A Good Week overall....

Hey family friends, and everyone else. 

 

These week was better than last week, and I am happy to say that.  We are going to have a baptism on Saturday, and we are also working with a family that is progessing really well.  The only problem is that all of them smoke, and they know they should stop, but they want to make it a process to put it into words.  So I do not know if they will be baptized this transfer or the next.  I hope so because I have been working with them for a long time, and I want to see them get baptized. 

 

I am doing really well otherwise, but I had a good and bad experience yesterday that I would like to impart with you all.  My companion and I went tracking for the first time in our time together, and we did not have very much sucess with our efforts.   The last house that we knocked allowed us to come in, but they were a little preocupied with things.  One of the people at our house evidently was baptized when she was 9 or so, but because of the suffering that she said that she has gone through in her life that she feels it is not needed to go to church.  She also blames God for what happened to her son.  He was born normal without any problems, but evidently when he was 2 years old the doctors gave him the wrong medicene which left him mentally disabled for the rest of his life.  I am sad to see that woman's lack of faith and knowladge about the plan of Salvation.  How her son will be resurrected with a prefect body free of any troubles or sickness of any kind, and also because of his mental problems he will go to the celestial kingdom and live in the presence of Heavenly Father once more, and be completely like Him.  But I digress, I cannot completely comprehend what she has been through. 

 

I am good.  Thanks for all the love and support that you all give me. I am so grateful for you all and also Erynn, sorry, but I forgot to say Happy Birthday to you last week.  So happy late birthday. 

 

Tchau,

 

Elder Caleb S. Carriere.

Feliz Páscoa gente boa

Feliz Páscoa gente boa, 

Essa semana foi muito boa, nada muito aconteceu, mas ainda foi boa.  Meu companheiro e eu fizemos uma mudança bem grande, a gente fez uma mudança duma casa inteira.  Minha nossa.  Alright I am sorry I realize that none of you can read that but I just wanted to show the improvement of my Portuguese.  

I am getting much better at speaking.  It has been a long time coming, but it is starting to make sense to me now so all is good.  What that stuff up top says is that this week nothing really exciting happened, but it was still good.  My companion and I moved a house.  Literally an entire house.  We removed the roof then a team of guys came in picked up the house with jacks and put it on a  truck and then moved it 20 yard to another plot of land.  It was difficult work and I took two days.  

We have good news though,  because of that and the lessons we taught them, that family that we moved their house said that they want to be baptized.  Yeah for us.  Now we just got to get them to go to church, quite smoking (all of them smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day) and drinking, and a couple of other things which I care not to mention. We also had one investigator go to conference with us.  She will also be baptized on the 17th of April, so the work here is going really well. 

Conference was the best.  Oh my goodness. I love it when Elder Holland talk.  I could listen to him all day long.  And my district in the CTM did one day.  It was great.  We took a bus to Santo Ângelo which is the district center and watched it there in English as well.  Good thing.  I love their voices too much to be voiced over by a translator.  

That was my week nothing special.  I will talk to you all soon.  

Love 

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

Who knew Monks wore pants?

Dear family and friends,

How is everyone doing these days?  This week was better than the week before, but I must say that my companion I were a little bit lazy and did not teach nearly as much as we should have.  It didn't help that it was raining a lot again, and it is difficult to travel in the rain here.  But that was not the reason for our laziness,  I am sad to say, but we had some really great lessons this week, and we have set one date already for baptism and we may have more on the way, so that is good. It still does not make up for the bout of laziness, but it is still a good thing all around.

I forgot to mention that last P-Day my district and I went to a Monastery here is Santa Rosa, it was cool, they did not talk.  Except the grounds keepers and the man at the front door.  One thing I did not know was that monks could wear pants. This was surprising when the monk at the front door was wearing what I thought to be a pair of pants and a hoody, but it was their normal garb evidently.  I have a lot of photos, and I also forgot to mention that we were their only visitors that day.  Oh, well, it was fun all the same.

I finally managed to bring my camera, and I have a lot of pictures to show of the past few weeks and all things that have happened in them. 

I am glad to say I am well, and all things are smoothed over with my investigators.  They are all progressing really well. We are teaching 11 families right now.  Most of whom are really really great. They all love message of the Gospel and they accept that what we teach is really the word of God.  I am glad to be a part of this work. 

I would also be remiss if I did not talk about Irmã Jaque and her family. Omar her husband, and here two children, Numa (here 10 year old son) and Luana (her 9 year old daughter).  They are recent converts and they have take to the Gospel like a duck to water.  It makes me a little envious how just how well they have progressed.  They are the most hard working people in branch we are attached to.  They have given us most of the referrals which we have and not to mention they are always willing to help us teach or give testimony during lessons.  My goodness.  Irmã Jaque bore her testimony with respects of tithing,  a few weeks ago they were in some financial troubles.  They had to make the choice between being 7 reaies short of being able to pay the water bill or paying tithing.  They choose to pay tithing. The Monday after they had paid tithing. Someone that owed a debt to them paid it back with interest, which ended up being 10 reais, They had enough to pay the water bill and then some.  It is how the scriptures say, the windows of heaven will be opened and blessings will pour out of them.  They really know that to be true. 

So if you have an experience like that and would like to share it with me, I would like to hear your thoughts.  Keep me posted.

As always, I love you.  And thanks you for your time ,and efforts.

Até mais,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

Shot Out at the OK Corral!!!

Dear Family and Friends,

I am really sorry about not writing my blog post, I really did not have anything to write about and I also was not feeling up for it.  I just wanted to relax more than anything. 

This week has been, different.  I have been playing private investigator, because my last companion may have proposed to one of the girls that he baptized, and my companion and I found out about it and we have been asking her, and people that she told that they are going to get married come December, and who knows what else.  I am a little upset by this because, they managed to do this under my noise.  I had my suspicions about them liking each other, but nothing to suggest that anything would happen after the mission.  I am really really trying to keep my works clean.  It is also funny, because our mission president also said something about how he gets sick when he sees missionaries flirting with girls and also he said that "Your wife is not in the limits of this mission, that is just Satan trying to get you to move away from what you need to be doing." 

My companion and I are getting along really well. We are getting better at speaking Portuguese, and I am learning a lot from him.  I am grateful for his example, and just simply he is a good guy.  He is chill and easy going.  He still wants to work but does not mind having a good time while doing it.  It is a nice change of pass.  It is kind of funny, we make bread and pizza and all sorts of other foods; we are like a regular Ozzy and Harriett. 

Yesterday was the first day of Fall, and it come in with a bang.  My companion and I work up at 1:30 last night to a great big thunder storm last night.  It was kind of wild, all of our windows and doors were open in our apartment because it is usually hotter than the sun here, but we had to make a mad dash around the apartment to close the windows and doors which were slamming shut and opening again.  It was crazy. It was kind of exciting. 

This story is also true, and my companion said that I could copy it from his email. I can testify that this is true, and it happened this week in our area.  In a letter from Elder Griffin to his family, "  so we have had some investigators going through some pretty interesting experiences this week, and none of them good ones. We had one that almost killed his neighbor because he threatened a seven year old that lives next door, whose mother then threatened him and called the father to come bust a cap!!  We had one whose brother got arrested in a drug bust, one of our members mothers, who is also an investigator, was almost killed by her brother, than almost killed her brother, who was then almost killed by her neighbors dad. And another investigator was almost murdered by her boyfriend who is three times her age, and already has a huge criminal record. Fun week huh!! Talk about exciting!! There was also a drug bust in an apartment complex where they got eight drug traffickers. Talk about adventure!! And last week me and my companion walked by a gunfight, it was pretty interesting!! " Elder K. Brooks Griffin companion of one Elder Caleb S. Carriere

That is me for this week.  I have pictures but I forgot to bring my camera and cable again, so I will send them next week. I hope. 

Com Amor para sempre,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

Nothing to Report

Hello family and friends,

Nothing much to report. I have been working a lot. My companion and I have been teaching a lot of people and I am getting over myself and talking more.  I have discovered that if I want to learn I have to talk and just take the hit when I cannot say what I want to say.  Everyone seems to respect that.  I have also been speaking more Portuguese with him everyday. It is a work in progress.

I am also sad to report that we did not have any baptisms last week.  We had one marked down but do to outside forces (i.e. his parents getting into a fight and his father not wanting to go to the baptism) put the kibosh on that. He will, however, be baptized  this next week and with another person as well.  I am really excited about the work here.  We have found so many good people to teach. 

I was on divisions last week again.  I really do not care for them.  I would have rather stayed here and taught with my companion, who I am accustomed to and not another guys.

Well, I have nothing to report.  I will have photos and more excitement for you all next week. 

Love,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere.

Oh Canada....

Dear Family and Friends,

I am glad to hear that everyone is doing so well and is in high spirits.  I am doing really fine myself, especially since the Canadians have the most gold metals and to top it all off, they also won both men and woman's Hockey.  I actually was fortunate to see the first half of the woman's game. They kicked butt.  It was great, because my companion is a good old American boy and I am a Canuck, and we are really into the game.  It was so great to see that we had won. 

My birthday was really good to.  I eat so much cake.  Oh my goodness.  Everywhere we went everyone knew that it was my birthday and they had cake.  It was really good cake too, and then we spent the night with a member family and did Family Home Evening with them and there I made Chicago style pizza which turned out pretty good.  The dough could have used a little more salt and the sauce could have used some sugar but all in all it was really good and the mother of the house hold said that I could now have her permission to get married after the mission. Not because I am a good guy, or the handsome devil that I am, only because I can make pizza.  Who knew?

I have not been good at sticking to the Portuguese only rule.  We have been slowly getting better, but it is still a problem and we know it.  We are coming up with a method of how to keep each other on track. I think punching will be involved, which is bad for me because I am a weak guy and he is an ex- football and lacrosse player who is 190 cm which is like 6 feet and 4 inches.  I am going to have a lot of bruises I think. 

I did not have any baptisms this week, but we did get lost a lot.  Boy Howdy, did we ever get lost.  I have terrible memory. It takes us a couple of hours to find lunch ( if we find it) because we have a list of the member addresses and it is really old and most of the time they have changed.  So we get there and they are not there and then we cannot call them because our cell phone we can only make calls to other missionaries and mission presidency.  Public phones here you need a phone card which is difficult to come between the hours 12 and 2 because all the stores are closed.  All of them.  Then on Thursday I think it was we were trying to get to an area of the city called Planalto, so we grabbed a bus which said Planalto on the front.  The mistake was we needed to listen to the guy yelling out the window like all the other buses in the city.  So instead of going to Planalto, which is on one side of  the city we went to the completely opposite side of the city and had no more money on us to get another bus ride so we walked almost 2 hours getting to Planalto.  Oh the fun times we have, but we did learn our lesson.

I hope you all are going well.  Have a great March and I will talk to you guys next week.

Com Amor,

Elder Caleb S. Carriere

They say it's your Birthday... Well it's my Birthday too, yeah!

Dear Family and Friends,

Thanks for all your lovely emails and the letters which I am sure that I will get.  I am looking forward to those. I am doing really well.  I am in good spirits and my new companion and I get along great in the same city of Santa Rosa.

His name is Elder Griffin. He is from Cache Valley Utah.  Which seems to be a common trend in my time as a missionary.  He is the second companion from Cache Valley I have had. The first was my companion in  the CTM.   I like the guy a lot and he speaks Portuguese like a Brazilian.  The only worry that I have is that we speak English too much.  We have a goal of only talking Portuguese in the mornings and on the streets when we do the work, but as of now we have not been doing so well on that.  It is just so easy to speak English.  I mean I have been doing it for the last 22 years.  Mas agora, vou escrever só no português.  Porque eu preciso melhorar meu português cada dia, dia inteiro.  I can write and think in Portuguese, more or less, but I still am struggling with speaking it.  But it will come with time.

I hope the Winter Olympics are really sweet.  I know they are in Vancouver, which is a pretty great city if I do say so myself.  I want highlights. I have not been able to see the games.  They are not on television here, because Carnaval just got over and no one could care less about the Olympics in Winter.

I laughed to when I heard that Dad bought an air riffle, not to mention that it has a scope and a muzzle velocity of 1700 feet per second.  This air riffle is to shoot woodland creators in our attic and back yard.  That is funny.

Well I am good.  I hope you all are too. I am looking forward to the packages I will receive in the mail coming up in Zone Conference.  (fingers crossed)  I hope you all are doing well and I wish Seth a late happy birthday and Amy a early one.

Com Amor,

Tchau!

Elder Caleb S. Carriere