3-28-2011 Letter Home

Healing Water


Hey family!

This week was stellar. Lots of rain, as you all have mentioned. I've been walking in the MUD a lot. The boots I've gotten from Elder Da Hora are awesome though, still holding up as if I started wearing them yesterday. 

We spent a lot of the week taking buses to Genipabu, a small little town outside of Caucaia that is just a couple of streets and a catholic church in the center, almost everyone works in the neighboring steel factory there, very very quiet. We actually aren't teaching anyone there but the family of Andre and Tereza. Tereza was baptized in 1995 but went inactive soon after, her mother Terezinha stopped the missionaries in another area to tell them that her daughter was a member of the church but hadn't gone in a long time and those Elders sent Tereza's address to us. The ward here didn't even know they were out here. So we started teaching their whole family, which includes Jessica (15) and Mateus (11) and Lucas (5) as well as Terezinha and Jose her parents. To our surprise, the greatest force of initiative came from Terezinha and Mateus, who went to church despite sickness two Sundays ago and despite an ankle injury last Sunday and they love it. Mateus loves Primary and after we explained to Terezinha about being baptized with the authority and power of the Priesthood of God, she started telling everybody that she was going to be baptized. It was so funny, the first thing she said to the Stake President when she met him was "I was baptized a long time ago when I was born, but I don't even remember it. It's taken 68 years to get to this point, but now I am going to get baptized the right way!" Uh, yeah, she's way awesome. The baptism was great.

The loving family of Terezinha and Mateus, some of which will also be baptized soon!
It was a family reunion there.

Just us and Terezinha and Mateus

The interesting and awesomely spiritual part of the whole experience is that last Sunday a member brought his friend, Allison to church. Allison happened to recognize Mateus and he told us that he was his cousin and that they hadn't seen each other in a long time. I guess Mateus didn't recognize him. We went to Allison's house and ended up teaching HIS family, his mother Adriana and his grandmother Rita and his younger brother Anderson.  When we got there we realized that Rita was near-blind, wearing these dark glasses and she told us that ever since her husband died in October she hasn't been able to see anything, that she went to other churches to be cured but nothing happened. We asked her if she believed in Jesus Christ and if she believed that she could be cured. She affirmed to us that she believed and had faith enough to be cured. So we gave her a powerful, spiritual blessing. Afterwards she thanked us and there were tears, but what really got me is that at the end of the lesson that came afterwards, she started telling us that her headaches had gone away and that she could see us! She started describing our physical features and the colors of our ties. When we went there later in the week, she was laughing and smiling, still using the glasses (her eyes are still sensitive to the light) but she told us that she could see almost everything around her!! 

Wow, I can't believe I've been part of such huge of a miracle. I know it wasn't me at all, I wasn't deserving of such a huge miracle in my life for any reason, I don't think, but Rita was and she had the faith necessary for it. The Lord just used us to heal her and that's that. Undescribably powerful I am really having trouble explaining how everything happened because it was such a powerful experience!!

Meanwhile we had discovered that Rita was Terezinha's older sister and Rita didn't even know where Terezinha was living, so we asked Rita if she would like to see Terezinha in the church and see her be baptized. She almost jumped out of her hammock with joy, thanking God that we had come to her house to bring her such blessings. So... yeah, we took them to church, and despite the Sunday morning rain everyone of the two families arrived and had a big miraculous family reunion right in the hallways of the church! It was Allison's second time to church and he is already wearing a tie and white T-Shirt, he is a great kid as well, he told us he read the Book of Mormon and that he prayed the night we gave it to him and that he felt a warm feeling inside of him telling him it was true. You can't make this stuff up, this is all totally crazily real.

I am being blessed a lot on the mission you guys, more than I think I deserve. Your prayers, I think, are really making a difference.

I'm on a bus!

My comp is too! (don't worry!)

For this P-Day we got authorization to go to the center of Fortaleza just to be tourists for a day. It was raining a lot, which meant a lot was closed, but at least there weren't a lot of crowds. In the short periods of lack of rain we were able to race to different tourist spots and take pictures Elder Andrade and I. We entered a museum of Cearense art and we were all alone in there, took a lot of funny pictures with statues. 

Picture from our Museum Trip today. This is Padre Cicero, the most famous priest of Ceara, and especially the Juazeiro do Norte are. He actually founded Juazeiro do Norte. He's a very controversial guy, his denouncers say that he was actually a warlord who used his affiliation with the Catholic church to gain followers and that he made up his own fake miracles. Certainly the Catholic Church does not support his actions and has not officially declared his many 'miracles' as the divine intervention of God, but the Cearenses don't care and love him anyway, build statues of him everywhere and always complain that he hasn't been sainted. My opinion: he's probably a member of our church on the other side by now, Cearense members have done his work repeatedly... =/ or maybe not, but its possible

The Tree of Life

Nativity scene in Cearense woodwork

Historic Cearense boat/raft, doesn't look too sturdy to me. Row row row!

"Oh, Elder Carpenter is such a cool guy, ohhhh!"

Hands!!!

We went to an awesome beachwalk right in the heart of Fortaleza, was very cool. We ended the day with two huge glasses of icecold sugar cane juice at a little spot I found with Elder Reis a long time ago, the Best Sugar Cane Juice of Fortaleza, in my opinion, because I've tried a lot of sugar cane juice since I've been here. It is sooooo delicioouuusss you guys should be so jealous of me that I can drink this stuff for cheap cheap cheap and you guys can't!!! Hahahaha.

Who else could you want on the beach with you, than your comp?!
hehehe

Look, I didn't go swimming President! I am so awesome I caught a wave out and then back in without getting my shoes wet! We stopped a surfer to take a picture with his board, haha 

Learning to speak Portuguese "On the Other Side of Heaven"-style

Beach shanty

And leaving

Golden Gate is cooler... footbridge at the Dragao do Mar a famous museum/arts/cultural complex of Fortaleza

Optical illlussssiiioooonnn!!!!

Iracema Beach, one of the most famous beachwalkarea (? what word am I looking for?) of Fortaleza. Not too many people because just a little while before we took the picture it was raining pretty hard

Comemorative statue of Brazilian patriotism and liberty

Two famous Fortaleza landmarks: The Soares Cathedral, the biggest cathedral in Ceara which might even be bigger than the Notre Dame its huge! And the Mercado Central, four levels of marketplace targeted towards tourists

 Me in front of these two landmarks. Oh, by the way, I've entered both but haven't taken pictures yet... :(



Hmmmm, time is already up but I can't help but type really quickly one last funny story. Elder Andrade needs new glasses his glasses are cracked and falling apart and he needs to buy a new pair. Only that here in Caucaia glasses are ridiculously expensive. We entered one store and they wanted more than 700 REALS ($435 US) for what appeared to be a normal pair of glasses. We ended up asking a member where she buys her glasses and we found a little family-run eyeglasses store, but they still wanted 680 for the glasses he wanted, to fit the lenses in and everything. So Elder Andrade decided to give in and was all depressed that he would lose his whole reserve and money from home... until I cheered him up by entering in another glasses store and told him to try again and see what they offered. Elder Andrade then started doing something that Brazilians do very well... he told the owner of the store that another store wanted 680 and got that owner to cut him a deal pushing the price down to 480. But the quality of the glasses weren't very good. We went back to the original store and told them we wanted to cancel the deal because we'd found a better offer at another store. The owner flipped out, started telling stories about how that store always cheated their customers and the quality was super poor and yadda yadda yadda, Elder Andrade told him that it didn't matter because we don't get paid for being missionaries and we need to conserve money, and then the owner of the store cut another deal with Elder Andrade, dropping the price of the original offer to 450 reals ($280). We went back to the other store to see if we could cut the price even more (laughing on our way there), but they wouldn't. In the end, we ended up saving Elder Andrade 230 reals! Definitely a cheerer-upper for my Brazilian buddy!
Okay, okay, I gotta go now really! I love you all sooooo much!

Your neighborhood-friendly missionary in Brazil,
Elder Brendon (Carpenter)

:D :D :D

3-21-2011 Letter Home

Paz do Senhor

Okay, okay, okay, getting to my e-mail for the week. 

First of all, thanks for all the awesome birthday mail and presents and e-mail!

But, shoot, I ran out of time to write a message! Freak! No big long message this week. 
But I will tell you two little facts that were cool:
The whole ward was doing a temple trip to Recife this week, and I don’t really know many members anyway yet, so there was no missionary love from the ward this time around. Very few knew it was my birthday. No sweat, though, I’m going to get a lot of love when I get home in five months. Though, if I had stayed at Fortaleza/Castelo, man, everyone in the two wards would have organized a party for me, they were even planning it a few weeks before I left. Awww... I miss those guys so much. 

I’d been fasting this Sunday to find some new investigators here in Caucaia because its kinda slow going and whadya know, I ran into Eden, Heverton’s older brother while walking to lunch! I didn’t recognize him because he was on a motorcycle with a helmet on, I haven’t ever seen him walking before, because, when I met him for the first time it was after he had a terrible motorcycle accident and had broken his leg in several places, and so he was always laying down or sitting. I’ve taught him the first lesson back in Fortaleza/Castelo and he’s been part of several spiritual discussions with the rest of his family. But, he moved to Caucaia and I didn’t even know that he lived real close to our house here. What a weird turn of events! He’s a great guy, we always talk a bunch about TV shows and video games because he’s an even bigger nerd than I am. He has a desire to follow Christ like he’s never had before, I think because of his near-death experience. We’ll go there this week and see what happens!

On the funny story side of things, we often take a bus to get to farther-away areas, and on  the return journey one night we were all alone on a bus with this drunk guy. When he came onto the bus he wouldn’t stop staring at me and when I finally looked at him he turned away and started shaking his head. I have to admit I  sometimes joke with the drunk guys I meet because they are always so enchanted to meet a gringo. So I asked him what was up and he started to ignore me but then he started talking bad about the United States and Americans. I don’t even care for that kind of stuff but just to razzle him I started talking to him in English to see if he was paying attention. Well, the end of the story is he got mad all of the sudden and got in my face and threatened me. I didn’t understand his threat at first because he used a lot of words I’ve never been taught (very dirty words) so I just sat there quiet like a dummy trying to figure out what he was saying. Elder Andrade got up all of the sudden and in a stern voice told the drunk guy, “If you touch him, you'll be sorry!” The drunk guy started backing off but then yelled back as he was getting off the bus, “I won’t  fight him in here, but if I see him on the street I’ll get him!” Elder Andrade yelled back. The only thing I yelled in this whole exchange of words was a meek “Paz do Senhor!” (Peace of the Lord!) which is a way to say that we didn’t want to fight. I’m not too worried because the guy was drunk out of his mind and kind of old, there’s no way he’ll remember us or fight with us if he sees us on the streets, besides, Elder Andrade is like super Muay-Thai fighter guy.
Sooo... that’s the last time I joke around with drunk people! It’s a dangerous line to cross after all!

Yeah... times up. Love you guys. Hope you like the pictures!



Alright, of the pictures that I sent that aren't self-explanatory!!!

Studying English while playing chess... how Elder Andrade and I spend an hour every day!!

Me trying out Elder Andrade's glasses... I think I like wearing glasses! Very xique.

Our chapel is huge!

Local manditory catholic church in the center of Caucaia!

Parasites come out of our shower drain! Seriously, those aren't just worms, they enter through the bottom of your foot if you are dumb enough to shower without sandals! One of the bigger parasites I've seen on my mission...

One more motorcycle accident, only this time someone hit a policeman! That sucks!

I need more picture ideas... and I need to take more pictures outside of P-Day... :(

3-14-2011 Letter Home

Practically a miracle!


We took a train from the center of Fortaleza (where I renewed my visa) back to Caucaia. 


Argh, why didn't I take pics of the interior! 

Train from the 1970s, seriously, its way old. I like taking trains. I was thinking of that scene from Slumdog Millionair when the kids start living in those crowded Indian trains... I really liked that movie too, probably more than I like to take trains even. ...

Yeah, and that's my friend Neiva who has two months in the Church, she's helping us alot with references and Geovana is her niece. Cool girl. 

And the rest... just pics from the streets of Caucaia this morning!



Hey everybody! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a proper e-mail off. We had a lot of craziness because of Carnaval and all that. So let me tell you what’s been going on for the last two weeks!

Last week was my first week here in Caucaia. It is a big place and much poorer than I am used to, much more spread out. You don’t have to walk too long to get to huge fields of jungly swampland. We’ve got some Indian reserves next to us, just huge jungles with dirt roads where apparently the Indians live. The Indians here are no joke, they have kept a lot more of their culture and way of life than in the United States, you can expect log houses and Brazilian-style teepees when you go into their villages, they hunt animals and everything to make a living, do strange rituals, I’m not making this up. Still haven’t taught any real Indians though, just Indian-descendants. I don’t know if I’ll be making any trips into the jungle to teach them either like Chase, haha, because the jungle is known to be very dangerous here, full of drug traffickers and regular thieves.
But there is also a lot of normal suburbs (well, normal in the Cearense sense) that I am used to. 

 I took pictures from my walk to the LANhouse this morning, showing some parts of Caucaia. The LANhouse. A fruit stand.  The street. A place they sell fresh fish. Eh, random stuff you guys might like.

A place they sell fresh fish

A fruit stand

The street

The LANhouse

Man we walk a lot here. Lately President Batt has been telling us we need to work almost exclusively with member references, which is great but we end up getting these huge lists of addresses and names and we walk the whole day from one house to the next, with a very low success rate of meeting somebody and teaching. Elder Matias taught me something important about missionary work: “You’ve got to work with your head, not with your legs.” To that I would add: “You’ve got to work with your head and with the Spirit, not with your legs.” There’s some missionaries that don’t learn this lesson, and think, “Hey, I’m outside, sweating… that means I’m working and if I’m working I am doing the right thing and the Lord will bless me.” Yeah, the Lord blesses those that works, but how much will He bless those servants that are not only putting in the work, sweating all day, but doing everything they can to enter into homes and teaching His children, and not just teaching kids on the street or drunk people (who always want to shoot the breeze with missionaries here), but searching for the Elect and only really spending time with those that the Spirit confirms are ready for the Gospel? In my experience, you’ve got to work with all of your mental and spiritual power, not just your physical capacity. The Lord grants more miracles to those that are doing everything they can with their own capacity to reason and solve problems than to those who want to just pray and wait for the Red Sea to open. We receive help from above after we do all we can do. That’s what lesson I am trying to apply to Caucaia, because it seems the other missionaries didn’t have this kind of vision. I already received a kind of hint from President Batt that I will stay in this area until I end my mission, and I’m thinking it’s very likely that I have twenty-two more weeks here and I have a lot of ideas I want to put into action here in that time. I’m really excited to put everything I’ve learned from the last 18 months into practice here and help the ward as much as possible.

Did I mention in my last letter that on my fourth day in this area we baptized Geovana, an eight-year old girl that has been going to church for a real long time here? A little angel, she’s super cute, always wants to hear scary stories when we pass by her house which I love to tell her cause she gets really paranoid and scared of shadows and stuff even after I tell my more silly scary stories. Hahaha. Good way to start off the transfer!

One night we were returning from an appointment by bus (yeah, we have to take buses to get to some appointments! Caucaia is huge!) during Carnaval, a little later than it is advised, and a bunch of drunk women returning from a party enter into the bus. We’ve got window seats so it’s all good, but it gets really crowded and everyone is laughing and talking loudly and we’re trying to ignore them when some punk from outside of the bus chucks a rotten egg into the bus through the window! Oh man, it smelled so horrible and we decided to close the windows to keep them from throwing more eggs inside but it just ended up trapping the smell inside the bus and all of the women started panicking and pushing each other in an attempt to get away from the smell. Luckily our bus stop was very close so we got off with little damage. That was the most nervous I got on Carnaval, I didn’t see too much more than that.

Na verdade, the whole city shut down for five days! We were still supposed to be working but seriously, the city was abandoned. Almost no shops were open in the center of the city. What people we saw were making their way to the beach in swimsuits, carrying huge ice chests and big umbrellas for shade and all that. A lot of drunken people at all hours of the day. It was pretty hard to work but, I dunno, we did manage to find people to teach. We ended up spending a lot of time with members, leaving messages with them and asking them for references.

Did I tell you much about Elder Andrade? He is awesome! Becoming a great friend. I love it when a companionship just works out great, and, everyone knows, there are companions you like more than others it’s not wrong to tell the truth. He is a martial artist, has trained years in Jujitsu and Muay Thai but he’s still a little cheerful guy with glasses. I’ve seen him show me some stuff… man, do not mess with Elder Andrade he can break any limb of your body in a few seconds. Maybe he can teach me some stuff this transfer! Wouldn’t that be cool? He’s from Rondonia, the capital of Porto Velho, right at the border of Bolivia and also right by the Amazon Rain Forest. It’s apparently a big modern city so even he get’s weirded out by the poverty and other conditions here in Ceara but he also has good stories of going to Bolivia and to the Amazon. He’s got a good sense of hard work and knows how to teach people well and use the Spirit, but he’s also realistic and down to earth like I am, which I really appreciate. We can be serious together when we need to and also joke around a lot too.

Cool teaching experience of the week! Well, actually it starts from last week when we had nothing planned for the day and I told Elder Andrade “Look, you know the area way better than me at this point, so you’ve got to figure out what we are going to do today, who we are going to teach. I don’t know enough to make a good decision on where to work today.” So I was reading the scriptures a bit on the bed while Elder Andrade started looking through the Area Book, he prayed and everything and he came back to me with the spiritual impression that we should find Raphael, a man they had taught in the house of another investigator who they’d never followed up on. So we walk and walk and walk, way far away, to a big lake in Caucaia, and in this little house right by the shoreline we find Rafael, his wife Rita and his three-year old daughter Rafaella. Just happens that he took a day off of work and we teach an awesome lesson with the Spirit. Then on Friday we passed by again and Rafael told us he prayed and felt the Spirit and knows that everything we said is true. Rita is a little bit more apprehensive but is very eager to visit the Church and know more. We also taught three of their friends who just happened to pass by: Giselle, Carina, and Bruna. Rafael told us that we had to go share the same message with his brother, Raul. So we walk walk walk to another area and find Raul but he’s rebuilding a wall in his house that fell down because of the rain, but he tells us to go to his mom’s house. We marked an appointment with him so we’ll teach him this week at some point. We go to his mom’s house and end up teaching his mother, Lucia, his sister, Renata, his sister-in-law, another Rafaella, his brother, Rodrigo, and a family friend Marcos. All of them excited to go to church but only Lucia could go this Sunday all the others had plans. So, yeah, Elder Andrade got some real inspiration there! Because of his spiritual impression we ended up teaching ten new awesome investigators! We’ll see how the progress in the coming weeks but I felt they were really elect and I hope the best for them.


Sorry, by the way, if I haven't been including more spiritual experiences. I'm a total believer in miracles, I've seen lots of miracles on the mission, but there's this whole urban legend that missionaries are supposed to see angels or people brought back from the dead or have visions of people that need to be taught... that definitely happens but I don't think its part of the average mission experience. My miracles are very simple and beautiful... when I feel the Spirit to talk to someone on the street who ends up going to Church, when the Spirit helps me say something in a lesson that makes total sense to the person being taught, when I feel God's love help me forgive my companion for doing something stupid that I was getting overworked about, when I feel more patient or humble during whatever trial. Those are the miracles that I've been seeing and experiencing and I love them, just that there are so many times its hard to express correctly in e-mails. I guess personal spiritual experiences are always difficult to describe to others, you know?  

Man, that’s about it I guess. The mission is awesome! My birthday is this week I have no idea what I’ll do! I love you guys bunches! Hope you like the pics! More next week!

Love love love
Elder Brendon

3-9-2011 Letter Home

Hehe, hey, by the way, we were leaving a family home evening one night and the center of Caucaia happens to be the second most dangerous neighborhood in the whole Fortaleza metropolitan area, so the members there offered their magic broom sticks so that we could fly back home without any danger of being assaulted. Unfortunately, though I didn't get to take a picture of it, the broomstick police pulled us over and confiscated our newfound magical transport because we didn't have a license. Fun while it lasted.

 

Only seven pictures! Well, what happened... we went to develop some...


(a few hours later we get this email with the pictures...) 


Freak. Yeah, so, we were trying to develop the pictures of the baptism of Geovana and I get my camera hooked up to the computer of the picture developers and apparently it picked up a virus THERE. They spent an hour trying to fix it and eventually had to delete all of my other pictures. So... not too many pictures this week but NEXT week definitely a lot more.

But I am still the Rei.

Why am I sending e-mails tonight? I have to get my visa renewed tomorrow morning (seven months late!) so we are in the center of Fortaleza sleeping at the secretaries' house tonight. Didn't have anything to do, went to the nearest chapel to use the internet there. Can you believe for the last three days we've been looking for LANhouses to use and not one has opened up in our area since P-Day? Yeesh.

More later..


I've got to go now! Didn't get a letter to the family but I don't think Elder Andrade did either so maybe tomorrow we'll use the internet again. Carnaval... hahahahaha, wait till I tell you some things that happens.

I love you !!

3-3-2011 Letter Home

Hey guys! Woah, what am I doing e-mailing you guys on quinta-feira? Wait, what day is it today in English... *counts on fingers* 
It's Thursday today right? Okay. Well... Carnaval is coming up! Apparently Caucaia is one of the biggest tourist hits for Carnaval so it looks like the whole city is going to shut down tomorrow and they are going to have nonstop partying in the streets for a whole week. There is a chance that we won't be able to find a LANhouse open this next Monday, so I asked President if I could fire a quick message to everybody. So, yeah, you guys might have to go a while without an e-mail, at least a week from now.

The ward is awesome! My comp is awesome! Loving it a lot. More details later. Oh, what do I mean by King's Triumph? Well, I was comparing cameras with Elder Andrade this morning and it turns out I have the same brand of camera as he does. Olympus. I asked to see his cable and, what do you know...

The cable interfaces with my camera.

That's right, with the next e-mail you guys receive, you will also get a ton of photos that I've been holding out on you. So I guess that kind of redeems my earlier foolishness. The only sucky part is... if I had found that memory card three months ago, I would have tons of photos of my old ward and baptisms and fun stuff to send to you guys now. Oh well, I'll pass by my old area on my last transfer and take a bunch of pictures for everyone to see.

Happy Carnaval Week everybody!!!

Love love love,
Brendon