e-mail of February 21st.

Dear Dad and Mom,
This week was pretty good we didn't have a baptism but we will have some here in the next few weeks. We would have had 2 baptisms this week but one girl that we would baptize wants to wait until her mom can visit the church and some of her cousins. So we went to their house yesterday after lunch and started teaching them. Her cousins listened to the message but her mom kept getting up and leaving and coming back and then leaving again and didn't pay attention to the message but we will keep trying. The other two Elders that live with us baptized almost an entire family yesterday, except the mom but we took some investigators to the baptism and they liked it a lot. I have a feeling that we are going to have quite a few baptisms coming up these next few weeks.
So carnival this year is in March. It will start about March 5th and will go until the 9th. We still haven't heard anything about whether we will stay at home or be able to go out and work but I imagine that we will stay home like last year.
We started teaching a new family this past week that is more or less about doing the things that we ask them to do but we are helping them and hopefully we can get them to go to church. It is a little bit difficult here in Brazil for people to fulfill commitments, even the simplest ones, like going to church for 3 hours of your Sunday. It makes me sad that they don't give God enough value. It is very interesting because you can go to their house talk to them about God and they accept everything that you teach them and say that God is everything to them, but then when it comes to actually going to Gods house they have more important things to do.
Hey Dad if you could get me Lex´s email address I would like to email him and see how he is doing.
I am doing good here in Teresina and in the mission. I can't believe how fast the time is flying by. Today I make 1 year and 4 months. My group and I are some of the oldest missionaries here in the mission. All of the missionaries from the other missions like Fortaleza, Belem, and Belo Horizante have already gone home.
President sent an email last week saying some of the new things that he would like to have happen this year. He is planning on opening up two new cities in the mission, one that has about 25 members that go every week but doesn't have missionaries there, it is a city in Araguaina, Tocantins. The other city is Caixias, Maranhao which is about 3 hours from Teresina. It doesn't have any members. The church hasn't even been introduced there so it would be really cool to be the first missionaries there. President is also planning on reopening some areas that were closed for a while and reintroduce missionaries there. He also gave our mission some Goals for baptisms and some other things but this year should be a really exciting year for the mission.
I am really proud to be here in the service of the Lord and help people find out about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Well I love you all very much. Thanks for your prayers and tell everyone in the Ward HI for me. Love your son, Elder Crittenden

Valentines Day, Feb 14 e-mail

Dear Dad and Mom,
So I had completely forgotten that today was Valentines day. I remembered when you said in the letter. So they do celebrate Valentines day but it is the 12th of June.
About the only holiday that they have this month is Carnival and this year it won't even fall on this month. They do have some patriotic holidays down here but not too many. They mostly have holidays about Saints from the catholic church because its influence down here is so strong.
But anyway my week was really good. We had zone conference on Wednesday. We are no longer in a triplet. Elder Romero got his new companion and it's Elder Daniel from my group in the MTC.
We had a baptism with a miracle and we taught a lot of cool people. Zone conference was pretty good. I liked it and learned quite a bit and liked being able to see the two zones together here in Teresina.
So this week we started teaching a family that is a cousin of a member here that does divisions with us quite often and they are a really cool family. They have lots of questions and doubts and are really open to hearing about the gospel. They have a ton of questions about baptism in particular. They didn't go to church yesterday but said that they would go next week. We also started teaching another family that was a reference of our person that got baptized yesterday and only the daughter went to church but she already wants to get baptized too. At the baptism yesterday we had another family that me and my comp had contacted and the Dad didn't want anything to do with God or Church or even talk with us but he went to the baptism yesterday and decided that he now wants to hear about the church and accepted us to come and teach at his house.
We had lunch yesterday at the house of some recent converts who their mom isn't a member yet but we have been teaching her a lot and she wanted to make lunch for us. I don't think that I have ever eaten so much food in my life.
I have got to go but I will fill you in on the rest of the story this next week. Sorry that I don't have a lot of details but I am out of time here on the internet. I Love you all very much. Love your son, Elder Crittenden

e-mail of February 8th

Oi Pai e Mae,
Parabens Pai seu Portuguese é muito bom! Você está usando meu Ipod muito ou você aprendeu mesmo? Eu estou planejando em aprender Espanhol quando eu chegar em casa entao você precisará me ajudar bastante. (translation: Congratulations Father your Portuguese is very good! You are using my Ipod very well or you learned well? I am planning on learning Spanish when I get home. Then you will need to help me some.)
So this week was pretty good. We didn't have a baptism. It fell through but this week we will for sure have one of a member who was less active but we reactivated him and now he wants to baptize his son.
So we had interviews with President on Thursday and it went really well. We had transfers today and my comp and I will stay together and Elder Daniel which was Elder Ashton from the MTC in my group is my new zone leader with Elder Romero.
So some news about here in Teresina, well its raining a lot here almost everyday. It has rained so that helps with the heat quite a bit. It is raining right now outside really hard and it's a good thing that we're inside. That's all that I have to say.
Last p day we went to the center and visited a catholic church and they let us go up into the bell towers but the only problem was that we didn't have our cameras to take pictures so we came back today to take pictures of us in the bell towers but it was closed when we passed by so we will have to come back next week.
So about my mission. Will we don't do door knocking. (In response to a question from me about tracting) In fact President told us not to door knock, so we work mostly with members references and with our own contacts that we do in the road.
That is so funny about the Mechams and them maybe passing on the program. They really needed that because they hoard a lot of stuff.
So I am about out of stuff to write about for this week too. I love you all very much and miss you all. Love your Son, Elder Crittenden