e-mail of February 22, two letters combined. Como vai, Aqui no Sobral todas as coisas estao muito bom, ontem eu tinha um outro batismo de um homem chamado Evandro. Tambem tinhamos muito pesquisadores na capela e igreja foi bom de mais. (Everything is fine here in Sobral. We had a baptism of a man named Evandro. We also have many investigators attending church.) Para responder seu pergunta Brazil tem uma linha do Onibus mas nao aqui no Sobral. Brazil tem para outro cidades e Teresina tem uma linha do onibus mas nao aqui. Andamos todas as lugares na cidade, tem muitos pessoas que dirigir moto taxis que nos podemos usar mas esta muito caro. ( To respond to your question about the busses. There is no bus line here in Sobral. Some cities, like Teresina, have one, but we don’t. We walk everywhere we go here in town. We could take a taxi, but they are too expensive.) I hope that you can understand that I am sure you will find out a way. We had a baptism yesterday and hope to continue to have more. I talked to mom about this already but I could use more ties so if you could look through your ties and some that you don’t want or don’t wear you could send to me. It doesn’t matter to me what they have on them I could just use some more. The man that I baptized we gave Zacarias and Tarcisio ties as a present and taught them how to tie them. That is about it that has happened this week. Ate proxima semana (until next week). Love your son Elder Crittenden Hey mom, How are you mom? How are things at the school going? Are you ready for winter to be over too? I miss the cold a lot. The past couple of days it has been super hot here in Sobral and basically no rain which is odd, the people say for this time of year. They say that this time of year it usually rains everyday and really really hard. The man that I baptized Zacarias, we gave him and Tarcisio ties as a present and taught them how to tie them. Speaking of ties if you haven’t sent my package yet ask dad what of his ties he doesn’t want and you could send them to me to wear I am getting bored of the same ties and could use some more. I know that he has a lot of ties, and if he doesn’t mind departing from some of them. We had a baptism yesterday and it was awesome. That is about all that happened this past week. Love you very much mom! Love your son, Elder Crittenden

e-mail of February 16. Separate e-mails sent to Mom and Dad, edited and combined here: Hi Dad, I don’t really have too much to talk about this week because not too much has happened. We have just been teaching people and trying to get people to go to church and what not and it is frustrating because a lot of them won’t even do the simple task of church. Like I said this week is carnival and Saturday and Sunday we had to return home at 5, and We weren’t allowed to leave the house at all yesterday that is why I am emailing today. But yesterday the 4 of us in our apartment had a Churrasco (BBQ) and basically studied all day. Today is the same except we got to email and go to our lunch appointment. Something that is exciting that we found out today is that president might let us go paint balling which is something that I have been missing doing so hopefully we can. Yes I have been writing in my journal and keeping mementos too, sometimes not everyday but I try. They don’t really have a Valentines day here. They have it but its not celebrated like in the U.S. I love you all,Love Elder Crittenden Hey mom, It sounds to me like your weeks are as busy as mine and it really is amazing how fast time flies. I have been in Brazil for almost 2 months now, its crazy. Yes I am writing in my journal and taking my vitamins you don’t need to worry about that. Something that is funny is that it seems like each day that I eat at a member’s house I eat a little more and it seems like it takes longer to get full, but the funny thing is that I weighed myself the other day and I have lost weight a little I think. It is odd but yeah I miss your food a lot. Well mom the work here in Brazil is alright now we haven’t had a baptism for about three weeks now but hopefully that will turn around. I have been reading a lot, and it was really fun the other day I was kinda cleaning out my suitcases and found again all those little notes that you had everyone write and have saved all of those and it was good to go back and read through those. Thank you for doing that mom it was really nice. Well about my laundry, there are many different ways to do it and I do it different than the other elders, I fill up the sinks or the washing machine/wash basin with water and my clothes, water and soap, let it sit for about 10-15 minutes and then come back and scrub my collars and other dirty spots with a scrub brush. Then I usually rinse them it is easiest with my white shirts to hang them on the hangers and rinse them with the shower, after that we ring them out and let them hang dry all day in many different places in our apartment. That is how I do my laundry, it is pretty fun, but I prefer our washer and dryer back home. That’s all that I have for this email if you have any questions ask, I love you mom and will talk to you later. Love your son Elder Crittenden

James' Sobral neighborhood

As near as I can tell from the description James gave, they live on the 2nd. floor, above a pharmacy in this block. They live across the street from the restaurant marked by the knife and fork on the map below.

The restaurant is marked here by the letter "A". They live on the street lldefonso Cavacante.

February 8th e-mail

Hi Dad, so you got the pictures I am glad. Dad I have a question for you, do you remember your first baptism? If so you should tell me about it. To answer your questions, first off we probably have a street address but I dont know what it is we live above a Pharmacy in an apartment building. So I don’t know about an address. I hope that you can see my area and everything and understand it is was kinda confusing probably. But anyway living conditions aren’t that bad, our apartment is pretty nice we have 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a kinda of living room I guess where our desks are and a kitchen. The showers are always cold and it helps to wake me up in the morning. The kitchen and 1 of the bathrooms dont have working lights so at night time it’s kinda hard to cook if we are hungry. Speaking of food, no we don’t have food delivered to our house we have to buy our food. Our allowance that we get is 120 reais ($63.82) twice a month and we have to buy living things with it and use it to send cards and what not. Everyday we have lunch at 12 at a members house. If the member cant have us over for whatever reason there is a member in our ward that owns a restaurant and they give him money and we go and eat at this restaurant, we ate there 3 days in a row last week. There are food venders everywhere in the streets, that is where I bought cha de burro, so if you want you can buy food on the street and we do sometimes. As for laundry, I do my own laundry every P-Day. Since today is P-Day I did laundry and we have to hang it out one of our windows and it is now raining and it is probably soaked again, but that is life it rains alot here and really hard. We spent about an hour and a half at an investigators house while it rained, luckily we had the restoration film to pass the time and talked with her too. I will take a picture of how we do our laundry and send it next time. We have a washing machine but it doesn´t work so we use it as a wash basin. You will see in the next email. We have 4 beds in our apartment, but also our bedrooms and balcony has hooks for hammocks so I sleep in a hammock sometimes. That is all that I can think of to write about living conditions if you have any other questions go ahead and ask. You can tell Bro. Meeks and Bro. Kohler that they can email me and I would love to hear from them. Anybody else in the ward can email me too that would be great. As for my height, yes I do tower over most of them and they comment on how tall that I am. Also whenever my companion and I are walking down the street everyday all the little kids want me to speak english, they say fala inglês so I say fala inglês, that usually makes them laugh. So yeah I love the questions keep them coming, and Dad you should tell me about your mission. That flash drive idea is great I need a big one like 16 gb or even a 32 gb would be great but whatever you have will be awesome. I will back up all of my pictures and send them home when it comes. Dad I also need email addresses of Jenny, Heidi, Patricia, and Kendra. I will try to write them too. This next week Carnaval is starting and I got an email from president today that said that we had to return to our houses at 5 on 13,14,and 15 because it is dangerous. So that should be fun. We also have zone conference this Thursday with President. I gave my first blessing to Tarcisio who was sick this past week in Portuguese, it was cool. Yesterday Tarcisio and Zacarias were confirmed in Church. This past week not too much happened, and we didn´t have any baptisms but we are expecting 2 this week but we will see. I love you Dad and am excited to hear back from you. Write back with any questions and I will answer them. Love your Son Elder Crittenden

February 1st. e-mail

Well everything here in Sobral is OTIMO! The work is good especially in our area. For your questions about the baptism last week, the girls name is Katia, she is 17,and my companion baptized her. This past week has been great, we have had many appointments, and have found many new investigators too. To talk about two in particular, we were walking in our area which is just west of our apartment called Dom José and this older man sitting out on his front porch said hi so we stopped and asked if we could share a message with him and his "wife", the reason that I put parenthesis around wife is because their are not married but they are living together and call themselves married. There are alot of people here in Brazil that do that. But anyway we shared the 3rd lesson with them and invited to come to church and we actually picked them up for church on Sunday, and they loved it the mans name is Valder and his wife is Lucia. While we were at church Valder leaned over and asked my companion and I how often that we had church, and when we told him only on Sundays he was kind of sad, but he said that he wanted to come back for sure. I am really looking forward to continue teaching them and we have a baptism date set for them on February 21 and I think that they will be baptized for sure, we also have to get them married. Other exciting news that happened on this Sunday we had about 15 investigators at church on Sunday and 2 of which are families and we didn´t even know they would be there. The members in our ward are really helping us out alot they give us references and bring their friends to church. Also something that happened this Sunday we had 2 more baptisms, I have talked about these two men before it was Zacarias and Tarcisio. With Zacarias all the rest of his family are members so when we baptized him we entered his family in the church. I am the one who baptized Zacarias my first baptism! I Will send pictures later I forgot my cord hopefully before the end of this week I will get them sent. Tarcisios´son Zacarias also baptized him. Well dad I dont have an exact street address to my house but I went onto google maps and pinpointed it but hopefully you can find it with these directions. The street in front of my house is called Idelfonso Cavalcante, on my block I have the Restaurante Casa Grande O Louro you will have to click the map tab to see that. I live on the Northwest corner of this block I Think, and the Feira Livre is right in front of my house. Still in the map tab the hospital is straight down from my house 2 blocks down on AV Dom José. One block down from my house is a street called R. Luis G Prado that is right behind my house. Hopefully you can find it now, my area is alot to the West of my house across the train tracks Southwest until the Freeway and on the North of the Idelfonso Cavalcante across the street called R. Idelfonso Holanda Cavalcante. Our apartment is in our area but just barely we have a little bit to the East of our apartment but not much I dont know how much. To the West of our house the streets R. Guarani, R. Tapajos, R. Iracema, that is Dom José the only other area in our area that we have worked is South of Dom José near the BR 222 that area. Zacarias and Tarcisio lives in the area near the BR 222. That should be enough explaining. Well it seems like I have been asking for alot of stuff from you but I do need a few things. If you could make a package with these things I should be good for a long while. I could really use rechargeable batteries and thing to recharge them with, a flash drive like 16 gb or so, I would also love some like instant oatmeal that I could make for breakfast, cereal out here is really expensive, also some treats I miss American treats. If you could make like a package and send it to me that would be great but dont send it if it is too expensive I mean that! I have a question for you dad, how is the Rec.Center coming along? How is the school library did you get everything put in its place yet? Could you tell like Brad Kohler or anybody else in the ward to email me or send me letters that would be awesome. I would like to hear about the Ward and how it is there. Hey dad, how is everything going? Like I said in the email I had my first baptism this past week and it went excellent. It is so amazing the change that the gospel brings into a persons life. I didn’t include this earlier but I should have, we took a movie over to their house to watch with them and when it came to the part about temples we had talked to him about eternal families and through the temple we can be forever, well when that part came up he started to cry. It made me think about our family and how grateful I am for you and mom raising me in the gospel and being a great example in my life. Love Elder Crittenden