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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Good luck to Bryan

1/10/11
Ola família!
 
Como estão as coisas por aí? Happy Late Birthday to Mike and Jaimee!! Unfortunately, my birthday calendar is not exactly up-to-date. I hope that your birthdays were great! Go watch Tron for me. Everyone from Thatcher is coming down to Mesa! Crazy. Although, this next weekend everyone will be there for Bryan´s farewell. Good luck! It´s only a talk, but I want to know how it goes. Womp. Bryan is growing up! And I enjoyed the pictures of Kade´s wedding.
 
This last week was good stuff!  We have called it the Week of Reactivation! We spent a lot of time working with this less-active family. The parents have already gone through the temple, but only the dad goes every once in a while. They´ve got 6 kids, 3 of which are young men ages 18-20 that can go on missions (18 is the new age to leave in Brazil). They really like Elder Fraga, so things are going well there. 2 of the kids came to Church with the dad, and also their cousin that lives with them. His name is Julho, he´s 25 and has a baptismal date for this Sunday. The only thing is that he smokes, but I´ll have you know that we were all surprised when he came to Church on Sunday! When we went by on Friday and Saturday, he was keeping away from us, and we thought that he had given up. Neat! Bruno also came to Church again. He needs to get married soon! The last that I heard, he just needs to mark the day, which usually happens 30 days after you pay. Please don´t transfer me, President Oliveira!
 
The other elders had a baptism/reactivation. The one girl in white (picture below), got baptized and confirmed this weekend. She´d been baptized over a year ago, but never got confirmed, so... Rebaptism! Out of the family, only Domingas has been active (the short grandma-type lady), but her daughter (far left) and granddaughters (everyone else in the picture) live in the same house and finally came to Church this Sunday. Domingas is awesome!!! I will never leave Tijucal because it will be super hard to leave our "grandma" here. She´s really frank and says hilarious things. We made her cookies last night because she´s the best.
 
In other news, one of the friends of this less-active family showed us his collection of Beatles records today. Awesome! I got trunky, because I love the Beatles. He has 21 records including all of their CD´s, and also some best hits and a live recording. He is selling them for $1000 US. If anyone wants to buy some, I got the hook ups. We ate some fancy chicken thing today too and the less active family´s house. I got to watch the chicken get killed and help de-feather the little guy! Fun stuff.
 
That´s it for now. It´s January! Happy 11 months on the mission to me! I´m excited for this next year and want to get lots done here on the mish. Have a wonderful week, and remember who you are!
 
Loves,
Elder Carpenter
 
1/17/11
Minha Família Amada,
 
How are you doing, folks? Everyone is probably crying at the moment because our dear Bryan is going off to the field. Congratulations and I wish you the best of luck, Elder Smith! You´ll do great. Everyone keeps telling me how good your talk was and that they´ll miss you to death. Just remember to work hard and be happy! It´s all part of life.
 
This past week was fun stuff! We had lots of interesting experiences. We went to a Churrasco that is close to our house. As I cut a piece of blood-red meat and was about to put it in my mouth, I saw that there was a worm on top. I could have died! Thankfully, I didn´t have to pay for lunch and we all got out of there quick before we all started dying. That is why I don´t like raw meat.
 
We also helped some of the members load up this gigantic truck with branches and plants that they had trimmed. I felt like I was back at home cutting the boganvias (?). Fun stuff. As we were driving to dump the plants off in the forest, Irmão Café wasn´t really paying attention. He had hid some button or something and the back part of the truck was rising up to dump out the garbage in the middle of the freeway. He quickly fixed the situation, but it was hilarious and lots of people were honking at us. Good times on the mission.
 
Sadly, the guy that came to Church last week, who is the nephew of a less-active, was going to get baptized but didn´t want to give up his beer! He smokes, and drinks coffee, which he said he could do, but he "can´t do without the beer." It made us sad, but not discouraged.
 
Thankfully, some members brought friends to Church! A+! One of them doesn´t live in our area, but the other one does. So, we´re gonna be working with her! We´re excited. There´s gonna be a Zone Conference tomorrow and I´m excited to see some old comps. Especially, Elder Santana!
 
                                     Domingas family with E. Saito

                                      Drinking Xi Marrom
                                    E. Fraga and Beatles
Have a splendid week! I heard that it´s been raining lots up there in the Valley. Fact or fiction?! Every afternoon it´s been raining here in Cuiabá. A MUCH welcome change.
Abraço,
Elder Carpenter

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