Sleep? What's That?

Dear Family,

First of all I´m sure you got my point on my last heading, but just to make sure I wanted to clarify it. I didn´t mean destiny in the sense that I was destined to be AP. More in the sense that sometimes the Lord has things in store for us that we aren´t really hoping or planning for.

As far as the last week (before transfers), it was pretty chill. Elder Smith and I went to Praia for a Zone Leaders´ Council. I got two more packages, 1 from America (through mom) and the other from Cookie. Both were very gratefully received. So I brought those back to Mindelo with me to enjoy. And then I had to bring them back to Praia because I wasn´t able to consume 20 lbs of goodies in a week. (possibly exagerating on the amount, but I can´t be sure. Those boxes were chuck full and heavy) So funny enough, those became a part of my weight problem for the flight back to Praia. Luckily I made it through without having to pay despite being way over the weight limit. Bonus!

So the week before transfers Elder Smith and I made tacos (with the tortillas and taco mix I got in the packages), ate many Ice-pops (otter-pops for you Utah types), and the night of transfers we had root beer floats with rootbeer made from concentrate stuff sent in packages. So, thanks to you my beloved family for making my last week in Mindelo a very happy one. At least as far as food goes.

Monday morning (the day of transfers), I woke up at 5:30 to finish packing and then finished off one more rootbeer float and an Ice-pop(otter-pop) before taking my flight. So breakfast really didn´t happen. As soon as I arrived in Praia I began going around town with my new companion and the old AP doing all sorts of picking up and dropping off missionaries for Transfers. I only had time to drop my bags off in my house. We did new missionary orientation and bussed around the missionaries getting ready to go home. We ate lunch in 10 minutes then passed by our house to relax for a few minutes. We had a little time to do some office work but not much. Then after the returning Elders´ Farewell Dinner with President Neves we had to take them to the houses they would stay at that night. So we were up until 11:30-ish. Rough first day.

Tuesday we woke up at the normal time but had to skip most of our personal preparation because we had to take another Elder to the Airport that morning. We bussed some other people around and then I got the chance to buy some food. Did I mention that our house didn´t have water? My comp and I went to the mission home to take showers. I spent a bit of the morning unpacking but we had to go to the office for some other things. We took the returning missionaries to the airport for their flight home at two and were finally able to take our lunch at 3:15-ish. We ate something simple and I took what time we had to continue unpacking. Then we went back to the office where we stayed until 9 something working on stuff. I haven´t been this tired in a while.

Wednesday was more normal. I was able to finish unpacking and arranging my stuff, we did some office stuff in the morning, but then had our District Meeting like normal. And in the afternoon we taught people, like a missionary should. Thursday was 100% normal. Just teaching and stuff. Today is P-day. Yay!

So what it looks like is my schedule will normalize here for about a week and a half or so before we go into a frantic race to do all the last minute preparations for the new mission president who gets here the 28th. Then as soon as the new Mission President gets here, I lose all normalcy in any sense of the word. We will be travelling all over the mission and helping our new President learn about Cape Verde and the state of the mission, etc.

Oh, and my new companion is a Brazilian. His name is Elder Moreira. He´s a really funny guy. His family is all members but his parents have been inactive for a while. They didn´t want him to serve a mission but here he is. It´s been a good start between us two so far so I have high hopes for our companionship.

So, thanks for all your love, support, and prayers. I need them.

Elder Canute