March 29 Second Easter!

Hello everybody!! Worry not, I still draw breath. We were asked to
move our P-day since yesterday is also technically a holiday in the
caribbean called "second easter" hahah and they wanted us to proselyte
on it so that we could find more families and what not. Me and Elder
Geigenmiller had an awesome week though, we got 13 new investigators
this week and beat last week's previous record of 12! Hahah it was so
crazy, we were very blessed, it was mostly due to this awesome new
family we found, their last name is pretty weird but I think it sounds
something like 'P' or i dont know but they are great. The way we
found them was nothing short of miraculous in my opinion. Long story
short it's Easter Day, and we were biking in the rain with nothing to
do. We decided to just start walking up a dirt road in the far south
corner of our area when a car puts it's window down and says "Why
don't you elders visit the 'P' family anymore?" I replied, "I don't
know them! But we can!" hahah we followed her to their house on the
street where the whole family was super excited to see us! They were
so cool, and we learned that missionaries hadn't been there in about a
year and a half or so! We had a short lesson on the atonement with
them since it was easter but I am really excited to go back and teach
them some more. In other news, I get to go to Trinidad in a couple of
weeks!!! They are holding a large mission leadership conference and
are flying us all over there! I'm super pumped, I haven't been to the
mission home in a year and a half!! Anyways, love and miss all you
guys and hope you all have a great week!
Elder Carpenter

  

 craziest picture this week... a live cayman alligator! this guy was
like steve irwin or something. just holding it barehanded...

 guy riding a horse on the road

March 21 Super quick!

okay, a quick summary is that we got 12 new investigators, and have

been working very hard! We contacted a house who thought we were the

polygamists from Warren Jeff's church but after we explained who we

are and what we actually do we were just laughing about it with them.

We played sports and tried wiffleball out for the first time, it was a

solid idea except when i dove for a ball and got mud all over me.

 'G' didn't come to church this week :( but when we asked him why it seemed

like he had a good excuse and he said for CERTAIN that he will come

next week so we let him off the hook this time. But that's about it

for the most part!

Re: Elder Geigenmiller

He is a really cool guy i love being companions with him. super easy to work with and also has a really strong work ethic. 

March 14

Dear Everyone,
What a great week! I have really enjoyed my first week with Elder
Geigenmiller. He seems like a really great guy and I can tell he has
an enthusiasm for missionary work. We tried really hard this week to
find new investigators, we were blessed to find 5 this week and even
put one on a baptismal date! His name is 'G' and on our second lesson
with him, he asked us if he could be baptized, we were super happy to
find him and feel as though he was definitely prepared for us to find.
If all goes as planned he should be baptized on April 16th and he says
he will be looking forward to it. We also had a great service project
by our branch mission leader, and helped him spread a pile of sand
around his property that was taller than me! It was a lot of work but
he was really grateful for it. We also held a branch fireside in
conjunction with him and the other wanica elders on Sunday evening and
it went over great. We did role plays with the members about sharing
the gospel with their family and friends and they all seemed to love
it. We made a special emphasis on the little I'm a mormon cards and
everyone was excited about taking them to work. I hope you all have a
great week! Lobi!
Elder Carpenter

March 7 new comp!

Hello everyone! This week was awesome! Just last night, we sat with
sister d and her husband again to discuss marriage with brother
H. Brother d not only agreed to get married in April but
also brought someone new to the lesson for us to teach! It almost
seemed to good to be true! It went really well and the friend he
brought, ' m,' wanted a blessing for his broken foot which brother
H gave him. We had a couple good experiences this week but
that one definitely stood out to me. Our new branch mission leader,
rais abankie, a recently returned missionary who just served in the
netherlands, has also been super helpful to us this week as well. He
is helping us plan a big missionary themed fireside we're planning on
holding this week to get members more excited about missionary work
and I think it's going to go over really well! We also did a really
cool service project for a family in the branch as a part of the new
"self-reliance" initiative the church has been emphasizing down here.
We planted a humongous garden for them on their property and it looked
great! A lot of the members knew some good things about gardening and
it was really nice. Almost forgot, the craziest part, I'm getting a
new companion!! Elder Geigenmiller, a newbie to suriname, is coming in
on wednesday night! I couldn't be more excited, he's already been
trained in guyana while he waited for his visa, but is still a
relatively new missionary. so it should be a good time! I love and
miss you all and I hope you have a great week!
Elder Carpenter

here's the worst road in suriname! (that's on pavement) It's on the
way to the jungle to pick up the elders in Uitkijk.

Here's a picture of the garden we helped plant, this was about halfway
through and there were two more of those squares we set up.