April 19, 2011 - Letter Home

Profecy
How you doin? Real quick update: I was transferred to Neopolis, a big neighboorhood outside Gravatai, which is a neighbor city of Porto Alegre. So far I love the area and the members! My companion is ANOTHER gringo, so far he's been awesome. He's Elder Persinger, from Ohio, he's got 3 months on the mish and I'm his 2nd companion.

Hello families! Elder Carpenter coming to you from Neopolis, Rio Grande do Sul!

This week turned out to be really awesome. It was hard to leave Esteio and Elder Carroll but I left in peace and it was great to see Elder Diego, another Elder in my district, go to take over the area. There's a lot of great investigators there and I hope to see them have a lot of success.

Going to the bus station for the transfer was pretty cool to see a lot of my friends again, Elder Feller (who's our new assistant to the Pres.), Elder Bowerman, Elder Anderson, Elder Gibby, Elder Bullough, Elder F. Ribeiro. It's weird seeing a bunch of the missionaries I've loved and known for my ENTIRE mission be going home. Like Elder Willden and Elder Damewood, who are only a couple months older than me in the mission. So weird to be old in the mission. I still feel like I just got here. :/  :)

What's weird is that my last night in Esteio we had dinner and popcorn and chimarrao with an awesome young couple Jonni and Brenda, who I've become really good friends with, I didn't want everyone to get so sad at my leaving, so I told them that I'd probably end up going to Brenda's parents ward, (who I had met and had always been saying they wished I was transferred to their ward), and that we'd get to see eachother later on. 
The next morning, I receive the transfer news and see the word "Neopolis" !!! That's the ward that Brenda's parents live in- the one I had just talked about the night before ! Out of 60 different areas in the mission, I guessed which area I would go to. I was also super psyched because I knew Brenda's parents and I really liked them and was excited to surprise them at their own home! 
The day I got to the area we go to her parents house, the Dulliuses, and we go into the house but I just didn't say anything and hid out of sight behind my companion, and everybody was laughing and asking who it was, and then I jumped out from behind him and saw their whole family and everybody just got super shocked that it was I that had been transferred to their area (Sister Dullius literally got way scared... Whoops :P)

Anyway, my companion is awesome. Elder Persinger is another new American missionary which means he's super excited and animated, but needs help in learning the language and other missionary things. I'm really happy to be with him.

This area has awesome members, but for the last 6 months, even though there were great missionaries here, there hasn't been any baptisms (which is fairly odd for this mission), and no firm converts from the last 3 years. A lot of missionaries seemed discouraged about the area but my and Elder Persinger are determined and excited to turn it around. In fact, we have even received revelation that we are the ones to turn it all around. We started the week off running, visiting all investigators and inviting them to baptism, and talking with everyone we meet about the gospel, and getting all the members out of their houses and into the streets to work with us, and we've got a great start with 3 people with baptismal dates for next month and 17 new people we've found to start teaching. I'm making it my goal to turn this area around and give it my best as a present to the Lord for all the great experiences He's given me in this time in Brasil. I am so grateful that I have this time to dedicate to Him. I know we'll have success.

Our house is pretty lame here because there's been a lot of rain here and more than a couple leaks in the roof, and President told us to find a new house. After looking around we couldn't find anything, and so we talked with Brother Dullius who was already building a house to rent out on his property, he said that he would let us live there. The only thing is, is that he's a month away from completion on the house and we needed to get into this house at the end of the week! So we're going to try to help with the construction to get the house done SOON. We've been over there 2 days already and we're going to try to finish the house soon. Lifting tile does good for morning exercise!


You saw the movie "Rio"? It is really big here! Everybody is saying that is shows that the world loves Brasil. 
:)


The ZLs told me I got a package! I don't know who it's from, I'll probably get it Thursday.


I did want to tell you that I loved the photos. I love looking at all you guys but if I look too much I'll get so homesick it hurts! Man! I just gotta stay patient cause the time is already just flying by and I know 4 months'll pass so quick, but it's really getting hard not to think every day that soon I'll be home. The only solution is for me to try to completely forget about you guys and make myself think I've still got a long time left and just think all about the people I'm serving here. I'm sorry but that's what I'm gonna try to do until the end. :)

I hope all of you guys don't get too trunky and homesick for us while you wait! I'll only permit you guys to feel anxious the week before our homecoming!
But it's gonna be awesome. :)
  
I loved seeing Wyatt's mission call opening! So awesome! Wyatt (**friend from Folsom, 1 of 4 called to Brazil from Folsom just recently!)  is going to LOVE serving in Rio! One of the coolest missions!

I love you guys and hope you have a great week! I'm loving life and loving the mission and loving the Lord! Through Him we find ALL of life's solutions and victories.

Keep loving!
Elder Connor

P.S. Attached photos are us and Brother Dullius messing around in the middle of our service project. 

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

April 6, 2011 - Letter Home

It's an Entmoot
Hello Family!

It's been a great week and a better weekend! 
I love General Conference! We were given the privelige of watching all 5 sessions this time around (before it was only 2), and because the stake center is a bit far from our area, we ended up camping out at the stake center with a bunch of other missionaries for two days straight.

We watched conference in this room of the stake center because we wanted to watch it all in English. Very fun just to watch with fellow missionaries.

Woah! Party! I think I'm pretty much like everybody else in liking especially the talk be Elder Oaks, Elder Christopherson, President Uchtdorf especially. But I especially enjoyed the Priesthood session talks. ALL of them were great! Especially Elder Anderson and Elder Uchtdorf and President Monson. 
Bah, I liked them all. There was too much good stuff.

Nick talked about how it seemed to be talking alot about marriage. I feel like he was sitting next to me because Elder Carroll kept elbowing me too whenever anything was said about marriage. Watch out world, Elder Carpenter has a profetic mandate to follow when he comes back to the States! Hehe, well, those talks certainly made me step back and realize how fast time is going and how the next couple years are going to continue being pretty busy for me. :)

I got my AWESOME BIRTHDAY PACKAGE!!! Finally! I got it April 2 so it seems it took about 2 months to get here. It was so great! Cake will be made. Peanut Butter will/has been devoured. 

PB Addict - Give me nother hit of that peanut buttery toastness!

Man, great choice in filling up the whole package with peanut butter! I'm good with that. Thank you so much!

So this last week was interesting. Rochelle is Andrielli (a girl we baptized in January) 's sister and she recently came back from living with her grandmother, we're teaching her and she seems to have a lot of potential! With how strong Andrieli is, it's pretty much a sure deal that she'll end up being baptized, sooner or later. We got a reference from another mission that lead us to Joao and Raquel, really interesting folks that had investigated the church 5 years back but lost contact after a move. Joao is especially awesome because he's said that in the meantime he's read the whole Book of Mormon and is really interested to learn more! He's a pretty big history/religion buff who doesn't seem to be practicing any religion, so I thanked the heavens a lot for raining down a high quality reference on our heads! Yasim and Nilda went to a session of conference which was awesome, and later this week we're going to go to the house of some of their friends that are interested in the church after Yasim and Family's baptism. The work is goin!

I love you all so much and am so thankful for every word, thought, and prayer you've given! Thank you all for all that you are! Man, I am so thankful to be part of such a great family and have such great friends.

Dog Attack!  Elder Carroll catapulted Lilah, the crazy labrador, into my hammock when I was taking a hard earned nap! Sabotage!

Looooove you all! Have a good week and keep smiling!

Elder Con

March 29, 2011- Letter Home

Moments
Hey Family!

I'm feelin pretty chipper today! How nice it is to see so many great photos of my attractive family! Thanks Dad (you sent the most)! 
So this week was awesome because I had the privilege of seeing one of my favorite families, Nilda, Yasim and Fadua be baptized this last Saturday. 

Awesome Family!

They are so elect! I'm so happy we found them. They've become real family here. It's also the first time I've seen a baptism of an entire family! Nilda got up and bore her testimony about how the Holy Ghost testified to her that the Book of Mormon was true, and Yasim said later that at the moment when he received the Gift of the Holy Ghost, he felt the Holy Ghost testify to him that he was doing the right thing. It's only been a couple of days since the baptism but we visited them yesterday and they already seem like different people! It's so great that the truth can come into a household and a family and completely change everything! I'm so happy for them and I hope that at some point I can return and visit them.
It's also very cool that Nilda has 3 other children that live in Esteio as well, who have their own respective families. With the change in their mother, they've become interested in hearing about the church too. We have already taught Fatima, Nilda's daughter, and we will teach the other's soon. I think the entire family was prepared to enter into the church! It's cool to see the beginning of that.

Mini Carpenter

Anyway, it is raining here but it's been a good thing. Much better than the sun and mugginess! The people are saying it's going to be one of the coldest winters yet because it's never cold and rainy like this in March. Bring it on! I need to find a scarf...
Sooo... I have to cut it a little short today because we're gonna go out and buy Elder Carroll some Gaucho clothes in the middle of the city.


But... I love you guys so much. I am so thankful for the e-mails and the upbeat words. I am thankful for your prayers for me and your efforts to do what is right. It's so important to me that you all are well, physically and spiritually! I know that the Lord will protect us and will guide us if we merely trust in Him, do what he commands, and seek for the blessings. I know more than ever that this Church IS true! The Holy Ghost is real and He testifies to everyone of the truth! It's a very real thing and I am so happy to be a part of it. I am so happy for Jesus Christ and the opportunity to follow Him now in my mission and to try to become more like Him. I am so thankful for the promise that we will be together as a family forever!

doisgatinhos

I love you all so much, have a good week!

Elder Carpenter

March 22, 2011 - Letter Home

Cakeweek!


Hey My Family! Seeing my inbox full this Pday was a huge Happy Birthday HURRAH! Thank you so much! The photos, the awesome video, letters from various relatives, videos, cake! So awesome! This really made my day!

My birthday week went very nicely! On the day of my birthday actually we had a million stuff going on at the same time, including a party at our district meeting with the rest of the missionaries, a special lunch with Bishop and family, and 4 cakes with parties from families Edson and Josie, Valeria, Yasim and family, and Josias and Andrieli. 

Elder Carroll and I were ready to explode at the thought of cake after the day was over, and our refrigerator is still stocked with chocolate cake 5 days after. Alright! The members and our investigators are so awesome! Man, I love ém.

BUT...! Dang! My package got here in the mission office, but they haven't been able to get it here still! So close! So honestly Mom you did everything right, it got here on time, it's just bad luck because we haven't had a zone conference or assistant division in a while now. I should get the package here in 2 days. It's just as well because now I'll actually have room to eat whatever goodies were sent! I'm excited! You guys are so awesome for sending so much! Thanks Mom!

The work is going well! Yasim and his family are firm for baptism! They'll be baptized Saturday and I am super happy because Nilda was a bit more hesitant than the rest of the family about baptism but now she's super excited about it. They are very well integrated with the ward and a lot of members have visited them. Yasim is already wanting to do divisions with us and Fadua is participating in alot of the music programs and Nilda is looking into genealogy. Cool! I'm happy for them.

Josias and Andrieli don't have a date to be married but have been going to church and participating in all the activities and are very involved with the ward already. They are so awesome. They live right in front of the church so Saturday we went with them and Andrieli's little brother Junior to have a lesson out on the grass in the shade of the chapel, and brought chimarrao and kicked around the soccerball a bit. Junior went to church and really liked it. We woke up one morning early and ran for our exersize time with Josias. Running with firefighters!

Friday we had a fun ward activity where people competed to open and eat wrapped mini candy bars using two spoons and with your hands stuffed in socks. It was fun and everybody got really into it.

Sunday after church Nadir and Pamela came from Elizabeth, my last area, and delivered a HUGE chocolate cake, complete with bags of candies, and we lit candles and ate the cake in the park they have here. It was so awesome!

Pamela is halfway through her personal progress and has read the whole Book of Mormon and is bringing her friends to church! She's awesome. I love that family. So nice of them.

We've found a couple other new people that I'm excited about, but nobody's been to church yet. We will see.

Anyway, here we're just takin care of business, finding and teaching people and bringing the spirit into the people's houses. Normal missionary stuff. :)

I love all y'all so muchly, thank you for the awesome birthday e-mails and the upcoming birthday presents! You are the best family. I am so thankful for all of you and all the effort that you spend to spread your love and do what is right. God is too! Let's all just keep at it, keep going, and keep living it up!

Have a good week all!

Elder Connor

March 15, 2011 - Letter Home

Sup ma family!

As you may see from a foto I sent, I'm soooper happy today cause I'm wearin my awesome flannelpijamapants!

It's cold out there!

Yes my friends, Brazil isn't all beach and jungle, in fact, here in the south in a couple months it'll get downright blizzardy. But I think it's alot better than the sweltering heat of the summer, because in the cold you can always put on more clothes, but in the summer heat you gotta get in the same church shirt and pants.

crammed in a car...

...with five other people

And so the work is moving. We found Andre in a street contact, who ended up living next to a member family, who seems to show some promise. He's 16 year old and is a complete video game addict. We spent some time just chatting about video games. Finally my knowledge proves useful in something! I am pretty excited to baptize him because it would be like baptizing a past brazilian version of myself!

We also got approached by Rosane, who is doing a school project on our church and wanted a bunch of info about everything, and we were just like, YEAH! You asked the right people! So we're visiting her and teaching her; I hope she is inviting us over now because she's interested and not just for the project.

Yasim and his family are doing awesome, going to church and look so nice in their church clothes. We invited them to a family night with the bishop and ate "American Pancakes" with the syrup mom sent (thanks mom!) and played Signs and Telephone Pictionary. It was fun and they all liked it! They are getting very well integrated with the ward now. I love that family!

our church building

Josias and Andrieli are awesome and doing good. Wish I could see their baptism! Too bad that getting all of the paperwork and preparation to be married takes way too long!

Josias, Andriele, and Junior

Just makin trouble!

I'm done with the New Testament in Portuguese and am now gonna try to read the Book of Mormon one more time through before goin home. Easy!

Anyway, my birthday is soon and I'm going to eat 4 cakes that people promised to make for me! I'm excited! They like me, they really like me! Other than waiting for my birthday everything is pretty whitebread here; business as usual.

Brazilian ducks!

I like the ducks

Everyone has duck feeva!

I love to hear from all of you and I'm glad everything's going well!
Have a good week ma families! I'm prayin for all of you!
Elder Carpenter

March 8, 2011 - Letter Home

Experiences


Wassup everyone! Another week here in Esteio.

So after the transfer a couple of friends got transferred into the zone, including Elder Simmons! my first junior! It's very strange seeing him as a district leader and being a champ in the language and in the work. My little stepchild has grown up!

I had one of the coolest experiences to date the day I sent you guys e-mail last week. I really can't explain it fully. In words it'll probably fall flat. Josias, the fireman who miraculously was healed after a rough fall from a tree, and his girlfriend, Andrieli were awesome investigators for being young, smart, excited, and obviously fresh from their first awesome spiritual experience of his miraculous recovery. But they always kept telling us that their habits of partying with friends and their unfamiliarity with religion made it hard for them to keep focused and do the things we told them after our visits. We were teaching them about the Plan of Salvation, and the best thing I can say to describe what happened was that the Holy Ghost entered into the room and at the end us four just sat laughing and crying in silence looking to one another to see if they were feeling the same thing. It wasn't anything special that we said, just the same old lesson, but Heavenly Father blessed them with testimonies in that very moment. It's something that I'll remember the rest of my life. Way awesome.

Nilda

Nilda and Fatima

We are also having success with Yasim's family, and they continue to be excited to learn about the gospel and accept our invites to follow Christ, often, strangely, without any argument or doubts or questions. Elect family!

Yasim and Fadua

Although alot of the ward was traveling this Sunday for Carnaval and left the chapel a bit empty, it was a joy to see Yasim and his daughter, sister, and mother in church, everyone all dressed up. With them and Josias and Andrieli and another non-member from another ward, our class for non-members turned out being one of the most packed. :) We are blessed here. I am happy.

Stole My Tie

And My Name Tag!

Man, yesterday we ran through a grocery store and to my great surprise I found Pure Leaf Chimarrao! I was looking for the brand for about a month after hearing about it from Josias: apparently it's the strongest type of Chimarrao on the market and is actually pretty much like an energy drink in Chimarrao form. I woke up early and made a cuia to wake myself and see if it really did have those affects, and while it did wake me up, it ended up tasting HORRIBLE (like Chimarrao mixed with shredded cigarettes, BLAH!) and left me with one of the biggest headaches I've had on the mission. So gross I have the taste in my mouth still. Bah! Too bad that I bought a whole kilo and it wasn't cheap! So lame! That's what you get for messing with mother nature.

Yesterday as an emergency we ran Julia, (the mother of an inactive family we reactivated), to the hospital in Porto Alegre with a member. She's having problems with her kidneys and the doctors said it was pretty bad. I'm worried for her. Praying that it works out all right.

I need to show you guys pictures of my old shoes which were full of holes! I'm excited for my NEW BROWN SHOES which an awesome member gave me. I hadn't realized that my feet were actually really hurting when I walked until I put on the new brown shoes. It's like walking on clouds! I'm so happy I have them.

Moto Elder

Dude, last night Elder ------- played a prank on me that got me SO MAD! He called saying that because of political problems between the US and Brasil, all the American missionaries were being pulled from the field and that we'd have 10 days to pack everything up to go back to the states. I was incredulous until I call the Zone Leaders, which played along too and said it was real. I told my companion and we were so shocked and I was getting super sad. After sitting in shock for an hour, I called another missionary to talk about it and he didn't know anything and then I called the Zone Leaders again asking for more information and they cracked and said it was just a joke. I told them it wasn't funny and that I'd been crying (which I hadn't  - just torn up inside) and that I was gonna call President and tell him what his leaders were doing, and then I turned off the cell phone before they could say anything. I let them stew on that information, heh heh, but I didn't actually call President. Then after an hour I fessed up. They were totally worried - but we ended up laughing in the end. But seriously, you shouldn't make jokes like that!

Anyway, so awesome to hear that people from the Folsom Wards are getting call to Brazil! Especially to my mission! It will be cool to see if they pass through any of my areas.

I want to get forwarded Nick and Chases e-mails from now on! They're family so it's okay! It's great to hear what's going on there.

Anyway, I'm runnin runnin runnin here and doin my work and gettin things done. 5 month mark comin up... Birthday comin up! I'm excited!!!

Crazy Dog on Lap

This dog's crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXvU8dDlXo0 

I love you guys so very much, good week to all! Let us all keep running until the end!
Love love love,

Elder Carpenter