Hullo Mumzy!

Eita tudo bem meu?! I’m doing great! Just struggling to type English! Today was a pretty fun P-day I’d say. Ha, very simple though, I watched Tangled today with the two other Elders in my district. It was the first time for the two Brazilian Elders and they loved it. I don’t think you’d ever see 4 young men hootin’ and hollin’, cheerin’ and laughin’ so much about a little Disney movie. Ha, it was fun. After Elder Barreto (who doesn’t speak any English at all) started to sing and rap American music, I would sing and dance along. Such simple stuff, but so fun.

I’m still not impressed with the medicalness here in Brazil. Unfortunately my companion’s kidney stones haven’t left yet and so a couple times this week we had to take it easy. Friday day we were on a split and he was at the other Elder’s place and he crashed in pain. He spent the whole day there while the other Elder’s scrambled to get some medicine for him. He is doing a little bit better now; I think it must come in waves. He just needs to pee the freakin’ thing out!

While I took care of him Friday, I also read the whole book of “Mormon”, as in the actual prophet. I found it very similar to Star Wars Episode 3 in how everyone knows that the Republic/Nephites are going to fall, and it gets very emotional to watch/read it all go down. But you then see it all set up for a Restoration with Luke/Joseph, and oh my I could go on with the Restoration and Star Wars analogy but I will save it for Riley’s next letter.

I’m glad Elder Hodson liked me. He was a Red personality and was the opposite of the Blue affectionness so I couldn’t tell 100%. But I am really glad because he told me he felt unworthy the first time he trained, but surely this time... WOW he trained me good. I am so grateful for his hard work and example. And that he always was trying and willing to help me in my weaknesses. He should be receiving a pile of photos I printed out this week. You can go ahead and tell Elder Hodson’s Mom Diane, that he really REALLY left a big impact on me and my work (which will continue on even after he leaves). Working with him was the highlight of my work there in Juazeiro. He really was an angel companion.

There was one miracle (there’s always many) in the work this week. So happily, Jurandy will not leave!! He has already made a personal study plan and progressed a lot even with us not passing by. We invited his family again this week to church and they turned it down. I don’t know what happened (yet) but they (Mom and Sister) miraculously showed up Sunday and LOVED it. Omgosh, maybe an entire family here, we’ll see! But I got to go. I love you all and I hope many great things unfold for you all as well!

Love yer Son

-Elder Cetraro!

So Riley and yáll.... You think I didn’t hear about Star Wars?!? Hahaha, I was actually lucky to hear about that on Halloween. Which by the way, I guess I will tell you about Halloween. So you guys know... I love Halloween and I love dressing up!! So I couldn’t just let Halloween go by. So the night before Halloween while I was writing in my journal with my Comp... it came to me... we’ll dress up as each other! Ha, so we did! I wore all his clothes; Boots, pants, tie and everything. And he tried wearing all of mine! (My pants didn’t work out for him) We did a little photo shoot and it was pretty great. Here comes the naughty part... heh heh heh... we even switched nametags! Ha, but nobody noticed! It was fun =) I bought some American candy, Twix and KitKats, and I had all my investigators attempt to say trick or treat (which it is hilarious to hear Brazilians attempt, lol) then I would give them candy.. AMERICA!!!

That night we scheduled a family home evening with basically the missionary mom, which was very good because the girlfriend of her son is not a member and she brought her family. We made delicious brownies with ice cream stuff and of course they fed me up to the rim. BARF/YUM! It was here that I saw on the news about Mitt Romney, Hurricane Sandy, and STAR WARS!!!!! I gave a lesson from the hurricane (Helaman 5:12 and Matthew 7:24) but I was freaking out the whole night about STAR WARS.... still am freakin out kinda... so continue to fill me in!

THANK YOU FOR THE PRAYERS. I know God listens and answers. I have learned that even though sometimes it may seem repetitive with the words, it is the consistency and the feeling that shows that it really does matter to you. This week was great! My goal for this transfer was to get things rolling since that is what we lacked last transfer and in these last two weeks it has been a miracle to see how God has blessed us. I received tons of referrals this week and we found two elite people. One is Tierre and Rosa. They are a couple with two twins. This is what we need! The President wants us to focus on men and families and we found one. They are really good. We only taught them once and they didn’t make it to church, but I still have faith that they will make it to the font.

The other referral is a girl who lives on her own, is 21 years old, works two jobs, and studying to be a teacher.  She is kinda like a little Joseph Smith because she wants religion in her life and she prays almost identical to us, but she doesn’t trust the religions here. She accepted to be baptized if she receives an answer. As we closed our lesson she gave a prayer and in that prayer she asked to find what she feels like she has been lacking in her life. After the prayer she started to cry, we testified that she felt the Holy Ghost and that could be her answer. So we will see where things go with her. But it felt so good to run into somebody who almost has just been waiting for us.

And now to tell about my baptisms! They both went through! I baptized José Jackson Costa dos Santos (age 16) and my Comp baptized Natanael Bezerra da Silva (age 19). It was real chill because we are all basically the same age so we are pretty good friends and it was fun getting them ready that day. They were psyched. They both could be missionaries! =) After we celebrated a birthday with the member that brought Natanael to church. It was fun to celebrate!

So for Primary, I am playing! I will play this next Sunday the new Primary song and “Whenever I Hear the Song of a Bird”. I only will be playing those two. I will be honest because the rest of the songs the Smart Piano can play perfectly with the touch of a button. She just needed me for those two songs. But it has been great to practice with them, I plan on learning as many Primary songs as I can and maybe I can start playing some at baptisms =)

So I hope that was enough stuff for yáll!  Soooo love yáll! Take care!

Elder Cetraro