You may notice that today is not Monday. I'm sorry that you had to wait until Wednesday. I'm hoping you didn't worry too much. It's been a really crazy story and I'll tell it in the letter.
Monday 7- That was a long time ago. More than a week. I don't really have anything in my planner. I have that we had a member lesson (I don't know who with) and that we went to Big Boy for breakfast. But that's about it... Sorry...
Tuesday 8- We had some real quick weekly planning, like hour long instead of three. Then we had a district meeting with the Mission President and his wife. She talked about managing stress while he did interviews. They're really awesome. He's just a really funny guy but he knows his stuff. Then the district went to get smoothies. We were going to see one of our investigators, named Margarita but her roommate answered the door instead and we taught a quick lesson. She wants to know more but it's more from an intellectual standpoint than a spiritual one. She's from Turkey and she's named Deyra. I think... Then we saw Waiting, but Jianming wasn't home, so we went to a member's house and had some Chinese dessert while talking about General Conference and prophets. Then Jianming called to say he was home, so we went back and had a very similar lesson with him, but it was good.
Wednesday 9- We had planned on seeing some people in a neighborhood called Arrowwood but when we were riding there, we started talking to a lady named Michelle. It was an interesting conversation. She has had a lot of experiences and she liked to talk a lot. I also got sunburned because it was really sunny and it was a long talk. I learned quite a bit though. Then we went to a dinner at a member's house, the Teichert's. Then they came with us to see a less-active family and the two families clicked really well. After that, we saw a former investigator couple, Ryan and Nicole. They're from Shanghai. They're cool people. Nicole is trying to learn the guitar.
Thursday 10- I went on exchanges to the Ann Arbor 2nd area. They don't have any investigators. The missionaries before them were not so great and they had to whitewash the area. We knocked a lot of doors and saw a lot of less-actives but no one was happy to see us. We had dinner at a part-less-active family. It was good but crazy. They had three boys under the age of 8 and they were all over the place. It was fun though.
Friday 11- I exchanged back to my area. Then we had a weekly planning session. It was kinda weird because we had just done weekly planning like three days ago. Then I chased a squirrel up a tree and it started barking at me. I didn't know squirrels could bark. Then we had dinner at the Ward's. He is a member of the stake presidency. They're really cool. Then we went to do an astronomy thing. Apparently, three of Jupiter's moons were going in front of it at the same time. But it happened at like 1 AM, so we just got some cool pictures of the moon. But a less-active (Carl) and our Serbian neighbor-investigator also came. It was pretty cool.
Saturday 12- We met up with a member named Brother Kjar (pronounced "care") and hung out with him all day. His wife's out of town and he works for Google and he just wanted to do some missionary work. We saw a lady named Jill amid a cloud of ladybugs. Seriously there were a lot. I almost was suffocated by them. Then we tried to see some other people but no one was home. We went to Brother Kjar's house and helped him prepare dinner. We made some really good burritos. I chopped some onions and I cried a lot. Then I cut some peppers and accidentally rubbed my eyes. They burned for a really long time but I'm all better now. We had a dinner with the Chen's (Ryan and Nicole) and the Sang's (Waiting and Jianming). It was really fun. Then we watched Elder Holland's talk. So good. We went to see a less-active with Brother Kjar. There was a movie playing and a bunch of cats and screaming children. It was really hard to focus.
Sunday 13- Church was really good as a fast and testimony meeting. It was weird to have my first one as a missionary. It's a lot different. Then we had dinner with the Stein's. They're a super cool family who just want to share the gospel with everyone. We rode over to see a part-member family named the Hoff's. We taught them a real short lesson and rode home.
Monday 14- All the libraries in Ann Arbor were closed on Monday, which is why we couldn't email. I got a flat tire but we patched it up. Then we went to a natural history museum as a district and had a blast. Then the Ann Arbor 2nd Elders realized they had two dinners, so we did splits, I went to their apartments and Elder Shepherd went to ours. We had apartment inspections right after the museum. It was only an hour later that I realized Elder Shepherd didn't have the apartment keys and we were half an hour away. We had a good laugh about it. So we rescheduled our inspections for Tuesday at noon. Then we saw Marcela with Brother Ayala. His grandmother is from Honduras and he speaks Spanish. He was really good, he would just talk to her in Spanish and we would have no idea what they were saying. I think it was on church attendance and judging others. She's great though. We rode home and got a call at about 10:25pm asking if we were going to new missionary training in Livonia. We had no clue. Since we didn't get to email, we didn't know anything about it. It was Tuesday from 9 to 4. So no inspections... again.
Tuesday 15- We had new missionary training which was really, really long. We left at 8am and didn't get home until 5pm. We learned about teaching and how to study and I got to see Elder Jensen from the MTC. When we got back, we had dinner with the Wright's. A super cool couple. They're both studying to become piano teachers and Brother Wright gives piano lessons over Skype. They're just really cool and very missionary minded. Then we went to see the Hoff's again. We watched a video about the Book of Mormon. After that we started biking home. It was 8:55pm and we were almost home but Elder Shepherd wanted to talk to a guy walking his dog. We started talking and he's really interested in our church. We shared Ether 12:27 and he said, "I think you just sold me on being a Mormon!" He's coming to our Book of Mormon study on Thursday and Church on Sunday. He's just a really cool guy named Tim. We would have emailed on Tuesday but we had appointments until about 8:30pm. Crazy day.
Wednesday 16- We had district meeting and I had to give a demonstration about how to begin teaching. It was hard but I did it. Then we went to Subway for lunch. It was good. Then we came here to email. We're going to hopefully have apartment inspections in about an hour and then we have a couple of appointments. It'll be a good day.
Sorry for the wait, I love you!!!
-Elder Michael Carlson
Two things I forgot: First, to those who don't know, the subject is referring to my special socks that have a silver lining to keep away bacteria. Second, PICTURES!!!
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