Ward Conference

Yeah I saw the new racket in the pictures and the video! Looks like a good one to me lol! But that is good that they are working well together as a team! By the time he is a senior he will be kicking everyone´s butts. And lots of camps helps too. He will be better than me for sure. Just get ready for state! Lol I personally love those model homes over there in houston. lol I love looking at fancy houses and imagining living there one day. I bet you guys sure did have a blast as well. Those seem to be your kinds of things. Haha Trevor and John are so cute (especially John´s evil laugh lol) and intelligent! So this week was great, started amazingly and finished just as well. I got your package that you sent on tuesday after our district meeting! I absolutely loved it. It was perfect. I finished the JohnByTheWay book, am in the middle of the blue one about the prophets, and am in the middle of the one about the temple. Man that one has some deep deep doctrine lol. My mindjust gets blown and blown and blown with each passing page. I am learning a whole bunch! Thanks so much! My comp and I were twins yesterday for ward conference with those two ties that you sent. The ward liked it too! I will send the photos later. Speaking of photos thanks! Those were awesome! And for the extra financial help lol. Lots of candy too lol. I have been meaning to tell you guys for like the past two months now... You would not believe hoe much Elder Worsley weighs now lol. I weigh 146.6 pounds now.... I think AJ and I switched weights lol. I am making my challenge easier for dad to weigh less than me by the time I get home. Btw dad you are looking nice and slim in your pictures! Good job! Lol but now I am getting fat for the first time in my life. How strange... lol This week we got 9 people to come to church with us! And we have the potential of baptizing 6 this saturday between conference sessions. So I am pretty excited for this coming weeks work. Also two of our investigators are getting married saturday morning before the first session so I am pumped for that too. My first wedding in my life! Cool! Lol But that is pretty much it for me. I hope you guys have a wonderful week, enjoy western weekend, and the preparation for dogwood, and conference! I love you guys!

5 month mark!

Yeah 3 days ago I hit the 5 month mark! and I am past 150 days as well! Time surely does fly on the mission. The language sure is an issue of the past. The only thing that is difficult with the language is speaking for long durations of time and when people speak new words. But it is all good, people can explain what the word means and then it is all good. But everyone tells me that I am kicking some older American´s tails in Portuguese. Maybe I do speak better than I give myself credit. AJ is number 1???? Sweet!!! I mean, who had any doubts really?... Our family is a bunch of geniusses, and then there is me lol. But lol that is so awesome. And good for AJ quiting track, that was something I never had the guts to do. Everyone would have been mad at me haha. But yeah missing two days a week sure is hard. You have to be extra on top of the ball or else you will fall in a pit of make up work in which you cannot escape. Lol especially for me with economics senior year lol. Remember that? ha ha... Did AJ at least do well in the track meet? I saw that picture of the racket. All you need to do is restring the raquet and put a new strip of gromets on the head and you are ready to go again. Not a big deal. But the only way to do that to a raquet is if you hit it on the ground a lot, and I mean a loooot. I guess that is why coach Word was mad at him for smacking the ground huh? AJ got second place? That is pretty good! I saw that Kountze was there. They are generally pretty good. Natalie is going on a mission?? Wow! That is pretty sweet! A nice warm tropic mission! She probably will be speaking english huh? Or spanish? But that is still way cool. She will get home from her mission shortly after I will. So this week was interesting. We had PDAY downtown with all the elders and played some soccer, basketball, and American Football. That was really fun. Especially teaching them how to play football and basketball. We had my english class on Tuesday, Thursday we had a zone conference with President Pereira and Serranos Spanish class, Friday I had my first ever interview with President Pereira, Saturday we had a family home evening in our investigators house where we cooked them dinner, burritos, and played a brazilian card game called Truco. And sunday we had 7 investigators go to church with us. But there were two real highlights of the week. In my interview with President Pereira he told me that I have a possibility of being a trainer next transfer because I am working really well and he knows I am in the toughest area of the mission and have baptized more than post APs and Zone Leaders that have passed through. But for sure he said that I would be the senior companion next transfer. So I have been working extra hard to perfect everything to be ready for my first leadership position. Wahoo! But you cannot progress if you do not leave your comfort zone. And it is basically 100% out of my comfort zone speaking to people in Portuguese. But I am learning to just live with it and as my Kolbe said I am a person with the ability to adgust so I will be alright. I am really excited to see what I can accomplish as a leader in the mission. The second big news is that our investigator called to tell us that she and her husband got all the paper work done to be married on the 1st of April. The 1st is the second to last day of the transfer too so it was really close to a loss of 1 or 2 baptisms. But it will be awesome. We get to go witness her wedding. A wedding, general conference, and a baptism all in the same day! Sweet! But that is about it for me this week lol. I am doing a lot of cooking now with my companion too lol. I made him pancakes this morning as well lol. But yeah I am doing well. I hope you guys have another great week and that things settled down at work for you guys. I love you all! German Pancakes Stroganoff: Our investigator went and got registered to be married and made us dinner to celebrate.

Another week in Brazil

Yeah my hair is bleaching here in this hot Brazilian summer sun haha. And of course I have my famous Brazilian tan! I think you would be proud of it lol!!!! You would love the sun here. It will make you tan real quick. lol Congrats on the now 9 baptisms you guys have had here recently. That is pretty impressive! Lol yeah the burritos were pretty dry without a sauce so we made some fry sauce to put inside our burritos lol, it is quick, simple, and delicious. :) The baptism this week was truly was wonderful. The parents were baptized six years ago but had been in active after three years of membership and the children were unable to be baptized. We found them tracting reactivated the family and baptized the two children that were not baptized. Now the family is complete and waiting for the time that they can all go to the temple to be sealed together. This is what the gospel is about. Uniting families and bringing them the everlasting joy that the gospel brings. We are working on marrying our other investigator at the moment. Hopefully all goes well with that so she can get baptized before the end of transfers here in three weeks. She is basically a member already. In 2 Nephi of The BOM, Chapter 15 of The Gospel Principles Book, and is now starting The Doctrine and Covenants. Wow, not your average find no lol. She is wonderful. Our service project we had was really fun. The woman´s house was in this massive jungle and with 15 Brazilian Tim Durrs we managed to clear the forest with our machetes and hoes. Now her house looks much better and she actually has some yard to enjoy some sunlight. It was rather rigorous but the reward of seeing the lady´s smile was worth all the while. My week was good, really exhausting, but really good. It is hard work getting people to church and to the baptisimal font, but the joy that we get and the people get is priceless. A mission truly is a place that fosters joy. There is no other place I would rather be than here serving The Lord and the people. I hope you guys have another good week. I love you guys!!!

Baptisms!

service project: Clearing the Brazilian jungle

Burritos

Today I cooked my companion burritos. They don't have burritos here in Brasil. Also Serrano, my companion, played a chileno song for us.

Working Hard!

A 2-7 come back win is not an easy feat for sure. The emotional stress is immense. Lots of mental confidence and work involved. That is really good for him. Who did he play from jasper? the only one from jasper that I can remember is that cade kid that beat me 6-4 4-6 6-3. If Aj got beat by him with that score, that is really good. Really good. Lol Aj is having problems with hitting his racket on the ground? haha it will pass I think. Everyone goes through that phase a little, some more than others. But yeah singles is really frustrating. I know the feeling lol. I am sure his raquet is not broken. It may be a little scratched on the head but it will work fine. But one thing about the raquet that he is using is that it is built as a training raquet. He can use my raquets. They are the same type of raquet but much better. I will be sure to find some good rocks for Tim lol. If I get transfered to a branch it will be much easier. Here in big city Londrina we are without rocks. But I have been looking for him. I also still have Jimbo´s coin with me in my wallet. Thanks for the package! I am sure all will go well with it. It is not as bad here as everyone says. Pretty safe. This week we found some super stellar people. The serrano family, what a coincidence because my companion´s name is serrano, and a young mother named Ingredge. The mother and father of the serrano family were baptized seven years ago went to church for three years and went inactive. The children were never baptized. We found some information about them in the area book and made a visit. the next day we had lunch with the stake president and he told us that he had tried to reactivate the serrano family as high preist group leader, bishop, and stake president without success, even bringing with him two seventies. Wow. So this situation just got a bit harder. No matter, everyone deserves multiple chances. So we continues to work with them and we got the family to come to church with us on sunday! Boy was the ward happy and the stake president shocked lol. But the ward could not stop talking to us about how great of a job we had done. We definitely won the ward over two fold. We will baptize the two kids this sunday if all goes well according to plan. With Ingredge we had an amazing experience as well. we were walking to another appointment when we passed her house and felt something telling us both to talk with her. We turned around and did a contact asking to return to her house the next day. she said yeah that would be great. Then we asked if we could share a message with her in that moment and she replied with the same response. Yeah that´s be great. We taught the first lesson and invited her to read the book of mormon and pray to know of its truth. we also gave her the plan of salvation pamphlet because she told us she was lacking faith due to the recent death of her mother. we set up a follow up meeting with her the next day, but where unable to make it. We retruned to her house two days later and she told us that she was wating for us all day because she had questions. We asked her if she had read the book of mormon and she said she had. I asked her how she felt and she said she felt as if she were far from home and someone was begging for her to return. A feeling of unquenchable thirst of knowledge, a feeling of peace and happiness. Woah... Talk about the holy ghost going to town with this lady. we taught another great lesson and invited her to church and she went. After church we passed by again and she was ready for us with bible and book of mormon out and the two pamphlets, and the principles of the gospel book. She was reading out of the principles of the gospel book whilst waiting. She had finished reading the pamphlets, read a few chapters of the book of mormon, and asked about the Doctrine and Covenants. Wow. No one ever asks about that. So we arranged to get her a triple. Talk about a golden find. We then taught her the word of wisdom and got her to quit smoking and we took her cigarrettes from her. Now all she has to do is get married legally and go to church one more time. She wants to get married so hopefully we will be having a wedding here in 2 weeks and a sequential baptism. Wahoo!! We are working hard down here doing our best and having fun along the way. I hope you guys are going well and have another amazing week. I love you guys, Thanks for all that you do for me!

Misc Pictures