I got the batch of letters this last Saturday. When did you send them?
Cookies were great, saved them over the entire week in a plastic bag, ate them slowly. M&Ms and chocolate fudge... mmmm...
Im definitely having a great day so far. Got to see the temple, rode in the bus, and of course its Pday, which means no class! And its raining, so thats fun! I wrote you six pages, front and back, which should be getting to you through MissionTies. If they dont... I will be so mad!!!!! I spent a lot of time on them.
I love you guys so much! Love love love, love-song kinda love.
Elder B. Carpenter
Hey family, friends, acquaintances of all kinds! Im back in that dated internet cafe again typing out an e-mail and getting frustrated by its attempts to turn my English words into Portuguese. I cant turn it off! Oh well. I wrote about six pages, front and back, to you guys and it should be getting there shortly. Honestly, I covered so much in those letters that I dont know what else to say. But, life is getting into a routine here and there have been some problems adjusting, but luckily Im not feeling sick any more and every morning I expect to wake up where I am at, not at home.
I just bought some colored pencils and a notebook at an office supply store around here, so I wont need that, as my letter suggests. Ive been highlighting a lot of verses in my scriptures and really getting to know them... that part about me loving the scriptures in my Patriarchal Blessing may just come true after all! Making friends, larnin stuff, you know, Portuguese and Doctrine, all day. Eating strange food and playing volleyball in the gym. Talking to Brazilians and getting embarassed some times when they dont understand a word I say. I think its going to be like this, pretty routine-like, until at least our first street experience, which takes place in four weeks. Thats when you have two Livros de Mormon and you have to find people on the street to contact. Freaking out a little about that, but not so much. Its all going to work out fine. Its funny, you think you are learning Portuguese so rapidly when you first get here, but then the curve slackens downward and you start getting mired in sentence structure and grammar and everything... I can struggle to make a basic sentence with my limited vocabulary, but it may not be pronounced correctly and I am not going to be delving into philosophy and logic trees any time soon. Thats not what its about though, right?
Yes, we are learning a lot about how o Espirito is absolutely necessary for teaching the Gospel. Ive felt it a lot more here... Im getting to the point where about every day or so I feel a prompting for something, usually nothing huge but of some beneficial consequence... but I hope that when I get out onto the field Ill be able to feel it at all times, and depend on the Spirit to direct where I go, who I teach, what and how I teach. It will truly be awesome when I become an effective emissary and representative of Jesus Christ and I cant wait cant wait for it!
Some of the Brazilians we grew to know have left the MTC today for their different missions... most of them to Florinopolis in the south. It is sad to see them go... they were part of my first conversations in Portuguese and I will miss them dearly. Elder Santos... he was learning English and spoke pretty well, but he wanted badly to learn French because French was spoken in some places where he lived, up north. I was able to teach him a little but not so much, and I never got to say goodbye to him. He was very "legal" ("cool" in Portuguese... pronounced "leh-GAHL"). Elder Nascimento, he was so funny, the only word he knew in English was You, which he said often and dramatically. He was quite the practical joker, stealing our nametags and such. Elder Tavares, always busted into our class and tried to help out our instructor. There was this other Brazilian elder that would always sing these Portuguese songs in the hall very dramatically, and another that had memorized the phrase "And Thats How the Cookie Crumbles, Thank You Very Much!" Always got us to laugh.
We saw Elder Michael Getz for the last time and took pictures with him. He is probably in the air right now for Goianas, he might have even landed right now. Loved seeing him here, I cant wait to share stories when we get back.
- Elder B. Carpenter
September 5th through 8th, 2009
Dear Family & Friends,
I’m writing this letter between Saturday night and Tuesday afternoon. By the time most of you read this it will be transcribed by my wonderful and dutiful mother onto the computer. I want to write a long letter that will bore all of your so much that you won’t tune in for another two months, hah! I will keep writing it until just before I need to send it, so imagine me writing for days here at the CTM.
The plane ride here was long, but like I said, I slept much more than most were able. On the plane to Atlanta I sat by a man from Maine, who, though I love him much, instantly reminded me of the comic book nerd from the Simpsons. He had been looking for the right religion for years and had investigated the entire spectrum. I did what I could despite the many people listening in to convince him to give my church and the Book of Mormon another chance. Heavenly Father weaves a wonderful design, and my friend, let’s call him Bob, left the plane with what I felt was at least a renewed curiosity.
It was strange to wear the missionary tag in public. People look at you differently. What I noticed the most though was that the Latter-Day Saints come out of the woodwork. There are members everywhere, and only when you wear the tag can people identify you. I met an elder’s quorum leader on my plane to Atlanta who became very friendly when he saw me. He served in Quebec years ago and expressed excitement for “Preach My Gospel”, a new guide to missionary work released in 2004 with much preparation by the church leadership. He bought me dinner on the way to Atlanta and at one point crouched by my seat for half an hour to chat.
At the Atlanta International Airport, two returned missionaries came up to me and gave me some encouragement. They were only weeks off their mission and very nice.
I received your wonderful letter last week AND I got to eat three delicious cookies. I wrapped them in plastic and ate them a piece at a time, kept them in my closet. Thanks so much!
Dad, thank you so much for your spiritual advice. Surely you are inspired. I needed to hear that and I will treat it close to scripture. The spirit really hit me when I read it, and I intend to keep it in my “spiritual journal”. Non-members, such a journal is made in similitude of the Book of Mormon, which were the “Little Plates” which held the words of the prophets, in contrast to the “Larger Plates” which Nephi speaks of which holds a longer, more secular history of his people and was never translated. It is not doctrine or tradition (to keep this type of journal), but my good friend and role model, Alec Nethercott suggested the idea to me and I really like it.
Now, my parents sent me comments on this PersonaVita up to September 3
rd. Thank you all so much, for your kindness and support. This last week was tough, for reasons I may touch on later. Don’t get freaked out about it, but what I’m getting at is I really needed all that love.
Thanks to Uncle Mark, and Kendall, (who just returned from his mission in Brazil). We wish we could have spoken to him more… too bad he came back right as we became super busy getting ready to go. We love you guys!
I wish I could have gotten some video and pictures up. Unfortunately, my camera was at the bottom of my backpack so I was unable to find it until I unpacked here at the CTM. Hopefully I’ll get some pictures and video up later. They don’t want us to be taking pictures outside the CTM though, and only on Preparation Days (Tuesday for me). That’s okay though, as I’m only beyond the gates on P-days, most hours I’m inside. And I want to be obedient.
My toothbrush tastes like that herbal Irish soap you gave me, and therefore my breath. I try to get rid of it with lots of toothpaste and mints though, hah, I think it kinda funny.
Thanks for the compliments, Mom! The Campinas Temple reminded me a lot of the Sacramento Temple, yes, though the Telestial and Terrestrial rooms are much bigger and the Celestial room much smaller. It also seems like Brazilians love that Eternity mirror symbolism, as there were three in the Celestial room.
Food is great now. Get this: I’ve gone almost completely vegetarian. The meat was hurting my teeth and making me sick, and now that I cut it out of my diet, I’m doing absolutely fine.
I drink guarana mixed with mango juice for most meals. The food is varied and there is often something strange in every meal, but its all good now. Today at lunch they were serving tamales, beef, rice, beans, oranges, dinner rolls, salad and this pumpkin crème stuff, if you want specific info.
It seems like Connor explained it best, Mom, Sao Paulo is a big city with interesting and varied architecture. Skyscrapers rise out of one-story, two-story urban spread like looming citadels alone in the distance, or they are in small clusters. Very unlike our cities, a lot of red-tiled roofs and bright-colored paint. There are virtually no steel-and-glass structures, and because of this, all buildings have small windows, few and far between. A LOT of detailed murals and strange, Japanese-like graffiti. About five minutes from the Say-Tay-Emmy (CTM) is a huge canal with low, slow-moving water that is thick with trash… goopy plastic collects on the concrete banks of the canal.
There is a lot of construction going on everywhere, mostly along the freeway, lots of uniformed workers. There are sidewalks along the freeway, usually full of people walking to bus stops that frequent the busy freeway.
There must not be a no-fly zone around Sao Paulo. We get these biplanes flying real low everywhere, but we see helicopters more often. We hear fireworks often at night, as Brazil’s Independence Day is coming up and they celebrate for three days, and it seems they give the people the responsibility to make a show of it all.
A lot of terraces… I saw a lot of really crude buildings just packed together on these terraced hills. Also, a lot of lumber orchards outside the city, just rows and rows of these huge, straight, orderly trees. It isn’t jungly here at all, though there are plenty of palm trees and large, leafy trees that remind me of parts of the Yucatan.
Thanks for all the great support, Mom. I love you so much, and I miss you. I’m so lucky to be your son.
Good luck on the “early to bed, early to rise” initiative. As for me, I’ve adapted quite well to the constant 10:30 to 6:30 schedule. I had some bad nightmares the first few nights, probably from being in such a different place, but those are gone now. I used to wake up once a night, and at first I kept expecting to be home in my bed when I woke up, but now everything is normal.
Write anything you want. I like to hear about news and goings-on. If you ask questions, my letters may be longer. And keep sending me comments from PersonaVita. I’m definitely uplifted from any communication I can get from friends and family.
Hey, Lynsey! Yeah that does sound very busy. Thanks for being there for Kaitlin, so much. I love you. And I will probably be fluent at the rate things are going. Keep chasing the spirit. I know I have to sometimes. But you truly reap what you sow and it has been awesome for me so far. Send me any cool experiences you’ve had recently. Spiritual or otherwise. Good luck with Seminary! Thanks for all the encouragement.
Kaitlin, I love you lots! I miss you too kiddo. My mission is doing great. Brazilian food is strange sometimes but good…today I ate a lump of caramel that was very goopy for dessert and they have these weird soggy balls of chicken. I haven’t baptized anyone yet but I will probably in November or December. You are dressing up as an Indian princess? That is so awesome! That’s really cool Kate, I think you’ll look beautiful.
Connor wrote an excellent letter. My district is doing well, and everyone has their own personality, but one big thing is that about half of our group is obsessed with sports. That’s totally fine, but it has left me outside of a certain amount of conversations and my district is very competitive when it comes to sports and games. If you know me, that’s’ not an environment I thrive in. It has also been tough with getting the guys to focus in class. But I’m not the only one negatively affected here and were making an effort to fix things. I want so much to lead and help my district but sometimes the rest of the guys look down on me because I’m not good at basketball and because I try to diffuse competitiveness. My solution is to just do my best to be Christ-like and hope everything gets better.
Sounds like Connor is doing great though. One of the sisters in his district came up to me and told me that he was a very nice guy, intelligent and knew when to settle down. I am very glad he is being a good example.
I agree with everything he said about Brazilians, it is so true. They are so cool. They are pretty much the perfect people to join the church. We should convert the whole country, they are so nice, humble, spiritual and fun.
Our classroom is small…desks line every inch of wall space except for the whiteboard and the door. We have four large windows that look out over the city and it faces the setting sun. For a few days the room was constantly above 30 degrees Celsius in the afternoon and we had to be in there for hours at a time. However, the last few days it has been raining and blowing and has gotten very cool again.
Mario and Luiz are so cool. Mario was a young tie salesmen who met up with the missionaries and was baptized at 19 year-old. He served a mission at 22 and lost 60 pounds over the course of his two years. He is now trying to lose another 40 pounds and is dating a lot. Very funny guy, very nice and helpful teacher. Luiz was born in the covenant and has better English. He loves to have fun, but he is slightly more directed in his teaching. He smiles all the time, is very skinny, and we all laugh when he says “It’s freaking hot!” in his Brazilian accent.
Did I tell you I memorized “Joseph Smith’s First Vision… in Portuguese?! It was pretty difficult and I could not have done it without the Lord’s help. I am truly having the Gift of Tongues out here.
For Fast Sunday we had a huge CTM-wide conference and practically the entire staff of couple missionaries got up to speak. Also, for the last week we had been practicing to sing “Redeemer of Israel” with two verses in Portuguese and another in English. Here’s the thing: the four sets of twins in the CTM were responsible for singing it. It was great to sing a hymn in front of the entire conference, though I was pretty nervous.
I’m on the bus right now heading back to the CTM from the Campinas Temple. That’s right we got to go again! It was very stormy around Campinas… huge, low, black doom clouds above the city, but not above the temple which is just outside of it. The mud here is red and reminds me in every way of Georgia, when we used to go play out in the property when it rained.
I hope to include some pictures if I can figure it out. There’s Elder Foust, my best friend here and my companion, the shortest. Definitely a country kind of guy. Elder Ingersoll, from Utah, pretty smart guy. Elder Questerite has an infinite supply of American candy. Elder Kruger, Elder McDonald. Elder Slagle, he’s from California, baseball player, also our district leader. Elder Cusick, he’s pretty funny, Elder Clay is real cool, same with Elder Davis and Elder Boyd. Elder Duvall is from California, from Temecula. Elder Boyd lived in Australia for a while, that’s interesting. Yep that’s our district, District 35-D. Good group of guys.
I read “Our Plan of Happiness” What a sincere, special book. For non-members that are looking for a detailed, short, non committal explanation of our religion from our point-of-view, this is fantastic. If I could get “Our Plan of Happiness” into the hands of my questioning neighbors at Santa Cruz… wow, Elder Ballard has such a way with explaining the gospel… It isn’t the Book of Mormon though and doesn’t have the same spirit and promise, but for people that feel a bit defensive against the Latter-Day Saints, perhaps because they have a different religious tradition or intellectual background that they are cautious to “abandon”.. it explains what we honestly believe in very well.
My testimony is growing. I feel the spirit more than ever and when I pray, I know more than ever that Pai Celestial (Heavenly Father) is listening. I feel guided by His hand at times to make specific actions, like sitting by someone particular at lunch (Almoco in Portuguese).
We’re passing the canal now. It’s incredibly full of water with all the rain and the surface of the water is covered with trash. It’s really crazy…it’s a big canal… six car lanes maybe? More? If it was a foot higher it would cover the freeway we’re on! So much trash… I hope that they have big strainer somewhere… so much trash going into the ocean.
Man, some of these high-rises look like they’d collapse in a moment…not a majority of the buildings but definitely a notable minority. They just don’t maintain the exteriors very well.
Oh man! You wouldn’t believe what we just went through! One of the streets we drove through was flooded! Cars with their tires completely underwater stalled out. People running around chaotically. Anarchy on that street. Sheer anarchy. It wasn’t scary for us though, because we were in our safe bus. No violence, but a lot of disorder. Just that one street.
We’re sitting in a street café now. Not like in Paris. We’re eating pastels, these kind of Greek wrap things stuffed with meat. Last week we stopped here to eat, only we had dessert pastels, mine was filled with this thick, milk chocolate stuff. BOILING hot, too, scalded my fingers. They also love fruit-and-milk shakes. I’m eating a pastel filled with pizza ingredients, the Italiano, its called. Great stuff.
There were these two elderly (no, not “Elder” ly) who were sitting by us in the café. The register lady had given us numbers for our orders, but we realized that they were of course, shouting them out in Portuguese. I was able to carry on a very short conversation with the two elderly ladies in order to ask them how I would say “forty-six”. Quarante-seize, it turns out! Fun. Everyone kind of looks at us though, when we are in a café.
About to head over to Mr. Cheney’s Internet Café/Cookie Bakery. I just want to say again ho much I appreciate all the love you have all expressed. I hope no one feels left out because I didn’t mention them. I did read everything twice over though and I’m so glad so many people left comments.
I’m praying about my family every morning and every night, each person specifically. I keep on thinking about those last hugs we were able to enjoy. Don’t’ worry about me, I’ve got a warrior’s spirit and with Heavenly Father’s help I know I can triumph against any challenge. I’ve got a cool determination to make this a great experience and to transform myself into the person that Heavenly Father needs me to be, an instrument to help build the kingdom of God, and an emissary of Jesus Christ. I’d like to bear a short summary of my testimony I bore this last Sunday.
Despite all of the blessings in my life, I’ve lived a part of my teenage years in sadness and confusion. I had not really become converted to the church of Christ, I had not truly developed a relationship with Jesus Christ. And because of that, my spirit was sick and there was a hole that needed to be filled. It was only a few years ago when Jesus Christ and the Atonement came seriously and with the full force of the gospel into my life. It is the cure to all of life’s problems and its mysteries. Jesus Christ needs to be in every persons life. There are so many out there that are broken inside, to a much worse degree than I was. We need them to be healed. It has to happen. I testify I know this is true.
I love you all!
Until next time. Your son, brother, friend,
Elder Brendon Carpenter
