Surprise! You were transferred!

So I was transferred last week, and it was a huge surprise to me, since I was the newest missionary in my last area, and what's even stranger, is that everyone else stayed there! My old companion, Elder Riffo, called me twice last week, and told me that everyone misses me, and that this girl that we were teaching was baptized yesterday! I was really excited about that. Her mom had said that she wouldn't be baptized until next year (unless a miracle happened), just 2 weeks ago, and then, all of a sudden, she changed her mind! :D

My new area is called Queimadas, which has something to do with burning or something burnt, if you translate it. It's really hot here -- but apparently that's not why it has this name, hah. My new companion is Elder Markham, and he's an American, from Colorado, and... he's awesome. But also, crazy. (in a good way XD) He's been on his mission for 8 months, and he's still learning Portuguese -- but for the most part, he speaks really well.

We spent this past week getting to know a bunch of the church members here, and learning the area. We found 14 new investigators, but ended up dropping the majority of them before the end of the week, and we had 1 lady come to visit the church. I'm not sure how things will go with her, because she LOVES her church, but.. who knows! Hopefully she'll make some progress this week.

We only have water between Tuesday afternoon and Saturday morning here, and so we have to keep water in these 2 plastic bins that we have, to use on the weekends. I'm not in the US anymore... haha!

Last night, we went up on the roof with the owner of our apartment and watched the lunar eclipse, where the moon turned completely dark -- it was interesting! Apparently, there won't be another one until the year 2037, so I'm glad that we got to see it!

Hopefully we'll be able to find some people who are more interested this week, and we'll be able to teach more lessons at people's homes.

I can't believe that I only have 4 weeks left on my mission, and that I'll be flying home exactly one month from today... I'm going to have to make the most of this time that I have left! I love being a full-time missionary, and I am really going to miss it, especially when I'm at home. But, I am really excited to see everyone again! :) Especially my fianceé! (that means you, Alissa :D)

Have a wonderful week!

We didn't end up going to the parade on Independence Day, by the way. We decided that it wasn't a good place for 2 missionaries to be.

Elder Canto

Happy Brazilian Independence Day!

Hi everyone!

Today is Independence Day in Brazil, and we're going to a parade in about 2 hours. I'm about to sign out here, but, before I go, I just wanted to mention some things that happened this week.

We did a lot of tracting (door knocking, street contacting) this week, and.. it didn't really amount to anything in the end, but, maybe in the future, these people will visit the church. Nobody that we talked to this past week was at church yesterday -- except for the random guy that came up to us in the supermarket and asked us when the meetings are at church, hah. He lives in the other 2 elders' area though.

However! Good news -- we spent all week visiting a 20 year-old guy once a day, to help him prepare for baptism, and he was baptized yesterday! He's the first person to be baptized in the new church building. We brought the giant blue water tank over to the new building on Saturday, and we weren't able to find anyone to fill it up, but a truck with barrels of water showed up while we were in front of the church building, and we asked if they could fill it up, and they happened to have just enough water left to fill it up! That was definitely a miracle.

Here's a picture from yesterday, after the baptism. I'm sorry that it's not really the best picture -- the elder who was using my camera only took a few pictures, and most of them were blurry.. my companion has lots of good pictures from the baptism yesterday, though, so I'll have to get those from him later.

The guy who was baptized is on the right side. He's obsessed with Justin Bieber... hah. Crazy Brazilians...

We went on a short hike this morning to a big pond with our ward mission leader -- here are a few pictures:



Elder Taraveira (from Cape Verde, Africa)(he's crazy. XD)

Anyways, I need to get going now, or I won't have time to eat lunch!

I hope that you all have a great week, and, Happy Brazilian Independence Day! (and happy Labor day, too. XD)

I'm looking forward to seeing you all/talking with you all 7 weeks from now!

Tchau!

Elder Canto