Dec 28 party pants, a panda, and a president present!

Hello Friends and Family I hope all of you had a fantastic Christmas!

It was definitely a cool one for me and we have a lot to show for our

efforts this week. We picked up two really cool new investigators

named 'J' and another named 'G,' Who goes  often by his street

name, hahah. But they're both cool guys pumped to learn about

the gospel and we had a blast this week finding and teaching them. I

was reading a story on lds.org a little bit ago about one of Elder

Holland's favorite Christmas memories that really struck me, he stated

that one of his favorite christmas memories was on his mission in

england where he and his companion spent all of christmas eve and

christmas day knocking on doors, without even a single person letting

them in or listening. The fact he looked back on that as one of his

favorite memories struck me in a funny way, and it motivated me to

work extra hard this christmas season, mainly so that when I look

back, who knows how many years from now, I can feel the same way about

this Christmas, knowing I did what was expected of me and to the best

of my ability. I now know I'll be able to do that and it's a good

feeling. I hope that all of you continue to have a great holiday

season and a wonderful New Year's! I'm attaching a couple pictures

from our pday activity last week where we celebrated christmas by

playing some games with the other missionaries, we did a white

elephant gift exchange and I brought the giant stuffed panda you see

in the middle. Unfortunately i didn't have anything to wrap it with so

i just tied a plastic bag around it's head, hahah it was pretty funny,

anyways, I love and miss you guys, and happy birthday to Bailey! Who

turns 17 tomorrow!!!

Elder Carpenter

With his party pants on, Elder Carpenter was on his way to the gift exchange. His present to give was the big panda. Good luck getting it home!!

Elder Carpenter's "gingerbread mission house"

Missionary gift exchange

He traded a fish for a cinch bag

Presents!!

Dec 21 Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Christmas is getting into full swing here in

Suriname, we had a great Christmas devotional for the Wanica Branch

this past Saturday, and our branch mission leader organized a musical

number with all the missionaries and it turned out really good! The

primary also sang and some people gave talks so it was pretty nice, we

had a couple investigators there who really seemed to enjoy it. Today

for pday all the missionaries are getting together to do a little gift

exchange, I bought a giant stuffed panda, hahah so i'm pretty excited

to see who ends up with it. This week has been kind of slow with

finding new people to teach, a lot of people seem like they don't want

to be disturbed this time of year. But fortunately we've been able to

see a lot of members, and I think we collected at least 5 referrals

that people had for us so in a way it kind of balanced out. I'm

continuing to enjoy mission life and am especially grateful for the

chance I have to serve around this time of year where we remember the

Savior, I love and miss you guys and I hope you all have a wonderful

Christmas!!

Elder Carpenter

Dec 14 staying put

Re:

Hey guys, some good news, i found out that I'll be staying another

transfer here in Wanica South with Elder Van Den Herik! We're excited

to stay companions since we get along really well, I've made some

really cool friends with a lot of the members and so I'm glad I get to

spend more time with them. A couple of them are returned missionaries

or about to become missionaries who we work with and so they are super

helpful with coming out to teach with us. Some other interesting news,

Suriname will be getting 4 new missionaries next transfer! 3 elders

and 1 sister. Most of them aren't technically new, in fact I think

they just finished their training already, but due to visa problems

we've only just been able to get them in this transfer. They should be

coming in wednesday morning and so I'm excited about that! We had a

district activity last night where all of suriname got together to

watch the Christmas devotional the church puts on and that was pretty

cool. Normally they have a tv in the back where there isn't a

translation so missionaries can watch in english but it wasn't working

yesterday so everybody had to watch it in dutch which people were

complaining about, hahah. The dutch speakers they choose sound so

weird, they all have extremely nasally accents its ridiculous. But

despite that I really enjoyed it and it was kind of the first time it

hit me that christmas is here! Nothing down here has even much of a

semblance of christmas time and so most of the christmas you

experience is what you bring with you, hahah. But last night, it felt

nice to feel like it was so close. Me and Elder Van Den Herik have

some good goals set for this transfer that we're excited about, and

I'm looking forward to building on the work we've started in this

area. Love you guys a ton and I hope you all have a great week and a

great Christmas season!

Elder Carpenter

P.S. Happy Birthday Marley!

Dec 7

Hello and greetings from Wanica! This coming week will be the last of
the transfer and saturday I'll find out what's happening to me! I've
only been here for one but we're thinking that things could
potentially be kind of crazy this transfer since we're expecting some
new people to come in, so who knows what will happen? :p I feel
completely over my Dengue Fever now so that's a big plus, I had one
more little episode of it this week, around thursday but to be honest
I hadn't really fully recovered before I started going out again and
so I took some more time to rest and now I definitely feel better.
It's actually turned into a little bit of an epidemic... I think that
there have been at least 5 missionaries who have gone down with it and
the recovery time for everyone seems to be about two weeks, needless
to say it's not pretty. But despite that I still had a great week, we
were still able to get some solid lessons in and my favorite was
probably with the 'D' Family, they have a son on a mini mission here
in Suriname and their testimonies have really started to grow. Sister
'D' and her husband aren't technically married yet but we had a
really cool lesson about families and how they can be together forever
and I think that we drove a little motivation into their hearts. Will
definitely let you know if there are updates! In other news one of our
missionaries, elder Bowen, underwent toe surgery today hahah so that
was pretty crazy, I was surprised they let him have an operation here
to begin with but now he's got a zombie toe for the next few days and
my heart goes out to him. Today for pday we just got done playing
soccer, and ultimate football and it was a blast. we have some cool
plans this week and quite a few appointments set up since everyone
misses us since i was sick. Hahah so we're looking forward to a great
week, I hope you all are having a great december so far and you'll
hear from me again next week!
Lobi, Elder Carpenter