P-Day has been great. Went to the Sao Paulo Temple again and it was great. On another note, there is this guy outside of the CTM, a vendor that works outside of his van, that sells this sugarcane juice that is delicious. He puts a whole fresh, green sugarcane into this machine that crunches it up and lets the nectar seep into this funnel... its really cool to watch. He puts the sugarcane through it about six times and adds some lime and you drink the liquid straight after its been strained. I love the stuff, but I've heard sometimes there are parasites in it. Whatever. I haven't gotten sick yet... but if I start losing weight and feeling pain in my abdomen I'll tell ya. Only costs two reals here, which is about a dollar.
(Street Outside the CTM)
Yes, we watched conference, for the last time in English. Awesome.
All of my letters are pretty stream-of-consciousness, so I hope you aren't disappointed by the content. I'm telling you everything I think is interesting but who knows, some of the more mundane stuff might be interesting to everyone back home. Tsunami in Samoa, huh? Yeah, I've heard a little bit about that through the grapevine but no huge details.
I'll tell you one cool experience I had when I went proselyting on Friday. It was a bright, sunshiney day and there were lots of Brazilians on the streets! But there were also many Elders and Sisters groundpounding this way and that way, and we ran into a couple of people that just waved us on because they had already talked with other missionaries. Anyway, at one point we were on this very busy street. Full of shops, busy traffic, the sidewalk thick with people, these guys selling bottles of alcohol from alley-ways. It was very loud and I got the impression we had to get out of there, because we couldn’t have the Spirit when there was so much noise.
So Elder Clay and I trudged for five minutes downhill to a different direction. I thought we had wasted a lot of time but then I saw this teenager, a little taller than me but probably younger, who was wearing this red shirt and had braces. He looked kind of aloof and was walking quickly but I felt like I should talk to him. So I went up to him and started talking, introducing myself and he wouldn’t stop so I just kept on walking right along side of him. I asked him if he went to Church and he said he did, I said it was important to believe in God because He loves us, and that God shows his love for us by calling prophets. I went into more detail into the Book of Mormon than I usually do… where it comes from and what it's about. I bore my testimony seriously three or four times because he asked questions I couldn’t understand, I didn't know what else to do. I felt prompted to give him my Livro de Mormon, which I had written my testimony in Portuguese in the front. I felt really good about it and I said "ciao" to him with a smile on my face.
Elder Foust and Elder Cusick said that they saw him in the doorway of a shop at one point reading the Livro de Mormon, about half an hour later! Awesome, huh? I can't wait to do that every day.
I love you, Mom, Lynsey, and Kaitlin! I'm glad life is continuing normally and you are all doing well. I hope you are doing great at school and friends and everything else that you are worrying about. Thanks so much for keeping up an awesome home front! I love you guys!
I'll have more cool stories in my next letter. I love you all, bye!
Elder B
-------Handwritten letter from later that day -------
Obrigado!
10-06-2009
Hello my family and friends, this is coming to you from the Land of the Southern Cross, half a world away in the fair country of Brasil!
I have to tell you, I’m getting antsy to get to the field (o campo).
Only seventeen days left as of the day I am writing, October 6, and then I’ll get twenty-two months to devote all my time solely to the advancement of the Kingdom of God, instead of simply preparing for it. It’s finally starting to warm up here in Sao Paulo so I feel Heavenly Father is thawing me out before shipping me put to one of the hottest missions in Brazil. The year with no winter for me, and it may not be the last.
The language is coming along nicely and I’ve been very healthy this week. Besides the routine of language classes (each of them interminable it seems), meals in the cafeteria, and volleyball and personal study time, this week had two exciting events; proselyting for the first time in Portugais on the streets surrounding the CTM, and General Conference.
There’s so much to tell about both of these wonderful anomalies in my schedule. First of all, I hope everyone back home was as excited as my district and I, when the (building of a) Fortaleza Brazil Temple was announced. Oh man, that is awesome! I probably won’t see it finished during my mission, but the fact that the people I teach and help bring into the Church will eventually be blessed by a nearby temple is thrilling. It gives me a reason to make a return trip at some point AFTER my mission. Mark my words. Anyway, northern Brazil definitely needs more temples. Outside of the one in Recife’ and the one being built in Manaus (middle of the Amazon), the rest are far down in the south. Northern Brazil also has higher rates of baptism. My conclusion? I’m not heading to a cushy mission, I’m going to one of the major frontiers of the church! It’s very exciting.
I loved General Conference. We got to see all of it live, via satellite, all of the American Elders and Sisters in the auditorium watching two large projector screens. I got sit by the "other" Elder Carpenter every session and that was great, to spend time with him. It seemed they talked a lot about gaining spiritual knowledge, didn’t it? I liked that focus. I loved Elder Uchtdorf’s stories as a refugee and his encouragement for everyone to be educated and hardworking. I loved that one story from one of the Seventy who went on his mission to Finland and prayed for the Soviet Union to open up… and it finally did for his son. Did you connect that talk to President Monson’s request for us to pray for countries to open their borders to missionaries? I’m going to do so every night now. There were so many good talks…. Elder Holland’s fiery testimony of the Book of Mormon… Brother Satati’s overview of the church in Africa. That great talk directed to and about the rising generation…. We were all very pumped by conference. My last one in English for awhile!
By the way, we went to the Sao Paulo temple again today. A member of the Branch Presidency was there and took pictures of our district. He said he’d send them to you via email, family. Be looking for it, I hope they turn out to be good pics!
I was thinking of Dad during the whole Priesthood session. Connor and I were missing you a lot, Dad… but at least we got to have a shared experience in watching it. I’ve been thinking of all of our trips lately, how fun they were, and the classic scene of Dad piloting the RV by himself late into the night. I am so thankful for you, Dad. You are my best friend. Thinking of jumping those sand dunes or even just going to a movie with you or chopping wood in the backyard and all of the various things we did together. We definitely have a lot more to do together in the future.
Elder Clay and I
Sooo… First day of proselyting to Brazilians! That’s right, every day Brazilian people on their way to work or home or whatever they do. They really are just normal people like us, even fashion-wise. That might be because we are in Sao Paulo but who knows? I was more comfortable with the language and with strangers so I did the majority of the talking. It was hot out and there were Elders and Sisters everywhere! Elder Clay and I had two Livro de Mormon and a lot of little pieces of paper with the # for missionaries on it. We talked to a lot of people and they seemed to understand us but they spoke so fast we could barely understand them!
“Ola! Como foi sun dia!” I would begin, asking them how their day was. I’d introduce ourselves: “Nos somos missionarios da Inreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Utlimos Dias! Meu nome e’ Elder Carpenter. Qaul e’ sua nome?” And who knew what happened after that. We prayed a lot and got rejected half of the time, but everyone was very nice.
At one point we talked to an old Asian lady who told us she couldn’t speak Portuguese. Hah! Ironic…. But it’s interesting how many Asian people are here, actually. So far way from Asia, yet there is quite a noticeably large Asian minority, here in Sao Paulo. By Asian, I mean East Asian, of course.
We talked to a family of five at another point, giving a message to them all at once. The grandmother was the spokeswoman of the group and despite a good twenty minutes of testimony and explanation of the Livro de Mormon, she continued to assert that they were Catholic and weren’t interested. Ah well…. I hate to be annoyingly persistent like that but Brazilians are so nice and relaxed it’s hard to feel like you aren’t making progress!
Another cool story: we were talking to this mechanic who didn’t seem very interested when all of the sudden this short, middle-aged Brasileira (woman) energetically came up to the three of us. She said she was a membra da Ingreja (member of the Church) and she started chatting at a machine-gun pace with the mechanic. Out of the blue, right? She started testifying of the Livro de Mormon right in front of us! Answer to our prayers, to have this native speaker back us up. The mechanic took a number and seemed more interested.
We gave our second and last Livro de Mormon out with only minutes left for our four hours to be up. Elder Clay and I prayed in this small park and when we finished, Elder Clay pointed to a mother and a daughter at this outside café. It seemed kind of rude to barge into someone’s meal, but we did. We spoke quickly but got the message across. At the very end the mother kept on saying, “We don’t have any money.” But I just told her that the word of God was always free and that she could have it right then. I told her to call that number to talk to other missionaries, and then thanked for her time and left.
Nothing extremely amazing like a few others, but I thought we did well. Ah! It was so fun. I love the noise and smells of the city. It felt great to be outdoors for so long just looking for people to talk to. Elder Clay and I had a great time.
I’ve got to finish up so I’ll ask a few quick questions:
Could someone in our immediate family or among the family in the next few weeks, type me up a quick story about how tithing has blessed their lives, in a specific way? I don’t have any experiences with tithing of the caliber I would like out in the field. Don’t feel like I need it immediately, but I hope someone has a good story I could tell when I’m bearing testimony about tithing.
Did I mention Elder Clay, Matthew Olsen Clay, is a descendant of Newell Knight? Cool, huh? Can anyone find out if he is a distant relative, and how close he is? That’d be cool if you could just run a search and find out.
For the missionary plaque: Alma 29:2, por favor.
Ask Nick & Zach & whoever else to send me an email about the last month and to tell me a little about the Halo ODST
Included is the Brazilian National Anthem, which the whole CTM sings every Sunday. It sounds really cool …. I wish I could get you the tune.
Well, that’s all for now everybody!
I hope life is going well outside the missionary world,
Much Love!
Elder B. Carpinteiro
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