Another Week!

89327 steps or 53.59 km. Once again, I am left with not much time to write this email. Sorry everyone... But this week was pretty great. Nothing really happened for Carnaval because everyone had left town to go to the beach. Campina Grande was pretty dead for the first half of the week. Also, we didn't have water from Friday until Monday evening. There was a switch for the water that someone had turned off. So after climbing up on the roof and doing some ridiculous things to satisfy our water needs, we discovered this switch right in front of our house. Super easy to turn on but it had been buried in dirt. We had a water party when it came back. Also, we had a very convincing and logical lesson with someone but they just said, "Wow, that makes sense and I don't agree with everything in my church but I'm never gonna change churches." It made me sad.

For another week,

-Elder Michael Carlson

Merry Presidents Day!

102397 steps, 61.43 km. We had a pretty good week. I took my first bucket shower. I was just there and I put on soap, then all of a sudden, there wasn't any water coming out. So I had to call for my companion to get some water from outside in a bucket. It was quite the interesting experience. We also had a mission conference. One thing that I learned was that in the church, we gain our salvation, but it is only through the works in the temple that we gain our exaltation. It was pretty interesting. Sorry, I don't have much time today. Love you all and thanks for the support!

-Elder Michael Carlson

Interviews and a Very Full Saturday

105756 steps, 63.45 km. So, this past week, we had interviews with the president, where I learned some interesting things. It was my companion's birthday yesterday. Fortunately, we avoided being egged (a popular Brazilian custom for birthdays) and had a huge lunch of tacos at the stake president's house. Saturday was a pretty crazy day this past week. We had appointments every hour of the day. We were almost running from one thing to another. We taught a bunch of great lessons and we had a couple people in church (which we haven't had in quite a long time). We had a full, rewarding week and now I shall rest much today. We played volleyball this morning with some members of the ward, which was fun. I lost the first game but it was a close loss. Then the second game, my team won 15-3, which was gratifying. But then I didn't play anymore because I hurt my toe this past week. OH! Something that I forgot. We also had a service project on Saturday. We took the roof tiles off a house, cleaned the tiles, replaced the woodwork of the roof and then put the tiles back on. It was heavy, dirty work but we got it done in the end. It was nice to be able to help someone like that.

Until next week,

-Elder Michael Carlson

A Week of Cutting

90477 steps, 54.28 km. This week was full of two kinds of cutting. The first (and funner) was cutting down some banana trees. I was able to use my lumberjacking skills, with the aid of a giant machete to help one of the ward members. It was quite fun and I felt very manly afterward. The second (and a lot sadder) was cutting the people who wouldn't progress or who didn't want to. We had to cut a lot of the people we were teaching because they wouldn't do anything. It's always a sad thing to have to do that but like a tree pruned grows better, I'm hoping that our area will grow and flower soon. We did have some good lessons with some good people but I have yet to see many fruits of these lessons. This week was a lot of walking. And sorry Mom, but I haven't been taking a lot of pictures. It's hard to bring my camera. I don't want to get robbed. I'll try harder this week though.

Love y'all!

-Elder Michael Carlson