Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh WOW! Sounds like it was a good game! I was curious about it all week lol. Well life goes on and the next adventure comes. That would be awesome if AJ got to play mixed doubles with Shelby lol, That is what i tried to do last year haha. They would get to regionals for sure. Coker and lindsey probably will go to state or at least pretty far. Sounds like you will be in for another long tennis season lol. That is pretty awesome he will get to be on two varsity teams as a freshman. Are you getting him a lettermen jacket yet? I cannot believe people are already finding our house! CRAZY! Especially from Alabama. Aubrey must be doing some personal contacting lol. She served her mission in Alabama right? haha. Oh and make sure the new house has our ping pong room! Lol just kididng, but that would be pretty awesome. Well this week has been craaaaaazy. We are now the old people and everyone is starting to say goodbye already. I think I am prepared. I know when I get to the field the learning curve will increase dramatically. Like participating in the temple, and working in the temple. I still probably only know 2% of the langugae but I can hold my own in a conversation and teach all the lessons and pray and bear testimony. Sometimes it is a little hard because the brasileros speak really fast. Women are hard to understand too because they are so dramatic lol. And a few people during proselitismo without any teeth lol. The language is really fun though and very similar to both spanish and english. The gift of tongues and interpretation thereof have been vital in my time here and I am so greatful for those things. However memorizing scriptures is a little difficult for me. The translations are not perfect so it can get confusing. However we were challenged to memorize the first two articles of faith before the next day, and by the gift of tongues, I somehow memorized the first eight in one night! I was pretty stoked, and my professors were so shocked lol. I am ready to spread the gospel and begin the next wonderful adventure in my life. Thank you guys for raising me so well and for teaching me the gospel. It has blessed my life so much, and because of that I get to share that knowledge with others. Thank you so much. I love you guys. Thanksgiving was pretty relaxed here. We had a devotional in the morning, a live broadcast from provo with elder neil L anderson, the apostle. He talked about giving thanks in all things and being optimisitic and hopefull. It was good. We had splits as well and we taught the plan of salvation and it went pretty well. My new splits companion is a district leader. His name is Elder Pereira, quite common here. Me and a Brasilian by ourselves and we go town when teaching, lol it is so fun. We also had our thanksgiving meal for lunch. Lots of turkey and mashed patatoes. Brasileros do not celebrate thanksgiving and i am sure you could understand why lol being an american holiday, but it was very special. They went all out and decorated and everything, and for dinner our dessert was an all you can eat buffet of ice cream lol. AJ would love that. Mountains and mountains of it! It was good. I also read a lot of the book of mormon. I am in the words of mormon reading about king benjamin and it is super powerful. I have a pretty good name i think lol. I cannot wait to get to the end of the book of mormon. Proselitismo went super well! I was not afraid to contact people this time, and the spirit guided me the whole time. I was only rejected twice. once because the woman could not read and the second because i think the guy just needed to see a smile and so the seed was planted. Our companionship goal was to give out all 6 of our copies of the book of momon but did not. WE GAVE OUT 10!!! It was pretty legit. Brasileros love americans lol. Our whole district wanted to give away all 30 of our copies but instead we gave out 41!!! the lords hand was definitely helping us. Oh i met this guy and he is probably like my best friend ever. He is so cool. He is going to BYU after his mission so that will be cool. His name is elder Olivira. well he changed his name to elder guindo now lol. olivera is too popular here so he changed it lol. He plays some intense soccer, ping pong, and volleyball. He is really awesome to talk to and knows a lot of english. We talk for like an hour each night and it is really cool to learn from each other. We both learn each others language and culture and what we both like to do. I hope my first companion is like him. He always asks how i am doing and is smiling and gives knuckle punches. he is just a super cool guy. He is from rio de janeiro and is serving in paraguay. Well my time is up, i hope you guys have a good week and some good adventures. I love you all! Elder Worsley.

Wow!

WOW! That sounds like a super fun week! Aj's leg thing sounds like what i did to my leg sophomore year remember? But wow a 40 yarder is pretty good Aj! I remember Cameron Yoe being really good too!! we talked about them last year when we were in the play offs. It will be a good game for sure! Did the Woodville office finally get finished? I leave for the field on the 29th. So 12 more days. Everything settled down the week, so thank you guys for your prayers. We are still killing it here lol. We have English fasts every morning and starting next week we are going to try full day language fasts every day. we have been doing the morning language fast for about 2 weeks now. It is pretty hard, but it is great to see how much of the language you actually know. It also helps with learning new words you would normally use in a sentence. So my investigators are doing pretty good. Renato is loving everything and is very willing to learn the gospel and live by its standards, and Eryksson. lol Eryksson is very interested but he we had to get him to give up coffee, pornography, and probably the hardest one, soccer on Sundays lol. It was interesting to teach keep the Sabbath day holy, because the word for Sabbath is sabado and the word for Saturday is sabado as well lol. We were also asked about why Laban was killed and why he could kill if it was a commandment. Those are just the first two of many questions that we had not been prepared for really that will come but we got everything straightened out and everyone is still on date for baptism this Sunday. I love that quote! That is so good! I will be sure to always remember that! LOL my Brazilian roommates are nuts. They always sing american songs, dance all crazy, speak in girl voices, and many other crazy things. Lol they told me and my district leader that we would get lots of baptisms because of our looks. Also again thank you for the milkshakes! I am excited for the cinnamon rolls! They are huge and look super good lol. You would not believe it but I have gained 15 pounds as of last week! lol I am a little scared to weigh myself this week. But apparently we will not be fed much in the field so that will be fun. AJ I destroy the people here in ping pong lol. It is hard without my paddle. The ones here are like 5$ ones and they are very well used and practically ruined. However the people from Peru are pretty good, and a guy and girl came this week from Londrina that were good. Of course we cannot full loop or anything but it is still fun. It is generally 7 to 2. we cannot play any higher because there are a lot of people and little time, Winners stay so i get to play the whole time generally. Oh and Brazilians play some serious volleyball. It is so fun! We did 50 push ups yesterday for celebrating to much. Oh and I heard we cannot play soccer in the field because it is too competitive, so that is a bummer. But Brazilians are fun and they are all pretty athletic. Good luck with your game and go get a w for me! I Love You Guys so much! Have a good week! Love, Elder Worsley

Howdy!

Wow! Sounds like so exciting times! And I heard about TRUMP LOL. The Brasilians were going nuts. Now i cannot stop hereing about it. lol. They started tennis this early? that is going to awesome!!! I will be sure to make sure i recieve those packages, and if they are not there it will be alright as you said. Also thanks for the shakes that we will get lol apparently they are super good. I had a cookie a few weeks back and it was super good lol. Both my investigators are doing well, they are going to be baptized on the 20th which will be sweet. Oh and splits are great. My brasileiro is so funny. He such a geek it is hilarious. He would like aj lol. He plays all the games aj does haha. Oh i am feeling a whole lot better as of yesterday. I can finally swallow without much pain. It is amazing how you can take swallowing for granted lol. Still a little stuffy, but obedience, faith, and prayer brings mericoles. Thanks for praying for me. I love you guys! We finally got some more elders in the ctm going to londrina. they are from mexico and peru. 11 out of 320 now lol. they play some good ping pong. they are super competitive but they are all nice and we all get along. It seems like the days are weeks at first and now the weeks are becoming days. time is flying so quickly here it amazes me. Portuguese is coming along swiftly. i can bear my testimony more and more and answer questions and just talk to brasileiros it is crazy. the gift of tongues is so real. this week i have been praying a lot for the companionship of the holy ghost and how to better my way in obtaining and retaining it. Yesterday was crazy. Literally on a higher plane. even compared to my district. it was crazy that i could like feel their moods and negativity and sometimes even before they had said anything. Ever sense they heard about trump it has been less spiritual sadly. So maybe you guys could pray for my district to be able to focus a little more? i do not really need anything personal at the moment. My Brasileiro roomates are awesome! we read scriptures everynight and they are super helpful with the pronunciation and the meanings of words. they are also a bunch of nuts lol. Brasileiros are crazy at night lol. I really love our family pictures. i look at them everynight before i go to bed. it is nice to see you guys everyday although it is in picture form lol. We are having two gerneal authorities coming to the ctm next week so pday will be next thursday for me. i Hope you guys all have a good week. Eu amo vocês (I love you all).

Interesting Week

So this week has been a little interesting. You know how i said i thought i had strep throat? well I was right and it almost put me in the hospital with two of my other friends in the district. Now 5 of the 9 are ill in one way or the other lol so if we are making prayer requests i think it would be nice to pray for our health. Concerning my health I am alright. My throat is killer but i live with it. The doctor here is apparently well known in the US but has no license to prescribe meds here so i live on ibuprofen. Amoxil would be sweet but its whatever. I did not go to the hospital like they wanted me to though so that is a plus. This week my companion and I got our two investigators baptismal dates and they agreed to quit smoking and drinking coffee because everyone here drinks coffee it seems like. We are also now going on splits with brazilians which is pretty crazy. we spend half of the day with one. My brasilian companion´s name is elder Leite which is brasilian for milk lol, but he is super cool and super nerdy like most brasilians. they like to talk about videogames all the time lol. But teaching with a brasilian is great because they can speak what i wish i knew how to say. As far as the language goes i think i am doing really well. Every time we talk to brasilians everyone is amazed and i can understand most people. The hardest thing about the language is learning all the verbs and their corresponding conjugations. that is all i really struggle with. I generally translate for the americans when i am close to those who cannot understand what is happening. and my companion is fluent in spanish so portuguese is nothing to him. Almost all the words are the same. being obedient to a tee is very much important in all aspects of a mission but especially with learning a language. i am also grateful for my busy high school for preping me for stress and for learning how to focus. i think that is what sets me apart. i manage stress well, i study my butt off, and i follow every rule. the spirit is also very necessary to have. Oh and tommorow we go out into the real world and proselyte for a few hours. Each companionship gets 6 copies of the BoM. I am pretty stoked for that. I am in district 42b english and have mailbox 19. Also tell aj that they have a ping pong table here and although i do not have my paddle i am smoking everyone. lol it is really fun playing against the brasilians who know how to play a little. they get super into it. I hope everyone has a good week. I love you all!!! also i apologize for mispelled words and bad punctuation and capitilization lol i have to type fast and i have to type in english on a portuguese keyboard so it is a little weird lol.

I made it!

Well I made it to Brazil safe and sound! I was at gate a10 for an hour and then had to relocate to a14 which made me a little nervous. I was the only elder flying from Houston. The plane was 90% military so we all chatted it up. My seat mate had never flown before so i helped him through that. He drives tanks! I taught him the restoration and almost gave him a Book of Mormon. Then in Atlanta there was 23 of us. 2nd largerst group to the MTC yet! So far it has been really great, and I am taking lots of photos,but am limited for time at the moment. My companion is from Brownsville and is fluent in spansih. His name is elder Wilson. It is hard not saying dude or bro all the time lol. Do not worry about me. I am fine. Have a good week, and tell me how Aj´s game goes and anything else important.

Finally, a P Day!

Hey guys!!! I finally got my first P-Day!! Lol it has been a crazy first 10 days around here for sure! The CTM is pretty awesome. The first day we arrived we did not really do much, but that was the last time we had nothing to do. lol. They put us through the wringer here but it is all for the best. Each day we wake up at 6:00 to eat before the line is huge, we do personal study, which is really just memorizing the words you will be using for your lessons with the pesquisadors (investigators). Then we have a couple of classes all in portuguese and we are not allowed to speak in english unless we honestly do not know how to say it in Portuguese. For me that has been the easiest part about the language. Listening is easy, but sometimes they speak like a million miles per hour. Thank goodness for four years of Spanish, yet also it is a curse. A lot of words have the same sound but are spelled differently but all of the verb conjugations are similar enough that I can know how to say things properly. After the classes in the morning we teach Rafael. He was super cool and believed everything we said. At first we were bringing in scripts to say, but with each passing day we have used less and less and taught from the spirit it has been awesome. Thankfully my companion is fluent in spanish so whenever I have no idea what Rafael is saying or how to say something he can tell me in spanish and we portugize it so to speak. Rafael was on date for baptism but moved because his dad was sick. However yesterday we got two new investigators named renato and eryksson. They are both pretty cool dudes. After that we have lunch, then it is straight back to the classroom. Honestly we only have two hours a day to study the language so it is kind of hard. In the afternoon we have a few classes and teach erkysson. Then we have dinner, Physical activity, and then preparation time for tomorrow and are in the dorm at 9:45. The food here is the bomb dot com! And the Brazilians say that the food here is not that good, and that in the field everyone cooks super well. Breakfast (desjejum) is the same every day- a pasty soup of either, banana, cinnamon, chocolate, vanilla, or peanut butter. It is really good. Lots of protein. I dip bread in it like you would hot chocolate. Then we also have a ham sandwhich. One day we had pancakes with all that and they were the best pancakes I have ever eaten. They probably use cane sugar. Lunch (almoço) is different slightly everyday. I have had lots of really good chicken and lots of really good steak, and the occasional fried fish and fish sticks. and of course the main part of lunch and dinner is a whole plate full of rice and beans!!! Haha everyday.... Dinner (jantar)- is generally the same as lunch, but each meal we have a dessert with. Oh and this drink called Gujana (dont know how to spell it lol) is the best. It is like sprite mixed with apple juice. it is soooooo good! It is very similar to sparkling cyder. My companion is a pretty good guy, he just has to use the bathroom sooooo much. At least ten times a day. I have counted the many times he has gone standing up and it has only been once. Our afternoon instructor and I have a running joke with my companion about how he spends an eternity in there lol. He also cries a lot about his girlfirend But all is well. The Whole CTM said our district has been the best ever to come through the CTM! our district is super spiritual, exactly obedient, and learning the language so much faster than everyone else. The sad thing is is that the older missionaries dont care about the rules. But everything is well. We have an english branch here at the ctm and it is nice. sacrament meeting is in portuguese and the classes are in english so it is nice to hear english each week. We have devotionals every tuesday and sunday and they are really good. We were supposed to have a general authority come this week but it did not happen. Luckily we will be having another in 2 weeks or so. I am super greatful i was striving to be exactly obedient before my mission. A lot of my district is having a rough time. All but me and the District Leader had boy/girlfriends before coming and they are being wrecked by home sickness. The only thing killing me is, is that I am pretty sure I have strep throat. But I am doing really well. I love it so much. The spirit is amazing. Also elder holland´s grandson is here and he is a stud. He is on a languae fast that has been going for 2 weeks now. We chatted it up in portuguese once. He is a super nice guy. Today we went to the São Paulo temple and it was absolutely beautiful. Most beautiful one I have ever seen. You would have to see it for yourself to know the extent. But today will be my pday each week. I cant send pictures. TTYL!!!