What an action-packed week that it has been! I´m now in Campo Grande! The capital of Mato Grosso do Sul. Things are going great here. We have a gigantic ward and the members are excited and want to divide soon. Our ward mission leader is Josimar, who is the best ward mission leader that I´ve had on the mission! He´s like 23 and SUPER excited and happy to help us baptize here. He served his mission in Recife, Brazil which is a baptizing machine, so he has all sorts of good techniques to find people to teach and whatnot. Our bishop served a mission during the same time as Seth and is very young and excited to help us out.
This last week was Stake Conference, which was weird because I don´t know ANYBODY in the entire stake, let alone the ward that I´m serving in. But, we brought a 12 year old young man to Stake Conference called Marcellus. We met a recent-convert in the park and he was playing soccer with a lot of his friends. Everyone was invited to Church and Marcellus was the only one that really wanted to go. After chatting with his mom (she´d already heard some lies about our Church), she said it was fine if he went. About 30 minutes in to the 2 hour conference, he started asking, "When does this end?" Elder Stipanich and I both looked at each other with "Oh my" in our faces. Thankfully, Marcellus likes Dragonball Z drawings and the dot game. We watched the baptism of the other companionship in our ward and he liked it a lot. Last night, we went with Josimar who is super crazy and STILL remembers all of his missionary techniques from 2 years ago and taught Marcellus´ parents. Now they are our friends and will come to Church this Sunday!
Elder Stipanich is from Santos, São Paulo! His great-grandparents are from Austria which is where he gets his name from. My 12th Brazilian companion! He is 22 years old and has a high-pitched voice, but he is an awesome companion! We get along really well and are gonna start doing crazy things to find people to teach. Elder Daniel Stipanich is super skinny and always talks during the messages and invites everyone to be baptized.
The other day we were talking about how all of our investigators are weird and we feel like we´re in Zombie Land. We visited this ex-investigator, Dina Gelatina, who likes tea and has a little bit of testimony about the Church and whatnot, but won´t accept to get baptized! But she sure loves to talk about tea (there is only one kind of tea in Brazil that is against the WOW). Then, we visited this less-active who is coming back to Church. After he took his time making juice and spilled some on my pants (then offering to have me use a pair of his. No thanks!) we figured out that he was drunk. His prayer after the message was interesting. Hmmm.... we´ve got Marta who is going to get baptized but she´s kind of crazy. If they were to make a movie about her, it would be called 50 Going On 15. That about sums her up. And the best for last is Reginaldo! He´s a guy that asked for the Book of Mormon through the Church website. When we FINALLY found his house in the middle of nowhere, his wife answered and said that they were Evangelical and didn´t want to change religions. We said that she´d asked for a Book of Mormon (because Reginaldo sent his request in her name) and she said, "Oh! That was my husband." Then we met Reginaldo. As he began to explain to us, he is a philosopher and thrives on knowledge. When he saw that there existed an Outro Testamente de Jesus Cristo, he had to get his hands on it. After telling us about his expansive library of knowledge and books that he´s read (the likes of Steven Hawkins and Benjamin Franklin, one of the "former USA Presidents"), he let us teach him about the Restoration. Reginaldo liked it a lot and accepted a date to get baptized and to read the Book of Mormon. We´re going back there this week to see how it´s going. We´re determined to baptize this guy!
Well, I love you! Stay out of the record heat and get in the A/C! It´s the way to be.
-Elder Carpenter
Fotos: Elder Stipanich teach a rock. Gigantic cat at lunch.
Brazilian Fact: Salgado = Pastries with meat and cheese inside! Kind of like Hot-Pockets but maybe more healthy.
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