July 18th letter

Caro Família,

Julho está bem quente aí? Eu sinto muito. It´s starting to get hot in Maracaju as well. No fun! I like the cold so much better.
Let´s do a run-down of the week, starting with-
Monday: Transfers! We ate lots of sub sandwiches at Gilmar´s house (he´s the ward mission leader of Dourados 1) and played Uno Spin. Then, we did companion switches until everyone was on the bus to their new areas or had already arrived in Dourados.
Tuesday: District Meeting was good stuff. Our new district is full of old and new people. All of the newbies are in their 3rd transfer (one is Elder Vargas who is actually American with a weird name). We had a 2 hour busride and then got in to Maracaju! We visited a few people, but didn´t have much time to get things done.
Wednesday: Lunch at Irmã Josy´s house! She had some family in town from another state, and we decided to teach them about the Restoration. Josy´s sister-in-law is a Jehovah´s Witness, so she wasn´t too happy to be there. Elder Tragante and I had been teaching the Restoration with a different setup, and he ended up doing the First Vision. Then, he asked the mom is she knew who the 2 people were that came to Joseph Smith. I´m not sure, but I think that JW´s only believe in one God. She said, "I don´t know." Then I tried to do damage control and invite everyone to Church in Goias and to pray about our message. We taught Eli (who came to Church), too, but she thinks that baptism this Sunday is really soon. AGH! So, we left the Book of Mormon with her and she´s going to read.
Rest of the Week (I´m running out of patience): We visited Eli some more and she felt that she got an answer and came to Church. She´s progressing really well! The other kids that went to Church last week, went off to the farm where their mom lives, and weren´t able to come to Church. This happens a lot here because lots of people live on farms nearby and don´t stay at home on the weekends. But, they´ll be here next week. Branch Conference was awesome! We had 72 people at Church, 8 of which aren´t members. Some of the investigators are boyfriends that we´ve already taught but don´t want to get baptized, people that aren´t married, Eli, and Gabriel. On Saturday night, we were going with Geise to teach one of her friends, and another friend of hers was playing soccer in the street and asked if she was going to Church with us. She said no, but invited him to go on Sunday. He came! Yet another testimony that lots of people are only hidden from the truth because they don´t know where to find it. We went to teach him last night, and he accepted to get baptized on Sunday. Then, we wanted to talk to his parents, since they were off in their house. He came back and his mom had said to come back another day to teach them because they were drunk. This family is from Paraguay (about 2 hours from Maracaju) and Paraguay had beaten Brazil in a soccer game yesterday. So, they were pretty drunk. Womp! But, we´ll go there today. The "special number" turned out good in the conference. The Stake President was telling everyone that they should keep doing musical numbers and take advantage of the musical talent that is here. Woot! I´m willing to help, but I´m not nearly as good at the piano as I used to be. In all, it was a good week. We didn´t have a baptism, but we´ll change that. I have been studying Jesus the Christ lately, and it´s awesome! So many cool insights that James A. Talmage has. It´s always the highlight of my day, and I usually end up reading a little bit at night. My journal is a few days behind though...

Elder Tragante and I are getting along really well. He´s funny and full of energy. His dad served a mission and has a gigantic family in the Church in Curitiba. Curitiba isn´t very far away from here but they have 16 stakes there! Our entire mission has 5 stakes and 3 districts! Nossa. He used to have crazy emo hair before the mission, and his pictures are just plain silly. But, he´s an awesome kid. He went to a few concerts in the US when he visited his aunt and we liked lots of the same music, so that gives us something to talk about. He teaches kind of weird in our lessons, but we´re helping each other out. When I had his time in the mission, I could barely even speak. It´s also funny because they use different slang in Curitiba, so he´s teaching me some things.

Good week to all! Soak in the sun! Love ya!
-Elder Carpenter