Nov 30, 2009

So not a whole lot has happened this last week. We have a couple new investigators that are doing really good... One of them isnt one you would really expect to be interested in the gospel but he is doing awesome! His name is Dí and he is about 22. He is a rapper and is actually really talented, he has a shed next to his house with his own little studio and he showed us some of his songs. He is actually kinda getting pretty popular here and is selling cd´s and everything... but its funny cause he has tattoos everywhere and dresses like a gangster and everything and all his friends are thugs, but he is really interested in our message. We picked him up for church yesterday and while we were waiting for him his mom came and talked to us and said it was the first time in his life that he had ever been to any church in his life, but he got all dressed up nice and he loved the meetings and wants to keep coming back. All our other investigators are doing good too, we have one that was supposed to be baptized this Saturday but they had an emergency in his family so we switched it to the week after. He is 17 and he is definitely ready to be baptized. We talk with his sister all the time too who is 18 and she is right behind him... and now their parents are starting to ask to have lessons with us and are reading the book of mormon together. They are a really close family and I could see the whole family being members one day! We are going to have family home evening with them tomorrow so that should go good.

Word on the street though is that I might be leaving this next transfer (next week). Its all just rumors now but what Ive got out of it is that I might be leaving my area but staying in Praia, which is not what I want to happen! I want to stay in our area a little longer cause I love all the people here, and if I do have to leave I want to go to another island. Nothing is official though so I will find out Saturday. I would miss all the people here though, Ive got people here that just feel like normal friends. We teach a non active member and his girlfriend and he is like my best friend... he cant even speak Port., just Creolo but everytime he talks to me he speaks in the english he learned from movies... things like "Whats up gangster" haha its funny. I will miss everyone here.

So yeah everything is going pretty good... its definitely the hardest thing Ive ever been through being here but its worth it and there are lots of good things happening.

Elder Luke

Nov 23,

> Its good to hear its cold there! I really miss snow and I really miss thanksgiving! I will miss being with you guys and yeah we do absolutely nothing for thanksgiving here besides work. Most of the missionaries here are Cabo Verdeans and Brazilians here too so not even a whole lot of people care about thanksgiving here, with the Elders next door to us one is American but they are getting less and less Americans here and more missionaries from Cabo Verde. Almost all the guys that serve from here end up being called to serve here. In our district I am the only American and I can only think of one other American now in our zone. Lots of people ask me to teach them some english though, its fun and they are way cool. But yeah back to thanksgiving I think I am just going to make a really good dinner that night to celebrate.
>
> So this week has been alright, but we had two days where absolutely nobody was home and we just spent all day trying to find people to teach and only got a couple lessons. It was hard but at the same time we got 5 new investigators. One crazy thing that happened is we have a non active member thats about 30 and all he does is drinks and partys and he is crazy... his name in english means Vision and everytime he talks with us he points at his eyes and then at the sky and says "I have the VISION of being better" haha its funny. (Lots of people here just give themselves their own names like Vision, we teach a guy who calls himself Bruce Lee, and just lots of weird ones like that) But yeah so we went to his house sunday morning to take him to church and we knocked on the door and his mom answered who is pretty crazy herself and said that he went to a party the other night and drank too much and when he got home he just got home and went up on the roof and had been asleep their ever since... stuff like that isnt even uncommon and I have so many stories like that haha people here are so weird. We see the same guys every day that sit on the street from morning to night and drink and talk, every day. Nobody has a life here. And Ryan I forgot to answer your question but everyone drinks here, most of the people on the streets are always drunk and it always smells like alcohol.

Nov 16, 4 months out

Well I am e mailing a little later than normal because all the power is out in half of Praia so we had to walk up to the Plateau which is the downtown area and it took us forever to find a place to e mail. But so everything has been going pretty good this week but nothing too different happened. We were planning on going fishing this week but we didnt get anything for it in time so we are planning on going next week. My good buddy Rico who is a member about a year older than me is going to come with us cause he knows some good areas that we can go so I am really excited! He says you can catch puffer fish where we will be going and they also have lots of other types of fish and you can catch eels and stuff too so it should be different than what Im used to! Just walking around Praia there are always ladys carring fish around to sell so I see eels and giant tuna fish and everything. The other islands have a lot more sharks too and some of them have tons of Great whites I hear. When I serve on São Vicente I will be able to go the the island next to it, Santo Anão for P day too and you have to take a boat to get there and I guess you see dolphins all the time on the ship too so that will be cool. Alright sorry, I was just rambling on about marine life but Im done now. So our work is still going pretty good. We are still working with the people and getting them prepared for baptism. We were supposed to have the baptism of Zézé this week, he is about 20 and he is definitely ready but he had to go to the island of Fogo to visit his family this week so we had to postpone it one more week. We also have Fidelho who is totally ready too but his wife is extremely catcholic and she is a little hesitant about it and of course he doesnt want to go against anything she says so we are just being patcient with them. Their son Paulo is about 20 and we have been talking with him for a long time too. He says he doesnt feel ready even though he is doing everything we need to so we have been working with him a lot too. We plan on having a family home evening with them this week cause they have a big family and it would be really good for them we think. I love family home evenings, they are way fun and help the investigators out a ton. We will be having one at a members house this week and we are bringing Elmer and Zuleika, they are 17 years old and 18 and they have a baptism date too and they are awesome!

So most of the other lessons are going really good too. Its cool because they dont used the memorized discusions anymore, now we have 5 lessons to teach them from Preach my Gospel but we can teach it for how they need it and we can do whatever we need to do for each specific person. We dont have any order to teach in and we can teach with what we feel they need so it makes things go a lot better! For example, with Paulo we have been teaching him a lot to finding a response to know that the Book of Mormon is true and those lessons have been sweet!

Praia isnt the prettiest or cleanest or nicest area in the world... in fact I think its one of the worst but I really hope I stay here at least one more transfer and I wouldnt even mind 2 more which would be until the start of March. I have tons of good friends here now that are investiagors and members so its awesome being able to have help from them. Everyone is really supportive here with me, especially with teaching me Creolo cause they love Creolo a lot more than Portugues.

But so yeah this area is going really good. I always here about the other islands too and they sound really cool though so at the same time it will be cool to go to a different one! In Fogo you can see the ocean no matter where you are and if you serve in a city up top you are above the clouds and from some points can see all the other islands even though they are so far away. Praia is also extremely loud and people are always out doing something and I guess everywhere else its really calm and you can see all the stars cause its just little villages and stuff without city lights. So I am hoping to serve in Fogo next after here but we will just have to see what happens. It would be good to get a break from the city life though.

Nov 9, Letter Home

Everything is going good here! Last Saturday I performed my first baptism which was way cool. It was with the seventeen year old named Jó and I was really excited when he said he wanted me to do it! The night before it we went to go fill up the font but we couldnt get any water out of it and nobody could figure it out so we were just planning on doing it in the ocean which got me even more excited! However at the last minute our President called a water truck to fill it, but it was still really cool! If you get the pictures I send, he is the one in the pic. So besides that there is a huge epidemic going on here with the dengue, the disease from the mosquitos. There are 9000 people that have it here between three islands and its just getting worse every day. A few people have even died from it but they were already unhealthy. But you guys dont need to sit around worrying about me wondering if I will get it cause I can already answer that for you now... I got it. I have had it for about 3 and a half weeks now and it usually takes about a month to get rid of. Its getting better for me now and i am still able to work everyday. I just had an outrageous head ache all the time and my left eye was swollen shut a lot of the time and I never had energy. Its all leaving though and I feel a lot better so no need to worry! Cabo Verde had one day this week though where they tried to get rid of the mosquitos though. They have trash EVERYWHERE, the streets, the dried of rivers, everywhere! So on this day they just lit all of it on fire so lately Ive been walking around and there are just trash fires everywhere! Personally I think that is more dangerous than the actual mosquitos. About half of our investigators have the dengue too but nothing too serious. The work is still going really good here, on Nov. 21 we have 5 baptisms schedualed with some really good people so hopefully they all work out. I think that has to be a record, 5 in one day in just one area! But I am loving the area I am in now and I want to stay here as long as I can! I am really close with a lot of the members and I love having them come teach with us! We have like 5 different young guys that always ask to come teach with us and it helps a lot! All the people here are just really chill and friendly and I love talking with them. The language is still getting better all the time! Im glad to hear everything is going good there though.

Nov 2, Letter Home

This week has also been a little hard cause my companion is really lazy, he is nothing like Elder Sequiera that I had before. We got tons of stuff done with him and he was really fun, but Elder Gonçalvez from brazil doesnt like to work a whole lot. He will be going home this next transfer so its just 5 more weeks that I have to deal with it. I will still make sure that we work just as hard as normal.

Elder Sequeira and I have this area going really good and have 10 people with marked baptism dates which is amazing, it still takes ton of work to keep them going to church and everything though so I hope they all come through and are all baptized. We have a baptism this Saturday, I am excited. His name is Jó and he is 17, he is already really strong in the church and goes to the seminary they have here and stuff. I think it will either be me baptizing him or a member named Edinho that is 20, either way it will be sweet. I guess you guys will know next week. Our other investigators are doing pretty good too, some require more work than others and sometimes we have to push baptism dates back, but I am in a really good area so its going well. The members help us out a lot and I love teaching with them, my favorite is Fredy, his mom cooks lunch for us and he teaches with us a lot, he is 20.

The weather here is cooled off a little bit but its still too hot, I still have to sleep with no blankets and a fan on me everynight. We had tons of rain a few days ago, in our area we just walk up little pathways up on the hill and it was raining so hard that when we came out of a lesson their was a river going down our alleyway about a foot deep so we had to find another way down. We have also been getting sand storms i guess from the Sahara these past couple days. It just kinda looks like smog in the air but orange, I dont really like it. I think the rain season is kinda stopping for the year now though but it should still be somewhat cool during the winter months but its still always too hot for me.

One thing is I think it would be best to switch my address to the
C.P. 420
Praia, Santiago
Cabo Verde
Then write via Portugual on it, you dont have to but I think it is a little more reliable.

Oct 19- Letter home

This week was a really good week with our investigators. We now have 8 people with marked baptism dates and we have another one coming up this saturday. We should have a few more this next week too cause we just started teaching some new people and they are really doing with what we ask them to do like reading and praying. It is the best feeling ever when someone tells us that they have been reading and praying about the book of mormon and they tell us they know its true. I wish every lesson could be like that cause some of our lessons are extremely good but others just make me wonder what Im doing here. Some of these people are ligite crazy haha I hate to say it but people come up with some of the wildest things to say while we teach. We were teaching a guy last week and all the sudden he just started talking about the wildest things and asked if we could hold hands and pray. me and my companion just looked at each other then the thought came into my mind that he needed to stop drinking and smoking cause he is crazy so i taught him about the word of wisdom. Church was pretty exciting yesterday, 2 minutes before sacrament the branch president came up to me and told me i was speaking and i asked what on and he said just follow the spirit and it would be ten or 15 minutes. I was a little nervous to speak in port. but it actually went fine. I have also been giving a lot of blessing lately to sick people, its been cool. Well write back with more stories this week and I will hear from ya then. I love ya guys thanks for everything.> Love Elder lUke

Oct 12, Letter Home

This week has been pretty good, I got a little sick at the start of the week but I lived and we were able to work everyday. We got a few new investigators which was really good and we taught a lot of lessons. We have a strange Nigerian who calls himself Water, he is about my age but he loves to talk to us. He was drunk the first night we talked with him and smoking the next night, but he is actually getting better each time we talk and he came to church yesterday. We had a bunch of investigators here yesterday so that was pretty feesh, we also commited two young men to be baptized, one 17 and the other 21 and they seem really excited about it. The 17 year old said that he was reading in the book of mormon and that he all the sudden just felt that it was true, it was so cool when he told us that! He definitely has potentail to be a missionary one day. We teach lots of young guys here which is different than how things used to be done here. It used to be where missionaries would just teach women cause they are nicer and easier to teach, but now with all the guys we are teaching it may not be as easy but there are a lot more priesthood holders and missionaries from here. We also try to focus on the familes, there is one family who I love teaching and the guy is a member but his wife isnt and they have two kids. We are really working on marriage with them (nobody wants to get married here) and its hard work but we are making some progress. We also teach a guy named Djojinho and his girlfriend Ghandi and they have a kid on the way and we are working on marriage with them. Djojinho speaks very little Portugues, its mainly just Creolo with him and he is in the military but I love talking to both of them, we visit them a lot. Well there are too many stories to name so you guys will just have to wait for 21 more months to get all the stories.

So my address is...> > C.P. 420> Praia, Santiago> Cabo Verde

A Few Statistics of Cape Verde

OFFICIAL NAME:Republic of Cape Verde
Geography Area: 4,033 sq. km. (1,557 sq. mi.), slightly larger than Rhode Island.Cities:
Capital--Praia (pop. 106,052).
Other city--Mindelo (pop. 67,844).
Terrain: Steep, rugged, rocky, volcanic.
Climate: Temperate; warm, dry summer; precipitation meager and erratic.
People Nationality:
Noun and adjective--Cape Verdean(s).
Population (2008): 499,796.
Annual growth rate (2008): 1.41%.
Ethnic groups: Creole (mixed African and Portuguese) 71%, African 28%, European 1%. Religions: Roman Catholic, Protestant.
Languages: Portuguese (official); Crioulo (national).
Education: Literacy (2008)--77%.

Oct 5, Letter Home

So this week has had its ups and downs. Lets start with the downs... my companion has been really sick all week so for the whole week we have done nothing, I think we only taught like 10 or 12 lessons total. The rest of the time he is had to sleep and I just sit there and either read, study, or be bored out of my mind. I have finished the Book of mormon, our search for happiness, and am like 100 pages into Jesus the Christ and I study tons of the language too but than just forget it after. It gets really boring and I hope things will be back to normal this week, I think he is starting to get over it. We have had a few visits to the doctor and we have the nurse over sometimes though.> >

So the highlights of my weeks were the conferences. We had zone conference on tuesday which was really good, we had lots of food and it was the most satisfied I had been since I got here, we have had ice cream. Out of my zone there are two other american elders and one tongan sister and everyone else is from Brazil, Port., or here, we have tons from here. So everything was in Portuguese for it, my president doesnt even speak english very great but he is a stud, I really like him, he is only 40 or so and he is the first president that will stay for two years, because this is such a stressful mission the past ones have only stayed two. We were also able to watch conference live which was sweet, it was only the Praia missionaries that were able to and even they usually cant, we just hooked up a lap top to a projector in the chapel and had it in English and Port. I was only able to watch the first session and closing session though since E Sequeira was sick. I have never been so grateful for conference in my life though and I loved watching it. It was weird watching it last night though and having it be dark outside while it was early afternoon for you guys. It was cool watching Scott and Holland speak since they spoke to us at the MTC. I loved the first talk from Osgulthorpe or however you spell it when he talked about how his mission they would speak Tahitian and French and when he tried to speak one they would answer back in the other and how he could hardly understant either, I felt like he was speaking directly to me because thats how it is. I hate when I start speaking in Port. and they talk back in Creolo and when I tell them I hardly understand a word they say they just keep talking. Im still just working on Port. though cause its the most important for the lessons and the president said to, Creole is just for starting out conversations and stuff and if you know portuguese perfect creole will come like that so most missionaries say it starts coming in like 5 months or so. > >

So transportation is hilarious here but scary too, we either take the bus which is pretty normal, a taxi where the drivers do not know how to drive, they just weave in and out of cars like crazy! And the best is the Hiase ( these little vans that just drive around everywhere). They have a guy that sits outside the window and as they drive ask people if they need rides. When they find people they just stop in the middle of the street and you hop in and it doesnt matter how full it is. The most I have seen in one with me was 22 which is about like putting 22 people in our Ryans 4 runner. I always get crammed between two large women who smell like fish and I cant even breathe. Then they blast their music up extremely loud with tons of bass so you cant here the person next to you and you just drive around. Its hilarious! So we take those every once in a while when we need to travel far but for the most part we walk, we walk tons everyday and our area is up on a steep hill so its a lot like hiking in the mountains everyday all day, its good for me though.

> So once again I forgot to bring my address with me to send you guys. Its really simple but I always forget it but its the one that you can send letters and packages to and I dont think it takes that long for them to get here. In my stuff I sent home is my call packet and it might be in there, its just the mission home address and all it is is like a PO Box number. I think 420 and then Praia, Santiago, Cabo Verde so if you see anything like that thats what it is. If you havent found it by next week I will make sure to have it by next and I am planning on sending some letters and stuff today. I would love some letters though and maybe even a package! So yeah just try if you can.

First Week in Praia

Hey everyone hows it going? Things are going good here and I guess Im adjusting pretty well cause I see all sorts of crazy things and dont even think twice about them anymore. I see things like pigs walking around on peoples huts, chickens all over the streets, goats chasing the stray dogs around, and dogs that are so gross that you can hardly even tell they are dogs, they just have blood and flies all over them, I donºt even see how they are alive. Praia also has music blasted up always and lots of american music, I seriously here more american music here than you guys do there, its always a party here with people drinking and blasting up their music in the streets, even the old people! There is a huge river that goes down along the street by us but its dry and you cant even see the ground cause it has piles of trash. We got tons of rain though for 2 days so everything was flooding, I got soaked but it was a good break from the heat. >

> It is also way to hot here!!! I guess it says it is about 80 but with humidity and the direct sun all day it feels so much worse than that! I would give anthing for some cold weather! I havent stopped sweating since I arrived here, even when we are in our apartment. We have two fans in our apartment and one of them I put write next to my face whenever we are studying or sleeping. We also only get running water for part of the morning every other day. Its all good though, I am adjusting. >

> So the people are pretty cool here, most of them are super outgoing to me and love to talk with me, but some just like to speak Creole so they make fun of me when I cant. The kids will run up to me too and just give me five or ask me to do magic or something like that (I guess because Im white they think I can do magic or something cause it happens ten times a day). They are really funny though, there are some people that I always look forward to teaching. We teach so many lessons, our area is really good for that! The area authority for our area from portugual in the first quorom of the 70 (Who I met in Lisboa on the plane and talked to for a while) made it a goal to teach 21 lessons here per week and this week me and Elder Sequeira taught 32 and most of them we teach with members which is really good. We also have 4 investigators with baptism dates. The church is doing good here but there are also tons of inactives so we work with them a ton. There are also some really faithful members and they work really hard so that the church can grow! I love going to church here cause even though its a lot smaller than what we have, it isnt any different and the spirit is still the same. My companion is a native and he makes sure we work really hard because he wants the church to grow here so bad! He is always asking about church in America and about all of our temples and everything. The people here are awesome and I love working with them!

Saying his goodbyes for 2 yrs!!

Kevin saying his goodbyes to the family!!

Kevin & his best friend, Cooper

Kevin with the proud parents!!Tanya, Eric, Bradon, Kailee, with Kevin!
Ryan, Jalyn, Corbin, Baby Landon (belly) with Kevin!

Shane & Ciara, with Kevin!

Arica, Bo, Trevan, & Kevin!!

Ashley, Cooper, Alyssa & Kevin!

Welcome

Hey everyone, this is Kevin's Sister-in-law, Ciara! I am setting up a blog so everyone can read Kevin's e-mails home! I saw this idea from a friend! He is going to try to write something every week for me to put up on this blog so he can keep everyone up to date! Myself and other family will get on to post pictures or any funny stories that he may share! For those of you that do not know, Kevin was called to serve the Cape Verde Praia Mission, Portuguese speaking! He left on July 15th for the MTC in Provo, and flew out to Cape Verde on Sept 17th! I will also be sending him everyone's comments or questions in my weekly e-mail to Kevin! I hope this helps a little for everyone to be able to keep up with whats going on with Elder Luke!