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