"We hope that the parents will now energize their kids and help them reactivate."

So transfers were announced yesterday, and both Elder Carmo and I will be staying here for this transfer! I'm stoked about that because we have a really good group of investigators that are progressing a lot. We tend to teach the restoration over and over here because people rarely progress. But we have about 4 or 5 families that are studying the Book of Mormon as we speak (maybe) and others that are ready to receive it. It has been a really awesome time here, we are absolutely ripping it up and having an awesome time.
Today will be the wedding of Ari and Neide! Everything is in order, so they will be married at 4 today and baptized on Saturday. We are really excited for them and they are really excited to have finally arrived at this point. Their kids were baptized well before they were ready, and a few of them have gone inactive. We hope that the parents will now energize their kids and help them reactivate. I have been reading in Alma a lot and when he was doing some home teaching he rippped the people and said it was more tolerable for the Lamanites than for those Nephites who had been baptized and then turned away. A lot of missionaries here do not recognize this. I remember one time Dad and I were driving through the canyon by Mantua and he was talking about exactly this, that if they can't keep the covenants they should never make them. I am still going with that, and while I have very few baptisms I do not feel like I have been doing things wrong. I am in good standing with the Lord, so its cool with me.
It has gotten COLDDD here! Dang, one day it was super hot and then the next day it was really cloudy but didn't rain for the whole day. At night I had to bust out the blanket for the first time since like last April! I woke up the next morning and it was frigid!! I threw on a shirt and sweater and some pants right away because I didn't have the courage to shower (our shower head is broken so the water is really cold, we are working on getting that fixed.) It warmed up a little the rest of the day, but still was cold. It is weird to not have heating in houses and businesses, vents and furnaces have still not made it here. One day...but for now I am reduced to relying on sweaters and tea. It is fine, and I am excited to not sweat so much. We are in one of the coldest parts of Brasil, I have heard it gets as low as like 5 or zero degrees Celsius! Oooh!!
We only got to watch the Sunday morning session of conference because it is not broadcast in Medianeira. So the branch rented a bus and everyone went to Foz to watch the session. It was super Ill, I watched it in Portuguese (apparently ALL of the Americans aside from me were watching in English in another room, and I have to say the church needs to improve technically on their transmition in other languages) and especially liked the talk of Elder Scott. Most of the talks were translated by people who speak Portuguese. But Scott speaks a little (very little) Portuguese, so he recorded it in Portuguese beforehand. LoL his Portuguese is very poor, but it was really cool to see the love he expressed for everyone giving the talk directly to as many people as possible. It is a huge blessing to have all of them talk to us in our natural language, I never recognized that until Sunday. But I was a little sad to see only one sesh. So if you could somehow mail me a copy of the General Conference edition of the Ensign/Liahona it would be great. I would probably never get one otherwise because I am far from Londrina, thus far from materials. But I like reading the talks almost more than I like watching live. That is about my only request, the conference talks.
I think this was the worst Easter of all time as far as food goes. We failed to gain any chocolate and unfortunately also failed to eat after breakfast because we left before lunch and got home after, so nobody was eating/wanted us to eat with them. Also we had zero food in our house, so we struggled a little at night. But it was all fine, I marked a huge map of the city with ALL of the members and investigators, marked in different colors representing active, inactive, progressing, baptism marked, and leadership. It is interesting to see how many members there are. If all of these people were active there would be at least two wards here, but as it is we have one branch, so we are gonna keep working on it. I also completely neglected April fools, actually I didn't really notice that it was April until yesterday. But there is a weird holiday here on the Friday before Easter where nobody works and everyone eats just fish. It was alright, but the fish we ate was pretty bad.
Well I love you all, I sent a letter to Spencer a few days ago, one to Dad today, and Mom and Char will get them in the next little bit. Well keep everything classy, it's good to hear from you!
Love
Joseph

Tudo que faz, faz com amor.