Elder Joshua Sheffield

July 29, 2019 Me and my companion Hey family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This week was great! I’m great We helped a family move Tuesday .  It was craziness - you know how moving is.  We ended up having to pass everything through a window haha Quarta was zone conference with the new mission president.  It was great!!!! We learned so much and actually got to know our new  President, he is awesome he has so many experiences. We were eating lunch in front of the church and actually taught a family that was walking by. Then they came in and ate with us and got to know the missionaries. Also a  sister bought a bunch of new things for the house; plates cups .  Also a fresh new box of Books of Mormon .  It was like Christmas :) Because of the first few days being at zone conference, we had to work double-time to do everything!!! W e had some great lessons. Every last Sunday of the month at church is sobre (about) missionary work! So Elder Parronchi, Elde...

A banquet that a less active member made for us. We are teaching her and she's coming to church again!!!!!! What a week of miracles!!!!! We started working in an area called Monte Verde 1&2.    We found families. Just about every house has a family. It’s been amazing .  We are teaching a couple, Cristiano and Natiele and their twin sons. We were teaching Taina e Roberto. They had a fight and Taina was planning on moving back home. It’s really complicated .  We had previously marked a lesson with them and it would one of our last lessons with them . But when  we got there and it was just the husband . We were teaching Roberto and he had said Taina had gone to a friend’s house on the other side of the city in a neighborhood called Monte Verde . We had just finished our lesson with him and a car pulled up and the door opened and a little boy peeked his head in.  I thought “who’s this kid, wait… I know him!! He’s one of the twins of Cristi...

Jul 15 2019  I traveled all day Tuesday and then went straight to the one of the chapels in Juiz de Fora. We had a little meeting with the new mission president. He has a vision really different for the mission and for the work here . He’s really great. He has a lot of experience and was a seventy and so has a lot of stories and is full of the spirit. Then we went to another room to hear the announcement who would be companions with who .  It's so great . M y new companion is Elder Parronchi (pa-hon-kee - His name reminds me of  the guy from Cusco Ponchee)  He from Sao Paulo and he is so great. A ll the miracles and blessings that have happened this week have made it hard to even keep track .  We got right to work when we got home to our apartment. We taught some new families Cristiano and Natiele, Ramisa e Lucas, Ana Clara e Gabriele. A family that the other elders are teaching went to church on Sunday .  After so many weeks of work; ...

Editors Note: Elder Sheffield called us on the phone and talked to us, so didn't send a letter.  We were excited to hear how he had spent his "1-year mark", and he changed the subject. We asked him again and he again changed the subject. After some time talking, he said "I don't want to be the kind of missionary that counts how long I've been gone from home, or how many days until I go home. And the mission president said 'burning a shirt is a tradition of other missions, not our mission' so I didn't tell anyone. We just had a nice all you can eat Bar-b-que lunch. But one of the elder's found out it was my one year mark and so they sang Happy Birthday to me" He said they do a lot of service moving people or helping people build their own houses. He is getting good at construction. This time they were helping an old lady move. His companion had a bag and was carrying it, and the old lady started yelling "let go of my leg!...

We took a bus to a city 3 hours away to meet with the rest of our  district (the trio Sister Gomez Sister Stocco and Sister S. Silva) .  It was great taking about preach my gospel (chapter 11) and our investigators .  The next bus only left there at 4:00 so until then we knocked doors and made contacts. It was great we didn’t know much about how to get around the city but just talked to everyone. Roberto e Taina are going to get married . We had an awesome lesson with Roberto e Taina talking about all the blessing God has for them and the importance of marriage . We left three challenges: pray every day together, read the scriptures every day together and ponder about marriage and what we had talked about in our lesson. Robert kept his head down and just sat there . When we came back, they were all cozy on the couch watching a movie and Robert had a huge smile. Before we had even said anything he told us he had gone ring shopping and they were looking so happ...