MANDINGAS!!!

Dear Family,

This past week has been a good beginning of the month of March. Which is funny that I should say that because all of a sudden I can't think of anything to write. So I guess I should explain the pictures.

The first one is a group shot of soccer this morning. Nothing too special.

The other ones are pictures of Mandingas. Every year in Cape Verde there is a festival called Carnaval. I think it originated in Brazil, which also has very large Carnaval celebrations. In fact, there may be similar things throughout Europe, but I can't say for positive. What I can say is that here in Cape Verde Carnaval is basically just a massive country wide Mardi Gras. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be celebrating, but there are all sorts of parties, parades, activities and such. Unfortunately for us, Cape Verde's Carnaval celebrations are largest here in Mindelo. And more specificially in my area. Yesterday during our proselyting we spent quite a bit of time avoiding parades and partyers and even ended up going through quite a bit of it on the way to our appointmens, all of which fell through. And Carnaval is actually on Tuesday. So I figure it will only get worse until then. But basically there are people that get together and dress up all tribal like and cover themselves in oil and go around in groups beating drums and stuff. These are called Mandingas. We ran into a couple of groups of those yesterday. The picture with 2 we took last night as we and they were headed home. The picture of just one we go a few weeks ago. Oh yea, and the Mandingas have been getting together once a week for the past several weeks in preparation for Carnaval. It's a pretty big deal. Tomorrow we're going to be staying in our house all day. Joy.

In other news I'm alive and well. Dang I really don't have anything else to say. Sorry.

Elder Peterson