Hey Family,
This last week was crazy.  It felt really long as well.  Hopefully this week will be better.  The members really want to help us out which is a huge plus.  I´m in Amaralina and thats the name of the church building.  Its a stake center. 
Today they had a drug raid here.  It was crazy they had the main street shut down and they black police were out.  They only call in the black police when they are going to kill someone.  They shoot first then ask question.  They all had out their fully automatic machine guns.  It was a little intense. 
This past week I´ve had some messed up food as well.  I ate cow insides twice...like the intestines and stuff, its probably good i don´t know what it all is.  Its not very good and it looks worse!  But for some reason they like that stuff here.  Hopefully its not a trend.  Yesterday for lunch we had lasagna!  It was so good.  It made me almost feel like i was in America.  The members are a lot better off in this area than my last so the lunches have been a lot better.  Our investigator gave us the cow stuff.  I think its actually a treat here.  Oh well.
So the view from our apartment is awesome.  We see the ocean and the breeze comes in all the time.  That is a plus, but other than that the apartment is a piece.  Nothing really works well and we don´t always have water and the bathroom smells horible all the time.  Oh well its an experience, one i´d rather not have though. 
I totally agree with you that baptism don´t measure how good of a missionary you were.  My companion and I are both on the same page with that.  We don´t wan to baptise anyone unless they are ready and are likely to stay active in the church.  Its useless to baptise and then 3 weeks later they are inactive.  You did a dis-service to them if that happens.  And we were talking to the members here and they were talking about baptising kids and how bad it is.  We were like we aren´t looking to baptise kids.  Right now we have 2 kids that could be baptised this week but they have parents and family that are members or investigators right now.  So they will stay active if their ties to the church do. 
Oh we are also starting up a english class.  I´m excited for that.  It will be good.  A lot of the people in the ward want to learn more english and with 2 Americans what better time.  We are also going to invite investigators and other people and hopefully it will be a good oportunity to get lessons. 
Well I´m still alive.  The days this week felt like they took forever but looking back now it seemed to go fast.  Hopefully we will get things running here like we did in Engenho Vehlo.  I hope all is well in Moscow and that it gets warmer for you. 

Love Garrett