23 de Fevereiro 2015

Ei, Galeira! So, I really don´t have too much to say today since I feel like I JUST sent an e-mail home. Here´s a quick update: Julio Cesar is really progressing well! One day, as we were passing by their house on the way to another appointment, we heared Julio saying, ``The missionaries said that it´s not good to use Tobacco, alcohol, illegal drugs, tea, and coffee!´´ I think he was teaching his 5 year old sister about the Word of Wisdom, haha. It´s good to know that some things we teach are sticking! We found a family of four boys, all with the ages of priesthood holders! It´s getting a little repetitive, though, because we can only catch one brother at home at a time, so every day we have to teach the same thing to a different brother to catch him up with the others, haha. The other missionaries also passed us a great referral that they contacted on the street. His name is Alex! (I know, I can´t believe it either! A normal name!) He´s 17 years old and lives alone in a really nice condominium because his parents live in another city, and he´s here in Teófilo to study. He received us really well in our first visit, and accepted a baptismal date! He also made it to church with us yesterday, but while we were walking to the church with him, he told us that he would suddenly move back home for about a month to help out with a family crisis there. SO CLOSE!!!! That´s okay, though. When he gets back, the missionaries here will keep working with him and he´ll be baptized, which is what really matters. I´ll have to hunt him down on facebook when I get home. I hope you all are hanging in there! Have a good safe week, y´all! Love you and see you soon! (Like...really soon.) :) Elder Crapo

``That´s why we love Carnaval!´´... ``Só que não´´ (only, not...) 19 de Fevereiro 2015

SO...let me explain... Remember when I said that the city would completely shut down during Carnaval? That´s what happened on Monday when we were supposed to send our e-mails...and everything was still closed on Tuesday, and Wednesday we spent all day travelling to zone conference, having zone conference, and travelling back. It was like driving to Cedar City for a meeting and coming back the same day. We arrived pretty beat... But the conference was great. President Young is really focusing on how we´re using the Book of Mormon, and I remembered a lot of things I learned earlier in my mission that I need to do better. Also because of Carnaval, we really had a hard time finding anyone to teach. Actually, we were having a hard time finding anyone to look at. Really... I´ve never seen Brazil so quiet. We did find a 15 year old boy named Isaac who seemed a little shy, but receptive. His parents told us that he creates chores for himself to do around the house, and completes them without his parents telling him anything. THAT´S the kind of men we want in the church, haha. Isaac said that he´d like to make a visit to the church, and his parents said he could go if we went to pick him up (we would have gone to pick him up anyway, haha). Also, our recent convert, Juneia´s son is home from his trip to his grandma´s house, and has started to receive the discussions. It´s great because you can tell that Juneia has been taking time to teach him everything ahead of our visits, so he already knows all the answers to the questions we ask. It´s reallt funny when he starts showing some of the traditions from other churches and Juneia quickly and desperately corrects him, haha. For example, in our last visit, we let Julio say the closing prayer by himself. Everything went great until he got to the end, and started to say, ``in the name of the Father, and the Son, and th--´´ after which, Juneia was like: ``NO NO NO!!!`` hahaha. She then told him ``In the name of Jesus Christ...`` It was pretty funny. That´s all for this week! I love you all and see you soon! Elder Crapo

9 de Fevereiro 2015

BOM DIA!!!

     We´ve had a really great week! It´s been so great to be able to get back to working hard after being stuck at home feeling pain for so long! This week we found a really great family of 6! There are four girls, one boy and they live with their single Mom. Our lessons with them are really entertaining but also spiritual. The little 8 year-old, Leticia, is a little fire ball and asks lots of questions, haha. The last lesson, as we were teaching about the Holy Ghost, I gave the example of the comforter and told them that where I live, it gets really cold and snows. That led to all sorts of questions, and the girls started singing ``Do you want to build a snowmaaaaan???´´ haha. Yes, Frozen is a world-wide epidemic. They really like the lessons, though. The mom, too. They didn´t make it to church yesterday, but we´ll get all six of them there next time.


     We finally got rain!!! We started getting some promising clouds on Wednesday, and we got rain from Thursday until Sunday. We´ve really been needing it. We´re grateful for the moisture, but the mud makes it a little hard to climb some of the hills. Sometimes it seems like we´re just walking on a treadmilll as we try to climb. We laughed pretty hard when I decided to try harder and almost fell on my face after running in place for a good minute.


     We´re gearing up for Carnaval, which will start on the 17th, I think. It seems like the partying here in the city will be minimal, which is good, but that also means that everyone will go elsewhere to celebrate. We´ll start teaching cats and dogs if things get too deserted. They listen pretty well for the most part. The hardest part will be getting the cats to enter the baptismal font. Not sure what we´ll do about that...


      I hope you all are well! Love you so much! Have a great week, and see you soon!


Elder Crapo

The promised pictures!

Monday: Pointing to the mission on our map! We were searching for creativity, as it was the first day... yeah, sorry.

Tuesday: Still searching for creativity. We found these pretty flowers!

Wednesday: The closest thing we got to a rain cloud for over a month!

Thursday: It finally rained! You can see by our nervous smiles that we were about to get pounded by that rain cloud...which we were.

Friday: Found this coke bottle with Livie´s name on it!

Saturday: What happens when the members leave the room during lunch...

Sunday: More Rain!!! Love you so much! More to come next week!

No Pain No Gain!!! 26 de Janeiro 2015

What a week!



     Our district is full of troopers!!! I´ve never seen a group of missionaries so afflicted yet so determined and successful! Our district leader has a really painful ingrown toenail, his companion is suffering from an inflamed knee, Elder Dos Santos still suffers from shoulder pains, my companion, Elder Barroso´s back problems continue to worsen (the two keep me busy as I give massages that I learned from Julie each night before we sleep), and although my ankle is perfectly fine, I had a fun night on Friday fighting some pretty intense jaw pain that could be caused by an ear infection. I slept a total of about 3 hours trading hot rags to help with the pain. No pain killer we had in the house was doing the job. We called Sister Young the next morning, and waited for three hours at a ``ready help´´ center (which was on strike) becasue no other hospital in the city accepts our health plan. In the end, we just went to the pharmacy and asked for help there, because nobody was going to help us. After receiving some medicine at about noon the next day, I finally managed to get some sleep. Elder Barroso said that he had to make quite a bit of a rukus to wake me up to eat lunch, hahaha. Even shaking me like a crazy person wasn´t pulling me out of my trance. He thought I had died. :)


     All that being said, I have an announcement:



WE HAD A BAPTISM!!!!


     Our investigator, Juneia, has been reading and praying every day since our first visit, and said that she was excited to go to church again, that she traded her coffee for juice in the morning, and that she received an answer and knows the church is true. The only thing holding her back was the Law of Chastity, which we thought she broke with her boyfriend during the weekends. We discovered on Thursday that they don´t do any of that at all!!! SURPRISE! That same visit, we invited her to be baptized on Sunday, and she accepted. In the following visits, she told us that she wasn´t going to let anything stop her from getting baptized!!! It was incredible to see her so confident, because in the first visit, she seemed pretty squishy about everything. The Gospel changes people!


     We also had a great work week and found several people with much potential!  The district has baptized at least one person each week this transfer, even thought we´re all dying! he he. We´re looking forward to this last week of the transfer. It´s been really spiritual to see everyone helping each other in some way. Even though we´re suffering, we´re not suffering alone. :) But really, this is getting good! I love you all, and see you soon!


Elder Crapo

We want some more! We want some more! 19 de Janeiro 2015

We have some good news and some bad news this week.

     We´ve had an interesting week. We woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday to travel the 3 hours to Nanuque for our zone meeting, then travel back again after. Wednesday, we helped out at a service project for some inactive members where your´s truly ever so gracefully sprained his ankle. That kept us in house arrest for the rest of the day, and the work went...slowly until I fully recovered yesterday. However, one of the inactives came back to church yesterday, so it was all worth it!

      Later in the week, as we were walking to an appointment, we passed by a man sitting on the street curb who appeared to be pretty worn out and tired. As we passed, he asked us, ``Where can I find a church here?´´ We decided to take advantage of the situation and jump right into teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He told us that he´ll be here in the city for about 6 months working on a home reformation, and that was why he was so tired. He humbly stated that the work was hard, and that he was far from his wife and son (he´s legally married!!!). He invited us to see the house he was working on, and it was easy to see that there was much to be done. He accepted both an invitation to church and for baptism, and thanked us for stopping by.

     That seems to be the most of the news for this week. We´re hoping for a more eventful, and less painful work week. :) Love you all and see you soon!

Elder Crapo

12 de Janeiro 2015

Bom dia, pessoal!

     Everyone is praying for rain here in Teófilo. We´ve been getting hit with quite a bit of sun, and it´s drying everything up and making us all lose our marbles. Really. There are days when we get home and I can´t think or speak right, so everyone says I´m going crazy and that I shouldn´t spend as much time in the sun. It has led to some pretty funny language mix-ups, though. Nothing new for the Crapo family, right? (see also: lanes in the store, stop it off, rolled oats, etc...)

     We miraculously managed to get several investigators and less-actives to church yestarday! Four of which were two couples who need to be married. (surprise? No.) I´ll save you all from the ususal ``just get married!´´ rant this week, you already know how I fell about this. The work is going well, and we´ve been going crazy still trying to find people to teach while the whole city is travelling. It´s seems like things are finally getting back tho normal now.

     We also had President and Sister Young visit the city this weekend along with his couselor, President Aguirres. It was a weekend filled with meetings, interviews, and lots of running around. The two branches here met together in sacrament meeting and also in the third hour with the Quorum and the Relief Society. About half way through the third hour, Presdent Young stood up from the stand and started walking to the back of the chapel where I was sitting. I sat there thinking, ``not me, not me, not me...´´ but to my dismay, he stopped in front of me and started whispering something in my ear. He told me that he would be the next to speak, and that he would talk about the sacrment and asked me if I would sing a sacrament hymn solo before he spoke. I thought, ``oh, just that?´´ haha. It went well and many thanked me for bringing such a strong spirit to the meeting. 

     That´s about all the news for this week. I love you all, and see you soon!

Elder Crapo

Happy New Years! 5 de Janeiro 2015

Can You believe it´s 2015!?!?

     This week, many of our investigators were traveling, so we had a long week of knocking doors and making street contacts as we tried to find someone to teach. After one particularly difficult day, in talking with my district leader, Elder Willett, I realized that maybe I could be doing more to find someone prepared to receive the gospel. The next day, Elder Barroso suggested that we knock doors in another neighborhood, since we weren´t having much success where we were. Even though it was a longer walk, we decided to go street by street, door by door, in search for that one investigator who was waiting for us to arrive. We actually found a lady named Vanessa who is incredibly receptive and has passed through many many hardships this year. We felt guided by the spirit as we unfolded the gospel of Christ for her and her family, and they have accepted baptismal invitations! My testimony grew stronger and I remembered how the Lord is the head of this work, and the Spirit is our help and guide. I´m very grateful to be part of it all.

     New Years was good. Everyone in the city was letting off fireworks, and we sat up at the top of the house to watch everyone celebrate. I thought about the year, and I´m grateful for all the blessings and experience I gained. I´m also grateful for a fresh new start, and I have many hopes and goals for 2015. For now, we´ll keep on keepin´ on here in the mission field. I love you all, and I´ll see you soon!

Elder Crapo