"...if I want to see miracles every day."

Hello!!
On Tuesday we had a mini-zone conference and I received the excellent surprise of receiving the Christmas package! Logically I couldn’t wait until Christmas to open a few things (Only the ones that weren’t labeled “On Christmas” or “Christmas Eve”) and I quite enjoyed eating some good old peanut butter cups (Super good!), Sour Skittles and Lindt. I saved most of them for Christmas, but it was great to eat some solid American delicacies.
I'm stoked to play some Blink and win (of course) and it's gonna be great to practice my prophet knowledge with some Go Fish! The basketball hoop is great, but dang… I am TERRIBLE at basketball!! I'm excited to open the rest and see what other surprises await!
This week has been another very good week as far as the work goes. Genivaldo is kinda losing some of his desire, but Daniela is firm for baptism on the second of January! She is a friend of the returned missionary in the ward, and her testimony is really strong on all fronts. Me and Elder Thrapp are working a ton and teaching loads of lessons, its been so awesome. We have started working a lot with less-active members in the ward (there are a lot more of them than there are active members) so that’s been cool. Back in the time of Dad I think people got baptized for lesser reasons than a testimony of the truth. We found this lady that said she was baptized 20+ years ago because her friends were all members, so she never received a testimony. So basically she needs to get it in gear now of suffer the consequences!!
But they (menos ativos) ALWAYS have non-member family members, so we hope to activate many people and baptize others along the way. We are finding a lot of really awesome people, but not a ton of ready-to-go elects. I was thinking about that, and I received that I need to make more sacrifices and be more obedient if I want to see miracles every day. I have stopped lollygagging in the morning and I just get up, pray, iron, exercise, eat, shower, dress, and study. It is a lot better that way and already my study time is a lot more eye-opening and helpful in our teachings throughout the day.
Also I saw a dude get hit by a car on his bike the other day in front of our house, that was nuts. The dude who drove just kept on driving, I think that is actually the normal thing for people here to do. He was alright, but his bike broke.
Christmas here will be interesting! We will eat dinner at the house of Margarete, the member with no family, on Christmas Eve, then return for lunch on Christmas, so that will be pretty nice. President Leal said that we can stay out until 10:30 on Christmas Eve (WOOOOW!!!) but I don’t know if I will, I get so tired around 10:15. So we will probably just hang out a bit, visit families, and hopefully we can get some kind of dinner with the homeless organized.
Hopefully we can eat with our friend Adriano the homeless dude who we now know for sure deals drugs (he fulfilled a deal while we were talking to him on drug street in Tupi the other day) or something for dinner on Christmas. But I'm stoked for Christmas, it will be fun for sure. We will talk to you from Irmao Limiro´s house. I am still working on my Christmas project for you guys. It should arrive before Spencer´s birthday.
I finally found out what our mailing address is here. It is:
Elder Joseph Burt
Rua Pará 172
Centro
Cambé-PR 86181-240
Brasil
That should make mailing letters and stuff a lot easier. Sorry it took me so long to get that figured out.
We have conferencia de Natal on Wednesday with ALL of the missionaries in our mission! It's gonna be so so so sick!! It will be cool to see all of my friends and stuff. We still don’t have a cell phone, and we have had several times when we really needed it. Hopefully we get a new one on Wednesday.
Well that’s pretty much all of the news I have. I hope everything is great with everyone there. The last four days have been super super hot here with no clouds, it's been tough. I love you all, and wish everyone a super merry Christmas!
Love
Joey