email of Jan 11, from Sobral

HI Everyone Everything here in Brazil is Great! My first week here has been full of work, my companion and I are both new to the are so we have lately been using the area book to find investigators, but everyone here is pretty open to the message of the gospel. Almost everyone here that doesnt work during the day will sit out on their front porch and talk or just relax, so you get to talk to alot of people. We have been finding alot of people and yesterday was Sunday and we committed a bunch of them to go to church with us but when we went to go pick them up for church they either werent home or couldnt go for other reasons. We have been teaching alot of lessons and my portuguese is coming along. It helps to have a Brazilian companion that doesnt speak alot of english also. We have a few baptisms lined up this week and for the next couple of weeks so we will see how that goes. The streets here are crazy they have hills and they are steep hills its amazing how the people built houses on them. Because yesterday was Sunday and it was our first Sunday in the area we got to give talks in church. Mine only had to be 5 minutes and it went pretty good. To tell you about my companion he is from Rio De Janiero, he has 5 people in his family, and he loves to draw and is amazing. Something funny about the people here is when they TRY to pronounce my name they say about the first syllable and then give up and ask me how to prounounce it. To tell you about my apartment, the pipes are bad so we cant drink the water out of them, we get to buy our water. The first couple of days the showers didn´t work so we had to shower out of a bucket and then we got them fixed so now we get to shower with them, and Brazil is the only place that you can take a cold shower and have your body heat after steam up the mirror. There are 4 of us living in the apartment so its nice to converse at the end of the night with each other, I am the only fluent english speaker, one of them speaks pretty good english and can help explain things sometimes, but I get to use my dictionary alot. Well I had some pictures to send home but I am emailing you at an internet cafe and it takes forever to attach them so I will try to find somewhere next week with faster internet and send some. But last night I taught the elders in my apartment how to play phase 10 and they loved it. They liked it so much that they want me to ask you to buy a couple more sets and send them to me becuase you cannot buy this game in Brazil. Plus I could use a new set the one that I have is pretty sticky and its hard to shuffle, but if you cant then that is fine we will live. To tell you about the wildlife here, I have seen one tarantula but it was in Teresina and it was about as big as my face, then my camera somehow deleted all the pictures that I had from before the mission, the mtc time and what I had in Teresina, so I will have to send you more later. They also have here this type of ant that has a big butt, and if you smash it on your skin, they carry acid in this sack on their butt and it will give you second degree burns. The food here is amazing, everyday we have a lunch appointment with a member and they make some excellent food. They said the best way to send me stuff, because I dont know my address here in Sobral, send it to the mission home. the address there is: Elder James Crittenden Missão Brasil Teresina Rua Tersandro Paz 2129 Piçarra Teresina PI CEP 64015-015 Send my stuff there and I will get it when they do transfers and what not Well I need to go now But I love you all and I am keeping you all in my prayers. Love Elder Crittenden