Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been a bit easier than last, now that I´m starting to get settled. I still have a hard time understanding people´s questions to me, and I still can´t teach very well, but we´re working on it. I have so much that I could tell you, and I don´t really know where to start. hmmm...
Last monday, after we finished e-mailing and doing everything that needed to be done for the day, we decided to go look around at all the little shops that we pass by every day, but never look to see what is inside. Let me just say that it´s a good thing I´m a missionary, otherwise I probably would have spent some money. All of their dress shoes are so nice!
Also last week, I had my first experince with crazy dogs! We all knew this day was coming. It´s funny, because earlier the day that this happened, I thought to myself, ´´I don´t know what everyone is talking about back in the states, all the dogs here are just fine.´´ There are quite a few stray dogs in the more poor parts of São Mateus, but they never seemed to bother us. Yeah, that was the wrong thing to think. In one particular section of the poor section, there is this one dog, who I have decided to name, but I don´t know what yet (suggestions?), and she is really mean. The first time we went over on the street where she reigns, she let us pass by, no problem just like any other dog. Then, once we had walked down her street a few feet, she started to bark like crazy, and charge after us: lips curling, teeth showing, hair standing on end, the whole bit. It was in this moment that I realized the true purpose of the MTC for missionaries going to Brazil: dog attack prevention. I had been taught that the dogs in Brasil are very trained, and if you even pretend to bend over and pick up a rock, they´ll leave you alone. Well, I didn´t want to get attacked by a dog with diseases, so I stopped in my tracks, quickly turned, and started aggressively advancing towards the dog, bending down to pick up an imaginary rock (there were no rocks on the street where I was standing). The second I started to bend over, the dog screeched to a halt, and ran as fast as it could the opposite direction, whimpering as if I´d hurt it. As I stood there, marvelling at the fact that it actually worked, I had never felt so liberated.
Let´s see, oh yeah! We had another baptism on Saturday. His name is Wilson Destefani. I don´t know if I told you, but we don´t really have a church building here in São Mateus. We´re just using another building kindof like a giant apartment, only...not. It´s hard to explain. It´s similar to other church buildings in Brazil, but it wasn´t originally built to be a church building. Anyway, because of this, we don´t have a font. Just an above ground swimming pool on the back ´´patio´´. Since we had a baptism that week, we had to clean it and re-fill it with water. We cleaned it one day, and then went to fill it the next, but for some reason, we didn´t have any water in the building. We did everything we could with the help of ward members to fix the situatiuon, but we really had no water. Well, we weren´t going to give up that easy. We went across the street to a type of car wash (done by hand by people), and asked if we could use their water to fill the pool so we could baptize someone. The owner gave us permission, and so Elder Moroni and I took a bucket each, carried them full of water, one by one, across the street, up the stairs, across the building to the pool to fill it up. Needless to say, we needed a lot of bucket-fulls, and even more needless to say, my arms were very sore the next day. I was soaked and exhausted by the time we had finished. That night, I performed Wilson´s baptism, and we had to do it twice, because the water was so low that I really had to lower him pretty far, and his feet slipped and popped up.
Other than that, I´m just continuing to work on the language. I can´t really do anything but smile and nod until I´ve got it down, so it´s a little frustrating some days, but we´ll get there. It´s really beautiful in some parts here, and I´ll send you some pictures I took in the past week (don´t worry, I made sure nobody was around). ;) I love you all more that you understand, and I´ll see you all soon!
com amor,
-Elder Crapo
Pictures of parts of my area, and a bird that was talking. He was yelling "HEY!" at us as we walked by, and my companion told me the name of it, which I don't remember, and said it speaks Portuguese!
