e-mail for April 5, combined from Mom and Dads

Dear MOMMY, So for Easter we helped the Primary president in our ward to paint eggs for an egg hunt. But to paint the eggs we used real paint and paint brushes so it was a little odd. It was fun none the less for the primary kids to find them. I didn’t receive anything really for Easter except president gave us these big chocolate eggs I will take a picture and try to remember to send it. But the crappy thing about it was that he wouldn’t give them to us until after we had taken our worm pills that we get every 6 months, and you had to chew it, and to make things worse, the water in the church wasn’t working so we couldn’t even get a drink afterwards, but I LOVE THE MISSION. For some reason here in Sao Luis the water gets shut off and people go without water. In some of the neighborhoods that we teach in poeple were going 3 or 4 days without water to take showers and wash dishes and all that. Two missionaries in our zone actually Elder Niksich and Elder Daniel(Elder Ashton from the mtc) were without water and so they stayed at our house this past week with us to take showers. Our water was shut off for only one night and that was Friday so we all slept dirty. I was a little sick this week too but I am okay now. I really enjoyed conference this year. I watched the first to sessions on Saturday in Portuguese and understood alot. We watch conference in the Stake center which is our ward building and is in our area. They were all live sessions, so the sessions were at 1 in the afternoon to 3 and then 5 to 7 at night, except the Priesthood which was a 6 am on Sunday it was a re-broadcast, and I watched it in Portuguese. The Sunday sessions they had English for us Gringos so I got to hear it in English. I really liked the talk on Sunday I don’t remember who it was its in my notes but he talked about mothers and the importance of them in the lives of their children and it really made me think of you and the influence that you had in my life and I want to thank you for that. That was about it for conference and Easter. To talk about the work we are preparing 4 people to be baptized this week but 2 of them need permission from their parents and so it might not happen. The thing is here that everyone is Catholic but they don’t go to church except maybe on Christmas and Easter so everyone baptizes all their kids in the church too and don’t think that they need to be baptized again so it is very annoying. But that is how it’s going we are working alot and there is still alot to be done. My new area is pretty cool not in temperature but cool. It is hot, it rains alot and it’s really green. Today we did some service for a lady in our ward helping her move and I moved some stuff and there was 2 spiders about the size of well I can’t think of anything to compare them too but they were big. There are tons of lizards and alot of people here have parrots. I like all of the fruits and the different kinds of Juices I have almost heard of a new kind of Fruit every 3 days here since I have been here. I am going to start teaching English in our church this Saturday so that should be fun. I love you all very much and keep writing. Oh I forgot to tell mom that I would let here know when I get the package and if everything is inside thanks for getting that all done and tell mom thanks too for getting everything ready for it. We have interviews with the President next Tuesday so I think it should be here and I should get it I hope so at least. Um I am about out of things to say other than I hope that everything is going well at home and I know that the Lord is blessing our family. I love you all very much and keep writing. Love Elder Crittenden