Cupuaçú! August 16, 2014

Hahahaha that was one of the best stories that I have heard in a while, haha sorry that you had to go through that snake trauma mom!! But it was funny, maybe it happened just so you could make your son serving in São Paulo laugh! Haha here these type of situations are fairly common but with other things, like rats and cockroaches! Luckily we don´t have rats where we live (or at least in the house; São Paulo is full of them) but cockroaches are the bain of my existence. Haha the funny thing is that all of my Brasilian companions that I have had will kill a cockroach by just hitting it with a stick or rod or something and then leave it there... but it´s not dead yet! So then when the don´t listen to me saying we have to hit it harder a couple minutes afterwards it will have left the trash can and be out and running again! Hahaha but it makes for good stories. So thanks for that, hopefully Roxanne will want to enter our house again and hopefully you don´t move because of a snake!

This week was great, it flew by! It seems like time is just speeding up, it´s crazy! There are a lot of missionaries that are good friends of mine that are heading home here soon and it just blows my mind! We had interviews with President Farnes on Monday, that was really good. It was our first interviews with him and it went really well, we basically just talked but we talked about things like humility and confidence and the confidence that the Atonement brings into our lives. It was interesting as it set the tone for some of my studying this week. I was reading about humility in Preach My Gospel and it made me remember a talk that President Uchtdorf had given titled "Pride and the Priesthood." In it one of my favorite quotes goes as follows, "We don´t discover humility by thinking less of ourselves; we discover humility by thinking less about ourselves." Loved that. It is so true, one of the wonderful things about the mission is it gives us so much opportunities to think about other people, to truly become more like Christ. I am grateful for my interview with President, he is truly a great president. Another interesting fact is it looks like I might leave the office this next week!!!! I started my training in the middle of the transfer and usually I have to train for a minimum of 6 weeks but President said he would like me to get out in the field again! He said that he didn´t know for sure yet but if he felt inspired to transfer me he wanted to make sure that Elder McArthur would be fine alone! So the rest of this week was spent really making sure that he knows how to do everything and feels comfortable doing the things that he needs to do in the office! We will see, but perhaps on Tuesday I will be in a new area!!!! I will find out on Monday morning and maybe be able to send you an email really quickly, because if that is the case it means my next Preparation Day won´t be until the following Monday. But we will see, I will go wherever and do whatever! 

This week we had a good lesson with Thaís and her family, we are excited for them, they are really progressing as a family. IT was a fairly normal week in our area, haha yesterday we were doing street contacts on this really busy street in our area and we did this contact with this young woman who just brightened up and got excited when we started to talk to her! We told her we were servants of God and she responded that she already knew that was true!!! Hahah she is a member. Ah well! So we reassured her that she was on the right path and gave her a pass-along card to give to someone. Haha but at least we opened our mouths! I actually really love doing street contacts, it is fun getting to know people and we have had some really great experiences through it. Besides that we also found a great family last night who are really open to the Gospel and are excited to go to church this Sunday! 

Well, I think that is about it! We set a couple baptismal dates this week for the following weeks but it looks like I won´t be able to see them if I get transferred! But that´s ok, it is good to do that and leave the area better than when I found it! Love you all, have a great week!!! Oh and congrats on the baptism in the ward!! It makes me really excited to hear that hte work is progressing in our ward!

Elder Carney