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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

11/28/11 Letter

Dearest Family,

Happy Thanksgiving! While I didn´t eat turkey, some members in another ward made turkey for the missionaries that work there. Yes, turkey does exist in Brazil, but it´s kind of rare to eat. I´m not even sure if I´ve eaten it during my time here... Sure happy that you guys ate my share of turkey though! And plenty of other foods. That´s awesome.

First, I want to talk about our P-Day adventures last week! We ate lunch at McDonald´s (blegh) because they have Pokémon toys and cards as the toys. Talk about a ripoff! I payed R$13 which is like $8 for a wimpy piece of meat on bread, cold fries, and a healthy cup of sliced apple (which was about 1/4 part of an actual apple). Gotta love McDonald´s. But I finally have a Pokémon card in Portuguese. We checked out plenty of crazy stuff downtown and I found a dart blower (with wooden stick darts), fancy pants necklace, Peruvian backpack, and a classic giant horn made of cow horns. Everyone has to bring one of those home from Brazil. And to top it off, we bought pastries of crocadile meat. Crocadile is some tasty stuff! It´s seems like a mix of chicken and fish. Funky taste and worth the ridiculous price. One more thing to check off my bucket list.

Then, we had a crazy amazing week as well. There is this amazing family that we are teaching which consists of Sueli (mom), Unnamed husband, Rodrigo, Beatriz and William. William and Beatriz came to Church last week and were preparing to get baptized this week, but their dad, who works in the Pantanal (famous swamp lands in this part of Brazil) really wants to be here to watch. Yay for parents who support their kids in important decisions! But he´s gonna get here on Wednesday, so we´ve just been teaching everyone together. The mom, Sueli, is so cool! She´s been reading the Book of Mormon like crazy and already has a testimony that this is what she and her family have been needing and she just wants to keep learning and get married. We love them.

However, seeing as how their baptisms got moved to next week, we were running around trying to find someone ready to be baptized. We had plenty of people at Church, but they all became uninterested and running away from us. Blugh. But, we went and visited this guy that talked to us on the street last Saturday, who had been taught by lots of missionaries and told us to go visit him. We went and got to know Thiago and his family, and they are all really cool people. As we began to teach Thiago he told us about his crazy life! He used to be WAY in the world but in the past year or so he has freed himself of all addictions and is now much happier. Thiago has been to Church a few times and really knows his Bible! Rapaz. Anyways, after a spiritual lesson we invited him to be baptized on Sunday and he accepted. And it went through! Thiago is the bomb. We felt so good during his baptism because we know that it has been a long journey up until this point. It goes to show that the Lord is truly preparing his elect! It´s just a matter of us inviting and being instruments in His hands.

And other good news! Danny´s mom (he´s our ward mission leader) has decided to get baptized! We went and taught her during Elder Menezes 1st real day in the field! I felt like we would have to opportunity to teach and baptize her that day, but I didn´t know how, because at that time she had quite the hard heart. But, the Lord works through mysterious ways. Rose had a dream last week in which she saw the Saviour and some other things happened and now she knows that she needs to enter in to His Church and help her family. We´re so excited!

Wonder week to everyone. I give thanks to all of you for the support and love! You are all the best!

-Elder Carpenter

Fotos: Thiago´s baptism, McDonald´s, Crocadile meat!, and P-Day Spoils.
 



 

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