16 Dec. 2013

Thanks for the recipes and the pictures. They were awesome! Hopefully we get a chance this week to try and make the cookies. This week will be super busy for us, but it will be awesome! Tomorrow we need to get up at 4 am to catch a bus to the mission Christmas Conference which is in Alvorada which is quite a distance from us. Found out that apparently i won´t be able to play the piano for it b/c they decided to change the hymn from Joy to the World to Angels we have heard on high and i don´t have time to practice up for it.  If I have time to touch a piano today, maybe but I really don´t know. It will still be awesome anyway. Wednesday my zone gets to go to the temple which is in Ponte Negra, which isn´t as far, but its still a bit of a bus ride, especially with this bus system. The rest of the week will be pretty normal but will still be really exciting.

  This past week has also been a little crazy. We had district meeting this past Tuesday which was awesome, for the first time we didn´t have to travel to it because we decided to have it at our chapel. Our district has only 4 people but it is still pretty awesome. Wednesday was a baptism for the 2 girls I wrote about last week. That was interesting to say the least. We showed up at their house with a determination to get them baptized.  One of the girls came out and said that she didn´t want to be baptized, but we quickly talked to her and explained how important baptism is for us and she changed her mind.  We were planning our walking while they got a ride with the YW President but the YW President told us that she couldn´t do it when we had called earlier that day so we were going to just walk everyone to the chapel, which is not that far, but its still a good distance. However, the same girl said that she didn´t want to walk, so after some intense negotiations we called a taxi and got them to the chapel. We were not taking no for an answer!  Got to the chapel to discover that had drained the font and it was 7:30 at night. The YW presidency met us at the chapel and talked the girls while we filled the font. Generally it takes about 1hr-1:30hr b/c its a lot of water and its really slow, but we opened the water as fast as would come out, hooked up a hose to help it fill, and had a bucket brigade going from three different bathrooms in the chapel to get this font filled. Got it filled in about 30min and notified the girls that it was time to change into baptismal clothes. We asked them who they wanted to baptize them and they chose me so I quickly got changed into baptismal clothes and we waited for them to get changed, but when they emerged only one had on baptismal clothes. You can guess which didn´t. We asked her why and she said she wanted to watch her sister get baptized first and then get changed. We just rolled with it, got pictures and got the baptism rolling. The first girl was baptized and then the other went and got changed, got her baptized, with no more problems. They weren´t able to get to church this Sunday b/c one was sick and the other had to work so hopefully this Sunday we can confirm them without anymore more problems. Thursday was normal, no drama which was nice. Friday was the same, nothing of major import happened, but Saturday was different. Saturday we were going to sing at the temple with a bunch of other choirs and we needed to be there at 6pm and it would start at 7pm.  Our ride was going to pick us and the ZLs up and take us to the temple. The ZLs were going to be here doing baptismal interviews for us. Morning was normal, just going around warning our investigators that we would be swinging by later that day with the Zone Leaders to do interviews. We were expecting the ZLs at about 3:00-3:30 but that time rolled around and they stilled weren´t here . Decided to go grab so dinner b/c we wouldn´t have a chance later that day and the ZLs called and told us that they were at the bus terminal waiting for the bus to get to our area. Anyway, as were finishing up dinner our ride called and told us that turns out he couldn´t take the ZLs as well b/c his parents would be in the car as well. Called the ZLs and told them not to catch the bus and apparently right after we called the bus rolled on by(they´d been waiting for an hour).  Ran to the house to drop some stuff off and we´d just left when our ride comes hurtling down the street and picks us up and whisks us to the temple. The concert went great. We had a missionary choir of about 100-150 missionaries from Zona Manaus singing an arrangement of Called to Serve and Joy to the World in 3 different languages (Portuguese, English and Spanish). Pretty awesome. Weren´t able to get a ride back so took the bus and staggered back home at about 10-10:30pm.  Sunday was normal, had the ward primary program and that was really cool to see but a little weird to hear the songs sung in Portuguese. This week has been a little crazy.

I´m a little jealous that you all have snow! Its super hot here and we haven´t had a lot of rain. Thanks for all the pictures! We´re going to be skyping. What time would be good to skype you guys. I don´t know where exactly we are going to be skyping, but if you see a random brazilian name pop up its probably me! Have a great week! I miss you all! Feliz Natal!

Love Elder Battraw

9 Dec. 2013

Thanks for the email!  Thats exciting for Zach to be able to have his first concert! I remember my first concert still! That was a long time ago back in 6th grade!  Do you know why Matt wants me to be a firefighter?  I guess I will have to change careers just to suit Matt.  Thanks for all the messages from everybody.  Its always cool to hear my different people whats going on at home. Ugh, these keyboards are not easy to type with. The keyboards here have to have all the accents for Portuguese so its a bit difficult to type on.  But it works.  We don´t have any snow here. None at all. We actually haven´t been getting too much rain either. Its a bit weird b/c usually we get rain at least every day or every other day.  Buts its been really dry and hot.  Lots of humidity though too.

  This week has been interesting. Tuesday, first district meeting of the transfer. It was awesome as usual.  My district didn´t change much with the transfers. Only one person left and one person came in. They´re all awesome missionaries though.  Wednesday was a baptism.  His name is Saimon, which is Simon in English only with portuguese spelling. That was a lot of fun. We don´t have cars or bikes here so we have to walk our investigators down to the chapel when we want to get them to church. Its about 1-1 1/2 miles down to the chapel from where he was living so a bit of  a walk. Thursday was normal, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Went and visited with our investigators and found a new family for us to be able to teach. They seem to be pretty excited about the gospel! Friday we had a service project which we gathering up old roof tiles and washing and painting them and getting them ready to be used. Everything here is reused if possible. If its broken, its thrown away usually, but otherwise its cleaned up, new coat of paint and reused. There is not a lot of new things here. Its kinda of funny b/c lots of people here have American brand clothing with messages in english and don´t understand what its saying.  Saturday, we had a baptism scheduled so we did exchanges with the zone leaders to be able to get interviews done in both of our areas.  Elder Lima is a new ZL here in our zone and he was pretty cool. We only had two people to do interviews with, two sisters. We got one done and she was set to go so I made all the apropiate calls to set up the baptism. We came back later that day to do the other and the other sister was actually hiding from us when we got there so you can imagine how that interview went. We called my companion afterwards b/c they wanted to talk with him and him talked with them and they both came back saying they wanted to be baptized Sunday after church. We said okay.  Traded back companions later that night. Sunday we showed up at their house to pick them up for church b/c their baptism was right after church and they  didn´t want to go. Eventually got them to go to church but we had to call a taxi to get there in time. After church we got all the preparations and ward ready for their baptism but when they got their baptismal clothing they talked to the YW President and we found out that we couldn´t baptize them b/c of .......a monthly problem and we needed to wait till Wednesday. So hopefully Wednesday we´ll be able to baptize them.  Other than that, our week has been pretty normal. I found out that I am playing Joy to the World for the Christmas conference for the mission this next Tuesday so I need to practice a lot this week!

  This week looks like it will be pretty normal, but knowing Brasil it will always throw a surprise at you! Today for p day we met up as a zone and played basketball. That was fun being able to be with all the other elders!  I haven´t recieved any of the packages yet, but hopefully I´ll get one before Christmas or right after Christmas before New Years. My companion got a package from his home in João Pessoa in Brasil and so I have been trying a whole bunch of different sweet from there! Some of it like doritos is the same or only a tiny bit different and some of it is very different. One thing he has is candy made from milk that looks like carmels. Pretty good. Anyway. Thanks for the email and all the messages from everybody! I miss all of you!

Love

Ben/Elder Battraw

P.S Can you send the recipes for chocolate chip cookies or anything else that we normally have at home. My companion and I want to give it a try cooking them here!

2 Dec. 2013

Thanks for the email and pictures!  Thanksgiving here was not really any different than a normal day. We didn´t have a lot of money left over b/c it was getting toward the end of the 2 weeks, but I was resolute on having something to have for Thanksgiving so I walked into the nearest bakery at 9:00pm and payed for some pão doce, which translates to sweet bread, or the brazilian equivalent of donuts.  Not really donuts.  It is more like a sweet roll with a bit of jam and coconut put on top. Not the best thing in the world, but still pretty good.  I will try to add pictures to the email, some of the bread is actually bread with cheese in the middle.  So my breakfast feast on Thanksgiving was pão doce with grape juice and cookies. Really healthy, but it was as close as we could get. We actually had pizza earlier that week as we celebrated my 4 month mark and my companions 7 month mark. Partied for all of 15 minutes and then had to get ready for bed#Life of a missionary.

  Anyway my week was pretty good. Spent Tuesday and the beginning of Wednesday in another area with one of the ZLs. Had District meeting as well. Pretty awesome.  Manaus is a little strange b/c you can be standing in the middle of a neighborhood which has absolutely nothing material wise, walk down the street and be in comparably rich houses. Kinda of random to say the least. We spend a lot more time in the poorer areas working b/c people are much more receptive to the gospel there. Well, got back Wednesday and had a baptism that night and also found out that apparently my companion had baptized someone else the night before with the other ZL.  Thursday was spent going around and trying to find more people to teach and we had a meeting with our ward mission leader. We´re trying to get the ward more involved with our new converts b/c a lot of the time, we will baptize someone and they will come to church a few times and then drop off the face of the earth so we are trying to get the ward more involved to keep them at church.  Friday, was pretty normal till we get a phone call towards the end of the day asking if we could come to another area to do a baptismal interview so we headed out there.  To get into their area though without having to do a huge loop around houses and buildings because their area is down at the base of a small cliff/hill and the roads are all at the top and the only ones that descend down there were pretty far away, we had to navigate this slippery little path in the middle of a patch of jungle which is at a 35-45 degree decline. We both fell, but only once.  Interview as it turns out, fell through, but it was still fun. Saturday had another baptism.  This one was special b/c we baptize really only kids, no one else wants to listen to us and/or change their lives to be in harmony with the gospel and the families don´t usually care to much about them being baptized. But this one, the family of nonmembers rallied around the kid, Anderson, and helped him to be baptized. His mom came with him to church yesterday as well to see him confirmed and really liked it so we are prepping to teach her. Another family we baptized two of the kids and now the mom is also interested in the gospel! Its truly amazing at times. Sunday was exciting b/c we had Anderson and one other person we´ve been waiting for awhile got confirmed and then we get a phone call that we need to return to the other area now to do an interview for a baptism, so we hopped on a bus and headed on out there and did it and got back to our area. Got transfer calls yesterday as well. Staying with my companion in Canaranas. Really happy about that b/c this area is pretty awesome.   Awesome week!

  Thanksgiving sounds like it was a lot of fun. Really weird not to celebrate in the normal way. Thanks for the packages, i don´t know when they will get here, but hopefully quickly!  I heard that putting a tracking number on them as well helps out b/c the secretaries here pick up the packages and they can track it if they have the number and help make sure it doesn´t get lost in the mail.  I am actually keeping a running list of all the films that I am missing while I am on my mission so when I get back, you can expect a two week long film festival!  Hopefully on Christmas we will be able to Skype.  We are trying to find a member with all the equipment for skyping right now. What is your skype name and when would be the best time to call?  Hopefully we will be able to get it working. I´ll try to send all the pictures! Thanks so much and I miss you all!

Love Ben/Elder Battraw

25 Nov. 2013

Thanks for the email!  The best way for packages would just be to use the advice I had previously talked about with the picture of Christ and writing religious materials on the box. The address with Rua Loris Cordivill is the address it needs to be sent to.  Money, yeah I would just send it to you and put it to my account. The city/town/suburb where I am right now has actually quite a few places that accept credit cards b/c they all have this little handheld credit card machines so I can actually use it. I haven´t had to use my card too much, mostly just for food when our mission funds run low b/c we always have to pay for the bus and water and gas. The machine generally refunds it back to us but we don´t know when we get refunded so it makes the weeks a little interesting. Did you find the memory card in the box? Its has all the pictures from Boise and the MTC.  Your new job sounds so much better than the last. Hopefully it stays that way. Thanks for the pictures! Its always cool to see whats going on at home. I´ve been having a little bit of trouble with keeping track with whats been going on at home. I spent all this last week thinking that Thanksgiving was this last Thursday until Saturday when one of the Zone Leaders corrected me. Oh well, I´ll just have to find some way of celebrating it this Thursday. Pizza sounds good.  Interesting fact about Brazilian pizza, they don´t really use tomato sauce at all, and we tried a restaurant pizza this past week and I ordered the Italian pizza personal size. Cost 3.00 reals so about 1.50. When it came out it was about the size of a large cookie so maybe 4 inches in diameter and had a slice of tomato sitting in the middle with two olives sitting on either side.  Interesting to say the least. Would have taken a picture but I don´t carry my camera with me b/c its too dangerous to carry it at all times.

  This week has been a bit chaotic. Monday, p day. Tuesday we had district meeting which was great as usual.  Got completely soaked by the rain.  Rain here appears out of nowhere and is pretty sporadic at times. Wednesday, completely soaked by the rain.  Wednesday we were supposed to have a baptism for 2-3 people, but they all bailed at the last minute or weren´t home so a bit frustrating. Thursday we had exchanges so I spent the day with Elder Lessa, in our area working. Its always interesting to see how other missionaries operate.Friday we traded back and got completely soaked again (noticing a trend?). Saturday was especially frustrating. The ZLs came and did baptismal interviews for 6 people that were supposed to be baptized that night and every single one fell through either b/c they weren´t home or their parents changed their mind at the last moment and decided to not let them be baptized. Quite frustrating. We met one person though that wanted to be baptized so Sunday we planned on having them baptized after church.  Sunday came and we get to the chapel and check on the font and guess what the font is not working. Half of the chapel doesn´t have water, but the other half does.  The bishop recommends that we go to another chapel (which there are actually quite a few here) so after church, we get a ride with some members and ride over to another chapel and have a baptismal service.  That was pretty cool. But we are all exhausted so I´ve been looking forward to pday for a little while. This has been an interesting week to say the least. We have transfers coming up this next week so I have a possibility of leaving this area, which I don´t really want to. I also have my 4 month mark this Saturday! Exciting! Weird to think that I´ve been out for four months. Feels like forever ago that I left, but it also feels like yesterday. Time is weird on a mission. I do know Daniel Felipe D'Oliver, he is a member that lives near us. He is prepping for a mission as well and asked to see the video of when I got my call and I told him it was on your page. Did he send you a message as well? He mentioned sending you the request and perhaps a message as well. But yeah I know him. Hes pretty cool.

Thanks for writing. I miss all of you too! Its going to be a little weird not having Thanksgiving and watching the Macys Day parade. I´ll try to send you pictures as well. My companion has a bunch of pictures of our baptisms that I´ll try to steal from him. Thanks so much and I miss all of you!

Love Elder Battraw

P.S. Here are some pictures that I do have.  First a baptism . Daniel is acutally in this picture. The only other person as tall as me. The second, somebody we found in our bathroom. Picture doesn´t really convey how big it was!

18 Nov. 2013

Thanks! Thats exciting that you start your new job tomorrow!  Here its been pretty busy. Weather hasn´t been helping that much at all either.  Almost every day without fail we will get rain in one form or another.   Sometimes it just drizzles for all day, and at other times it will pour out rain for about 15-20minutes and completely soak us. I´ve gotten to keeping my umbrella one me at all times. Storms come up really quickly as well. We can walk into an appointment and walk out 20 minutes later and see storm cloud coming our direction. You can tell when its going to rain as well, b/c the clouds are very black.  It makes life interesting.  I´m so glad I have two pairs of shoes b/c they usually get soaked so I have a day or two to let them dry out before I have to wear them again. My companion only has one so life is a little interesting for him at times.  We´ve had some pretty bad storms but nothing yet on that scale where things are getting damaged by the storms.  The houses here are all brick and usually don´t have any glass so things don´t usually get broken from the storms.

  This week we´ve had two baptisms, but we´ve managed to get some of our investigators to church to get confirmed so we´ve had four people confirmed. Pretty exciting. One of the baptisms this week was a bit of an adventure. We´d just gotten out of lunch so it was about 1pm and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do when we came across a groups from the cidadão.  Several of the boys had already been baptized and actually they were some of the confirmations this week, but we started talking to them and one of them came up to us and said that he wanted to be baptized as well, but he was leaving soon. So we called the bishop up really quick with our phone that chooses when it wants to work and got permission to confirm him as well. We also called on of the young men who is prepping for a mission to help us out. We got the kid over to the church, gave the family and him a quick tour while we waited for the font to fill, had a quick baptismal service and confirmed him. Total time, 4 hours. Its blows my mind how quickly things can happen here. Another cool experience. So this acutally happened later that night, we got back to apartment and we beginning to get ready to go to bed. I had just gotten out of the bathroom and my companion got in to take a shower (I hadn´t taken one yet either) and he turned on the shower and nothing  came out. We thought the knob was broken so we ran to the apartment next door to get a screw driver to see if we could figure out what was wrong. Well, we found out the person above us didn´t have water, but we had some running water and we thought it was just the knob. Spent some time trying to figure it out when we turned on the tap nearby and guess what, we didn´t have a water either.  We went next door to see if they had water and it turns that they didn´t have much, but had some. We got to talking to the girl thats living there and she wants to hear more about the gospel! Its kinda of cool that b/c we didn´t have water, we managed to get into contact with her and hopefully she will hear all the discussions and get baptized!  The water came back sometime the next day  so we had to use buckets full out of frigid water for our showers.  

  Things have been pretty good here. When did brother newill last write, b/c I haven´t gotten anything recently?  My favorite scripture would have to be helaman 5:12.  Good for Zach! Thats awesome!  Its weird to think that there is only 2 more weeks in this transfer and then I have the possibility of leaving Canaranas, but I probably won´t.I hit my 4 month mark on the 30th as well so super excited as well! We have district meeting this upcoming week as well so that is something to look for ward to and we have a baptism this Wednesday that I will sure to tell you about! Thanks for writing! I miss you all!

Love 

Ben

P.S. Did a box ever arrive with a suit, towel and other assorted things from Boise? It has my memory card from the MTC with all of my pictures, but I had to trust that my companion would be able to send it off b/c I didn´t have time.Thanks!

11 Nov. 2013

Thanks for the email! I am pretty jealous that you all got to go to Arizona and I wasn´t able to. But I´m in Brazil so I´m kinda okay with it. This week has been pretty busy.  Monday, cleaned the house and made it look like people could actually live there, that was the big highlight of that day. We spent this morning as well get it looking all nice.  I spent Wednesday at district meeting at the stake center, which is about 20 minutes away by bus. That was pretty cool. There is only 4 of us in our district including me, so really small district, but its still pretty awesome. My portuguese is getting better and better. I could understand a good portion of it. Still a lot of room to improve though. I don´t really have trouble following the general flow of a conversation, but when asked specific questions, I have trouble understanding b/c every word that you hear matters in the meaning of the question in Portuguese. Not a lot of filler words like English. After district meeting, I went on exchanges with another missionary in another area for a day, so I stayed the night there. Pretty cool to see another part of Manaus. Life is so different here. I´ve come to find that Brazilian ice cream is better in some ways than American.  Brazilian markets are pretty cool to. If you can´t find something in one store, chances are that you can walk down the street and there is another store that sells the exact same thing at a different price. Not like grocery stores where you have to travel a bit of a distance to get to it. Restaurants here are pretty cool too. There are restaurants everywhere, including randomly in the middle of the neighborhood, so you don´t have to walk far to get there. Most of the time they are run by the people living there, so it doubles as a house, but you can just walk up and order some food without having to walk very far. Some members told me and showed me that there is a pizza hut in Manaus, but I haven´t had any yet.  I don´t know if  I will, it is probably really expensive. Everything that is american here is very expensive. What costs about 2 reals for the american version is usually 6-7 reals. But its all good. Thursday I returned to my area and we had a baptism that night as well. Tuesday we did as well along with Saturday. Total baptisms for this week is 4. The people here are so willing to listen to the gospel it is amazing.  We are always teaching somebody or finding new people to teach.  Baptisms here happen so fast.  We usually start planning for  one 3 days in advance, but most of it happens the day of. Very fast.  The days here are starting to blend together. Friday night, I played piano for one of the soon to be elders in our ward. I didn´t find out till the day of though so I spent a good amount of time at the chapel beforehand practicing up for it. I only had to play accompaniment for armies of helaman, but with the amount of notice I had and time to practice, I was pretty stressed out,  but it went just fine. The meeting was supposed to start at 6:30, but it started late even by Brazilian standards.  Normally meetings will start 30-60 minutes late here. Not unusual, you just plan for it. But this started at 9:00pm, 2 and 1/2 hours late. We are supposed to be back at the house by 9:30 and it ended right at 9:30 and food was available afterward. The food was also our dinner, so we grabbed as much as we could, gulped it down and got home as fast as we could. Brazilian cake is also very good. Tastes kinda of like really sweet cornbread, but super good. Saturday was a baptism, so super busy running around making the final arrangements. Sunday we spent in church meetings. Pretty good week.

Things that I need, I don´t really have any thing that I need.  Things that I would like to have is more music if there is some way to get it down here, and maybe some american candy or snacks, but I don´t know if they would survive the trip down here. Basketball shorts would be nice as well, b/c its pretty hot. Nothing I don´t really need. I really miss though donuts and basically anything that is american and is sweet. But everything is pretty good here. Thanks! I miss of all you! Have a great week!

Love Ben/Elder Battraw

P.S.  I´ve had to use  my debit/credit card a lot lately for food and to get a new bag b/c the other one was not working out with it having to be a shoulder bag and backpacks aren´t allowed here. My mission card usually works, but I´ve had to use my debit/credit card a bunch to get food and some other things that I really didn´t need. I´m really sorry about using like that and I´m trying to stop using it except for emergencies. Just letting you know, with the cost of the bag and all of the food for the past 3 months should be about 100 dollars off of it. I´m super sorry not using it right.

4 November, 2013

Thanks for the pictures, they always make my day to see them. So this week has been pretty busy. We´ve had three baptisms this week so we´ve been running all over the place trying to get interviews in and everything. We had two people get baptized on the 1st and one this past sunday so yesterday. It always amazes me how quickly people will get baptized here. We have been going through the area book and pulled out records where people have taken the discussions and everything except for some reason not have been baptized, so we walk on over to their house and ask them if they would be baptized thsi coming friday or sunday. They usually say yes.  Its quite surprising. We have three people who were supposed to be baptized this week as well, but they backed out for some reason or another so this coming week we will be dropping by to see how they are doing.  Really busy.

This week was also my first zone conference in Manaus.  My entire zone gathered at one of the chapels and we got taught how to be better missionaries by the zone leaders. The zone leaders are pretty awesome. One of them is american so he helps me with my portuguese whenever I need help.  It was awesome, but a little tiring. I have also figured out why brazilians don´t have amusement parks. They don´t nee them at all. The buses here do the trick just fine. We have to ride the bus a lot whenever we go out of our area so I´m pretty used to it, but the first time was definitely an adventure. These buses will fly down the street filled with potholes and literally move up and down about 6 inches the entire way. It is always jostling from side to side and when you get on the bus you have to be fast b/c they don´t really wait for anybody.  Once you get on, you have to pay 2.75 reals, bu the bus is already moving so getting the money out and standing there while the bus is flying down the street always makes life interesting. 

This past week I´ve been sick from something. I´ve just had a headache and a upset stomach. No vomiting, just not feeling good. It would come and go. It started Wednesday night, so we called Sister Klein, our mission presidents wife the next morning and she recommended some medicine and I´m feeling much better. Still have some headaches, but for the most part I´m feeling fine. My feet are getting used to walking everywhere as well. We probably cover 5-10 miles everyday just going from place to place. My feet haven´t blistered, but hey have come close. Showers here are also interesting b/c the water temperature depends on how hot is outside. I figured that our shower water sit outside the house above the house and is warmed by the sun. Its closed so nothing gets into it, but if its raining all day and we don´t get much sun, water is frigid.  Speaking of rain, it rains almost every day here.  Even if its just a little bit, it rains. You get used to it, but it still makes you kinda or miserable at times. 

Had my first interview with President Klein as well this week. That went well. He speaks only Portuguese with a little english. So it makes interviews interesting, but possible. Registered with the federal police this week as well. I am now officially allowed to stay in Manaus for the duration of my visa. My visa actually expires next October so hopefully we will be able to renew it when the time comes. I hope Tara will be able to return to her mission. Being a missionary is awesome. It is hard at times, being away from home, learning a new language and culture, but its worth it. Right now I don´t need anything from America. I did get the carmels before I left, they were delicious. Anything that I might want would be another pair of basketball shorts b/c my companion keeps wearing my Fishers ones and I would prefer to keep those and any food would just be anything that is american. I don´t need anything though. Packing tips, don´t pack anything that sounds like food or anything valuable. Muffle it somehow. Don´t send big huge packages as well. When you pack it, put a picture of Christ under the tape b/c people here are superstitious and don´t want to cut a picture of christ to open the box. You could also write `Religious materials´ on the side and I´ve heard that helps as well. Thanks for the piano guys cd. Its always fun to listen to whenever we get the chance. I hope you guys have a great week and I miss you all!

Love Ben/Elder Battraw