September 28, 2010 - Letter Home

The Chase is On!

I thought Chase had left already! But that's super awesome that he's on his way, he'll be back in no time. 
I'm really quickly realizing how short two years really is: I'm already at 13 months down! 
Honestly, the difference is in just really buckling down and striving for success and the ability to help people, 
and it just flies. I don't know where this last month went.

Alex and Maria

Awesome President Photo

Camilla Smiles

Candid Camera

Ernesto

Feijao and family

Feijao Missionary Taxi Service

Feijaos last goodbye

Fernanda and family

Jairo and family

Joao and Margaret

Jorge and family

Juarez and Eliziane

Iani

Lil' Artur

Little more of Alex

Moacir

More Fejaio

President Sergio Eltonenos

Rogerio and family

Suzette's Family

I am in Elizabete again! Awesome! The area had been without missionaries and I got sent in to reclaim it from sisters! My companion is freaking awesome, Elder F. Ribeiro, brazilian from Sao Paulo, convert of 3 years, really cool guy and it'll be cool to work with him for this next transfer. We did manage to clean up the apartment in Rio Pardo (somewhat) for the sisters. :)

"Psycho companion - haha!"

"yeah, we're cool!"

That's great that you're keeping time to go to the temple. I'm feeling super blessed because I thought I wouldn't come back to an area close to the temple for a long time after I left Elizabete, and what's more, with a companion who hasn't gone in the last 3 months (These are the 2 requirements to go to the temple in our mission). But it happened! Elder F. Ribeiro arrived to the mission just one transfer ago so he hasn't been to the Porto Alegre temple yet, something I'll gladly help him out with! I'm super excited to go next P-day (but this and the fact that next week is a holiday may mean no e-mail... :(* ) !!! I love love love the temple! We've got to plan to go to the temple all of us together as a family soon after we come back! That would be sweet!

Gauchos!

Man, Mom, good job on reading the Old Testament! Last week I finished reading Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price in Portuguese. The PoGP is awesome! I loved the stories about Adam and Eve and Enoch in Moses! Such cool insights, especially relating to the temple! 
Loved it. Now I'm on to the New Testament. I wanted to read all the standard works in Portuguese while I was here, but I don't know if it'll work out with the Old Testament. We'll see what happens.

Very interesting to read the scripture stories (old testament especially) with an eye to how it relates to Christ. It made me remember the often stated phrase in our 1st lesson that all the prophets sent before Christ testified of Him. It would be interesting to try to go out and prove that! I'm going to integrate this into my own study. I love love love the scriptures. I'm (pretty much) regularily waking up at 5:30 to just an hour of straight reading in. In my normal study time I try to focus on the lessons, Preach my Gospel, and investigator needs. Love it. :)  

My washing machine...

"Let me teach you a lesson here"...

"What am I doing here?..."

"Yeah, we wash plates..."

"Your friendly neighborhood missionary."

My journal is looking pretty sad. I probably most definitely won't need another one. Getting to entries of week or two week gaps. :( Honestly I'm having a lot of trouble 1. finding the time every night to write and 2. having stuff to write about. I just need to make a habit about it. I'm gonna get on top of this.

I pretty much always have dreams with you guys. If not all of you, definitely with Brendon. I think that the more that I stop thinking about my family and focus on the work, the more you guys keep popping up in my sleep. Hmmm, that's a little sad, but also nice. The other day I dreamed that we could come back home just for Christmas, but I wasn't enjoying it because I realized that I'd have to come back here after. Honestly, I think even my subconscious mind can't fathom that I'm ever going to leave my mission life. It will be very odd to come home.

I love you so much! Thank you for writing me every week! It's always such a treat :).

Love you,

Elder Connor Carpenter
  
Hey guys! I had to do a bit of non-e-mail computer work this pday, so sorry for the small week update! I know it's ridiculous because of all the good news I've got! I have returned to Elizabete, and my new companion has only 1 transfer in the field, but is super awesome and prepared and is already becoming a quick friend, Elder F. Ribeiro. Leaving Rio Pardo was hard, but it was so awesome that our last day, the members threw a HUGE party for us, 2 churrascos! A lot of the photos I sent are from that party. 

A little Overboard!

#&˘G$!I spilled orange juice on my pants!

Nice hat!

"Gimme that pillow, girl!"

"...but like, seriously!"

I stayed in Rio Pardo only 6 weeks, but I truly feel like the people I met and the things I did their were all planned out. So glad for the experience, and I bet I'll go back to that area later. I already miss Elder Simmons like crazy.

Last Supper

At the train station for transfers I saw a bunch of old friends, it was awesome. I saw Elder Feller (my ctm companion) for the first time in a year, and it was fun to chill and tell stories and see how awesome our portuguese was. I also saw two of my old companions, Elder K. Silva and Elder Carvalho, who are now home. Man that was awesome! Some of my greatest victories are the friendships I managed to make with those companions, and it was an almost tearful goodbye.

Oak tree fall hard

Companions of Winters Past

good weather for chimarrao up here!

This was not a good idea!

Now I'm here in Elizabete again, which is a little odd. People are happy to see me, but not as much as I had thought. Actually, they all didn't know why the missionaries had left, and had assumed that it was because the missionaries had done something wrong. We're building up the confidence of the members now, through pure, clean, work in the bundle. Elder Ribeiro and I are more than capable. But it'll be another transfer of building up the teaching pool from nothing. Good, I got used to knocking doors in Rio Pardo. Haha.

"The spirit of the chapel, haha"

"We've got to go back!"

Love you guys! You are all so awesome and I love the letters! Have a good week! Tchau!

Connor
 

September 20, 2010 - Letter Home

The Cat is Out!

 Hey ma families! So I still don’t know anything about transfers, because we’ll be learning that info tomorrow, but I do know that me and Elder Simmons are leaving Rio Pardo *tear* because the área is being Sister-ized! Again! It’s my second area in a row to do that! Crazy! The sisters are following in my wake I guess. 
I also got the notice that I will be transferred within my zone, so there’s a big probability that I will return to my old area, Elizabeth, and open that area up for Elders again. Strangeness.  I will be really excited if that happens because I left a lot of friends and it was pretty teary and I think they would all love to see me :).

So this week we were a little depressed at the beginning after the news that the area probably would close and the fact that after working crazily the whole transfer we hadn’t gotten anybody to church, but we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and really tried to do our best and had a lot of great visits with our investigators and we got 7 people in church this week! A member family brought 2 family members that weren’t members who want to be taught by the missionaries, and we managed to bring Dilson and Lecí, a couple, and Rosalia and her daughter, Aline, and Douglas, Aline´s boyfriend to church. It was really great. I thought of Brendon’s e-mail when people started throwing us thumbs-up signs. I felt nice when that happened. :)

Anyway, we were supposed to keep our news about being transferred in the bag until the sisters came, but I wanted to do something special for my last Sunday in the awesome branch of Rio Pardo, so I asked President to let us bear our testimonies at the end of the meeting. Unfortunately… right at the end was a primary presentation of all of the kids in the ward wearing missionary nametags and singing “We are as the Armies of Helaman”, and then President asked me to come up to the pulpit and it was too much, I pretty muched bawled up there in front of everyone, and so did Elder Simmons and… let’s just say it was pretty clear we were getting transferred and we were saying our goodbyes. Sorry President! We tried!

I’m pretty excited for today because here in an hour we’re going to go to lunch with the President of the branch, Rogerio, and a bunch of other families to see us off. And then tonight…. we’re going to another dinner with a bunch of families to see us off. This branch is so awesome.

 I did receive an awesome jerky-filled card last Thursday! You guys are so great to me! Brazilians love jerky so I'm going to wait until I can give it to someone special. But the butter rum candies were devoured and enjoyed. :) 

Anyway, I had a bunch of photos but forgot the camera cable! Doh! So it’ll have to wait until next week when I’ll be able to tell you the transfer news!
Love you guys!
Con

September 14, 2010 - Letter Home

Going Forward

 Hey Family!
Another week hás gone by in the muddy river! So we just got done hanging out with President and Sister Pavan all day. They came by to replace an old gas tube to our stove, and also get to know the area and the apartment. The news is that apparently a bunch of Sisters are arriving in the mission and, as President likes Sisters to be in secure areas, Rio Pardo was considered to fill the necessity. I really hope I’m not transferred again! I am loving getting to know other members and other areas, but one transfer really just doesn’t work here to see a huge result. I want to stay with all my member friends and investigators and in my huge apartment and in this cool little well-centralized city! We’ve just been finding all transfer and I really wanted one more to bring those people through the lessons and see them come to church and start liking it. Hmm… We will see. 

Just to let you guys know, next Monday is my Pday. So you guys can send twice as many e-mails at one go!
I went on a division with my good Brazilian friend from the CTM, Elder Lemos. We went tracting for 2 hours without success. I interviewed the family they baptized, and it was a really great, spiritual experience. Man, so cool to see an entire family just super excited about the things they’ve learned that they’d been looking for so long. I spent about an hour in my interview with Oneiro, the dad, and I really felt privileged to meet him and we became good friends immediately. Really cool. We ended the day calling for  pizza and drinking lots of coke. Good times!

One funny story. We were going to have a baptism Saturday, but Everton called us in the morning to tell us he wanted more time before he was ready to baptized AFTER we had already filled up the font and started up the heater, so we went to lunch and started to work in the area there, far from the chapel, and we FORGOT the heater was turned on until 4 hours later. So we caught a bus to the chapel and when we got there we saw all the windows were fogged up. We opened the door and the chapel was FULL OF STEAM!!! The baptismal font was half evaporated! We panicked but luckily only the hallway and bathrooms and kitchen had been open to the steam so nothing got ruined. But we were sweating from a lot more than just the heat! Glad nothing happened badly there.

But man, it was kind of just a depressing weekend because after our fallen through baptism, none of the many investigators we had invited to church showed up, even after we got a member to taxi us to investigators houses to wake them up. This marks the 5th straight week that we haven’t been able to get any investigators to church! We’ve been making more visits and finding more new people than ever, but for some reason they’re falling through on their commitments to make a visit to church! 
Luckily I only got a bit sad and depressed, but after my visit with President and prayer and scriptures I feel good about what I’ve done here, but it’s going to be a bit hard to work this week, I think, seeing as we’re going to leave soon. We’re going to do what is right.

Here’s to going forward, trusting that God will lead us into the right paths as long as we are willing to follow! 

I have not gotten packages, even though President brought a huge package for Elder Simmons with him. Jealous!
So awesome about the thoughts of the future! I can’t wait! I just keep thinking about how all the aunts and uncles in Arizona and maybe seeing the younger families growing their families and getting together and just having their lives together, and I’m really excited to do that same kind of thing with MY family! It would be so awesome if we could figure out all of our college and future plans to allow that to happen close by to one another! Can you imagine all us kids bringin home a bunch of rowdy rascals and toddlers and going out to eat together and see movies or go camping or do fun stuff together every weekend?! That sounds cool! I’m so blessed to have that in my future. I’m so excited too. I need to suck all the blessings I can out of this experience right now so that all can work out right when we get back. 
Oh yeah, I got the info that I’ll be getting home August 16th, 5 days after Brendon! Weeeeird!!! I don’t know if I like that! But it might be cool to always have more bragging rights and say I did a longer mission than him :P.
 
I love you guys so much! Man our family rocks!
 
Keeping you all in my prayers,
Elder Oh So Conly

September 7, 2010 - Letter Home

Hey Another sweet P-day! It's a holiday here so the whole town is shut down, but we begged and begged at the doorstep of the owner of a lanhouse here to let her open it up just for us, and it worked! So now we've got a lanhouse all to ourselves!

I will definitely be bringing chimarrao to the states. As much herva as can fit in my bag! It's turned into a serious habit! Making chimarrao in the morning helps me get my body moving, having water boiling makes it so I don't roll back into bed.

So glad you guys had a good time at the conference and so awesome about all the contacts you've made! Very cool that you could also enjoy the bike trails and river and everything. I also loved the quick list of all the blessings that our family enjoys! I gotta put that on the refrigerator! Man, I am just so full of gratefulness that all is well at home and that you guys are still going full force! When I compare the good news at home with the blessings of the mission and miracles we see out here, I just get full to the brink of happiness that God is really taking care of us. Awesome Mom!

I want to see photos of the wedding! Man, so weird that I'm going to go into the stage of everyone I know getting married. But very cool that you guys could help with that.

My week was good, and included a visit to Santa Cruz where I did my first baptismal interview to Jaine, who was super shy but I got her to open up a little after a lot of jokes and talking about my little sisters.

I interviewed her!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We saw a book fair and a giant chess game, saw the outside of a giant cathedral and talked with a hardcore atheist about philosophy for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate a pig head. Pictures included.

We're still just knocking doors and looking for an elect family to start teaching. We've found a bunch of people but they just kind of fall through after the first visit. So we're still looking. I'm just enjoying the time studying, drinking chimarrao, drinking lots of drinkable yogurt, trying to get my BoM program off the ground, joking with Simmons, perfecting my accent, talking with lots of people, smiling, and staying happy. It's a nice little rhythm I've got into here. I really need to start trying to do more, but I'm gonna get there.


Sorry about not having too much time this week! We have a futbol match up with some kids who said americans can't play soccer at 3! We're going to mash their 13 year old faces into the mud! Just kidding! Yeah! :) It's not a match up but we will be playing football. Pray for me... :P



Have a good week! From your Con.

Tchau!