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
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