November 16, 2010 - Letter Home

 Hoping for Miracles

Cookies!

Hello evrybody! I loved all the great e-mails this week, man, you guys filled up my inbox. Keep taking photos and sendin em my way!  Mom and Kait are lucky to be able to go to San Fran whenever they want with a good excuse now, and with a place nearby to stay also! I loved the news about Nick! Will he be able to serve close to Winters Quarters? That's got to be way cool to be serving in an area with such church history. Imagine teaching about
the pioneers and mentioning that they came through Nebraska? Awesome.

So this week was cool. After last Pday I got to go to the office of the mission to get my new travel visa for the next year. What I thought was going to be a short trip turned into cool action packed day. Little did I know but half of my group from the CTM went at the same time, and we all got together and went to the federal police station in the center of Porto Alegre. Hung out forever waiting in line. We went to the huge Porto Alegre mall afterwards for lunch and ate BURGER KING. With refillable cups! How I miss that. I bought a
chicken burger (still my favorite) and a chocolate milkshake. Awesomeness. 
Afterwards we had interviews with president, and so pretty much the entire day I was hanging out with my CTM buddies telling stories. I've got to say that even after more than a year of being apart, my CTM friends are still some of my best. 

CTM REUNION

There's a tip to Nick for the MTC! Concentrate on learning the gospel and everything, but don't let anything get in the way of being best friends with the people in your district. You need to take study seriously and stuff, but if you go through the MTC just with your nose in the scriptures or not getting along with your companion or other district members, you're not doing it right. But you need to make sure there's a balance of course. I wish I had taken that advice.

So otherwise me and Elder Correia have been looking for people, hitting a lot of doors, asking for references, praying for inspiration, and it's worked! We've got a great teaching group right now, and I'm releived to say that the hardest (physical) part of the work for this transfer is over, and now we just have to concentrate on the people. 
Man, I don't want to say anything too soon, but I'm super excited for one family we found. Darli is the father of SEVEN kids, each one named after someone from the Bible. He seems to be quite a successful salesman and attends the Pentecostal church. He reads the scriptures every day and knew a lot of the verses we used by heart. He started out trying to bash Bible a bit, but we managed to answer some of his questions and calm him down and talk about Joseph Smith, the first vision, and what the Book of Mormon is. He said he was very interested to read the Book of Mormon after learning that it was an ancient record and not the writings of Joseph Smith. He pretty much explained to US that we could explain all we wanted, but unless the Holy Ghost testifies to him that the Book of Mormon was true, he didn't want any more visits. We said that would be great, promised him that the Holy Ghost would do His part if Darli wanted him to, and left him a part of the BoM to read. Man, he might have a lot of social problems accepting the answer he will receive, but I just am CERTAIN he will receive a huge answer. He's a really excited guy and his family would totally supercharge our ward. I'm hoping for a miracle.

We have a couple other families like that. Strong families that we're teaching that already have a church, but will accept our visits and have questions about our church. Now that we're in their houses, we just need to have the spirit with us to testify to them and help them
have a change of heart. I'm praying that we can do our part so God can do His.

Anyway, we're going to go to the temple today, so I'm going to have to make this short and run off! I love you guys so much and am so thankful for all of your e-mails. 


Have a great week!

Elder Carpenter


super week photos (must have received the Halloween package...)