Roommates Once Again....

Dear Family,

How is everyone doing? 

I am great, and I thank everyone for your love and good emails for my birthday tomorrow.  I am very thrilled that I will be turning 23 years old, but at the same time I realize that I am getting really old. My life is got much to do but little time to do it in.  I am all smiles however. I will get getting a new companion tomorrow.  I already know him. He is a good guy and he will be my third American companion.  Elder Hill.  He was my roommate in the CTM. It will be sweet. I am looking really forward to the new things that will be happening. 

I am doing really good. This last week there was a great deal to get done, and we managed to get it all taken care of before this past Sunday.  My last companion is ending his mission.  His name is Elder Monteiro he is a good guy, but he is really to leave.  The funny part of it his mother and father came to get him. He was really occupied by that for a while, and he did not think about too much other than that. We also received two more missionaries in our ward.  It is growing greatly and require two more Elders.  So this week my companion and I were on a constant companion exchange.  It was good however because we managed to help these two guys out, unfortunately one of them is being transferred to another area so I will have to help the new guys how is coming to the area.  

We also had two baptisms this weekend, and you would not guess it, but one of them the woman asked me to baptize her. Her name is Iracema. She is a wonderful woman.  She is the mother of three, and two of her children have mental handicaps. One cannot talk and is a result of lack of oxygen in the brain during the birth process, and they other is due to something that happened when he was a child.  It is very difficult for her, and she took to the gospel like no one I have seen before. It was an amazing transformation. She was a smoker, and when we taught her about the Word of Wisdom she stopped smoking, and that was about a month ago that she quiet smoking.  She is a great example of true will power through her faith in the Savior Jesus Christ.  

The other was a woman that was not baptized with her husband because she was pregnant and it was a risky pregnancy.  However she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and after a good time of recover and some trials of faith she too wanted to be baptized, and the cool thing about it was that her husband was able to baptize her having received the Aaronic Priesthood that same day.  It was cool.

My week is doing great, and I hope you are all doing really well. Amy Happy Birthday in two days.

Love,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

Free Agency is a Powerful Thing!

Well Family,

This week was a good week. We managed to have many lessons and also we marked two baptisms for this weekend. It was also a colder and all around a better week.  

I had a couple of interesting experiences which prove that free agency is a powerful thing, and that laziness is more powerful at times.  I have done a lot of things to help a certain investigator to get married, but he has been keeps a secrete from us for some time now and our bishop discovered what it was in a chat that he had with him.  He is on probation for a crime that he has committed a while back, and he never told us.  So even if we were to get the marriage taken care of, he would not be able to get baptized because of the criminal troubles that he has.  It is a stab in the back, but what can you do.  I realize that none of this is my fault and that I did everything in my power to help this man out, but until he looses his vices which easily binds him, we cannot move forward and he is procrastinating the day of his repentance.

On a more littler note I have started shaving with a straight blade razor.  It is much better than anything else I have used.  They still sell actual razor blades and I recalled that Dad once said that when he was learning how to shave he said that a straight one blade was much better than anything that we use today. So I thought to myself, why not.  I have to say it is the best save I have given myself.  I will bring it home with me.  

My companion is ending his mission now and so it is somewhat funny. He is working hard, and he is showing me lots of things how to improve my teaching and what not, but it he knows that he is ending his mission, and he is becoming really trunky.  It is really funny.  I hope that I can continue on like that, working, but have a sense of humor about the end of the mission.

Happy Birthday Seth.

Love,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

Things are going my way!

Well family,

I am very good. I tired,but I am good. That life is good and things are going my way.  This last week we were able that we to teach many lessons in spit of a transfer and also a council meeting that we had that took up a lot of our time that day.  We did not have the wanted baptism, but this week I am feeling that is going to be a good week.

I have a new companion. I do not remember if I mentioned that. It was somewhat of an unexpected thing. My companion was called to a new position in the mission and my new companion is Elder Monteiro.  He will be ending his mission this transfer.  He has just two more weeks left in the mission. We have been in the same zone for many transfers. It seems that we were always in the same zone, but never companions, and now it has come.  We´ve done many division together and the people that we found on those divisions have been baptized.  It was good times had by all.

I really do not have much to say other than that. I am doing well, and people are saying that I am getting really skinny.  I do not know if that is true or not, but I am glad to hear that. 

I love you guys and I will talk to you later.

Love,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere