Tchauzinho!!

Dear Family and Friends,

How is everyone doing?  I myself and doing okay.  This last week was a strange one and I spent a lot of it being really sad and I will explain why.  I now know that it is really important that we keep working with recent converts, and for that matter anyone who has made themselves a part of this church, for it is a shame to see people fall in unbelief of that which they know to be true.  I myself have done that once and I know for a fact that wickedness never was happiness as the prophet Alma once said.  (Interesting fact, the word Alma in Portuguese means soul.) 

But we have a recent convert family in Santa Rosa, who I consider to be family.  I love them.  Truly I do.  My companion and I visit them almost on a daily basis and we help them with doctrinal things and them give us references and good conversation.  They had a pretty terrible week.  First off, they are not the richest people I have meet.  In fact they are very poor, but they have a nicer home and better food them most people I have meet here. Then they had a motorcycle accident on last Monday, then on Tuesday the father of the family is a furniture repair man and was working with a cutting machine with a plainer and disc sander and a circular saw all in one and he managed to cut his pinky really badly.  They started to fall into unbelief because of that, thinking that they have been doing all that they can to live rightly and that Heavenly Father was being unkind and unjust with them.  They made all sorts of claims of not going to Church or reading Scriptures.  The wife even made a claim of asking to be released from her calling as the primary president.  My companion and I spent a lot of time in there house keeping them from making a knee jerk reaction.   It evidently worked because they went to Church and they also said that they have a feeling that this week is going to be better. 

I am glad to hear that.  I just hope that they continue to see truth in the things which we said to them.  

Other than that I´ve got nothing to say.  This past week was uneventful.  It got colder and it rained a lot.  I am working on Portuguese and keeping my companion from becoming completely crazy because this is his last week on the mission and his parents are coming to pick him up, so on Saturday I will meet Brother and Sister Griffin and play translator for a while.  I will let you all know what happens with that.


Tchauzinho!!

Elder Caleb S. Carriere