A Dog Named Bunion.

Word from Cape Verde is short and sweet:

 "Everything here is good. We had our first baptism this week! that was way sweet. We also have a pet dog! hes somewhere in Cape Verde I dont know exactly where right now but we gave him a cookie and he followed us to two lessons and then back home. We named him Bunion. I hope eveything is going well. Hang in there and keep on keepin on. Love ya."

Mail takes four weeks. You can mail letters/packages to the mission home in Cape Verde. (I will get the mailbox slot address soon) Then when transfers happen they get their mail and such...which is even less frequent than the four weeks it takes to get there. Also, if you are going to mail a package the cheapest route is through USPS flat rate shipping boxes which have a flat rate of about $50. Not cheap, but worth it right?!? If you do mail a package it has been recommended that we put religious pictures all over the outside to prevent the package from getting stolen. (The people are superstitious of stealing religious material).

"They dont actually have address here. People just buy a mailbox slot so that is what the church does. And then they just get delivered as people get transferred or when the mission pres comes to visit. This actaully makes it really hard to get references. People will just tell you its by that tree past the big rock or something along those lines."

Elder Edwards is doing great. Thanks for the prayers and support.

Papaya, Baptisms And More.

We heard from E.E yesterday and he is doing great! There is no snail mail address yet so emails are the only contact. Here is the email and our first pics from Cape Verde.

"That first picture is a picture of a papaya! My first time ever eating it. It was totally delicious. The other two are pictures I took out of our appartment window. So Awesome! thats what I get to see every morning.  Easter was way good! we taught 3 families and committed 6 people to baptism. When I showed up we only had three people set for baptism now we have like 8 single people and 3 families!! It has been sweet teaching people! They all are really open to hear about the gospel and even if people dont want to theyre soo nice theyll always let us into their houses right at that moment to talk with them. Creole is good. Im not really trying to learn it. Its a total caveman language. The thing I learned to say this week was "corpo, modi que sta" literal translation being body, how it is. My companion is good. Hes way nice and super cool. Weve been getting a lot of work done together. hows is everything going for you? is life good? Love ya. Fica fixe"

News From Cape Verde.

Ola everyone! First week in Africa! Crazy! When I first showed up I did not know what to think. Everyone and everything looked a lot different. When I first showed up I got to go and eat with the Mission President and have a "welcome to Cape Verde" meeting and I found out where my first assignment would be. For the first part of my mission I am serving in a place called Assomada on the main Island Santiago. This place is awesome! The first couple days it was really weird... Everyone was screaming at me out of cars, not one person besides the missionaries were speaking Portuguese and the whole culture is completely the opposite to what I'm used to. Luckily things got better, a lot better. I discovered that everyone was yelling at us out of their cars because basically everyone that has a car is a taxi so they all just yell out the city that they're going to. Unfortunately everyone still is speaking Creole. I guess after 3 transfers (according to everyone) you can understand creole even though you don't speak it because it is super close to Portuguese. Its rather annoying though. We speak Portuguese, they respond in Creole, even though almost everyone can speak Portuguese. The food here is actually super good! At least in the place I'm at there is a grocery store that has basically everything America has its just a Chinese or Cape Verde knock-off. My appartment is sweet. Its gotta be one of the nicest places in Assomada. There used to be 4 Elders there but now it is just us so we actually have a lot of room. A full sized kitchen, two bathrooms with nice cold water, a small laundry room two bedrooms. I hope everything is going well in the good old US of A. Enjoy your grass, carpet and pavement. I dont plan on seeing any of those for the next 22 months haha. Fica fixe.