12/26/11 Letter

Glad to hear about the big day! Happy Birthday Dad!! One year older and wiser, too! Congratulations! It was good to see your smiling faces and different voices and attitudes from the nephews. Cool beans.

Hey, so I´m headed back to Cuiabá... in Pedra 90! Woot. Imma go on back there and train again! I think I should change my name to Elder Coelho. The newbie´s name is Elder Duarte and he´s from São Paulo. He´s 19 years old and that´s all of which I´m aware of! It´ll be fun stuff. I remember some people who we were teaching who weren´t baptized that we´ll have to visit. We´ll get things going up there! Have a fantastic week and a good start of 2012! Love ya!

-Elder Carpenter

Fotos: Giving out presents on Christmas Eve and the Big Ol´ Dinner afterwards!

12/19/11 Letter

Dear Family,

So glad to hear that Christmas is on its way! The spirit is in the air and everyone is thinking about Christ! Yes yes yes. To be honest, it doesn´t even feel like Christmas because of the heat, but at least you are all getting the cold! Make the best of it. Congrats on the calling mom. You´ll do amazing. Teach those kids just like you taught us.

Elder Menezes and I had a pretty interesting week. We got a call on Monday saying that we needed to find a new house until Christmas because we´re gonna have more elders in our house and Universitário will have to find a new one! We helped them to find a neat little apartment right by the chapel that I think will turn out fantastic. 

We have been visiting Sueli and Luis as well, and sadly they won´t be able to get married til January. They have some documents that need to get here to Campo Grande and the free marriages will only start up again in January 2012. But they are firm on getting married and baptized together! The sad thing is that their member neighbors, Rodolfo and Vanuce and children, will be moving to Ala Jardim Imã. We´ll miss them a lot because they´ve been helping us out a lot during our time here and the ward will not be the same. But we will move forward!

Eva is strong as a rock! She is learning a lot and helping her family be more united and loving. She was confirmed yesterday and gave an awesome prayer when we visited them last night. Woot! Her daughter came to Church this week (the one who offered a laptop to her daughter so she wouldn´t get baptized) and she loved Church. It was cool because all of a sudden she showed up in the middle of sacrament meeting, and everyone was surprised. It turns out that her husband was at the hospital clinic next door to the Church and it seemed like he´d be there for awhile, so she decided to pay a visit to the REAL Church of Jesus Christ. And of course, Marcia loved Church and wants all of her family to keep coming and to help her come as well, but she´s not ready to leave her Church. It was a bit of an intense lesson, but I know that she felt that our Church is true.

The ward had the coolest activity ever! It was like their Christmas Devocional Night- complete with some testimonies, funny videos, and a giant dinner afterwards. We did a cool thing with Danny about how we all need to turn ourselves like little children, because Jesus Christ himself came to the Earth as a babe. So, we got some pictures of members and recent converts (yes we are sneaky) and made a fancy slideshow showing people as little kids and then showing them as they are today. Everyone was laughing and guessing as to who was who and it was bomb. The best was when the three girls (Eva´s granddaughters) showed up and Ana was very upset (Imagine how "upset" that a 9 year old would be for getting some attention) and said,"I´m going to talk to the pastor about this!" Womp!

Yup, so we´re excited for this week. We need to find somebody who is ready to be baptized and do all we can to give a present to the Lord! Have a merry Christmas everybody! I love you all!

-Elder Carpenter

Habbib´s Fact: We ate lunch at Habbib´s today and it´s like an Arabian food style McDonald´s! The food is actually super good. The little bread things are called sfihas. I wanted one with some weird Arabian meat, but they didn´t have any. 

Fotos: Habbib´s!

12/12/11 Letter

Dearest Family Carpenter e outros,

 

Happy Holidays! All I hear about is Christmas parties and shopping and eating! Everyone must be getting fat. 

Last week was quite amazing gente. On Monday night, we had the best missionary work meeting with our ward mission leader EVER. We went to the chapel and he had bought us salgados (which are pastries with meat inside, such as ham and cheese) to eat with french fries and Coke! Que maravilha! Talk about awesomeness. We are planning on doing a cool activity next week for the ward and we got together a good heart-breaker lesson for Eva.

 

On Tuesday, I did a division with Elder Wanderley and we taught some cool people (despite the rain coming down), and at night we had to switch back so that Menezes and I could teach Eva with Danny! It was a good lesson but her granddaughter was screaming and nobody was paying attention. Eva said that she had not smoked for a few days and she started talking about how she had bought a new dress to wear at Church. So we butt in and said, "That´s good because you´ll be able to wear your dress to your baptizm this Sunday." The rest was history. We took her cigarettes away and she got baptized on Sunday! Yay! She was all nervous on Sunday and kept saying that she would take off and that her back would hurt (since she has some back problems), but after the baptizm she was fine. Danny baptized her and practically went all the way down with her so that she wouldn´t have to bend her spine. Oh Eva! Now the family is complete! The two grandparents and the 3 granddaughters who are 8 and above. Sadly, their 2 living kids aren´t very interested in going to Church, but they´ll wake up sooner or later.

On Thursday, we had our Christmas Conference! It was fun. Sister Oliveira talked about how we need to be happy wherever we are because that is how it´ll be for the rest of our lives. Totally true. We watched some videos about Christmas and with MoTab singing, and everyone had some music that they´d been practicing and sang for all to enjoy. It was funny because all of the sisters got up to sing that one hymn "Plains of Judea Where Christ Was Born." Uh... I don´t remember the name in English. So the sisters sang in front of everyone but let´s just say that it wasn´t up to par, so ALL of the Elders and President Oliveira got up and sang the hymn with gusto! It was a crackup. We got presents too! Some good chocolate from Switzerland and a dirty clothes thingy. It´s not a bag nor a hamper. It´s some mesh thing that folds up like the shade you throw up in a car while shopping at Wal-Mart. And I got a tie for my birthday and Zona Monte Líbano got certificates for completing our monthly goals in November! Sweetness.

 

At Church, we had William and Beatriz´s parents. Irmão Luis finally got back from swamp land! And they LOVED Church and are planning on getting married and having the ceremony at the Church and getting baptized! YES! I love this family. Sueli is the sweetest lady ever and she even has a testimony now! She´s been reading the Book of Mormon and is in Alma 36 now. It´s only been like 3 weeks since she´s had the book. So we have wedding and baptismal bells ringing on Christmas weekend!

 

Good week to all! Remember the true meaning of Christmas.

 

-Elder Carpenter

 

Brazilian Fact #1: To celebrate the holiday season, everyone eats meat on the 24th until midnight and then the party begins! 

#2: There are members that go caroling but it´s definately not as common as back in the states.

#3: People put up a strand or two of Christmas lights during this time of year! I have yet to see anything that compares to our yard though.

 

Fotos: The Best Zone Ever: Mount Lebanon Zone! and Feliz Eva!

 

 

12/05/11 Letter

Hey folks,

 

Christmas season is here! Make the best of the season! Everyone is thinking about Christ and is looking for happiness.

 

Elder Menezes and I had yet another amazing week! Ala Pioneiros is on fire! I love this ward and the members and investigators. I was kind of sick during the week, but we managed to get to our appointments every day. We have been visiting Sueli and her family almost everyday. Unfortunately, her husband has been on holiday since Wednesday, but because of rain and lack of bus coming to take him and the other workers home, he hasn´t gotten here yet. But, he already said that he wants to get married and then Sueli is definately gonna get baptized. She totally made me trunky this week. We went and visited her and asked what she felt at Church. She responded,"You guys who are away from home for 2 years, how do you feel when you come home?" I responded really dumbly,"I don´t know yet," to which Menezes did damage control and said,"REALLY good." Sueli said that that is just how she felt. Trunkeza! Everything went well for William and Beatriz´s baptisms last night! They are such innocent and good kids. I love this family.

 

Another trunky moment: On Thursday, the executive secretary in the mission home called to ask me which airport that I´d like to fly to. Wow.... February 8th is the day! But that´s when I´ll leave from Cuiabá to São Paulo to Houston to Phoenix. I calculated the time with Elder Syndergaard who used to be in the office and he said that I´ll probably get in Phoenix early morning on the 9th. Get ready!

 

During the week we have been teaching Rosimeire, Danny Presley´s mom. Danny is our ward mission leader and his mom has been an eternal investigator for over 12 years! They always say how EVERY companionship tries to teach her, but things changed after she had her dream and saw the need to help her less-active sister. And after teaching every day, Danny would make us something different to eat. Words don´t express my love for this family! Food and missionary work! Rose was SO happy to get baptized. After she came out of the water she started smiling and giving thumbs up to everyone. Hahahaha. I´ve never seen such a reaction! And there were plenty of people there, so it was quite the event.

 

We´ve been helping Eva to stop smoking but it´s turning out to be harder for her than we thought. But she´s super firm in coming to Church and even the baptisms at night! Just throw them ciggies out! And the sun sure isn´t getting any brownie points with us this last week. I feel like I have gone back to Cuiabá already. NO!!! But, we´re excited for this next week. We´re gonna find lots of new people to teach and have interviews with President and Zone/Christmas Conference this week. Sniff, sniff, it´ll be my last. There´s still plenty that I need to learn though, so I´m sure it´ll be great. Have a fantastic week! Merry Christmas!

 

-Elder Carpenter

 

Brazilian Fact: On the 24th, everyone gets together and eats a lot and parties until midnight when people will light off fireworks and whatnot. It´s kind of like New Years the Prequel.

 

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.

 

 

11/21/11 letter

What an exciting week you have all had! Thanksgiving is on its way as well! Hip hip hooray!

As always, the first week of a transfer is kind of nuts, and this one was no exception. On Monday night, we had some elders sleep over at our house (since our house is a street away from the Bus Terminal in Campo Grande) since they missed their buses. Gah! I hate having so many messy people in a house that want to eat all of your food. Caidaço. But, they left early in the morning, so that was good.

Tuesday, we had a short meeting with our new ward mission leader: Danny! Danny is awesome. He served his mission in Manaus (which is the Amazon rainforest mission) and he´s helping us to make this ward grow and get even better than it already is. We went and taught Jair and Eva (their granddaughters got baptized last week) and Danny helped us out a ton. He bore a powerful testimony that helped Jair decide to get baptized. "How can I support my granddaughters in doing what´s right, if I myself don´t follow?" That is what I´m talking about Jair. 

Wednesday, I did a division with Elder Stuart which was bomb. We taught Guilherme and Thais´ mom, but unfortunately she´s got her heart in her other Church. At least she supports her kids and wants them to keep going to Church. But wake up! Your evangelical Church is a joke! But, everyone has their agency. We taught a member´s friend as well, whose name is Maria (go figure). She´s a sweet lady, but is a little slow. We´re helping her out.

Thursday, we got stuck at lunch for forever, while the other companionship taught Sister Maria Lúcia´s neighbor who came to lunch (and church!). Lots of things didn´t go as planned , but we went to our most important committment: Jair! Jair´s son tried to question us about some stuff, but the poor guy doesn´t even know what´s in the Bible. Don´t worry, there was no contention nor Bible bashing, just a calm explaining of things as they really are. Eva insists that we baptize this son of hers before she gets baptized. But, the guy doesn´t even want to learn with us! We have a challenge on the horizon.

Friday, the big day! Elder Bednar stopped by in Cuiabá and we got to watch the transmission of our 3 and a half hours with him. He is the most calm, forward, and direct person that I think I´ve ever seen. Elder Bednar had us ask him questions as well as conversing with the Elders in Cuiabá. It was an open air discussion, and he kept asking us, "What do you notice about the form of this meeting?" He was teaching us that we need to TEACH people and not just spout out information at them and expect them to be "taught." And to ask questions that make people think and learn at the same time. Elder Bednar laid down the law in quite a few areas where we have old Mormon traditions as well. Like the practice of writing down everything that people say and then never reading the notes again. We need to take note of our feelings, impressions of the Spirit, and what we have learned. It was amazing! Sadly, the transmission was not so hot, so I hope that they recorded it in Cuiabá. Having an apostle in our mission has surely helped me out and I have felt and seen many things that I need to improve on. And I know that this is just the beginning! Gah!

Saturday was a big ol´mess of interviews and quick visits to people to see who would go to Church and who wouldn´t.

Sunday was equally hectic. We had to call for last minute rides to take all of the girls to the Church to get confirmed (since Sacrament Meeting starts at 9 now with the new ward). But they all got confirmed! And we had plenty of investigators at Church. Best of all was Jair´s baptism after Church! His family was so excited and happy. We invited Gleidson to baptize him, because we love Gleidson. He´s only been a member for 4 months and he just ordained as Elder and called as the ward secretary. Yes! At night, we visited Sueli, whose kids came to Church with their member neighbors. Sueli is a perfect example of love! She takes care of her blind, memory stricken, and humble mom all day. We taught them the Restauration and after the first vision, we asked her if she believed that God answers prayers. Sueli said that after we passed by on Saturday, she prayed to know if this was the right path for her and her kids. She felt that if her kids came home happy, then she would know that it was what they were needing. Willian and Beatriz (her kids) came home bundled with joy and Sueli knew that this truly is the Church of Jesus Christ! Now they´ve accepted for us to help them get baptized!

Yet another hectic week is on the horizon, but I wouldn´t trade it for anything. This is the best ward that I´ve ever been in and it´s because they members make all the difference. Inviting their friends to Church and not being ashamed to talk about the gospel. Vamos avante nessa obra! Love ya! Did you know that you are my favorite family ever?

-Elder Carpenter

11/14/11 letter

Dearest Family,

Happy Birthday to Sarah! Yip yip hooray! Congrats on getting all of the free things that you could! That´s how we do it. And mother has even overcome her fear of touching cilantro just to make your special dinner! Congratulations. I love cilantro by the way .

Elder Menezes and I had a pretty booked week. Wow! We had 3-4 houses to visit every day. Our schedule went like this: 4:15 to 5 we would wait and then teach Daniel (who is a recent convert´s grandson that went to Church), 6ish was when we tought Thaís (who is Guilherme´s sister), 7:30 is our time to teach Jair and Eva along with their 3 granddaughters (who came to Church), and sometimes 8:30 we taught Romano, who is Rodolfo´s dad. Whew! Talk about walking fast. If any of the visits took too long, then it would make everything late. Gah! But it´s all good. 

Our week was awesome though. Thais is BFF with a member and so teaching her was super simple. She was already living the commandments and just has a strong desire to do what´s right and follow Christ. We would include Thais´ mom so that she could see that what we´re teaching her is good and healthy. It was cool because the member family that lives right next to them is about to send their missionary off on Thursday, so we invited Antonio to baptize Thais. That lucky duck got to baptize on his last sunday at home! Now he´s off to baptize more people in São Paulo.

The other family that we´re teaching is AMAZING! The members taught with us EVERY single day because they´re all so awesome. We´ve been teaching the 3 granddaughters with their grandparents and they´re all so cool and happy to be doing the right things. One of the granddaughters, Ana, is 9 and actually lives with her parents behind her grandparents house (but her grandma is the legal guardian and the one who has raised them all). But Ana´s mom has been going to the dark side and told Ana that she would buy her a notebook computer if she didn´t get baptized. What?!?! But Eva (the grandma) is amazing and told her what´s up. And Ana´s mom has actually listened to our lessons on Friday and Saturday. Now, we´re helping the grandparents stop smoking and have the grandpa give the JW´s the boot and stop visiting him! Yes. 

Sadly, Daniel, who´s recent convert grandma has a ticket to the celestial kingdom for all that she´s through, 8 was taught and interviewed, but on Sunday gave up on getting baptized. We´re still not too sure of what happened, because we sat and tried to get him to come out for a while and just his brother came out to give lame excuses to us. We´re praying to know what to do with him.

In all, it was an amazing week! I couldn´t have asked for a better birthday present than being a part of the Lord´s work in bringing these people to his kingdom. We even ate gigantic pastels to celebrate the big day. The Lord is blessing us and we´ll be staying another transfer together! Elder Ertel is off to be a district leader in another area and Elder Stipanich will be with Elder Wanderley. Perseverar até o fim Stipanich! Love ya! Happy Veteran´s Day!

-Elder Carpenter

Fotos: Frafiti of Tereré, Thais and Guilherme and mom, The Jair Tribe consisting of Nathália, Alexia, Ana, and wife Eva!