March 10, 2014

Meus Queridos, 

     I´ve really been humbled by this past week. A lot has happened, and I feel as though a lot is about to change. On Tuesday, one of the assistants to the President requested a surprise division in our district. Our district leader, Elder Araujo, told me that it was requested that he spend the day in my area with me, and that Elder Capelletti would go with his companion in his area. within the first hour of the division, I asked what our focus of this division would be. He told me that it was just a normal division to see how the area is working and to see how he could help to improve. I wasn´t convinced. The assistants to the president wouldn´t call a division the day of--just to see how the area is doing. I had a feeling something was up. We visited Denize, and she told us that at the moment she is not willing to separate from her boyfriend and change her life in order to be baptized. She said that she feels that the church is true, and that baptism by authority is important, but for now she does not want to stop living the way she´s living. 

     Then we went to visit Bruno. His mom still thinks he´s not ready yet, and she won´t let us baptize him still. We wanted to talk to her personally, but she ran to the hospital with Bruno´s Grandma, because she became suddenly ill, and needed immediate attention. We left a baptismal record with Bruno, and he said that when things calmed down, he would ask permission again and present the form for her to sign.

     We had planned to meet up with a member of the branch to go visit some less actives and investigators after the lesson with Bruno, and he told us we could meet up at the water tower in São Marcos. While we were waiting for the member to meet with us, Elder Araujo and I got talking about the transfer, about my experiences in the mission, about my difficulties and my strengths, and about my vision for the future. He asked me how I would react to being called to be a leader. I told him that I´d like to learn to lead well, and that it would be a good experience that I could learn from, etc. He shared some experiences of his with me, and assured me that you learn a lot from serving as a leader. As we talked about some of the difficulties I´ve passed through, Elder Araujo told me the real reason for the surprise division. The assistants have been calling him daily, asking him ``How is Elder Crapo, is he doing well, is he happy, is he working hard, etc.´´. Elder Arujo always told them that he´s not sure because Elder Crapo is not a morning person, and mostly keeps quiet until comp. study (Elder Jones knows all about the `morning monster´) and by the time he gets home at night, he´s so tired, he just takes a shower, says his prayers, and goes to bed. The assistants called the division so that Elder Araujo could get to know me, my likes, my interests, my work ethic, my abilities, my language skills so that he could pass these things on. Why do the assistants care, I had wondered. Then he told me that it´s because the assistants have really grown to like me, and they will ask authorization of President to place me as a trainer this upcoming transfer, and perhaps in other leadership positions soon. When I heard that, I didn´t know what to think. I´d have to wait until transfers and see.

     This morning, we received the transfers announcement. I´ve been transferred! I´ve noticed that President likes to transfer the trainers to re-open a new area with their ``sons´´. I´m not saying that I´m sure I´ll be training, but with the news I received about the assistants...I think it´s probable, and I´m nervously excited to see for sure tomorrow. 

     From Wednesday morning until late Thursday night, we struggled as we juggled getting the house moved and attending to our investigators´ needs. I´ll be short and simple in saying that it was not fun, and I hope I never have to do it again. Unfortunately, when Saturday rolled around, Bruno´s mom hadn´t budged, and the move made it difficult for us to catch her at home. He´s ready, but I´m going to have to leave him to another group of missionaries because of transfers. I´ll leave a note for the other missionaries to send me pictures when he gets baptized--because I have no doubt that soon he will.

     To be honest, I feel really relieved and peaceful in knowing that I´ve been transferred. I´ll miss Aracruz and the people here, but it´s been 3 transfers, and the normal ammount is 2, so I got a little extra time. I feel it´s now time to go. I´ll be sure to fill you in on all the details on the transfer meeting tomorrow. I love you all, and I´ll see you soon!

Elder Crapo

March 3 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

     

     Well, it seems like my ``little head cold´´ has almost completely disappeared. One week ago, I went to bed with the first symptoms, and yesterday, I went to bed with hopefully the last symptoms. It has been a fun week fighting the sickness and trying to fit in an acceptable amount of work, as well. Elder Capelletti tried to get me to call the President´s wife so I could stay home and get better several times, but we had Bruno´s baptism coming up on Saturday, and we had other important investigators to visit who we couldn´t afford to neglect. We went through some pretty funny stages, though. Near the last part of the week, my voice became sore, tired, and I sounded like Eeyore with his super deep voice. This was the cause of some hilarity Friday night.

     There´s a less active member named Edite who lives in our area, and who we´ve been helping get back to church, as well as her recent convert granddaughter, Elise. She always likes us to sing at least one hymn during the visit, but usually she gets us to sing a few. When we were visiting with her on Friday night, I told her I probably wasn´t going to be able to sing anything with the terrible condition my voice was in. However, she and Elder Capelletti pushed me to sing, despite my complaints. Elder Capelletti chose ``The Morning Breaks´´ and I knew it was going to be a disaster. I started out fine because we set the key low, but I didn´t last long. I got to about the third measure where the melody jumps from low to high at `the shadows flee´, and my voice rebelled with an incredibly humiliating screech that completely floored Elder Capelletti. I don´t know if my family remembers, but it reminded me of the video that Lydia shared of that one opera singer´s epic fail. Yup everybody ended up laughing uncontrollably, and thus ended the singing for the night. How embarrassing…

     Anyway, I bet you´re wondering if Bruno actually got baptized on Saturday. Well…he didn´t. His baptism has been postponed until this next Saturday because we´ve been trying to talk to his mom so she can authorize the baptism, but she´s always either sleeping in bed or not home. Bruno told us that he would talk to his mom, and that she´d be home for sure on Saturday to sign the baptismal record. It´s…just that when he went to tell her that he wanted to be baptized, and that she needed to give permission…she said no. She doesn´t think he´s ready. It´s frustrating because of all the people I´ve worked with on the mission, Bruno is one of the most prepared people I´ve ever taught. I know he´s ready. He knows he´s ready. But his mom won´t give permission. However, we´ll be visiting with her on a regular basis this week, and with some faith, we´ll get her to sign the form.

     We also have been trying to get Denize´s daughter, Lisamara, to accompany her mom to church. She promised every day last week that she´d go, but when Sunday morning arrived, she was still sleeping. We woke her up to get ready to go, and she told us that she wouldn´t be going to church this week. That was fun. Denize also needs to separate with her boyfriend so that she can get baptized, and she wants to separate and baptize, but when she tried to talk to her boyfriend about it, he treated it as a joke, and then started fixing all sorts of excuses. Unfortunately, she´s not being all too firm, but in our last visit, she told us that she won´t allow him to stay at her house any more, and if he shows up, she´ll leave to her cousin´s house to stay the night. We´ll see if it actually happened.

     Those are basically the people we´re focusing on this week, since it´s the last week of the transfer. If everything goes as planned, we´ll have two baptisms on Saturday.

     On Thursday, we had our Zone Conference with President. Attending was my zone (The Serra Zone) and the Vitória zone together. It was good to hear President and his wife speak about the mission, and they´re helping us get excited for the new Mission President to arrive in July. We had a devotional in the morning, had lunch, held a questions and answers meeting, and then in the evening, we all changed clothes and played sports. We got almost everybody to join us in playing volley ball, and we had a blast. Everyone was sore the next day.

     It´s really strange how March has started and I should be experiencing the transfer of winter to spring, but in reality, I´m experiencing the transfer of summer to autumn. Hopefully, I´m sending some warm sun to all soon. I love you all, and I´ll see you soon. Have a great week!!

-Elder Crapo

February 24, 2014

Meus Queridos!

     We had an interesting week, and we´re in for a ride this week, too! There´s been a lot of stories floating around for a few months now that President Araujo would place two to four new missionaries in Aracruz. This week, the rumors were confirmed. On March 11, Aracruz will be receiving four Sister Missionaries in addition to the four Elder missionaries previously placed here. The Elders will be moving to a different house, and the Sisters will move into the house we´re in right now (it´s nicer). We were also told that the Sisters will receive all new furniture and appliances, so we have to move all the old stuff to the other house here in a few weeks. That´ll be fun. 

     The weather has been acting strangely here this past week. It keeps switching back and forth between pouring rain, and scorching hot sun--sometimes several times a day. Because of this, everyone has been getting sick, including my companion. Then, yesterday I caught it as well, and woke up sick this morning. The blessing here is that it hit on p-day, and I can spend the day resting in bed without wasting a work day. Oh the joy.

     Another bit of news is that Carnaval starts this week. (tons of excitement here...) The city is about to become a ghost town as everyone heads to the beach to spend the weekend there. It´s going to be nearly impossible to teach lessons. But, the blessing here is that while the party usually goes on the main road of the city, Aracruz doesn´t really have a big enough population in the city alone to make a big enough of a ruckus, so they´re taking the party to the beach, and we´ll be free to roam the streets--however bare they may be (no pun intended). 

     As for our investigators, Bruno made it to church this week! Wahoo! Denize also made it for the most part of Sacrament meeting, but Juliana didn´t make it. She has a really hard time with smoking and drinking, and she spent Saturday night partying, so she wasn´t feeling up to going to church when Sunday morning rolled around. We´re working with her on it, but she´s really addicted, and has some friends she´s going to have to lose if she wants to turn her life around. It´s difficult.

     Other than that, it seems like the heat´s starting to come down a little bit as we had some ``cold´´ nights here (``cold´´ meaning that it got down to about 75 degrees). Elder Capelletti was complaining, since he´s from the north of Brazil, where it ``snows fire´´, as he says. 

     That´s about it for this week. Hopefully I won´t have too many interesting stories to tell next week, and we´ll find someone to talk to. Have a great week, and I love you all! See you soon!

Elder Crapo

New Pictures Posted!

I have finally found time to update the blog.  Sorry for the delays in posting the letters the last few weeks.  As I was going through some old letters, I discovered that there were several pictures that had not been posted.  There are now pictures added to posts in August, September and November.  This was when I was having computer issues and couldn't post pictures.  Hope you enjoy them! 

February 17, 2014

Dear Family and Friends

     I hope you all had a great Valentine´s Day! I remember I had to work at the Elementary School last year...and I remember how impossible it was to teach that day. Luckily, I was able to teach this year. ;)

     We managed to...uh...

can someone tell me what ``levar´´ is in English? ...


Ah! It means to take.


Yeesh...

     Anyway, we managed to take some investigators to church this week!!!! Wahoo! Hopefully this means the church drought is over, and it can start raining baptisms again. Perhaps it´s because daylight savings time ended here on Saturday, and everyone got an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning. That was really nice, but our investigators won´t get that next week, so pray for consistency...please.

     The people who came to church (and others who had legitimate intent and excuses for not going) were surprisingly all new people we found this past week. Let me tell you about them:

     - Juliana: is a referral from a sister named Iara here in the branch who really has been a help picking up Juliana for church and staying with her through all the meetings because we had a dozen investigators to pick up and take care of. Juliana is a young mom--married, with one kid, and really enjoyed attending church. She felt the spirit pretty strong during Gospel Principles where we discussed our spiritual experiences concerning the Holy Ghost. Many recent converts bore their testimony of the truthfulness of this church. It was really neat. We´ll be visiting her throughout this week to prepare her for baptism.

     - Denise: is the mother of a street contact we made last week (funny how things work out that way) who also attended church, and also felt the spirit strongly during Gospel Principles. She commented after sacrament meeting that she enjoyed the meetings, and that she´ll have to practice the hymns so that she can keep up with everyone when we sing, ha ha. We already shared The Word of Wisdom with her, and she´s been...(gah...I don´t speak English any more!)... she´s been...lessening? the amount of coffee she drinks? I don´t know. You get the picture. She´s improving with the coffee.

     -Sabrina: is a referral from a branch missionary named Rodrigo. He called us on Friday, and told us he has a friend who accepted his invitation to meet with the missionaries, after she related to him some of the struggles she´s facing in life right now. Her name is Sabrina, and she lives with her boyfriend, Eduardo. We had the opportunity to visit with her that same day (Friday) and share the message of the Restoration with her. She really accepted it well, and was pretty excited for us to come back again (before we even left) and to attend church with us on Sunday. Eduardo was working when we stopped by, but he´ll be there next time. Unfortunately, he was really sick yesterday, and Sabrina didn´t want to leave him by himself, so she´ll go to church with us next week.

     Bruno: is a street contact (thank heavens for successful street contacting) who was really excited to hear our message when we showed up at his house on Saturday. He accepted what we taught completely, and was really sad when we invited him to church because he had another commitment on Sunday morning. Bruno is really honest, and I can always feel the spirit when we talk to him, so I believed him when he said he wouldn´t have scheduled the other commitment if he had known we´d invite him to church. I´m really excited to see him at church next week.

     Those were the main developments for this week. Other than that, we had a really good zone meeting this past week about being a Preach My Gospel missionary. It seems like all the other zones are receiving the same training, as well. President Araujo is trying to get this mission in really good shape for President Young in July. After the zone meeting, we had some time before we had to catch the bus, and we had been awake since 3:30 in the morning without eating anything, so we took advantage of the civilization in Vitória and bought salgados and the best milkshake in the state of Espirito Santo from a restaurant named ``Bob´s´´. That was awesome.

     On Tuesday or Wednesday (I don´t remember which it was) there was a power outage throughout the whole state. It was dark, and almost time to go home as we were sitting at the home of our recent convert, Valdesir, when the whole city shut down. Of course, immediately became aware of how much easier it just got for criminals to get away with whatever. Fortunately, everyone who had cars decided to drive around to provide light and more security, and we were able to make it home safe and sound.

     Anyway, that´s all I have for this week! I love you all, and I´ll see you soon!

Elder Crapo


Our ward mission leader asked us to take some pictures of us for a fireside for missionary work, and here´s what we ended up with. Enjoy!

February 10, 2014

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

February 3, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

     This past week turned out to be pretty entertaining, but first, here´s the news about the transfers:

     Elder Bueno became zone leader in Nanuque, the zone farthest north in the mission. Elder Knudson was sent to the Vitória zone. As our new district leader, we received Elder Araujo, who passed through Aracruz already at the beginning of his mission, and his his companion, Elder Hansen, who is from Ohio and will finish up his training this transfer.

     This past week feels like it´s been a month because so much has changed. Even my relationship with Elder Capelletti has changed a little. We had a couple days where we were able to really have some deep conversations and talk about how the mission has changes us thus far. We´ve gotten to the point where we feel comfortable opening up and sharing some of the real difficulties that we´ve passed through, and because of this, there´s a lot of confidence that´s been built. We´re getting really good at figuring out what gets the other to jump out of their skin, and what makes the other completely lose it with laughter, too. Elder Capelletti always gets a kick out of the faces I pull when something goes wrong (like knocking down the clothes rack as I´m trying to grab my towel--sending hangers flying all over the veranda), and how high I jump when we both turn a corner at the same time and almost run into each other. The other day, as we were stopping by at a less active member´s house (Luis Carlos--he´s less active because he has a disease in his legs, and is without a wheel chair at the moment. We´re working on that) anyway, we were sitting on the floor, visiting with Luis, and I noticed that Elder Capelletti was spacing out a little (he was tired, we had to walk a long way to get there). So I casually took my pen out of my pocket, and tossed it onto the spot of ground where he was staring, and he jumped pretty bad, Muahaha.

      This same day, Elder Capelletti and I were standing at the sink doing dishes, when Elder Capelletti accidentally knocked over a glass cup. We both almost cracked our heads open on the ceiling because we jumped so hard when it fell and broke into pieces! We both stood there for a second--shocked--and then I couldn´t help but bursting into laughter. I noticed that he wasn´t too happy about the broken cup, so I ran to a safe distance to laugh at the hilarity (Mom, you know how it is. Laugh from a distance to be safe from retaliation, he he he). I was trying to tell him to breathe ( the word for breathe is ´respira´), but I was laughing so hard I wasn´t able to say the whole word without busting up again. Now, I´ve been teaching Elder Capelletti English, and we have a goal to get him at least capable of basic conversation by the end of this transfer. Because of this, (and the impediment of my laughter), Elder Capelletti thought I was trying to say ´´speak´´. So he stood there, thinking ``wha--....what do I say?´´ So he was just standing there wondering what to say as I was having a laugh attack. It was a pretty funny picture.

     Anyway, those are a few of the funny things that happened this week. We´re pretty good at cracking each other up. Things are still a little slow on the work front, but I feel like we´re going to start seeing some real progress soon. I love you all so much, and I´ll see you soon!

Tchau, gente!

-Elder Crapo