November 21, 2016

Hi all,

As far as our week and area..  So yeah Tim met his girlfriend in DC from a coworker and she's actually the YSA Relief Society president in the YSA Ward we cover. So we know them both! She did introduce him to the gospel but he's definitely not doing this all for her. He's so awesome. His baptism will be Dec 31st in West Valley. I'll get you more details as we figure it all out. 

This area is awesome!! Maybe the busiest I've been in so far. We have 3 baptismal dates right now: Tim, Nelson (guy I taught when I was sick) and Chris (I'll tell his story in a minute). Plus a few other that are really close. So we stay really busy between the two wards, it's great!

So just two things from the week I'll talk about. First off I met Jason Chafetz at dinner.  We were in Capitol Hill at a YSA dinner and all of a sudden he turns around and see us and says hi to us and thanks us for serving and all this. Pretty cool!  My companion had no clue who he was though haha. He left and Elder Tutuu was just like, "well that was a nice member" haha

Other thing in the story of meeting Chris our new baptismal date. So it's a big string of miracles that is gonna be kinda hard to convey in an email so just know it's a huge miracle. So it starts with him being a BOM online order that never got followed up with, so we called him and set a date. Then we left an appointment both feeling like we needed to get moving. We then spend like 15 minutes trying to get into his retirement home (usually for a referral we knock like twice and bounce), then a lady let's us in and takes us to his room (we are still convinced she's an angel cause she disappeared after we knocked..), then he let us in, we taught a lesson and he accepted a baptismal date on the first lesson. So all in all that was such a cool experience! This area is going so good, it's really been amazing! 

Sounds like it's gonna be quite a party at our house for Thanksgiving. Sure wish I could be there! It's so crazy that next one we will all be together though. Holidays on the mission are great, they are different and you are able to appreciate new things. But I think I would still take the holidays back home. But I'm so glad I'm here!! Wouldn't wanna be anywhere else right now. We are gonna be taken care of, don't worry. We are going to the stake presidents house, he lives in our ward, and then we will go to Sister Mayes family thanksgiving. If you don't remember she's the one with the peppers. She's in our ward here too and she's a ward missionary so we see her tons! So we will be taken care of out here so don't worry too much. 

I'll be thinking of you guys lots this week! Sure love and miss you!! Have a great Thanksgiving!! 

Love you!

Austin 

Lunch with the French Elders after an exchange

Guess who was at Why I Believe last night??

Man I love that kid.

(The answer is Ismael if you don't remember)

November 14, 2016

Hi all!!

Sounds like it's been a good week back home! I guess the sick bug hit all the Carrolls back home and here, I had a pretty bad cold to end the week and I'm still bouncing back from it. But other then that it's been good here. 

Like you would guess the elections made for a kinda crazy week. Wish I was down in DC for it! But kinda cool cause I got to experience DC on Election Day! I was on exchange with one of our DLs who's in the ASL program and we walked the mall and contacted. Plus we walked past the Trump hotel and snapped a quick selfie cause we thought it would be a pretty funny picture to have if Trump did win.. and look at that haha. But also when I was on exchange I got to teach an ASL investigator through a member interpreter, that was such a cool experience! Like you mentioned it's super cool to have so much diversity around here in DC, it is amazing to see all these people from different backgrounds yet still the gospel still applies to all of them. 

Like I mentioned I got under the weather this week, I've had a few little bugs since I've been out but this was probably the worst I've got. It was a bad cold I'm still bouncing back from. Lots of NyQuil and cough drops were put down this week. But it was actually kinda cool thing cause I woke up on Thursday feeling under the weather but went on with the day. We ended up teaching a referral that day. And on the first lesson accepted a baptismal date only 5 weeks out! So awesome! And almost as soon as the lesson ended I really fell under the weather. Kinda cool to see the Lords hand in making sure that lesson happened. We got slowed down a little on Friday from me being sick but we still rounded out a really good week. 

To give an update on Tim, he's pushing his baptism back. But for kinda cool reasons! So he's dating a member girl who's family lives in West Valley and they are coming back to Utah for the holidays. And he wants to get baptized back there! So you'll get to go to a baptism of one of my investigators!!! Plus he's gonna have Elder Warnes baptize him out there since we actually take Elder Warnes to the mission home tonight for him to fly back home tomorrow. I'll keep you up to date as I get more details!

Anyways I hope you all have great weeks. 

Love you guys!

Love,

Austin 

November 7, 2016

Hi Gang,

It was a slower week here just like yours. We had Zone Conference so that absorbed a lot of our week prepping and planning for all of that. I love getting together with the Zone and they announced we will now hold ZC every transfer as opposed to every other that we had been holding previously. 

On Tuesday we got to metro down to DC to teach a YSA lesson. Our YSA ward covers the Suitland and Silver Spring Stake (HUGE BOUNDARIES) and the Suitland stake has the Capitol Hill area in it. So of course I'm very happy cause I get to be back in DC sometimes!! So we went to teach this YSA referral and this guy is nothing like what I'm use to teaching. This guy is 27, got his undergrad at Yale and masters at Duke. He now committed to take the lessons and we are going back tonight to teach him!

Zone Conference was on Thursday and went great. It was fun to see the Morgan's and hear him talk about how much I've grown after he was there for our workshop. We taught on teaching the Plan of Salvation. We talking about emphasizing the Atonement in each point and using the Book of Mormon. Then there was other workshops by the APs and President & Sister Johnson. Another highlight was we got to see the churches new Christmas video!!! It's so great you will love it! 

Since I'm so short I'll tell you about our investigator who will be baptized on the 27th. His name is Tim and he's in his late 30s. He's from Ohio and is out here working in a lab trying to find a cure for malaria. He has a PhD, is super smart, and has some dope tats! He's the best, like is reads everything before hand and has great questions. He's committed to live every commandment we have taught and is good to go for later this month!

I'm glad it was a good week for all of you!! I love you guys! 

Love,

Austin 

The stake boundary is 2nd/ St (road right behind me) so the Supreme 

Court and the Library of Congress is in our YSA boundary!

Some fall colors at the temple. We stopped by the Visitors Center to pick 

up some language BOMs for the Zone when I snapped this. 

 

October 31, 2016

Hi everyone!!

Well sounds like everything is going good back home! As far as for us with Halloween it's just an all day P-Day with us having to be in our apartments from 6 until the end of the night, so a little different if I was at home haha. But I agree I can't believe that we are back into the holiday season! That's fun about the World Series! We have got a little info from on of our investigators but not tons. 

The last week was a pretty good one. We had Zone Training earlier in the week and we felt like it went pretty good. We talked a lot about faith and we got feedback that the missionaries really liked it. We talked about them having faith to find and baptize, but also having faith that if they tried their hardest and those things didn't happen that the Lord is still proud of them and their service. We used a lot from a talk by Elder Bednar where he asked a man if he had the faith enough to not be healed. As well as the Parable of the Seed Grown Secretly which is talked about in Jesus the Christ. 

This week was a lot of checking on referrals, this area gets so many!! Tons of bible referrals for African names we can't even pronounce, so that's fun. This area is a really diverse area, lots of different cultures. As well it was a catch up week where we tried to get a hang of things with the YSA Ward since this is new to all of us. The ward has been covered by the Chinese missionaries as their English area but President changed it so language missionaries now just focus on their language program so we picked up the YSA ward (Glendale) as well as our family ward (College Park). 

YSA is so weird, it kind of feels like hanging out with other kids and then taking about Jesus occasionally haha. But really I'm not use to talking to kids my age anymore, so this will be good to get me back closer to normal before I come home haha. And going to institute on campus is bomb! Holy cow I can't wait to go when I get home cause we get to go and it is so awesome!! Also YSA is tons of fun since I get to work with the Morgan's. Like yesterday I went on a mini split with the Morgan's to the YSA Ward Council and my comps stayed with an investigator in Sunday school. Luckily both wards share the chapel so it's not too bad but it does make for a long day, 7:30-4:30 at the church. 

I do wanna share the story of one of our RC though. It's a long story so I'll give the abbreviated and maybe I can tell the full story at Christmas. So his name is Anwar and he's from Pakistan. So he was in the armed forces there and after he got out he started doing a lot of charity work for the Christians in the country. And some people there didn't like it, and he had a lot of close encounters. Long story short he's been shot, beat, and had his family threatened because of his belief in Christ. He became a religious refugee and got expressed a visa to get him to Bangkok, where there he was transferred to the US. When he got here he prayed for guidance, and no joke as he got up off his knees there was a knock at the door and there stood missionaries. He was then baptized on July 24th. It is so amazing to get to work with him and keep teaching him his new member discussions. His English is pretty broken as he's trying to learn, but he is such an amazing man. I'll get a picture with him this week and send it next week!

Hope you all have a great Halloween!! 

Love you all!!
Love
Austin 

We climbed the steeple at our chapel. It's just a ton 

of ladders, quite the adventure!

 Knocking doors with 3 of us is pretty interesting.. it's a little 

too much on people's porches

For the District Activity today we carved various fruits and 

veggies.. cause pumpkins are too basic

October 24, 2016

Hey Fam!

Sounds like things are going good back home! Bummed about BYU but that is an awesome CC win!! Glad we could get the win over Alta!! 

Well things are doing good out here now! I think I was just shocked to be transferred but now that I am here I have really enjoyed it! I am now serving in the College Park area. So it is the area that surrounds the University of Maryland. It has been quite the adjustment from the ghetto to a college town haha. But I really like this area so far, we are on the DC-Maryland boarder so we have a little area that feels like DC which I love! Then we have the UofM area, some upscale stuff as well as some semi ghetto, lower income areas. So it's a great mix!! Plus there's a lot of work! 

We are double covering wards right now. So we are in the College Park Ward as well as we cover the Glendale YSA Ward. So it was a long day at church yesterday.. 7:30-4:30.  But it's fun! And that is how I serve with the Morgan's, they are assigned to coordinate YSA across the mission so they work here as well as with the other YSAs. But they live within our Zone. 

I am in a trio right now with Elder Warnes and Elder Tutu'u. Elder Warnes goes home mid transfer in 3 weeks because he would have missed 3 Thanksgivings. It has been really fun so far being with both of them, Elder Warnes has been here for 3 months so we are trying to pick the area up from him quick before he goes. Elder Tutu'u only has 2 transfers left after this one so I could be in this area for a little bit which so far I'm cool with. 

Not much to note from this week as it was mostly taking care of transfers for the Zone but we also got to teach some good RC and Investigator lessons. So it will be nice to get a full week of working this upcoming one! So I guess the only thing to note was MLC. I love MLCs so much just getting to see how much the leadership cares for this mission and our missionaries. We did get another rule from the Area Presidency that no one likes.. we can't work out in our Apartment gyms anymore, so I'm gonna be fat when I get home. But they followed up with telling us we did get approved to have a full mission Christmas party so we are so excited for that!! Also Trey, former Elder Tanner, was out visiting with his family so he dropped into the end of MLC to say hi to everyone. Then we came with us to our traditional post-MLC Chipotle. So awesome to catch up with him!

Well I don't have much more to say about this week, but things are going good! I hope everyone has good weeks back home! I love and miss you all!!

Love,

Austin 

Goodbye to Suitland Districts at their District Meetings last week before transfers 

                                

October 17, 2016

Hi everyone! 

First things first, some stuff made for a hold up on transfer board so we don't know anything about transfers until tonight, so it's been a pretty nerve wracking weekend, but only a few more hours! I'll send an email later after I find out to let you know what's going on for the new transfer. 

This week was a pretty good one! I was able to go on some great exchanges. One of them I got to be in a trio with Elder Schank and his trainee. So it was a great posterity time! We tracted, had a member meal and grabbed some ice cream. So all in all was a great time!! Also this week we did some service for a friend of a member and helped build a garden fence, so it was nice to do some manual labor and get some dirt under the fingernails for the first time in a while.

Also this week we were able to go to the temple for the Recent Convert Baptism trip! It was so nice to be back in the temple. Even though it wasn't a full trip to do an endowment session it was great to be in the baptistery with all of these recent converts doing the temple work for their direct ancestors. Such an amazing spirit. We took Clarisee, a convert who was baptized in August when Elder Zocca got transferred down here. She speaks only French and her brother is in the ward so she didn't want to go up to the French branch. So really a miracle Elder Zocca came down and was able to teach and baptize her. 

We then had Why I Believe on Sunday and I got to see the Morgan's! I'm sure they will text you with a picture of us today! It was so awesome to see them and get to talk with them. I sat next to them for the meeting and Clarisee was one of the RC who bore her testimony to start the meeting. So it made for a great night with also getting to see all the old friends from around the mission! Crazy to think it's already been a month since the last one!

Love and miss you guys! 

Love you!!

Austin 

An e-mail we got later with his transfer information-

Calls just came out. So I will be moving again. I'm going to the Silver Spring Zone staying as a Zone Leader in the College Park Area. It's up around the U of M. 

I'll be with Elder Tutuu and Elder Warnes. Elder Warnes is going home mid transfer so that is why we are in a trio to start. 

More info to come, I'll talk to you next week!! Love you!!

Austin 

Exchange with the posterity!!

Anacostia Boys! With Brother Mason, one if our favorites. He has slight mental 

disabilities and he's all the Elders buddy!