Dear Family and Friends,
First I have to say that I´m a little sad to be missing it, but happy Olympics 2014!!! I found out that Brazil doesn´t really care about the winter Olympics. I didn´t even really realize that it was this year--or this week even, until we walked into a member´s house and they were mentioning it briefly on the news. It´s not as big of a deal here as it is in the States. Nobody talks about it or really watches what´s happening. That´s probably why the teams from Brazil are so small. There´s no winter here anyway, so why bother? hahaha. Eveyone´s too excited about the World cup in June to worry about the Olympics. I heard that the Summer games get more attention...anyway, I´ll stop ranting about it.
Also, I hit 10 months old today! I´m growing up so fast!!! Let me tell you about this week:
We passed by an old man who was sitting against the wall on the street the other day. We decided to talk to him about his family and his life here in Aracruz (possibly note his address and pass by to share a message another day). His name is Antônio, and he´s lived in Vitória for most of his life, but he likes it better in Aracruz because it´s quieter, more tranquil. He has 10 kids, is separated from his wife, and lives with his son and his son´s wife. He used to drink--a lot. He told us he never ate. He woke up in the morning, and went straight for the alcohol, and stayed there until he fell asleep at night. Because of this, he lost all his weight bit by bit until one of his kids hauled him to the pharmacy one day and weighed him. You couldn´t call what he was as ´living´ . After some time in the hospital, he resolved never to drink alcohol again. He´s gotten his weight back to healthy, stopped smoking, and now spends his days sitting outside his house thinking about Christ and life and how he could have died in the condition he was in. He also told us that all his kids study religion and philosophy, but he doesn´t know much. He just has his belief in God and Christ, and is trying to live the rest of his life right. He loves visiting with the missionaries almost as much as the missionaries love visiting with him. He receives the lessons really well (he quit drinking coffee immediately after we taught the Word of Wisdom), and is hilarious. I end up laughing really hard at least once every time we go to teach him. Unfortunately, most of the hilarity would get lost in translation from Portuguese to English, so you´ll just have to take my word for it. He accepted the invitation to make a visit to the church on Sunday and to be baptized! Unfortunately, he had to travel to Vitória this weekend to solve some family problems that are happening over there. Hopefully he can get it resolved by next Sunday so he can attend church with us.
We also accidentally knocked on the door of Mara, a mother of 6, separated from her husband. We were looking for a different family, but we took advantage of the situation and asked her if she´d like to hear a message, as well. She accepted, and we got to talking about her and her life, and what we do as missionaries and our lives away from home, and our beliefs as members of this church. She started asking a lot of really good questions. She asked why we chose this church to serve, what we believe about baptism and life after death, and about the churches qualifications for baptism. We hadn´t even mentioned baptism yet, and she brought it up for us! We decided to teach the Third lesson (The Gospel of Jesus Christ) and the Word of Wisdom. We set some goals to get her going with stopping coffee ( she drinks a lot of it) and to stop smoking. She also accepted our invitation to make a visit to the church, but woke up yesterday without a voice, and feeling pretty sick. Her and two of her daughters accepted to be baptised, as well, so we´ll get going on that. She asked if we believe in life after death, and we told her yes, and that we´d teach a lesson all about that next time. I´m pretty stoked.
Other than that, it´s missionary life as usual. I don´t know if I mentioned this last week, but one of Elder Capelletti´s greatest fears is rats. Now, we don´t have rats in our apartment--nor will we. Ever. But you do see them in poorer areas. They´re pretty big here, but usually they disappear as fast at you catch a glimpse of them. For some reason, Elder Capelletti fears that one day, he´ll get attacked and die or something like that. It´s a pretty big deal for him. That being said...the other day, we were alone in the apartment (the other companionship went to fill the baptismal font for their baptism), and Elder Capelletti thought he heard something like a rat in the study room of the other missionaries. I didn´t hear anything, so when he stood up and peaked his head around the corner to see if his worst fears had come true, I wondered what he was doing. While he was staring into the other room, I walked up behind him (innocently--I swear) to see what was going on. Mom knows how I don´t make noise when I enter a room (it drives my companion crazy, too), so when I arrived behind him, he didn´t know I was there. There was silence in the apartment, until he decided it was probably nothing and turned to sit back down in the other room--running right into me. Now, I made a noise in preparation of being run over. That, and the fact that he ran into something he didn´t know was there while he was already spooked was just right for giving Elder Capelletti a heart attack. I´ve never seen him jump so severely. It looked like someone tazered him. I´m not kidding. The apartment went from silence to instantaneous chaos. First a grunt from me for being run over, then the screams of terrified Capelletti, then me--dying of laughter. It´s definitely something I wish I could have seen from a third person´s perspective. Priceless.
Anyway, I hope you all take advantage of the fact that you live in a country that fully supports the winter Olympics, and that you have a happy Valentine´s Day! (Surprise! It doesn´t exist here). I love you all, and I´ll see you soon!
-Elder Crapo
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