August 29, 2016

Hi all!

Well it was a pretty good week here in DC. Things are starting to cool down a little, but it would be nice if it does more!! We are still sweating it up pretty good here. 

This week was a really regular week for missionary work, we did pretty good on lessons taught and had some exchanges with elders in the zone. We do have a baptism that should happen this upcoming Sunday though!! So Sister Hardy is a less active lady and we stopped by cause she has tons of grand kids that she has legal custody of and have been baptized and we found out she has two that are over 8 that haven't been baptized yet. So for the past 5 weeks we have been teaching them and now Kyrie and Hayley should be baptized on Sunday! We are super excited and we will make sure to keep ya in the loop on that one!

Other than that it's been a week of letting adjustments sink in. It's been kinda a hard transfer just having so much change. Usually mission presidents don't make changes so fast I feel like, but since Baltimore missionaries came down it made the changes happen faster since it was a mold of two mission cultures. And it's been super hard. The two big overlying things the church has made policy changes are just with us being more effective with our time and not traveling as much. They have been quoted saying they don't want us to make friends because we should be focused on the work. And you know me, I'm a people person and I love getting close with people. So it's been hard. Just that I can't see these guys I've gotten super close with. But we are moving forward, it's hard but it's not gonna change back so I've just had to get over it and move along. It's really hard when you are feeling like you have to prove yourself as a missionary and leader to your companion, but things are getting better. We've had some good talks and it's improving I feel like.. 

Missions are hard, but so worth it. Biggest thing I've learned this transfer is hard things are good things. And I'm glad things haven't come easy for me on and off the mission so far. Learning to work for your reward is worth it. I hope you all have great weeks adjusting back to school!! I miss and love you all!!

Love,

Austin

We drove past a High School on Friday and it's the start of 

Friday Night Lights around here!! Man it was rough, we wanted to 

stop and watch the game so bad!!

Always reppin the 801!!

 

August 22, 2016

Hi everyone!!

I cannot believe that it is already time to get back to school!! And that this is the last school year I won't be apart of!  Time is flying! But it sounds like everyone had pretty decent weeks. 

That's awesome the Morgan's got to come speak to the ward! I'm so excited for them to get out here.  It's always fun to have a familiar face in the mission! I'm not positive about splits but we have senior couples come to lessons with us quite often so both Pres and Sis Morgan could come out depending on where they get assigned. It will be fun to have them in 5 weeks! 

To answer you questions- we talked to President about flipping areas and he's still trying to make a decision. He has a lot of things going on so I don't really think it's the top of his priority list. There are quite a few details that he has to consider. So I'll keep you in the loop! We are suppose to talk more on Tuesday with him. 

This week was another pretty same old same old mission week. The few highlights were Zone Conference, Stake Coordination (not really a highlight), and Why I Believe. 

So Zone Conference was on Wednesday and it was really good! A little hectic and not as smooth since it was the Johnson's first one. But it was still super good! I gave a training on helping other missionaries more confidently share their testimonies. And then the Johnson's focused on teaching the Restoration. It was great to spend time with them, they really are like parents out here to me!

Then it was Stake Coordination.. Ugh. How much I hate those stupid spreadsheets. But we have gotten it down so it onto takes us about 2 hours. But now we had to take the Excel app off our iPads cause it's not a "Church Approved App". So say hello to 4-5 hours next time we do it.  Pres Cooke said we could use it but Pres Johnson is very by the book so we have to wait to get it approved by Salt Lake. 

Then Why I Believe was sweet!! First of all we get to see other missionaries which is amazing! I miss all my friends in other zones. I got to see guys like Elder McDonald, Florence, Jenks, Mellen, Cowan. Almost everyone! Plus even better Ismael was there!! Felt kinda bad for the Laurel guys but he wanted to come sit with me hah. I love that kid! And the on top of that Josephine Chamberlain was there with a few of her boys! So in one night I got to see two of my favorite people I've worked with!! It really made me feel good and remember the good I've done on my mission so far, especially in the kinda work slump we've been having in this area. 

Things are going good out here. It is getting cooler which is a relief and we are fast approaching another transfer which is crazy to think! There's a high probability I'll get transferred out this time and there are two places which are probably my most likely, College Park ZL or DC 2nd YSA ZL, which I would be super excited for either! So we will see soon! 

Have a great week getting back to school! I love and miss you guys!!

Love,

Austin 

Ceasar (guy who loves missionaries and feeds us) at our Ward FHE this last week 

Ismael & Me at Why I Believe 

August 15, 2016

Hi everyone!

Things are starting to get back into the normal routine around here! It was sad to see Chico go, but we have him set with some Visitors Center sisters to stay in touch with him thorough Facebook and things like that until he gets to Zambia and reconnects with the missionaries there.

About switching to South. So I served there with Elder Cowan so it wouldn't be too bad if it happens since I know the area and most the people they are working with. Just the thought is our area is super slow, and their area is too much work for them. Cause they are the French missionaries so they cover the whole stake for French then the South area just for English and it's gotten too busy with French. So President was gonna think and pray about it the talk to us at Zone Conference this week about it. 

I am so jealous of you guys getting to watch the Olympics.. I'm sure they have been tons of fun! Only 16 days until College Football starts and that one will be rough on me haha. I'll make it though. 

This week was a pretty good one.. Except for the fact it was so freaking hot here!! The heat index hit 109 this last week. The humidity.. Man if felt like a sauna. Let's just say I'll probably burn all my shirts before flying home and just get one new one to come home in. But it's all good. I got to go on exchange with some of the Spanish elders and had some good appointments as well.. We have started playing Prose-Ball for some finding. Which includes us balling kids up in our shirts and ties. It's a ton of fun and we actually get people to become more interested in the church. Plus we are a pretty good duo.. Especially since Elder Sherratt is 6'5" haha

Thursday was by far our highlight. We had interviews with President and Sister Johnson and they are the best!! I'm glad I was able to get to make a immediate connection with them. I talked to both of them for probably 30 plus minutes and they were both great talks. I'm comfortable enough with President to tell him I'm getting a little burnt out on the area and he talks to me about mission business a lot. They are just so awesome!! 

But the coolest thing happened during interviews. So a guy named Paul showed up and wanted to talk to missionaries. He told us his story and how he's been jumping from church to church trying to find the true one. And he kept coming back to the Mormons. Long story short he felt like he needed to come to the chapel so he could be taught. No one is usually at the chapel on a Thursday at noon. We taught him an awesome lesson that President even came and sat in on for a few minutes and we are going to start teaching him.  It is so cool to see how the "coincidences" of life are not that at all. But the Lords hand in our day to day lives. He cares about Paul enough to prompt him to go to the church when we are there, and he cares enough about us to prompt and help us as well. If we are mindful and watchful everyday we can see miracles. I know God was and still is a God of miracles. 

I hope you all have great weeks getting ready to go back to school! I love and miss you guys!!

Love,

Austin 

I'll fill you in in them all next week! They are grand kids of a less active.  We are teaching the 

two that are 8 and 9 trying to get them baptized. It is a crazy house with all the kids but nothing a 

video on the iPad can't fix haha!

August 8, 2016

Hi everyone!

Yeah the transition is setting in a little better. We have interviews with President this week so I'm excited to be able to talk to him a little more about everything. Like you said when we are serving others and serving with them our prospective of them will change. So I'm sure it's just a matter of time for the 2 missions cultures to be able to better mesh. But it will be all good!

My week was pretty uneventful as well. So this might be a boring email. (Yes Mom I know you are saying any email is a good email..) We just did some settling into the area, a few zone errands, but ended up teaching a good amount of lessons! 7 investigator lessons, which for this area is pretty good! We are teaching a part member family where the wife isn't a member as well as two grandkids of a semi active grandma. So it's good! Especially with this sad news.  So Chico is moving back to Zambia. So we are sending a baptism to Africa, cause he had all the lessons taught and was ready to have his interview. That was really rough. Then on top of that Alex dropped us pretty much. But said he would meet with us after 2 weeks of reading the BoM on his own. So hopefully he will and we can come back and keep teaching him. But if not we will just move on and find others to teach. This area is pretty slow though. I'm kinda getting sick of it but there is talk we might get flipped down to the South area which would be AMAZING! I love that area and it is such a active area! I'll let you know any updates on that next week!

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. I'm glad you are able to interact with all the old ward members! There are so many good people in the two wards back home. I will still claim most of Bellevue as my home ward!  

Love and miss you!!

Austin

Official Year Mark Shirt Burn!! 

We went to the Library of Congress and the Capitol Building for p-day

Almost all the DC 3rd Elders.  Just missing Elder Stubell and you have the 6 of us 

that serve in the ward together.

My new companion, Elder Sherratt, is the tall one to my left.

August 1, 2016

Hi all!! 

Like you, I can't believe it is August and Friday is my official year mark. We are either a year out until I'm home or less and that is just crazy. In some ways it has gone so fast, others I feel like I've been here forever. Sounds like it was a good relaxed week for you all. Man do I miss those! 

So to be 100% honest this week was a pretty hard one. Really tough and overwhelming. So I am staying here in DC 3rd and my new companion is Elder Sherratt who came down from being one of the Annapolis ZLs. He's from Anaheim, California and has been out for 15 months. He's a really great missionary. 

Sending home a group of 24 that includes some of your good friends on the mission is really hard. This was the first group that has been hard to see go. Some of those guys were like older brothers to me when I got here. So watching them all leave the Stake Center parking lot to go to the airport was a real heart breaker. But they all served great mission and I'm happy for them to move on to other things. 

So as we all would have guessed, getting a new mission President, loosing 24 missionaries, bringing in 23, plus adding a new stake and 28 missionaries from another mission is a lot of changes. And change is so hard sometimes. It is good, but so hard. There have been so many little changes (and big ones) that have happened it is super overwhelming. It's been tough. I could list out all the little things that have been changed with rules and everything, and each one on its own doesn't seem like much, but add them all together and it's been rough. I know all of these changes are meant to make us better and serve better but still is tough. Plus the missionaries that came down from Baltimore are struggling with the new mission. I can't blame them for missing their old mission, but DC North is such an amazing place to be. And they just keep complaining about anything we do different than how they did. So that's hard.. Elder Sherratt isn't like that, but it's sure an adjustment to a comp who is use to a lot of things going different. 

But I'm glad that through all these changes we have someone great like President Johnson. It's a good thing I love him cause it would be pretty rough if I didn't. I had a really awesome interaction with him after MLC (Mission Leadership Council) this part week. We had discussed a lot of changes during the meeting and there were a lot of not happy people in the room but by the end everyone accepted it and moved on. So I was talking to him after and made a comment that I may have been mad, but I accept the changes and support him. Then he looked at me and said, "Elder Carroll I'm glad you were mad. Cause that shows you are passionate about this and the other missionaries. I would so much rather have someone who is PO'ed because they actually care." Then he went on and just was really complimentary of me and talked for a few minutes with me. It was really nice and is something I've looked to this past week a lot. 

Overall this is one of those weeks I'm sure I won't miss on the mission when I get home. But the mission as a whole is so worth it. There are gonna be ups and downs and the best thing about downs is you then get to go up. Well, hopefully cause it will be rough if we have to go down any more haha. 

I sure love and miss you all! Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers!

Love,

Austin 

Great-Grandpa, Grandpa, Father, Son. 4 generations on the mission is pretty rare!! 

Also the only picture I got with Elder Coombs before he left!

 

Me & Elder Tanner

July 25, 2016

Hi all!

Well like you mentioned in your email, this is the crazy week for transfers on Wednesday. We are loosing a group of 24 which includes 2/3 of our assistants and both of our traveling assistants. So it's going to be quite the changes coming for the mission. But we are going to do great and have some awesome missionaries come in to keep it all
going!

Sounds like it was an eventful week. I'm so happy for the new baby to be here!! The cousins are just growing! Can't believe she will be so big by the time I get home! Sounds like Caleb had a great time at scout camp. I remember the night that me and Caden Calton spent the night together finishing our wilderness survival.  Thanks for keeping me in the loop about BYU football! That would be so awesome if that works out for us! What is the look out for the team this year?? Also about my bike. It is currently locked in the basement of our chapel collecting dust. But I do use it if I go on exchange with some bike elders here in the city. But let's just say Caleb might have a pretty nice mountain bike in good shape coming his way in a year 

This week was a pretty good one. Busy with all of the prep for transfers as well as getting everything in place for Elder Jorgensen to go home this week. On Wednesday we got to go to the temple for our departing trip. It was super nice as always. Getting welcomed into the Celestial Room by the Johnsons was amazing. I already feel so close to them and I know I'll probably get closer to them than I did to the Cookes.

Early on in the week JS took us to dinner since Elder Jorgensen is going home. I love that man so much!! He's someone I for sure can't wait to introduce you guys to. He said he is going to try to connect with Dad on Facebook since you don't have one mom! He also said he wants to go to lunch with Dad next time he's here in DC!

On Friday it was departing dinner for the missionaries going home so I got to go on exchange with Elder Torgerson. He's the AP who is just a transfer older than me. I love that kid so much. We are pretty close and it was awesome to be with a younger guy again. He's a stud!

Sunday was another hilight since we went down to White Plains to eat a last dinner with the Beals. It was so awesome getting to be with them again. They are like family to us and love us tons. They told us we have to come visit if we ever come back to DC and to me since I was the only one not going home on Wednesday, that I need to come visit again before I go home. Adam (Beals son we worked with about a year ago) was talking to me and told me that "You and Coombs helped me tons when you were my missionaries, but help me even more now you are just my friends." He said he just set a goal for himself to go through the temple in six months! Man I love them so much. They made missing the 24th pretty decent.

Well I will let you know who I get as a new comp. I will be staying here for for sure this one (duh) and possibly one more. I'm glad to stay for this one cause now I will have served a forth of my mission here in the city. There are days where the mission is hard. But hard things are good. At the end of the day I love it here. I am glad I have another year to work here.

I miss you all!! Love you all so much!!

Love,
Austin

After the temple. The Johnsons took this photo. They just seem so happy to be around us 

all the time!  I have Elder Florence on my shoulders if you can find me....

Dinner with JS

We found out BYU had released the new season shirt for football.  Shirts are $10 so we 

got a group together to order the shirts so we could get free shipping.  All the guys in the 

Zone that bought them wore them to the Zone Activity.

July 18, 2016

Hi all!

Sorry today is our Zone Activity, so this email might be a little shorter but I'll try to fit a lot of good stuff in! So I'll hit all of your questions. First off yeah the humidity has been pretty rough, some days have been brutal. But it's all good. So I've forgot to mention but Pres Morgan has emailed me a few times since getting their call. And he had been up a few times to have dinner with the Johnsons so they know each other pretty good now. And let me say, I LOVE the Johnsons. They are so amazing, so loving!! I swear I've gotten like 20 hugs from the guy already in the few times I've seen him. President Cooke was the mission president I needed for my first year and President Johnson is who I needed for my second year! Transfers are a week from Wednesday.  A ton of guys go home!! Coombs, Jorgensen, Tanner, Patchett. Lots of great guys! So it's been interesting being with a comp that's trying to deal with getting ready to go home. I'm not sure on the format of stuff like call outs. I would say you can bet your mortgage I'm staying here with Jorgensen leaving. Last week for p-day we went to Annapolis, since it is now a part of the mission!! It's was so so cool!! The Naval Academy was incredible and the city of Annapolis is so cool!!

This week was SO busy! Update on Chico and Kirk. So Chico has some pretty bad health problems so he's off and on with being able to meet with us. So we will probably have to bump his baptism. Kirk is still really rough around the edges. We are trying to work through lots of stuff and it's hard to know what to work on first. So it will be a
process with him. We weren't able to see him this week so hopefully really soon!

I then just wanted to share with you guys a really cool experience I had on Friday. So we were on our way back from some service and stopped by to see Caesar really quick. (Member who loves missionaries if you remember) and as we parked I saw this Hispanic guy sitting on these steps looking really stressed and sad. I had an impression to talk to him, but let me doubts take over. My Spanish isn't good at all, so how could I talk to him. We went and came back about 15 min later and the guy was still there. I had the impression again and just got in the car. Then Elder Jorgensen made a comment that he thought we needed to talk to that guy right as we pulled away. Three strikes and I was out. So we parked and went back armed with a Libro De Mormon and a Spanish pass a long card. As we got out I prayed that I would be able to have enough Spanish to talk to this guy. It wasn't just a normal contact, the lord had pointed him out. So we walked and the man wasn't there. I was wrecked. How could I deny these prompting from the Lord that as missionaries we seek so much. Needless to say I was pretty frustrated with myself. As we walked back to the car I prayed again asking for forgiveness to need 3 promptings to get me to listen, and if I crossed paths with him I would talk to him. As we walked I spotted the man now sitting in a parked car. For a split second I thought about how awkward talking to him now would be. But I wheeled around, made eye contact with him and walked over and talked with him. I spoke to this man with the best Spanish I've ever spoke on my mission. 100% the Lord working through me. I was able to give him a card with Spanish Elders numbers and the Libro De Mormon. It was amazing to see this man brighten. I am glad that I am able to be here
in DC working as an instrument in the Lords hands, even if I take a little more reminding and poking than I think he would like.

I love you guys!! Hope you have great weeks!!

Love,
Austin

Free slurpees of course on 7-11

Our Annapolis Trip

So remember on Meet the Mormons the huge milk shake the navy coach goes and gets?