12-28-2009 Letter Home

Noite Feliz? Conserteza!

Hello friends and family! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know I did, and in circumstances in which you’d think I wouldn’t. But let us start at the beginning.

This last Monday was very fun. It was Elder Matias’ and Elder Cheevers’ birthday and we celebrated at a member’s house with six missionaries, a big cake and a lot of other food. It was a very fun day, just chatting with each other and laying in hammocks. The fun of that day really set the tone for the rest of the week. I have to admit, Christmas Week was as fun as it was difficult. It was just hard to teach many people this last week, and we spent a lot of time with the members. We had a lot of commitments to check up on different houses and attend Christmas parties and Christmas activities. Yeah, the mission is so TOUGH, isn’t it? Haha. We built a lot of friendships though with the members and that is important for missionaries to work well. I feel somewhat guilty for having a good time, but, I am feeling very energized now to get back to work.

Speaking of work, Elder Hlavaty and Elder Shibata both left the area, the former to the United States for health reasons and Elder Shibata to another part of the mission to train a new arrival. This means that Elder Matias and I practically changed our area from Novo Oriente to Jereseiti, which means new people we’ve got to get to know and new investigators we’ve got to find. We are still sleeping in the same house, now just the two of us, and we don’t have to take the train, which is great. We spent a day just organizing our stuff, cleaning the house and moving the rest of our things from our house in Novo Oriente to Jereseiti. But, we have also now inherited a huge area of Maracanau that reminds me of the size of Juazeiro, and we have to manage four wards and a branch, which means our Sundays are going to be very busy. But… on the positive again, we now get to work with the investigators Elder Shibata and Elder Hlavaty left behind, which includes two sets of couples that are going to get married and baptized! We also have a much larger pool of members to get references from, and we already, with little effort on our part, received references for some friends of members that appear very special and receptive to the Gospel. I am amazed with the members here, actually. If for some reason missionaries were taken out of this city, I bet that in no time at all they would pick up missionary work responsibilities and start proselyting themselves and be just as productive! We are very blessed to be here and it’s just awesome how the Lord keeps on bringing us people to teach and to baptize. Best mission in the world!

This last week I happened to find a copy of the Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, in English! Just lying around the apartment! I don’t know where it came from. So, I read The Christmas Carol, then The Chimes, then The Cricket on the Hearth, all written by Charles Dickens in the 1840s concerning Christmas. What delightful heartwarming stories, those! Very Christian in character as well. Despite the heat and the palm trees here, I was feeling the Christmas Spirit just as strong as ever!

On Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day I wished everyone I saw a Merry Christmas, to the general confusion of pretty much everyone. You see, in this region of Brazil, Christmas is just like any other holiday, really, it is not especially special. People get a day off of work and they get drunk at night. It is kind of sad to me… but I did what I could to spread the Christmas Spirit and didn’t let the lack of it pull me down.

On Christmas Eve we went to a member, Linda’s house and ate Christmas Dinner with her family, rice and beans and chicken like always but it still felt special. I played jump rope for an hour with the kids and we watched a little of television and played Christmas songs on the piano. A very beautiful, fun family and it was a Christmas Eve that will live long in my memory.

(Christmas Eve Dinner with Linda's Family! Linda is a new convert who loves the missionaries and is a very fun and funny person and she invited us to spend the night with her family!)

Christmas Day was awesome! I woke up and immediately opened up my Christmas Present and to my surprise I unwrapped some new black shorts, an awesome, funny shirt made by Lynsey that reads “Got LdM?” LdM being Livro de Mormon, or Book of Mormon, and a nice leather book to put photos in. Thanks family!

We ate lunch with Linda’s family again, then off we went to find a phone to call our families. From six to eight in the evening I was able to talk to my beloved family in Sacramento as well as my twin brother in Passo Fundo.

 (The Greatest Telephone Call I've Ever Had)

What an awesome experience that was! I cannot describe in words how the conversation left me dazzled for the rest of the night, how wonderful it was to hear the voices of my mother, father, my two dear sisters, and my best friend. Everyone is so happy. I’m so grateful to be on my mission! Mom and Dad, do you want to write a little bit here about how the call was, in your own words? It’d be good to have a second opinion here on the blog, hah, and this is a good opportunity to do so. : )



***Per Brendon's request, I'll just say briefly that our phone call with our Brendon and Connor was our best Christmas present ever! We all gathered in one room and had them both on speaker phone. It was so good to be together as a family for those 2 hours and just to move into a very comfortable conversation about their news, our news, questions we had been wanting to ask each other. It was fun to listen to them compare their Portuguese and learn that there are differences in pronunciation and slang from area to area. We also got to say hello to their companions and hear some of the sounds of their surroundings. It was awesome to hear each of them speak so fluently (at least it sounded that way to me) and realize the incredible amount of learning that has taken place. We were not overly emotional until it was time to go, and then it was hard to break that connection. I just didn't want to let go.... that's a Mom for ya! We love and miss our boys! But we are so proud of what a great missionary Brendon is and for his consistent positive attitude and desire to follow the rules, to get the most out of his mission and for all he is doing to make a positive difference in the lives of the people he is coming in contact with.***

After that, we went back to our house and I crashed on my bed, emotionally exhausted, and then was told that we had to attend a Christmas Party. So I got on my clothes and we shuffled off to the ward Christmas party, and despite what you might think, my spirits were never higher. I really needed the members at that time. So I danced as much as I could, I organized a big game of Mingle that everyone loved, and I made people laugh and smile. Made a lot of friends during that Christmas Party and I loved doing so.

( A Present for Me from the Members: Sports Jersey for the Flamengos!

The best team in Brazil and the world! )

The day after Christmas was interesting. We woke up at six o’clock and headed off to the bus stop where we met a huge gathering of members of our ward. A few minutes later, a bus pulls up and picks us all up, just members of the Church inside! I’m standing in the bus, crowded with loud little Brazilian families, looking out the window and watching the streets and buildings become more sparse, watching as we emerge into the countryside and the mountains that surround Maracanau. Then we hit a few narrow dirt roads and right when I think that we are heading into the jungle, we pull to a stop right in front of a huge brick wall and a giant wooden gate, the sign above which reads: “Sitio Deseret”. The gate opens and we all pile out… and what do I find?

Dude. The Church built something out here that is… so cool. It’s a compound, a bunch of nice green fields dotted with houses and ramadas, with banana tree orchards in the back and tucked safely in the mountains. Obviously the Church wants to relocate all the members here when the End Days or the Zombie Outbreak hits.   ;)

(The outdoor large group meeting area at Sitio Deseret,

made for sacrament meetings and other events.)

It was such a fun place. Every ward in our stake found a ramada and began barbecuing a huge amount of meat. All the young men started playing soccer and all the children ran to play in this pool they have. Never did children play so long in a pool as those!

 (Brendon says "Nao a Lagoa Salgada, mas ainda muito legal"
Translation tool says "No the pond salty, but still very cool" )

The weather was perfect, and we changed into sports clothes, played everything from Frisbee to UNO, and I took a lot of pictures and went adventuring into the banana orchard. Such a great day. The Church really loves the members here in Brazil. I hope some of my pictures get through to show you how cool it was.

Brendon among the Banana Trees

 

"The Vacas (cows) Want to Join in the Fun! ...And the missionaries too!"

So that was my awesome, fun week in Maracanau, Ceara, Brazil. Wish it could have been made better with some progress with our investigators or some new baptisms, but I guess the Lord is just giving me a short break. I am having some technical problems with getting the pictures through so I am going to devote the rest of my time here to fixing that. I love you all, as always, and I wish you a Happy New Year!

Hey Mom,
Yeah, the call did make me a little sad and homesick that evening, but lately I have been feeling even more energized and ready for the next five months. The call was definitely a success and helped me more than it hurt. I am so glad you guys had a fun Christmas and that Snow Day looked so fun! Was it the same hill we went to last year? Awesome. I am glad the kids had a good time. You guys saw Avatar? Ah, man, everyone here is talking about that movie and there is a huge banner of that movie in the mall here. I was looking forward to it for months and that was before I left! Tudo bem, all is well, I’ll see it eventually, hah.

Lynsey,
Holy crap, that painting of the pomegranate tree with the birds and the yellow sky and the roots wrapped around planet Earth... that is one rad painting! Man, I can’t believe you are so talented and this being an ability you just cultivated in the last few months! You must have inherited an artistic knack from Mom, hah! Way cool.

Connor,
Hey, loved hearing from you this last Friday. I was glad to hear you are doing well there. It was impossible to not think of all the good Christmases we have had these last few years, you and me. I love you man! Keep up the great work!

Love y’all,
Have a great week!
- Elder Brendon Carpenter

12-21-2009 Letter Home

Feliz Natal Todo Mundo!

God Bless Us Every One!


Friends, family, this is my Christmas letter, but its not going to be super amazing because its not like I have more time than usual to type one. This last week was great! I got my package, which by the way is incredibly AWESOME! I cant believe you planned all of that, you guys! It was perfect!

Everyone in my house was impressed and my companion had a huge smile on his face as he opened his first present addressed to “Elder Companheiro”. Hah, he hadn’t gotten his Christmas package yet, so his spirits were lifted when he received a few little things. Its so funny, some of those little things you gave us were just so awesome because they were from home. Very cool. Our little Christmas tree is like the only decoration we have here for Christmas, but it makes all the difference. Thank you so much, everybody, you put so much thought into that and it really made me feel the Christmas Spirit so far from home.

We were blessed to be able to baptize two of our investigators this Sunday! Vitor is a twelve-year old rapaz (a word used for all young men here, HA-pies) who has a large family that we are going to continue working with. He has a lot of friends in the Church and man, he is just so ready for the Gospel, he is like a member already. Bruna is a sixteen-year old moca (MO-sa, word used for all young women here) whose family are all members, and will likewise be very strong. Two very awesome people have just joined the Church and we are glad for the experience.

That was really our week, despite the usual ground-pounding and door-knocking and teaching people. Oh, we did give out DVDs of “Feliz Mundo”, a Church film about Christmas, and all of our investigators loved the presents.

Okay, responses now… my favorite part of the letter!

Hey Lynsey!! Don’t worry, I understand how busy you can get. That sounds crazy! Wow, Alex ----- is getting married?! That’s great! Congrats to them. Your Christmas sounds like it will be so fun! Yeah, the package is very, very cool. The house I am living in isn’t so bad. I sleep well at night, every night, because I am so tired after work, I have running cold water, no hot water here, hah, and we drink from jugs of mineral water we buy from a nearby store, can’t trust the public water for drinking. The food is different from the food we had in Los Angeles, but it is really good! Rice, beans, noodles, sausage, lasagna sometimes, chicken. They make it great here. You are in a ROCK BAND?!?! That is fantastic! Oh man! That is so cool! I hope it is a bunch of fun and that you will get fans! That’s sweet Lynsey! I love you so much! Talk to you in a couple of days!

Hey Dad! I like Maracanau a lot, but there are some differences between working here and working in Juazeiro, which I still need to learn. As far as comfort, though, it is definitely an improvement. I really need to worry about a freckle? What should I do to make sure it isn’t skin cancer? There ARE a few things that would be nice to have here, hah… little tools that would make life a little easier. I need to keep a list and remember them better, because I can’t quite put my finger on it right now. Hmmm. That is a definite affirmative on the cooking a fresh chicken! Yeah! Maybe start raising it now from a chick so it’ll be big and fat when I get back! Haha. We did not get our new house yet, still waiting for it. I am thinking about the cottage meeting idea a lot, and I think it will be an awesome program. Unfortunately I think I need a little bit more experience with missionary work and the language before I can begin putting it into action. But it will happen! I love you Dad! Thanks for all of your encouraging words!

Hey Kaitlin!
I miss you and love you! I hope you are feeling very Christmasy and have some good gifts under that tree! I’ll talk to you soon and I am thinking about you every day!

Hey Mom! Natal isn’t a big holiday here, actually. It’s kind of just lumped in with all the others, and there aren’t too many decorations. That might just be Ceara, though, because the other Brazilians say that Christmas is a big deal in Sao Paulo as well. One funny tradition is that Santa Claus is depicted differently here. He has a wide-brimmed hat and he rides a flying donkey. No joke! It is hilarious! Christmas here will probably be just like every other P-Day, with perhaps a really good meal (we are thinking barbecue… hmmm…) and Christmas songs and a few little festivities. We’ll definitely do something fun though and take a lot of pictures. I have been writing in my journal every single night and I have filled up the first book quite a bit! I think I am nearing the halfway point, which means it might be a few more months before you receive it. There is a lot of content there; I think you’ll like it a lot!

Yeah, so, the only way I can talk to Connor is if we are on the phone at the same time! It is permitted to talk to him, as he is part of my family. So, I am going to call at 6:00 here, which should be 1:00 there and figure out what the time is in Porto Alegre at that time, because you need to tell Connor to call at that time. There aren’t too many rules here and I will probably be able to talk to you for an hour, maybe longer. NOTE: Just figured out I can call home to set up the call on Christmas Eve. So. I. Will. Call. On Christmas Eve and talk to you guys for maybe five minutes. Connor, what about you guys? Can you do this?

Hey Connor! I hope that we will be able to talk to each other! That video Nunes sent was absolutely fantastic! I could understand much of what you guys said, the accent is different but not incredibly so! Cool to see you at work there! Your companion seems cool from what little was said. Neat, man. I hope your Portuguese is better when I talk to you, it sounds like you have put in more study time than me! The pictures on your blog are great; I am really enjoying your adventures. Man, I’m glad I didn’t have to stay in my first area and guide my senior companion around, that sounds tough.

By the way man, you need to start keeping a record of all of your baptisms. Buy a nice notebook. Keep the first page clear for you to write your testimony at the end of mission. The next page should be a title page for that area you are in, with perhaps a picture of you and your companion. The next page is your first baptism, with a picture, and all the information you need to keep track of them: address, date of birth, date of baptism, date of confirmation, date of temple entrance, who baptized who, who your companion was at the time, what ward it was in, and a quick paragraph summarizing your experience with them. When you leave that area or switch companions, make a title page for your next area and your next companion. This makes a really cool Livro Dos Batismos that looks very nice. Mine looks sweet, I’ll have to send pictures at some point, and Elder Carvalho has one that is awesome. Please make this book! You’ll want an in-depth record of everyone you baptized on your mission and I will want to see it! I love you man!

I love you guys so much! Merry Christmas everyone! Talk to you soon!

- Elder Brendon Carpenter

12-14-2009 Letter Home

Brendon with President and Sister Batt when he arrived in Fortaleza on October 23, 2009

Chicken is so TASTY when it was alive just a few hours earlier. Except for the spine, that part of it - yuck. But it is better than the head. The only fun part about eating a chicken head is the fact that its a chicken head. Haha, I've actually eaten several meals so far where they have just killed and cooked the chicken that morning. It really is much more delicious.

Anyway, this week was called Sete Dias das Problemas com Casas. Cada ("dude"), first of all, that terrible house in Novo Oriente that I was telling you about was causing Elder Matias allergy problems, so we have been catching the crazy train (crazy in that it rocks back and forth like you are on a ship caught in a storm... and there's no lights which makes it scary at night) to another area every morning and night to another companionship´s house. We just decided a few days ago that we are going to stay there throughout this transfer, because the other house in Novo Oriente we want to move into is being renovated. At least tomorrow I can finally fully unpack my things after a week, and maybe finally put on a new pair of clothes (just joking). Figuring that whole problem out... touring the new house we want to buy and talking to a whole bunch of people about buying it and getting the money from the financial secretaries here, just one big hassle that took a lot of time throughout the week. Eh. Whatever. The house we are going to be staying in with the other companionship is really cool, we live on the third story of this big building and we can see the whole city and the wind is awesome at night.

By the way, you know how I said the other missionaries abandoned all of their things in our terrible house that we arent sleeping at? Turns out that one of them has the same size of clothes as I do, and so I was able to scavenge some really good pants and shirts. I was really excited by that... but typing it here kind of makes it sound a little pathetic. But hey, really, my clothes are deteriorating very quickly in this tropical climate! ; )

Speaking of tropical climate, the closer proximity to the Sun has caused me to develop a new freckle on my right cheek. It is strange to see there, but it was meant to be. According to my calculations, if this freckle has appeared solely based on my increased exposure to the radiation here on the Equator, then by the time I return home I will have seven new freckles in total on my face! It will make telling the difference between Connor and I much more easy.  : . )

Maracanau... is not incredibly hot every day! The first few days here, feeling the wind coming in from the ocean, I can't describe to you guys how it felt, it was so refreshing. I guess I had forgotten over the last six weeks how much I had been burning alive in Juazeiro. I was getting hit by temperatures upwards of 90 degrees Celsius every day without breezes and I had just gotten accustomed to sweating every minute and soaking my clothes down to the tie. But here... you guys would still think its hot but it is much more comfortable. Some days the temperature is down to the high 70s.

Other than the weather, Maracanau is a little bit more urban, though I have still seen wandering cattle here and there. No one riding horses. The problem is there is far less people on the streets here, its much more empty. The reason is because so many people commute to Fortaleza, for work or for school. They take the train into the city in the morning and come back at night to go to sleep. It makes talking to people much more difficult... we knock doors (not really, people here clap their hands instead) without a response much more frequently. A little frustrating.

We have three people with a date for baptism already! All investigators that had been working with the other missionaries when they left, so we don't feel like we earned the privilege of baptizing them, but it is still good news.

I was so happy to see all of those pictures, guys! I laughed, I smiled, I caused a disturbance in the internet cafe. Man, I cant believe it snowed that much at our house! And, the pictures of all the relatives were excellent, I loved seeing all of those faces. It looks like everyone had a very fun Thanksgiving vacation.

By the way, I will be getting my Christmas package today, it arrived a few days earlier and the secretaries were just holding onto it until Zone Conference, but the companionship Elder Matias and I are living with (Elder Hlaverty from Cash Valley, Utah and Elder Shibata from Sao Paulo, Brazil) are heading to the Mission Office and are going to pick it up for me! I too am looking forward to my Christmas phone call, and I agree getting Connor and I on the phone at the same time would be very fun. Maybe, though, only twenty minutes of us both on the phone would be better, so that you can stretch out your time with both of us. Good luck planning all of that! I haven't been given any information so far on what is going to happen. Remember though that the time to call is the most important information I need.

"One more photo of the members I left behind in Jauziero!"

 A mission is hard wherever you go, but the difference is that in Ceara, the people are much more receptive and we see the fruits of our labors in very short time periods. I already have ten baptisms and will probably have thirteen by next week. You know how much that helps me keep working and smiling? Its wonderful to see people start changing their lives after only a few visits.  I'm spoiled up here in the north.

Hey, Connor, there is an Elder Trage here that was born in Passo Fundo! He knows the city very well and was excited to hear that you are there. He's German-Brazilian, and he looks exactly like an American missionary, only he can't speak English and instead is fluent in Portuguese. Do they have a lot of people there that look exactly like Americans?

Dad, sorry to have skipped your last letter, I just didnt have enough time. Funny how often that excuse is used. We taught Jorge, Jackson and Jardel many lessons from Week 3 to Week 5... I want to say around seven to eight. We wanted them to have a firm understanding of the commandments and so we taught them one each morning for a number of days. My Portuguese is to the point where I can teach the first lesson very well, the third lesson okay, I can testify well and give answers to very easy questions, but many time it is my Brazilian companion who answers questions and is there when the lesson deviates from the plan (which happens a lot and should happen). After speaking with many American missionaries, I feel that I will never become fluent like a native, but it surprising how well I can speak Portuguese even now. I can follow a conversation pretty well... its weird, I can just recognize the meaning of words and sentences that three months ago would have sounded completely illegible.

Yes, President Batt let my district play Rockband for one P-Day. That doesnt happen every day for sure. We can watch Disney movies here in the Fortaleza Mission, and many Elders take advantage of the permission, watching three movies every P-Day. You might think that might destroy the rest of the week, but it doesnt. A few hours of clean entertainment in an air-conditioned room can do wonders after a week of sweat and tears. The problem is, when we watched School for Scoundrels, is that the whole district thought it was a Disney movie. It wasnt until after that I discovered that the Elder who had rented the movie had... uh... "forgotten" to check to see if it was made by Disney and for that matter what the rating was. The thing is, I had thought it was taking the Spirit away while watching it, but everyone else kept on watching and laughing, so I did as well. Elder Carvalho and I talked about it afterwards and he assured me that we had did nothing wrong. The thing is, like I have explained before, you end up accidentally watching unauthorized movies a lot, like at members houses or even in restaurants that have television (even fast-food places have televisions here, Brazilians just love watching TV while eating). It would be inappropriate to ask someone to turn off the television or to excuse yourself from the room, especially in this culture, and yet we still keep the Spirit with us afterward, because we didn't go looking in the first place to break the rules. Hmm... its not something I like doing here, but it happens.

Back to Connor. We aren't contacting very many people every day. Even with Elder Carvalho we were only doing an average of maybe five people a day, and in Maracanau so far it has been less. Missionaries here think that thirty is an incredibly high number to contact every day. I want to change that, too, and I will. I want to give you some advice on the first lesson that I have learned, as it is the one you teach the most, but I am going to have to wait until next week. I am missing you a bunch man. I think I have been dependent on the Lord and on the other Elders here in a huge way to help me cope with that. I am glad you arent feeling as homesick lately, that sounds really crappy. Just take one day at a time and try to have fun with your companion and with the members. Americans are so used to being constantly entertained, but you can turn that into a strength by entertaining others or creating an entertaining atmosphere by smiling a lot, talking a lot with people, playing games with children, and making jokes (especially about how horrible your Portuguese is, that always creates laughs). You can do it man! Remember, you have got to focus on other people, how to help them, lift them up, in order to lift yourself up. You solve your own problems by solving the problems of others. I am sure there are some small exceptions sometimes to that rule, but generally, especially in being a missionary, it works.

My memory this week is the two of us playing Indiana Jones: The Lost City of Atlantis when we were kids. Salaam afendi! *chuckle*  That was a fun game.

I love you Lynsey, Kaitlin, Mom! Thank you for your letters!

Christmas is almost here!
- Elder Carpenter

From Kay Lea (Mom)
Even though this photo is blurry, I loved Brendon, the future Movie Director's caption:

"Four missionaries. One large city in Brazil. A sacred duty with eternal consequences... "Elders of Juazeiro" Now showing in theatres near you."

Love you guys!!!!

12-7-2009 Letter Home

Opa! Uma area nova! Ola Maracanau!

Yeah, I have been transferred! My new companion is Elder Matias and I am now in Maracanau, after another long bus-ride. No longer in the Land of Cariri! I left Zona Juazeiro behind, the best Zona in the mission, but I am excited to start work in a new city too. Should be fun!

Could be a shortish message. Just a heads up.

Turns out for my second transfer I will be staying and preaching the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in Maracanau outside of Fortaleza! Yes, yes, I left the Land of Cariri, the Chosen Land of this Mission that everyone wants to go to. It was sad to see everyone, especially the people I baptized, for the last time! So hard. Everyone saw us off at the bus station last night, many, many people in the ward and I just thought, standing there with all my bags waving to all these smiling faces that I was going back home! Like I had finished the mission! It was so crazy.


The members of the Ramo (Branch) who came to the bus station to say goodbye to all of us that were leaving Juazeiro. I love these guys! These members are so awesome!

I haven't seen much of Maracanau yet but it looks a little bit more urban than Juazeiro. Elder Matias is really cool, big Brasileiro that I hope to  become good friends with. We just found our house a few hours ago and man! I can't believe I thought Juazeiro was bad! It looks like the previous just abandoned the house and left trash everywhere! Hah! I am not angry, just amused that they left the house in that bad of disrepair. We might be moving to another one though, even Elder Matias says its
ridiculous how many things are broken.

Pff, last week was fantastic. Elder Carvalho and I really bonded over the last week and I will miss him a lot. We finished the transfer strong by baptizing a family! Otacilo De Neto and his new wife (just married this last Friday!!!) Kathiwera, and her sister who lives with them, Capucherra, and I am probably mispelling their names terribly. We were so excited to baptise an entire family and it was a great climax to the transfer.

Here is a photo of their baptism. Such a great family! I love them! I will miss them so much! Last Friday after their marriage we went to the casapela (house chapel) and watched Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration in Portuguese and it was really fun, they liked it a lot. They already have such great testimonies and we met them our second or third week here!


Man, I loved Juazeiro so much and I am so happy with my experience there. I feel like I can take on the world now that I have beat my first transfer. Awesome.

So, I really want to read some letters, answer them and send pictures, so this is going to be about it. This last week was very simple, no huge stories, just a lot of working with Otacilo and his family and preparing them for their baptism, and then the whole ordeal with changing zones and all that.



Hey thank you Mom for the info and pictures! Don't feel bad for me, those pictures really don't make me "trunky" (homesick) , just happy for all of you and glad to be part of it in some way. Thank you so much for the kind words! I hope you feel like you are part of my adventure!

The Santos family is good, we left them on good terms. They all received the Espirito Santo this last Sunday. I wish we could have worked more with the one brother that was not baptized and the parents, but it seems like other missionaries will have to do the work. I love all those kids, all like my little brothers, always joshing around with me and making jokes when they see me.

The marriage paperwork went through for Otacilio! You dont know how much of a miracle that was. We fasted for it and were praying a lot and the paperwork was finished up in FOUR DAYS! In Brazil it usually takes a month! They were married in a courthouse in a cool ceremony that we got to be a part of, involving a judge giving an interesting prayer in Portuguese.

My feet are fine. My shoes socks and clothes are feeling good too. No medical conditions, feeling just fine. The weather  has been really hot here but I am used to sweating every minute of the day by now, hah. Money is hard to manage because we take a lot of buses and we pay for the transportation of our investigators sometimes too, but nothing too bad. Oh, I withdrew a hundred reals this last week, I hope that was okay, I needed to pay for my half Otacilo´s marriage with Elder Carvalho and I also needed to buy food for the week! Thank you so much, it helped me out a lot!

The hardest thing is no longer constantly working, like in the CTM. I like doing that. The hardest thing is, of course, being apart from you all and being able to communicate with you only an hour a week! It stresses me out so much!

The best thing is baptizing worthy converts that you love, that love you, that really have testimonies and look forward to their baptisms with such enthusiasm! Its the greatest feeling to lift them up out of the waters of baptisms and say "Para bens, bem vindo!" (Congratulations, welcome!) with a smile on your face.

I am reading in Second Nephi right now, starting over after having finished a short while again. I am also reading Jesus the Christ and Preach My Gospel again.

Oi, Kaitlin, minha irma! I love you so much! Yeah, it is going to be 2010 soon! Crazy, huh? Styles do change very, very slowly. I miss you girl! You are learning spanish! Thats great! Good luck! I miss you! Hug hug kiss kiss :)

--

Hey Dad, I love you so much! Thanks for your letter! It is such that I cannot respond to you this week but you will be first in the next! Lynsey, I love you my sister! I hope you all have a fantastic week and I will talk more about my area and answer all your questions next Monday!

I love you guys!

I love all of you! By the way, I got the pack of letters from all of the Primary Children in the Ward! Next week I am going to write them all back individually, but just give them a heads up that I got their letters and that I enjoyed them so much! Thank you guys, for giving me a little taste of home!

Ate mais!
- Elder Brendon Carpenter

11-30-2009 Letter Home

"HELLLLLOOOOOOO VIEEEEEETNNNAAAAAAMMMMM!!!!"

Serto. Not that huge of a week. Maybe I will get some more time to send photos and talk about my companion. Last P-Day was the funnest P-Day we have had yet. All the Elders in our Zone fourteen in all came to Juazeiro to have a barbecue at our casapela!

"our casapela" - church?

Me with a bunch of cattle (vashos, spelling maybe wrong) after lunch on Sunday in Malvinas, a long way away from Juazeiro, because we were celebrating there the new branch that just opened in Barbalha. Look these places up on Google Earth!

It was way fun. We watched "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration" on our big projector screen there, then afterward a movie with Jon Heder called "School for Scoundrels". It was very funny and the first movie I've watched completely on the mission. It wasn't authorized by mission standards, it turns out, but the blame goes to the guy who picked it out. We all thought it was a Disney movie. It wasn't terrible though. Very fun day.

So, our Otimo Familia is actually the Santos Family and we worked with them A LOT this last week. Pretty much every day we would go to see them. The parents, the aunt, the older daughter and the older cousin are going to take a little more time to convert, but the teenagers, five out of six of them, were doing so well that we couldn't deny them baptism this last Sunday. They were reading the Book of Mormon, praying every day, and they said they were feeling the Spirit so much together. So they entered the waters of baptism! I baptized three of them, Jorge, Jackson, and Jardel. I have big hopes for them. But, we are also hoping that the adults will join too, because it will be so much harder for the kids without them.

The Santos Brothers, five out of six of them! The three standing directly to my right and looking over each other´s heads were the ones I baptized.

Elder Pereira and Elder Ojopi trying to look cool, walking in slow-motion

We are preparing another family for baptism, Otocilo and his wife, who is pregnant. They have a two year old son named Saul who runs around and falls down a lot and likes me a lot. Every time I come to the house he runs over to sit by me. Haha. Very cute. Otocilo works for the city, not quite sure what exactly but he has a pretty nice house in a pretty nice neighborhood, Novo Juazeiro (in Juazeiro, still, though). They are pretty much members already, very nice and friendly people. Otocilo likes us so much one day he just tagged along with us for hours as we were looking for a new house for some extra missionaries president is sending here next transfer. The problem is they are not married yet, and that takes a while in Brazil. We will find out today if the paperwork went through fast enough.

We had Zone Conference this last Saturday! It was excellent. Had some good talks by President Batt, who is an awesome leader, and I got to bear my testimony. I had a very helpful interview with President Batt and after all the formal stuff, we went to a pizzaria where we ate as much exotic Brazilian pizza as we could hold in our stomachs!

                                                     "Pizza!"

Lately, because we don't eat dinner here, I have learned to cram in a ton of food every lunchtime, and this ability I am developing came in handy that night. You learn to stop as soon as you feel sharp pains in your intestinal area. Gostozo (delicious)!

This week we went into the Bazaar they have here one morning to find bananas. There is just a huge concrete building in Juazeiro, like a parking garage, only it has been transformed by whoever wants to buy a stall or space into this huge marketplace where they sell everything from fruit smoothies, to shoes and cellphones. Really cool place. Its dark and noisy in there and it feels really exotic to descend into the belly of raw, foreign capitalism. No pictures of the place, though... my camera would probably get stolen there.

So, about Elder Carvalho, my trainador. He is one of the best missionaries here and a very interesting guy. He has become a good friend and I hope throughout the mission and after we will stay good friends. He is the son of a General Seventy. Anyway, he belongs to a very notable family in Sao Paulo. Lots of rich and famous uncles.
Elder Carvalho  is an interesting guy. You would like him Dad. He has a lot of big ambitions in business and is very determined and hardworking. When he was 18 he was able to get a job in sales in the World Trade Center in Brazil. He rose to the top as a salesman and by the time he left for his mission he was leading a large team of salesmen and was recognized as a kind of wunderkind of the company. He has sold a company that he ran on the side that managed apartments in the interior of Sao Paulo for quite a bit of money  and has some big plans when he returns for different products. He lived in the United States for a year studying at BYU and while there he learned English and he speaks it fluently. He has studied in tons of universities around the world, actually, in Argentina, Britain... a world traveler kind of guy. He has some great stories!
One day, the President of the World Trade Center in Brazil called him up and said his English translator had gotten in a car crash and that he was flying to the United States to meet some of the presidential candidates (this is in February or March) in order to establish relations. So my companion got to go to this big dinner in Chicago to translate for the President of the WTC and what do you know, he got to meet and talk to Barack Obama, and shake his hand. This was back when he was a long-shot hopeful. Cool, huh?
I wish I could tell you more about him. He has been a great trainer and if I could teach as well as he can, I will be very proud of my mission. He has a very fun personality which has made my first transfer much easier.

Hey, Connor, have you met an Elder Monteiro there? The LZ of my zone, has a twin in Porto Alegre Norte, just like Elder Cheever and us. He is leaving in a week, though, so you might not get to meet him. Did I mention I met Elder Cheever on my first night in Fortaleza? He has been training Elder Clay this whole time. Cool that we were finally able to meet.

So, I did get the cards, Mom, no worries there. Thanks so much! Some stuff that would be nice to get later on: hot chocolate, something small to remove stains, and if you do ever send me clothing send me more of those black Dickies pants, they definitely work better, and I wish we hadn't listened to that lady and bought those other kinds.

Connor: Sailing trip during Sophomore year! Seals swimming by our boat and the lush green mountains on either side of us! I loved that trip so much, it was so fun.

Awesome, family, about duning and Thanksgiving and movies. Feel free to tell me as much as you can or want to about fun stuff that happened. It doesn't make me feel homesick, it actually helps me feel the opposite, because I know what is happening on the other side. I will have to answer your questions next time, maybe ask them again. The language is coming along well, I can have simple conversations now but I am still having difficulties. Everyone says I am learning quickly though. I will probably get the package a few weeks after it arrives, it just has to wait there until someone travels from the Mission Office to our area and can carry it. That visa problem sounds really horrible, it started soon after we arrived in the CTM, so I feel really blessed we were able to sneak in. Thanksgiving sounded really fun. Transfers are next week, cant wait to figure out whether I'll stay or not.

                                            "what I had for Thanksgiving Dinner, hah"

Love you all! Hey Connor, awesome letter, wish I could say more about it.

Elder Ojopi and me! Elder Ojopi is from Rodonia in Porto Velho and has been a great friend here, very nice guy.

11- 23-2009 Letter Home

Hello Friends and Family

This week was the toughest week I have had on the mission! Wow! Glad it is over. I am happy to report that I am over it and ready to finish out the last two weeks of this transfer strong. What kind of difficulties? Just new-American-missionary-feeling-frustrated-with-the-language and companions and the heat kind of difficulties. nothing big.

You will have to excuse the poor quality of this message. this keyboard wont let me delete anything without risking deleting entire sentences. it is very frustrating. Man, this message might be pretty short because it is so difficult to write. i never get what i want with e-mails...

So last week President Batt let us play Rockband for P-Day! It was very divertido!

"Last Monday President Batt gave us permission to play Rockband at the Lojas Americanas mall for P-Day! It was fun!"

hope you like the photo! We played for hours, all in English, and my favorite song to sing was "will you be my girl", hah! After that day we were singing rock and roll songs around the house for the rest of the week!

Streets of Juazeiro from bus window

The best news of this week was our Awesome Family, I think I mentioned them last e-mail. Both Elder Carvalho and I do not remember their surname. fourteen people. We found them on November 11 and gave them a short message.

We invited them to Church and what do you know, defying all convention, when we arrived Sunday morning they were all showered and ready to go! Yeah, I did write about this earlier.

ANYWAY, we returned to their home and we gave a great message about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which they really liked. It is awesome to just be surrounded by this giant family in their Living Room and teach them all at once. They really like us and say they feel a good spirit when we are in their homes. They have two twin three year olds, Andre and Andrea, who are very rambunctious (sp?) and cute. Anyway, we asked them if they had received an answer after praying and what do you know, almost half of the children did! They raised their hands, said they had prayed and felt the feelings in their heart which we told them is the Holy Ghost. One of the teenagers said that he felt as if a big fan started blowing in his heart! They have been excellent and if they join the church, it will bless their lives so much. Their grandmother has tuberculosis and Elder Carvalho felt inspired to tell them that if they we baptized and began living the commandments, their grandmother would be cured. Very powerful.

They were so excited yesterday when we drove up in this bus the Church bought for our area.We didn't actually drive it, but the driver stopped in front of their house and all the kids came running out. They thought it was so fun, that a bus came to pick them all up for free. They stayed all three hours in church, and I felt that they liked it. Andre and Andrea felt a little cooped up and were being a little crazy at the end, but I am sure they had a very spiritual experience. Tonight we are going to bring some member families to their house for family home evening and I think they will like that a lot as well.

Speaking about family home evenings, I have to tell you about our Elite Special Family Forces! There are three families in our branch that are super strong, they have been in the church for a while and the parents hold the important callings. We basically call on these families to help with missionary work once, sometimes multiple times in the week. They are very devoted, especially when you consider it costs them a lot to take bus rides across the town, but they are also very blessed by their informal calling to help fellowship all of our investigators. When investigators show up in Church, they are there introducing themselves, inviting them to their houses... just the nicest people with very powerful testimonies. If we didn't have them it would be so much more difficult to do missionary work here. Last night we had a Family Home Evening with the same people we will have FHE tonight with, and our investigator family just enjoyed the company so much. They went from having some doubts about getting baptized to being extremely enthusiastic about that.

     I hope no one thinks that I am saying our American LDS families should be better like these people here, you cant really compare... but it is very cool, because in Juazeiro we live on the frontier of the Kingdom of God, and these awesome, powerful families that have nothing of the comforts that we Americans have, with our large membership and concentration in the States,  are here, helping the work along in a big way and being super blessed and happy while doing it! I love being with them, they have become very good friends and I will miss them.

Other things... I had to fast this week. Hardest. Fast. Of. My Life. walking in the equatorial sun without being able to drink water at every house is tough. In Brazil, we eat lunch, the biggest meal, at noon, then skip dinner and breakfast the next day, culminating the fast with eating lunch the following day.

So that night it rained at about 4 in the morning and I just stumbled out of my room out into our hallway, which doesn't have a roof, and let the rain pour over my face. man. Tough. But that was also the day that our Awesome Family reported that many of the children and teenagers received responses to their prayers.

                                                                      "Photo of my hallway"

Well, I need to type responses to family:

First, to my brother Connor. Sorry that you had a tough week yo! I've been hurting too, though homesickness was only part of the equation. I still have the vision [for the work], but I have been burying it lately as it is hard to transform it into action when I do not know Portuguese. I think I need to take it easy and learn the basics out here before I really launch into my "epic missionary phase". Learn how to teach powerful lessons, get along with companions, and speak Portuguese. Once I have those down, I can start doing missionary work the way I feel it needs to be done. That experience with that guy with the broken legs must have been very cool, my friend! Don't feel like you aren't being as good as you can, you definitely are!

Memory: The Tuckfields, at their house, playing "Mario Party" and making a whirlpool in their swimming pool out back. Remember that? That was so fun. I miss those guys! I love you man! Keep strong! I know you can do everything you set your mind to!

shoot, I gotta go right now. I read all the letters and I hope you all have fun in Glamis! (Ah man...) And in Arizona with family! I miss that so much.  I love you Lynsey and Kaitlin, I am glad to know you are both doing great. I love you Mom!

I am going to write until the second I have to send this message.

Mom, I am the cleanest, most organized missionary here, thanks to you! Actually, I have found washing dishes and mopping the floor, putting food away is a good stress-reliever and helps me feel like I am contributing to the household! I hope I keep this habit!  I have had dreams of hugging or being with you guys as well. I like those. There was one time I drifted to sleep during study time that I hugged Kaitlin almost just as if she was really there, it was so real.

Hope the photos got through okay! A few more sights of Juazeiro. Oh, by the way, I saw the blogs! They looked great! Good job Mom, really good work.

I love you all! Have a fantastic Thanksgiving Week! Three more days and I'll have been out here for three months. Very cool! Shout out to relatives and friends! I know I don't pay enough attention to all of ya!

Sweet. Amo voces!

- Elder Brendon Carpenter

i was like a spy right there... with a camera snapping pictures straight from my pocket. *cue cool music* by the way, I've seen scenes from a lot of movies here. People love American movies, and everyone just watches TV during lunch, they don't like to talk. Made me feel awkward at first, but the other Elders say that you can't help watching TV sometimes, and you shouldn't feel bad about it.

Ive seen parts of Wolverine, Click, Mission Impossible 3, the Nutty Professor, and Twilight (Crepusculo, here, and the members love the movie because the book was written by a member, hah), and others but I cant quite remember. These little tastes of cinema will help me get through the mission, I hope!

I was going through the blog and I noticed Mom typed up those fantastic entries about our last day, saying goodbye and everything. great job Mom! Very proud of ya.

yes, Lynsey, they do not have Thanksgiving here. But what day is Thanksgiving? I cannot remember. You are my best friend as well! i love ya Lyns!

Elder Pereira and I at the bus station in Fortaleza at night, heading to Juazeiro.

11-17-2009 Letter Home

My email is down!
Spent fifteen minutes trying to send video through GMail and its not working, either. Nossa, nossa, nossa. Well, handbook says I need to e-mail my family every week, so I guess I am using Gmail today, maybe the only time ever. (!) No messages from anybody today, either. That sucks.

I am going to try to send pictures real quick. I hope it works.

So... G-mail works worse than regular email for some reason. I am starting to hate internet cafes... can't get photos or video through every single time. Anyway, so while I was on Gmail I saw some mail from Facebook. Hmmm... is that okay? I don't know. But, it says that Ive gotten a lot of friend requests and messages. Mom, Lynsey, whoever, do you think you could accept those friend requests and possibly reply to some comments that I am serving a mission in Brazil, and will gladly take addresses so that I can mail friends? That'd be fantastic, thanks in advance!

                 Elder Carvalho, Talysson, and Elder Brendon

I hope you get the picture, but we had another baptism this week: Talysson, sixteen years old, really into Brazilian jujitsu. We had a tough time with him because he went to another church where the pastor and others regularly got up on the pulpit and slammed the Mormons. At one point he said he didn't want to see us any more. But we kept on testifying and persevering and finally he said he realized that God wanted him to join our church. Fantastic! I hope you get the picture.

Moto-taxis. Here in Juazeiro, you can hop on a motorcycle with the driver and get anywhere in the city
for three to five reals. Really cheap and fast. Really fun to ride them because you skip the long walks across cobblestone roads. Especially fun at night. Just yesterday I was riding through this one hilly part of Juazeiro at night and it was beautiful, with all the orange lights dotting the hillsides. Really cool. Also, outside of Juazeiro is very green! We were able to see the outskirts a lot for some reason this last week and its gorgeously green. Well, there are some fields that are completely dirt-covered with trash mixed in... but there are some areas that are very beautiful. The greens here are brighter, for some reason, makes it feel very tropical. There are hills that surround Juazeiro that are very beautiful... not like big rolling California hills, much more sculpted and rugged like Arizona, but covered with green brush. I want to show photos!

Man, people are nice here. Every time we stop to give a lesson its: "voce quer agua?"  "Ou comida (food)?" "Pastels? Bolu (cake)?" Lots of hospitality here. Not like the States at all.

Restaurants and kitchonettes (cafes) cook their meat outside in the streets, here. So while Elder Carvalho and I are walking to an appointment, every day we pass these big open grills with simmering sausage and chicken. Smells so good. The streets smell like shower-and-sink-water from the gutters mixed with freshly-cooked steak and sausage. Not a pleasant mix but its better than if there was no meat-smell at all.

 

                        Mangoes!


Sausages are big here. They must have gotten it from the Germans. Really good stuff. Rice, beans, mashed potatoes, this stuff like cuscus (sp?) and always fruit... though the way fruit hangs off every other tree (coconuts, mangos especially), I am surprised they dont use it more.

So, Connor, how about that one summer we went to four or five different water parks? Wasn't as fun as going to that one waterpark in Utah, but definitely a fun summer all around. Fortaleza is known for its huge waterparks, which I haven't seen, but I've seen advertisements. Looks so refreshing when I am walking under the sun to an appointment.

Last P-Day we went to the Lojas Americanas: American Shops. It's this big mall in the center of Juazeiro (that would probably be the best place to hole up in for a zombie outbreak). Anyway, it is just like a normal mall from the US and it made me feel quite at home. Ate ice cream, pizza, watched someone play Rockband on this huge bigscreen TV (a pay-to-play thing there), and hung out at the food court. It was very fun.

Every P-Day we play this Brazilian version of RISK, which is cool. Get some extra sleep... its very necessary for the rest of the week because by Sunday night we are dead tired.

We found this one family this week who lives in this big orchard in the middle of Juazeiro in this little house. Fourteen people in this family, mostly kids, all boys except the youngest. And they were fantastic! At the end of our message about the Restoration of the Gospel, we asked them if they wanted to go to Church, and the matriarch of the family, an older women, pauses for a moment, looks around, and says: "Sim, vamos para sua igreja". Yes, we will go to your church. She proceeded to explain that they didn't have enough religion in their lives and they wanted to see what it was like. Excellent, right? That Sunday Elder Carvalho and I walked ahead a group of eight for twenty minutes to the casapela, me singing "The Spirit of God" in English to entertain the kids. Because of that family, this week we were able to get twelve of our investigators to church, which is really, really good. The big family left before I was able to talk to them about the experience, but I think it went well.

Well, I love you guys. Sorry I wasnt able to get your messages! Not my fault! Keep up the good fight! The Gospel is true!

Your son, brother, friend, relative,
Elder Brendon Carpenter

Connor: Sweet e-mail. Pretty much the same on the language right now, Connor. I can understand most words but the context and everything... its weird, you cant understand the whole meaning of the conversation, you know? Elder Carvalho speaks English a lot to me too. We have to work on that. Cool adventure story, and Passo Fundo really sounds otimo.

Fortaleza accent is fun. Goshto instead of Gosto, por examplo. Very nasally compared to Sao Paulo, and very fast most of the times. People dont like to open their mouths here and really anunciate their words. Di and De is pronounced both ways, no set rule, which makes it difficult some times. It will be fun to compare after the mission.

Love you man,
Your brother

Dad: Thank you so much for the fantastic message, Dad. I've gotten used to much of my life here, it doesn't seem too weird anymore. I think our travels and open-mindset definitely helped here. Even in the CTM it has helped, as I've compared myself with other Elders who feel weirded out by little differences. The Church here is different, but the same. We don't have a chapel, and most people have joined the church if not in the last year, in the last handful of years. Our stake president and bishop are all converts of the last five years. Frontier of the Church, here in Juazeiro. Other than leaders and those involved in sacrament duties, members don't wear church clothes, which makes it feel much more like a Non-Denominational kind of church meeting, but we are definitely teaching the right doctrines. Those members that have leadership callings are very powerful, and some people make a lot of sacrifices to get to our small house-church. Very tight-knit group here, we feel like pioneers, I think, making do with what we have, but being stronger for it. The older members are exactly like members back in the US, though they might have less materially, they act just the same. But we have so many converts, it really feels more like a cross-section of average society, but that is better in some ways. I really love our branch here, I've made some great friends and they like me a lot even if I can't speak too much Portuguese.

Oh yeah, because its so hot, most of the women and girls do not like covering up, even in Church on Sundays... they wear nice clothes, but they would feel awkward in a chapel in the US, I think. Ah well, its not as horribly tempting as it sounds.

With some of our investigators, the problem that the LDS Church is too "American", with American origins, an American prophet and mostly American apostles does come up. We remind people that the Church had to be established somewhere, and then we mention that in Christ's Church during his ministry and afterward, all but one apostle was Jewish. It isn't as big of a problem as I thought it would be, and the members don't care about it at all. The members bring up the Kirtland Temple and the Pioneer Migration and other very American experiences for the Church very openly, and no one thinks different of it. There are times when Brazil is mentioned in a lesson in order to not alienate people too much, but there are some interesting experiences here for the Church as well. For example, one Apostle said that in the Last-Days, Brazil would be the safest place to live for the Saints, and another prophecy was made that Brazil would soon have the third most powerful economy, and other stuff specific for the Brazilian members. There is enough history here that the Church can be made to seem very Brazilian even when to the outward observer it is primarily an American church, with primarily American missionaries around the world.

You are the Elders Quorum President? Nossa, isto e loco! I don't even know where to begin! Man, that is so awesome. I'm sure it must seem like a huge responsibility right now but I think you are going to take to it very easily in time. Awesome that we can serve together. Wow, big responsibility. I know you will do great, though, Dad. The Lord has been preparing you.

Thank you so much for the motivating words and I will definitely read Alma 42 as soon as I get home. I love you Dad, I am thinking and praying for you every day as well. I am so grateful that you are my father. More and more every day here, too.

- Your son


Hope you are thinking of our RV and ATV trips a lot! I am!

Lynsey:  School is getting difficult, huh? It sounds fun to me! Hah. You are so awesome, Lynsey. Office is good, huh? And you saw 2012? Awesome. Want to see that movie so bad. Its showing in the theatres near here, too. So cool. I want the soundtrack to that! Dad is the new Quorum President? Wow! That is really crazy! Boa sorte, meu Pai! Muitos benoes para voe.

A Package? Right on! Cant wait to see what it is!

Love you so much! Thanks for the awesome message!
Your brother :)

11-09-2009 Letter Home

E hoje temos....

Another P-Day, another opportunity to speak with the outside world. So exciting!

Had a great week. First of all, thank you so much to Sister Reynolds for that awesome Halloween
card and message. One of the few I received. That was very nice.

Next, to Zack: my mission has been great so far, the only difficult part is being away from home, really. The MTC was very fun and you should enjoy every day of it, even though everyone complains that the field is going to be better, you start missing it when you leave. I´m not an awesome missionary
just yet, first I have to master the language and that is going to take some time. Right now I kind of feel like a dope because I can say very little to our investigators while my companion Elder Carvalho does all the talking. I just smile, go over a few points that I'm good at explaining, then testify, pray. People still feel the Spirit but I can't wait until I'm fluent. It takes a lot of work, learning another language, but I'm trying my best, so it shouldn't be too long.

The scriptures have given me a huge comfort. Reading and studying them daily is awesome and I hope I can keep the habit up throughout my mission and after. Elder Carvalho is a story and a half, I might tell more about him later in this installment. We definitely get along, he's a really cool guy and I can learn a lot from him. Anyway, thanks for the great letter man and for that scripture, Joshua 24:15, I really liked that! I miss you dude, and I love you!

Hey Uncle Todd, that was a great story about your first days in Peru. I feel grateful it wasn't that crazy. You know, really Brasil is a first-world country and it has a lot of things that I am still taking for granted. I am sure many missionaries are not so lucky. I would think you felt so isolated in Peru, it just sounds like there is so much more of a contrast between the country and the United States, but here, you know, I have the internet, and we have paved roads and restaurants and so forth... Not that bad, you know?

Hey Nick, thanks for the great letter, man! Yeah, time has really flown by, and more is bound to. Here in Juazeiro each missionary gets 350 reals which is like 500 dollars for a month. Lots of money, right? Well, things are actually more expensive here, strangely, and when you account for food, bus rides, water, electricity, it really adds up. ODST sounds so cool man! Argh, I want to play it! I want to send my iPod home for Christmas to get songs added to it, and that soundtrack is definitely one I would like, it sounds cool. Do the ODSTs have recharging shields? How does that work exactly? Is multiplayer very fun? Awesome, dude.

Connor, sounds like you are having a great time in Porto Alegre. How hot is it there? Man, it's hot here... in the 90's every day, but I am getting used to constantly sweating. The Spirit, the power of the Holy Ghost, is the most important power in missionary work and if you feel someone is ready, they should be baptized.  Always trust your mission president, they hold the keys, I think increased contacting and increased focus on fortifying members and investigators in gospel habits is something important. We´ve got to remember that.

Kaitlin, your costume was so beautiful! That must have been so fun! Thanksgiving is going to be fun, too! I love you so much, and I am glad you got to go to the library! Hope you are enjoying school and church and everything. I love love love you my sweet sister! You are so awesome. :)

Grandma and Granddad, thanks so much for your awesome message. I look forward to those. Yes, focusing on the Spirit and being obedient is a constant battle, but it is very important. I want so badly to be just a perfect missionary, a true disciple of Christ. I think I still need to build my confidence up but I feel I'm on my way. Thank you for your motivating words!

Mom, some quick answers to your quick answers: Yes, send all mail and packages to that address I sent you, the Fortaleza Mission Home, and make it easily accessible for everyone, if you could! By the way, I received the package, the whole thing a few days ago!!! So awesome! Everything worked out in the end. Thanks for all that great stuff, the candy, the reference book, the sewing kit, beef jerky, those awesome glow in the dark glasses (lol), it was a very fun day to open that. Awesome present. Yeah, I got the Halloween pictures. Hah, those were so funny. Awesome. Dad with that wig on...

I've been thinking of sending my iPod home so that you guys could put a bunch of stuff on it for Christmas, if I send it in the next few weeks you could get it back to me by Christmas with lots of MoTab, some soundtracks and other songs I would like. I really don't need anything, and other than music I would just like some treats from home. Nothing very important, ya know?

Geeze, Mom, awesome letter. Love that stuff about prayers and its great to hear news of how the family is doing. I'm glad things are going well there. Very awesome, touching letter, keep them coming, though I won't be able to reply specifically to all of the great stuff you said. All the stuff you are doing sounds so fun and great and you are such a cool Mom. I love you so much.

Lynsey, I love you so much and thank you for the great letter.

Alright, did I say anything about the ants here? They are HUGE! Scary little things. I've seen them cutting out huge chunks of fallen leaves, big rubbery things, with these mandibles that could clip your toenails. They are the kind that carry leaves in those lines down into their gigantic anthills. Crazy little things.

Quite a contrast between inside and outside, here. People have nice computers, plasma screen TVs, iPods, cell phones, all very American, but houses and cars are extremely expensive here, so people have small, small houses, sometimes just one room, and very few people have cars. It's a weird contrast sometimes to enter a house surrounded by a bunch of scruffy half-naked guys, with chickens running everywhere, but inside people are watching X-Men on a big plasma screen TV or playing video games. Weird, huh?

Alright, so some fun stuff happened this week. First of all, Elder Carvalho and I and the two other Elders that live with us were invited to teach a short English lesson to all the classes in this private school near here. And they agreed we could teach a little bit of the Gospel. So we go in and climb all these stairs to these classrooms where a bunch of uniformed fourteen and fifteen year olds are sitting in desks and we speak to them in English, introduce ourselves, say simple sentences. I passed around my photo of all of you guys, my family, and used it to teach words like sister or mother. And then we launch into the First Lesson. Oh man, it felt so strange to do something like that. It doesn't seem like something like that would "fly" in the States. We passed out pamphlets, we explained how the Church of Christ has prophets, apostles and the authority of God to baptize and teach the Gospel. Told them about Joseph Smith and the current prophets and apostles... It was awesome, though. It's not like we were aggressive, we just did what we would do while tracting: testify about the true restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We taught four classes of different ages and the kids loved us so much. They wanted us to sign autographs and pose for pictures. The whole school was excited to have us there and it felt great.

Elder Carvalho, Danilo and I, before my first baptism in Brazil!

Second thing before I run out of time: my first baptism this Saturday! Danilo was perfect, man, just super elect and such an awesome, sweet guy. He really felt the Spirit. I didn't even know I would do the baptizing until ten minutes before, so I jumped into the clothing and quickly memorized the words in Portuguese, and everything went great. We don't have a font here, just this big tub of water in the backyard. It felt very spiritual though, with everyone surrounding this tub of water, and it was done very well. Danilo was so excited and had this little smile on his face the whole time. It was very powerful for me as well. I was so happy! I can't wait to do it again. I sent pictures of Danilo, he is twenty one, very quiet, but his testimony is growing very rapidly. I can't wait to see the Gospel bless his life.


Well... Connor, do you remember our house in Arizona, the first time we lived there, when we used to sit on that carpet by the small TV and play Mario 3? For hours and hours at a time, going through all the levels listening to that awesome music? That's the memory I choose this week. We've come a long way, eh?

I love all of you so much! Thank you for your prayers and your great examples!

Your friend, son, relative, brother,
Elder Brendon Carpenter

11-02-2009 Letter Home

A Week under the Southern Cross!

Ola! From Juazeiro!

Wow, first week proselyting here in Brazil. It has been very interesting and fun. Elder Carvalho, my first companion in the field, says that for a missionary to be happy he needs to be doing three things: either finding (the street contact), teaching, or baptizing; and none without too much of the other. Well, it is definitely true. When I come home after being able to teach a few lessons and/or write down a few more names in my planner to visit later, I feel great. Wednesday I was showering off all the dust after being able to teach three different families the first lesson, with one investigator committed to baptism, and I felt fantastic! So fun to be out here. Last week I was kind of down because I got here on Saturday, and then on Sunday and for our P-Day on Monday little work got done. On Sunday SO many people here are out of town, visiting relatives or on short trips. It's the only day most people have off. So its very hard to work on Sundays. As for our P-Day, its great to be able to relax now after an exhausting week, but last Monday when I was so ready to get to work, not being able to, kind of stressed me out. So, that's really why I was down a lot. The conditions down here are very different, the quality of life, but I have gotten used to a lot of it. I think things will only get better.

The road outside my house. Tells you a lot, eh? Sorry, that's all I could capture so far of Juazeiro.

Really quick, this computer is very slow and I will be lucky to get a few videos out and this message, so I will have to apologize in advance for not being able to respond directly to any questions. I'll do that next week, after reading the printed up e-mails.

Okay, lets see, when I first got to Fortaleza, as they were caravanning all of us "greenies" (new missionaries) to the mission office, what did I see? Dude, horses. They ride horses here, the poorer people, in the streets, or pulling wooden carts. Saw a bunch of kids guiding a couple horses around a hill. During the week I have seen many mules and horses and donkeys just tied out in the street. Really weird. It's not common, but they are around. It's strange not to see someone using a beast of burden once or twice in the day. Cars are often small and old, but you see a truck or shiny new car every once and a while. People ride motorcycles or bicycles as often as cars, which makes traffic a lot more crazy. It's not strange to see a man, his wife, and a kid or two riding on a bike down the street. They have buses here, but much more common is a kind of independent van/bus that are cheaper. There was one night I was crammed into a van, standing of course, with twenty or thirty other people inside. Just a van full of people hurtling through the streets of Juazeiro. Cool huh? Transportation is a big problem here for the church... they have to bus all the members and investigators from Barbalha to the branch (church) here, and not too many people from the other side of the city want to travel all the way to our branch because it would cost them a lot of their income. Thankfully, the new chapel is being built in the center of the city, where many more people will be able to access it.

Coconuts are big, fleshy, and green here, no hair like the Pacific kind. They sell them for the equivalent of seventy-five cents here, complete with a drinking hole and straw. There are so many empty coconuts everywhere... in the gutters, in the street, in the park. Juazeiro doesn't have that good of a public waste disposal program, so there's always tons of coconuts everywhere.

Brazilians here on average, are much shorter. It is strange not to be a head or two heads taller than someone else.

A lot of African influences here. It is not very common, but you see someone carrying a huge load on just their head every other day. Wish I could take a picture of that.

There is a holiday here that lasts for a week... people make promises to God that if they will be healed of a malady, that they will come to this festival in Juazeiro. If their leg was gimpy and it gets better, they bring a wooden leg to this church here. For other diseases, other carvings of wood. Interesting, huh?
Anyway, there is SO MANY PEOPLE HERE EVERYWHERE!!!! For the festival. Busloads and busloads. Tons of vendors of huge sprawling flea-markets that all of the sudden consumed squares and streets, every open area is filled with crowds and people trying to make money off of them. Its been really crazy.

I hope Halloween was fun! Please tell me all about it. I hope you'll send me some pictures of Kaitlin especially. I was lying on my bed at about 6:00 your time just thinking of you guys heading out to go trick-or-treating and I wanted to be there so bad.

Man, this computer can't upload my videos! Dang it dang it dang it. It will get to you eventually, I hope.

Last Saturday Elder Carvalho and I were walking back to our place and he suddenly turned around to talk to this guy in a nice truck. I didn't follow much of it but we wrote down his address. He turns out to live in a very nice neighborhood here called Novo Juazeiro, and has an actual lawn and driveway behind this big wall. He owns a grocery store here. He belongs to an Evangelical Church and some friend was randomly there from that church. So they open their Bibles and Elder Carvalho and them began Bible bashing for around two or three hours. Elder Carvalho says that he believes in some situations its okay to do so. He said that they were saying some really ridiculous things, like how the Old Testament wasn't really scripture nowadays, or how everyone in their Church was a prophet. Lots of other stuff I didn't pick up on. But they are a nice family. Brazilian culture is so funny... they were yelling at us at one point, but as soon as we started to close the conversation, they became very cordial and nice again. We talked about our families and lives, ate sandwiches and drank orange juice and then left... all after what I would call a very contentious episode. Anyway, the guy offers to drive us back to our place and while we were riding with him, he told Elder Carvalho that Saturday night, he felt like God had told him to stop us while we were walking by his truck and talk to us. God told him that if he didn't, that we would turn around and talk to him anyway. That's exactly what happened. After all we went through, the guy, Paulo, said that he knew there was a purpose we were there and he told us he wanted to see us again. Really spiritual. We feel that Satan was trying to stop us from teaching this guy, because he sent Paulo´s friend there that night, for a random reason (he was trying to sell him a mattress at the time we showed up). His friend was the one doing about 90% of the fighting, too. We feel very blessed that we have been guided to him, because he would be a great addition to the branch.

Otherwise, another memorable moment was teaching Danilo, who is 21 years old and lives in a small house filled with the meager possessions of his family. Feels like you are in a small tool shed, let alone a house. He had all of his personal possessions in a cardboard box, all of his clothes and things he uses in a day. Well, he came to Church the Sunday before I arrived after being invited by a friend. We taught him about the Apostasy and the Restoration, gave him a Book of Mormon, and he had this look in his eye like he believed it all. Every time we asked him a question he answered correctly and told us he believed what we were teaching. We asked him if he would be baptized and he agreed. Very elect, Danilo is. We are hoping this Sunday we will be able to baptize him. He could very well become the first of a large family of members here, and he is such a cool, kind person too. Not too much of a problem with "Word of Wisdom" issues either, which is huge here in Juazeiro where so many drink and smoke.

We have run into a lot of drunk people, by the way. Elder Carvalho and I were walking through the streets and this old bearded man comes up to me and gives me this huge bear hug and kissed me twice on the cheek with his big dirty beard in my face before I could pull away from him. He then pulled Elder Carvalho into a hug and kissed him close to his mouth. Yeah. We were laughing about that for quite a while after.

Pshah, gotta go. I love you all so much! Thank you for all the news and kind words from home! I will cherish it! Every letter has been or will be read by me but I will have to respond specifically later :(

@ Connor, wish I could talk more with you but I hope this will suffice. I love you man, am praying for you and hope you are doing well. I will read your letter tonight. Keep it up!

Love,
Elder Brendon Carpenter