April 11, 2011 - Letter Home

Zone Party

On the Road Again!
Hello my families,

Elder Carpenter here again with some familiar news:

I'm leaving Esteio. Today will be a flurry of activity as I pack my bags and visit friends here in Esteio. Tomorrow I'm off to the bus station in Porto Alegre and who knows where I will go! This next area will probably be my last here in the mission! This next area is the one where I will have my grande finale! I'm excited to see where I end up! I'm pretty torn up to leave some people here, and also have to leave Elder Carroll. We are best friends! I hope I can see him later in on the mission or back in the states. It's gonna be hard to see Yasim and his family for the last time, and Josias and Andriele, and a bunch of awesome members who I've really come to love! I feel really good leaving here and knowing that I've left the area stronger. I'm also leaving the area with a bunch of people for Elder Carroll and his new companion to work with, and I'm excited to see what happens with some of the investigators we're teaching.

Last Pday after my e-mail we had a fun outing with Yasim and his family, where we ordered Arabian burritos and watched the Testaments. 

Burrito Feast

Later in the week Yasim took us to a visit with some family friends where a couple members of the family had been baptized a long time ago. It was a really great visit and this Sunday two of them, Cristiano and Bruna, went to church. Bruna said yesterday that she wanted to be baptized, and so we're really excited and hoping that we can reactivate the entire family through that.

Yesterday we decided to walk to a somewhat far away house of a family, and we took a wrong turn and got WAY out in the middle of nowhere before figuring out we had taken the wrong turn. The problem is it started to get dark and we were on the side of a busy road and some of the roads didn't have streetlights. It was pretty lame because we were out in the middle of NOWHERE and we saw a guy walking along and we stopped and asked him to talk with us for a second to get directions, but he just said he was busy and refused to talk to us! Dude! We were pretty mad at that but we found another nice old man that gave us directions of how to get back to Esteio, and he told us we were in a neighbooring city and that was pretty funny for us. We were also on this dark, dirt road on our way back and we saw a light and got closer and found a bunch of candles around a dead chicken! People are weird. That was creepy! But we made it back and had a good visit with that family.

Hmmm... What else? 
I want to buy a bunch of Gaucho stuff to bring back home. I found a REALLY nice chimarrao set with a carrying case, and I guess in my next area I'll have to complete my gaucho clothing set. I also had someone show me how to do a gaucho dance and I want to practice that to be able to show you guys later on (the dance is called the Chula and is like a manly tapdance :) ).

I love you guys and I am excited to continue working in my next area! It's exciting! I hope you guys have a great week! Thank you for everything that you've done for me! Now I gotta keep movin'...

Love love love!

Elder Carpenter