Sometimes we have to take the good with the bad...

Hey Everyone,

This week was a good and a bad week. It was something of a bittersweet symphony.  We had two baptism but we also had to cut a lot of the people that we were teaching because they did not want to continue doing the thing which we had asked them to complete. However, we did mark one baptism and we also found two family which I feel could have some great potential.

My companion and I are trying to take a new road on doing the work. It is kind of a pyramid skeem, but if it works out we will have to work less and we will get more results.  We are trying to break the idea that their exists two church.  The church of the missionaries and the church of the members.  We are now trying to motivate the members in taking a proactive role in missionary work. We are now training them to speak to their friends family members who do not apart of the church, and we are teaching them how to place a Book of Mormon in their hands and giving chapters or a couple of verse to read.  We are also trying to get people to mark family home evenings with their neighbors and friends and talking about the church in general.  I hope that it gets some results.  I feel like if these works the results will be at least three times bigger them what we are currently having.

I ask all of you to take note of what I just said, and try to start having missionary experiences.  I remember when President Connolly asked that our stake to start praying to have missionary experiences and I believe that it gave great results for the missionaries and also for those who shared the gospel with those who do not know it.

I am doing well really well indeed. I got Amy's birthday package. Thanks Amy and Chris and Amelia and lets not forget Olivia.

I am still waiting on the others, but I believe that I will get them here soon.

I am doing really well, and I love you all and I hope to talk to you all soon.

Love,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

And the Oscar goes too... Who cares????

Dear Family and Friends,

Oh, how does time flies. I did not even remember that Oscar season was just last week.  Every year I got all excited about such things and now I couldn't careless about it. Oh how I have changed since I have became a missionary and changed my wayfaring ways.

This week was all good. We had two confirmations of the two women that we baptized last week.  It was good to see them at church. I have full certainty that they will stay active in the Church. We also started to frequent another chapel.  Our beloved Salgado Filho was closed this last week because it is an old chapel. It will be renovated and twice the size when she is done and so I cannot complain too much about it. It was a much needed change.

My new companion and I are doing great.  We have one bad thing though. We talk in English too much. It is going destroy our ability to speak in Portuguese.  It is really hard however because every now and again one of us will ask the other, "Oi você se lembra (incert show or movie or music here)."  Which means hey do you remember..." and we will get to talking about Back to the Future or Rugrats or OutKast.  We are getting better about meaning more self controlled but at the start it was difficult.

We are going to have two more baptisms this weekend. I am very excited about  these two.  It is a mother and her 8 year old daughter. Joci and Julia.  Julia´s grandmother is the 2 consular in the Primary and she was been going to church forever and one day our Bishops said hey go and baptize her.  He does that often.  So I talked with the little girl and asked her where she lived and if we could talk to her mother.  She said yes and gave me the address.  We went there and at first her mother was really nice, but did not seem to want much to do with religion at all.  She agreed to have us come back. She had a complete transformation and she got really excited. For example it was two weeks ago that we gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon, and she has already read to Mosiah. She is reading alot, and she has also quite smoking and drinking coffee.  It is a great progress that she has made.

Well Family I love you all and hope you are doing well.

Love,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere