriendcc@hotmail.com

• 

Kamusta, Tanan!

So we have Preparation Day on Monday this week because Elder Ardern, an area seventy, is doing a mission tour, so on Wednesday all the missionaries  on Cebu Island will be in a conference with him. That won’t leave any time for P-day,  so they’re giving us time Today to do all that stuff, like this message!

Anyways, Toledo 2nd area! I love being here with Elder Ursenbach and in the same house with the Zone Leaders, but the hard part is the area. We always have to have a kuyog or we can't get any work done most of the time because most of the people willing to be taught during the day are the women and children left at home when the dad is working. But we have a ward missionary willing to come with us most days so it works out. The interesting thing is that he has a drinking problem - we've taught and taught him, but not much seems to be happening. We're trying to figure out a different approach right now. 

In my studies, I've been trying to learn how to ponder, but it's really hard.  I'll just continue to try and figure my brain out with my brain ... that's quite a headache :P maybe I can use reverse Psychology! 

I know  this is coming on a different day than usual, but we have a huge meeting thing far away and so just for this week, we have P-day on a different day.  but I'll talk to you again in 9 days during p day next week!

We have this thing sorta like what Jesse did with OYM but we call it FTE (Find The Elect) so it has more focus on our purpose in doing it.    I want to help these people, but sometimes it's a group of people we've talked to before, or a group of guys who will just make fun of us, or a girl who probably won't be able to focus on the message.

anyways, I've gotta go because I'm running out of time 

Hope All's well with you and yours!
-og missionaryo sa Ginoo,
~Elder Dallin Carlson