Busy, busy, busy

May 6, 2013

Hello people of the non-mission world,

 

Hope everything is just going great!  I like that 'm still getting emails about the wedding.  It seems like it was kind of a big deal.  Glad to know that Ashton is happy with her eternal companion and every one's lives can get back to normal.  Huge family gatherings are the best. I can't really thing of anything better.  God really does love families and wants them to be strong, happy and loving.

 

I've got some news for this week. I'M GOING TO TRAIN! Not gonna lie... I'm getting pretty nervous. Partially because I don't know who my companion is going to be but that's normal and partially because I don't have any crutches to lean on.  I'll probably have to do everything by myself.  It's going to be tough so pray for me!  Right now I'm with another elder who is about train someone too, a temporary companion just until the noobies show up.  I'll be staying in his area until we leave to get our companions in Recife in the morning.  He's already trained.  He says that when you train you learn your identity as a missionary, and your way of teaching.  I feel like these past few months I've just been learning everything from other people and not really having my own way of doing this.  This will be my opportunity to establish myself and really grow.  I have a feeling that it's gonna be the second hardest thing I will have to do besides being super green and not knowing how to speak but, everything will be alright.  I always have the Lord on my side to help me and I know that he won't let me fail.  I'm really hoping the new guy will will be Brazilian so I can get even better at Portuguese. I still don't feel fluent mesmo, but I'm solid and can really say whatever I want.  I don't feel fluent but people tell me I am.  It's weird.  I don't know what to believe.  So my prediction for this transfer is that the Portuguese will come fast but the baptisms will come slower.

 

Another mission mile stone was that Elder Moore went home.  Here on the mission they call it killing someone when you have a companion that goes home.  Everyone jokes with me and calls me a killer cause I sent Barbosa home and now Moore.  Moore was a big help.  I learned a lot of technicalities of the mission from him because he was the Secretary.  I learned a lot of teaching techniques and mind games, I guess. Don't know if it's good to call it that but that's how it feels.  I hope he reads this when he gets home, haha. We had some good times and some bad times and we were really good friends. Still are!  I was really impressed with the way he handles dying though. Some missionaries literally lay over and die when they're about to leave but I felt like we kept working to the end.

 

This week we baptised two more girls. Patricia, 8 years old and Natalia, 20 years old. I don't know if I wrote about Patricia last week but I'm just gonna say that she was was super hard to baptize. Not because she didn't want to but because she was always just running around and being 8!  Her mom just lets her run around town so we were always trying to find her, teach her and bring her to church.  It took 2 weeks for us to get her into the water.  Who would have thought that baptizing an 8 year old girl would be so hard!  Her mom heard some things about the missionaries that were kind of bad... That we go after little girls and I don't even know what was happening but, she was hesitant on letting us baptize her.  But Elder Moore, being a boss smoothed the whole thing over and we got it. BUT,Only because of Natalha, our other baptism.  I'm going to tell her story and maybe these two stories will meet back up at this point. We'll try it.

Monday of this week we passed by Bishop's house to talk to him like we always do. He said he had a reference for us and that it would be a sure baptism.  And it was.  We taught her and she was just perfect. She had already been to tons of churches and this past Sunday she went to our church for the first time. She said she felt something that she couldn't explain. Just something true. We went to her door and she answered it practically saying that she wanted to be baptized, so that was cool!  We taught her and it was awesome.  The spirit was strong.  Mainha, the Relief Society Pres. was there one day while we were teaching her without even telling us.  I'm telling you the members in this ward are all about missionary work.  But it was great. She was a great testimony for the lesson. Natalia has 3 little boys already and shes 20. Crazy.  She's super nice and just loved us right off the bat.  She's going to be super firm in the church. She's one of those people that refuses to pray about the Book of Mormon because she already knows it's a true kind of thing.  She was super ready and we never had to worry about her.

 

I guess this is where the stories come together.  Sunday we were running around with our heads cut off again and just trying to get stuff set up for the baptism. Up until the last minute we were trying to find Patricia to bring her to the church and baptize her. She went to another town that day and we were worried she wouldn't get back in time but to our surprise she was in front of this house with her parents watching this huge Pernambuco soccer game with a ton of people.  We were there with Natalia on the way to the baptism. Patricia's parents couldn't care less about her, so they weren't even trying to get her to go or to stay but Patricia just didn't want to move. She's the shyest little girl I've ever met and she just wouldn't talk to us weird white men. But Natalia was there and she has 3 kids so she's super good with kids. She was super mom like and got Patricia to come with us. She was saying that she was getting baptized too and all this mom technique stuff. THIS IS WHY WE NEED SISTER MISSIONARIES.  We had the baptism and it was really nice. There was a lot of the ward there and the Bishop did a great job of making the new members feel welcome. After all, the 2 baptisms were his references, haha.

 

Man.. I can't really think of anything else to say. I bought mom a nativity.  I found a really cool one. It took a while to find but I got it.  It is made of clay and has this metallic lead looking finish.  That task is over, haha.

 

Love everyone. Good luck with the next week. They seriously just fly by.  I've already been out for 6 months!  A 4th of the way done. Carazy.  And Sunday is Mother's Day!  I get to talk to my Mommy for the first time in 6 months.  It'll be over Skype. We'll go to Mariana's house to do it or to the church.  We'll see. But keep your computers ready and send me your skype stuff!

 

Love from Brasil...

Elder Carroll