Hello my beautiful family and friends. How wonderful it is to address you all on this fine sunny day where I found out that I will be studying at BYU and in one week I will be at home. Life is getting different, but I'm ready to go. Let me tell you all.... my body is soooo tired. I'm trying my best not to get down because of my tiredness. Everyone I live with is making me super trunky! ''Hey Elder, how many days do you have left??''... hahaha there's no way not to know. We walked and traveled a ton this week so I caught a cold when the weekend started because of all the waking up early and going to bed late. The week started out with an exchange we did with Arco Verde. I stayed with Elder Wach in my area. The dude is super legit and he goes home one transfer after me so we were getting trunky together and making plans to meet up after the mission. He's a big football player who could probably go to whatever school he wants to play football. But we had a good ol time knocking on doors and talking to random people. A guy in the ward sent us a referral of a guy that cuts hair. The dude didn't have time to just sit and talk but he had time to cut my hair for free because we're his friend's friend. Don't know why that made sense to him but we'll take it! So I taught the dude while he was cutting my hair for free. He cut pretty well... It took me two years to find a good hair cutter! I guess if there was a haircut that mattered it would be the last one right?? The dude was kind of crazy and doesn't have a lot of time to go to church/talk to the missionaries but it was a cool lesson. Wach stayed at our house that night and then we got out at 6 to go back to Arco Verde(2 hours away) to undo the exchange and we got back home just in time to go to our leadership meeting in Recife(3 hours the other way/back home after the meeting arriving at 10). It was a lot of traveling in 1 day and my health was just going down hill because we don't really eat that well when we're traveling all the time.
The leadership meeting was sick. Our President is a missionary master-mind with a whole bunch of tricks up his sleeves. He pretty much flipped the mission in another direction than it was going before. We all felt it coming but we didn't think it was going to be that drastic! He's a man that likes to use time wisely and he knows that if we do use our time wisely the mission will do way better. The members encourage the missionaries to waste time and when he discovered that he got ticked and jumped on it. It's just Brazilian culture... everyone just wants us to sit around and talk and eat! haha.
We had a sweet experience with Michael this week. We went to his house when I was doing an exchange with Elder Cordeiro(lives with me). We followed up on the Book Of Mormon and he hasn't received a response yet. His dad and cousin were there to listen in on the discussion and everyone had different ideas. So it started to get awkward and we marked a few things for Michael to read and then Cordeiro asked them to play something since there were like 4 guitars lying around their house. They started to play some sweet stuff and the mood got a bit lighter. Then they asked us to play something and we grabbed it and played what we knew. It was sweet. Then they played some songs I knew and I sang for them. We automatically made a quick friendship right there because of our love of music. It's incredible how you can endear people to you when you have the same interests. Everyone got super psyched to go to church after the jam-sesh. Michael's dad went with his ''wife'' and they loved it! Michael stayed at home because he got home at like 3 in the morning on Sunday.... But this is a family that needs the gospel. Michael and Manoel(dad) don't have a great relationship and they seem pretty lost in life. The want to learn more and are liking what they feel and see!
How am I feeling about the end... My body is tired and I feel like I'm in an area that makes it so I want to be home. This last transfer has been tough. We talk to a lot of people who don't want to receive us and we walk a lot to get to our area. I made the Bishop redo the division between the two areas of the ward so that we had better neighborhoods to work with. We'll see how that works this week. I feel like I needed to do this to get the ward and the stake to give this ward a jump start to get divided. I'm going to miss my companion too. We just joke around all day. It's kind of like my relationship with Landon... we wail on and insult each other at home but it's just laughs the whole time. We have tons of insiders too. I told him I'm going to stay at his house in Rio when the Olympics are there while his girlfriend makes us food.. HAHA. All the Rio missionaries I've met just make fun of people all the time so we pretty much have license to say whatever we want to each other. The Elders I live with are parceiros(partners) too. Good buds. Johnson has a year left and is going to BYU when he gets back so we're going to hit it up. Elder Cordeiro lives in Rio Grande do Sul so I'll see him one day(years from now) when I make a trip to see all my buds from the south of Brazil. I'm ready. I'm probably not going to baptize this week but I'm going to do my best to make something work out. I'm going to fill up the area book and leave the area better than I got it.
Well fam I think that's it. To top It off I just want you all to know that I know that Christ lives, and that this is His church.
See you all in 8 days!
Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll
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