I love it. So much.

Once again, it is obvious that God is helping us with our work. If you look hard enough, you can find his miracles everywhere, and if you seek for it, He will bless you in many ways.

Our zone before transfers

As for the last week of my time in Cachoerinha (then I moved to Ariston last Tuesday), it was one of the most stressful for so many reasons….

I am filling the font with buckets of water because the water stopped again, so we had to draw it out of a well with a bucket.

Remember how I said it rained and rained? This is a big sinkhole in the road caused by all that rain.

Also there was a big protest on Sunday, so we had to be in the house by 6 pm. On my last P-day there, we got to eat at Andorinha again at 25 de Marco. We got sushi and noodles and ate like crazy.

Says Elder Hunt before transfers, “I’m really, really sad Elder Burt is leaving.”

Our dessert pizza at 25 de Marco

It turned out that my companion, Elder Cerantonio, has been great (we baptized eight people in the past six weeks together).

At our last baptism in Cachoeirinha

Now on to the land of Ariston….

Here are my words: It is incredible here. I love it. So much.

My new area is amazing. I will start with my house.

Elders Cruz, Oliveira, Fagundes, and I live in the house of a church member. Elder Cruz will finish his mission at the end of this transfer (six weeks) and is a legend in this mission. He was assistant to the President with Elder Borba and has baptized more than 84 people. He is a spiritual giant and has my same personality times two.

Oliveira is new in the mission. This is his second transfer and he is being trained by Cruz. He is very mellow and big. He has played every instrument that we have passed so far. Fagundes is my companion. He has been here 11 months and is very mellow as well, but he loves to joke around. If you aren’t careful, he will mess with your head. We have already gotten off well and will baptize a ton here.

My new companion, Elder Fagundes

The ward loves us. Our ward is also a missionary ward—they love baptisms. There is a pair of twins here in this ward that are crazy missionaries, and they love working with us. On Sunday, the twins pulled someone into church from the street as they got there. This street kid is now going to be baptized this coming Sunday. These two girls are incredible. If they served missions, they would destroy the mission. But as it is, they are helping the missionaries like crazy here, so they don’t really need to go on missions to be great missionaries. 

These missionary-minded twins in our new ward love to help find people to teach about the gospel.

Our Bishop is awesome too. He said himself (of course jokingly), “Throw ‘em in the water!”

He also said that a week without a baptism isn’t a week.

All the people in the ward want to help too. They ask us when they can teach with us or give us rides. It is awesome. We are always getting references, which makes our work so much better, and we can help more people.

Elders Fagundes and Burt with their two new friends

This week we baptized M. He is fourteen and has ear gauges bigger than my nose. I just met him, but I guess he thought it would be cool for an American to baptize him, so he asked me to do it.

Two young Brazilians excited to be baptized

We also baptized S, who was brought to church by the twins recently. We met her at church, my companion grabbed a jump suit, and we baptized her too. (Don’t worry; she had already come to church before!)

I will have more to talk about next week!

Love you all,
Your completely American son—Elder Burt