"When Oscar was five, he went to Mexico for his great aunt's funeral. What does that mean to a law officer like myself? A potential drug mule." Dwight Schrute

So Josh was busy on Monday and wasn't able to write much at all, but he was given time yesterday to write. He is the new Branch President in his area now that his companion, who was the previous President, is leaving.


Hey all,

They gave us some time to write today, but I'm still going to be brief. I won't talk about the leader's council stuff until next week just to save time, but it was a great meeting today.

I got that package from you guys, haven't opened it yet.

Tomorrow I have to get up super early to go get my new visa for the next year. Woo!

I didn't get sick last week.

Elder Burr and I have been working really hard, we are really happy. He leaves me on Sunday, and I'm really really sad to see him go. I will probably be in a trio for two weeks waiting for my new companion. The changes are kind of weird with the new mission, in two weeks we have the real changes and then from then on we'll have them every six weeks. (Elder Burr is leaving in week 4 of this change). So, I hate being in trios. So, these next two weeks will be interesting.

The branch went to the temple! We thought it would be so great for the branch to go together, that in the temple they could finally settle their differences and grow closer together as a branch. It would be perfectly reasonable to think that...what better place than the temple to grow closer together? Well, that plan failed, and we have a whole new set of fresh problems. Elder Burr didn't come to the council today since this is his last week to work, so he was going to try to fix some things...I hope that he could. We have our work cut out for us.

Elder Burr told me that he found the new branch president today. Well, the future one. It is some guy from Italy who is a member but has been inactive for a while and had no idea that the Church was in Lago. I guess he wants to be active again with...wait for it...his family! I'll hopefully meet him on Thursday. We get back late tomorrow. So, if this guy is for real, I will be doing all I can to prepare him to be the future branch president. I sure hope this guy is golden, if what Elder Burr says is true, he should be. So, that's exciting. We need priesthood so badly.

We contact tons still, find lots of people, and are still struggling to find good men. I think our only option is to make good men, not to just try and find them. I guess that's the whole purpose of the Gospel, to make men be better. But, it is hard to convice the guys that they can't drink, have to get married to the woman they live with, have to be faithful to her, and can't work on Sundays. So...yeah...we'll see what we can do. One idea that Elder Burr and I had was to have a "being better men" seminar thing, kind of like Elder Christofferson's talk last November about manning up. But, we wouldn't focus on inviting the men to it, we would tell their wives about it. If the wives want better husbands, they'll send them to it, and we can find a lot of guys that way. There are some guys here that have truly great potential, they're just always drunk and don't really realize it yet. Bless their hearts.

I'm really going to miss Elder Burr. I've loved my time with him and I don't want him to leave, but that's how it goes sometimes. I'm gonna exchange information with him, he wants to meet up with whoever is in Utah to meet you guys and talk about Lago. He's a stud, one of the best guys I know. I really do wish he could stay here with me. We were a really good companionship together. But, I'm sure that whoever will be my next companion will be awesome, as well.

I'm gonna stop writing, I'll write you guys on Monday some more. I love you tons, that video of Eliza was really cute!

Love,

Josh