Elder Joey Burt: "We prepared a deathblow lesson, but have not found him at home since preparing it!"

Me and Proulx

My prophecies for the world cup and my planner

Well, sorry about the low quality email last week. But I will try to make up for it today.
So we got back here to Medianeira on Thursday morning at about 6 AM. So I slept for about 30 minutes, then got going preparing to help Elder Proulx settle in. We have this book called the Trainer's Kit. Basically it outlines point by point what we need to teach new missionaries each day. For example, the first day was about street contacts. So when Proulx got up we practiced how to do these type of contacts, how to get people to let us teach them the gospel.
So we went out to work and all of the challenges, stresses, nerves, problems speaking, etc. came rushing into my mind again. Man, the first transfer is very hard! I had forgotten the feeling of not being able to communicate to others something that is extremely important to you, despite all the effort and preparation you can do.
Basically I figured I would be kinda guiding him while he learned to do all of the things he needs to do. But really as a trainer, the trainee's problems are our problems too. So the extreme tiredness from thinking too much that I had not had since the first month of my mission came back. I almost fell asleep during a lesson, it was ridiculous. But with the added responsibility and struggles have come an incredible rush of blessings.
We started basically on the first day looking for more less-active members that we could teach. We were wandering around looking for the address when we walked in front of a house that I remembered. I was like "I think a member lives here" so we talked to the people there. A woman lives there who just had a baby a couple weeks ago (indicator of readiness for the gospel!) So we taught her, her mom, and her mother in law the restoration. She was incredibly interested and decided that she wants to go to church.
She isn't a member and had never visited. But her husband is a member and his brother went on a mission until he got extremely sick and was forced to return early. We ran into them in the street, and he talked about how he wanted to return to church. It was great to talk to him. We also ran into a member who has been away from the church for a long time who doesn't even have a record in this branch. His wife also isn't baptized, but he approached us on the street and asked us to visit him. So we are super, super stoked to get going hardcore with them and help them return.
We are trying to help Luiz get baptized on Saturday. We prepared a deathblow lesson, but have not found him at home since preparing it! Rose and family are also doing well. Really two of them are close to being baptized, Marcos and Marcia, because she is still smoking. But we are working closely with them. Valderesa is also still smoking, we are going to step up our offensive against that. All of her kids have completely stopped drinking coffee, which is super super dope! We are having really a lot of success here, we have faith that we can still make our goal of three baptisms this month!
My health is good. My quads are getting freaking strong, oh my geez! I have started to use my increased weight to make my legs stronger in exercise time each morning LoL. I got letters from Ryan, Evan, Elder Fujimoto and Elder Ellis (CTM thugs) on transfer day. They are all good. I was looking at the conference edition of the Liahona, and Spencer Champlin got his photo in there! LoL what a lucky dogg!
I'm sorry that Spencer got bullied into cutting his hair.
Well, as you all know it is World Cup time. Looks like mine and Evan's country and Philly's country are among the favorites. Ryan is probably going to get eliminated by Brasil hehe. And Matt didn't even make the cup... step your game up Eskimos!!
Basically the only people here in Brasil who really believe that Brasil will win are Elders. Elder Carmo (got transferred to Foz and calls me every day for no reason...) is pretty stoked for the victory. I have high hopes for the United States, I think Bob is doing a great job and the game is developing well. It's sad that I won't be able to watch all 64 games, but I will be engaged in an even higher cause (Before the mish it was hard to believe that anything was holier than the World Cup haha).
Thanks for all the love and support. Love you all and hope everything there is going great!
Love,
Joseph

Maintain Internal Heights- Trevor Hall