16 April 2018 Acabou-se (It´s over!)

Dear family and friends,

     Surprisingly, my mission is ending, basically right now. I already had an interview with President Tavares and I will leave for the airport 2am this next morning. The bags are already ready but I´m not. It´s awfully strange.

     You´re probably curious, but Maria was inteed baptized this last saturday. It ran well. She was working a lot this week so we had to get creative. We jogged to her house early in the morning in the rain to fill out the baptismal form and then we came back that night we came back with the District Leader to hold the interview before she went to bed. We had to intercept her at the right times, but it all worked out. She was baptized saturday night and confirmed Sunday morning. She´s already learning a lot and has some friends. She´s a nice lady. João Lima came to church too, he´s doing great, he´s already half way through Alma.

     We worked with a number of other investigators, we ran around working a bunch, I won´t go into details. A large part of our time was used with Maria, tying up loose ends and I also used a few hours copying information to the Area book for future missionaries, info from investigators to bus hours.

     But yeah, that´s it. I´m not going to make an elaborate email, I don´t have much time anyways. I´ll miss Costa da Caparica, I met a lot of great people here. I had a good time with Elder Nichols too. I will miss Portugal and the mission greatly.

     I cannot begin to explain the experience that the mission has been for me, surely those who already served can relate. But it sufficeth me to say that it was incredible and I´m sad that it´s ending. But time, being merciless, ever ticking and tocking, stopping for nothing, has sealed shut yet another chapter of my life. My head is a swirl right now, but I´m happy.

Thanks,

Elder Ward

 Another abandoned base​

 Maria

 Casa Lima

Chimarrão (not drugs)

9 April 2018 Tick Tock

Dear family and friends,

     Things are going well! Good stuff is happening, we have our friend Maria who is preparing to be baptized on saturday. I´m enjoying the work, and I don´t feel like the mission is going to end. I don´t have the mental resources to imagine what my life will be like after the mission (I don´t know what college is like, nor what my home is like), so for now its only rendering mission life haha.

     I got the phone to work, so I have a recording instead of a long email. I still haven´t heard a complaint, so I continued to do the recordings. 

     I don´t have a clue as to how next week will work out, but hopefully I´ll have a moment to write and read.

    That´s basically it. 

Take care everybody,

Elder Ward

26 March 2018 Gravação 2

Dear family and friends,

     Once again, I decided to just do a voice recording. Once again, it was really long. oh well.

(At least I´m still sending something, right?)

​

 Voice007.wav

​

 Fonte da Telha

19 March 2018 Nichols

Dear family and friends,

     Today is different. We´re short on time so I´m attaching a voice recording with an update for the week. I talk a lot, I didn´t anticipate it all well, but it ended up being like 27 minutes... yeah, a bit long... Don´t worry, I won´t be offended if you don´t listen to it all. I imagine a lot of you guys already gave up on reading the whole email haha. But yeah, enjoy.

Voice003.wav

So, I guess the file was too big. I hope you guys can still access it t through google drive. if not, enjoy just these photos haha

12 March 18 Tá indo

Dear family and friends,

     This week ran smoothly, we had some pretty cool experiences.

     On Monday we met up Walker with at night. We walked with him for a bit and he stopped to talk with one of his friends there in the street, and we took advantage of the situation to meet him too, his friend´s name is Manulito, an african fella. We ended up going the next day to Manulito for a bit and we managed to teach him a decent lesson. He´s a bit of a spaz, so we kept things simple and brief for him. He already investigated the church a while back, so he new the basics. We simply talked with him about action, about really doing something to progress in his life towards God. He accepted to come with us to church and to prepare to be baptized.

     We returned another day to teach some more and follow up with him. There was another guy there named Ston, also african, about 20 years old. I sat and chatted with him as Elder Vigne sat with Manulito. We each taught each one individually because they were in different stages. Ston was a pretty cool guy, he said that because of his family traditions it would be difficult to decide to be baptized, even though he learned that day that he needed to be baptized like Christ was, by immersion.

     We planned to come back Saturday night to chat with the two of them to arrange everything for them to travel to church the next day.

     We showed up and found out that it was game night. Soccer. Dangit. There were already like 5 other friends that had arrived and Manulito had left to buy things (the beer...). We got a phone call from a member that was going to give a ride to an investigator called and I had to pick it up. I was in the kitchen chatting as Elder Vigne was on the couch in the other room, he actually managed to teach one of the guys there, smooth.

     Then Manulito showed up with more buddies and we quickly realized that it wouldn´t work out so smoothly haha. Ston stopped by not to stay but to just grab a few things, he didn´t make it to church due to short notice complications, but him and Manulito both promised to come this next Sunday... we´ll see haha.

     We visited Bruno this week with his (almost-)wife Ana at home. We played our cards well and we managed to sit and chat with the two of them together. We had a really really good lesson, one of the best of my mission. We shared a bunch about the Plan of Salvation and how the Law of Chastity applies in it. Ana was a bit stubborn, but everything was talked over with a lot of laughter, really smooth, and Ana and Bruno have a goal to get married in late April. Phew. Bruno was on our side the whole time and even taught some things to her too. Bruno was going to come to church, we arranged a ride for him and everything, but unfortunately family came to visit them Sunday morning so he couldn´t make it. No worries, we´ll keep a grip on him.

     A few weeks have passed since we last talked with Carla. She progressed super well, but her mother, whom we still haven´t met, wont let her do anything... She took the BoM from her and her phone... cmon. But we managed to find Carla and to our relief she still has interest, she´s just a bit discouraged because of her restrictive mother... We´ll see what we can do.

     Remember that Lucas from last week? We met up with him this last weekend and we had a good lesson. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and we basically asked him if he wanted to participate in God´s plan by progressing and preparing to be baptized. He accepted, and he came to church too! He´s showing some good progress, but still needs to progress some more. After church we went to eat lunch with a nice brazilian family, Família Lima, and we asked if we could bring Lucas. They gladly had him over. We had a good time there, he got along really well with everyone there. We´ll be working with him for sure.

     We had a very spiritual experience yesterday. There is a woman named Teresa who recently moved to our ward and was baptized about a year ago. She approached me after sacrament meeting to ask us to come to her home and give a blessing to her granddaughter.

     We got there last night and met the family. Carla is a young mother with two little girls, her mother is Teresa. The two little girls are Íris and Bianca. Bianca is a nice little baby, and Íris is a toddler with some health problems. I didn´t understand the medical terms used there, but I basically understood that she has a type of cancer that heavily effects her brain and her figure, and will stay with her until she will probably pass away as a young teenager.

     Little Íris was wiggling around on the couch, so Teresa held her in her arms as we gave her a blessing. The spirit was very strong.

     We had a moment of silence afterwards. I said the only thing that I could manage to formulate. I told them about Marie, an I simply said "God loves you guys and your familiy. He´ll carry you through this. He has a plan for you all and little Íris. Trust him."

     After we conversed for a bit longer, we headed out with heavy thoughts. I felt such a mixture of things for that family. They pass through so much. I felt pity, love, sorrow, gratitude... but in all I felt grateful for being able to give a blessing there and help, but above all a peace.

     This Sunday an older man in our ward, António approached us and asked us if we could accompany him today (during our pday) to a hospital in Lisbon to give a blessing to his granddaughter as well. We accepted, we´ll be going with him in just an hour or so there. Because of the experience last night, I can confidently say that I´m grateful and excited to help someone else today.

     The two members who asked for these blessings are the only members in their families...

     And to finish up, transfers. Elder Vigne will leave to a neighboring area, Miratejo, and I will stay in Costa da Caparica, and I will train a new missionary. I really really liked serving with Elder Vigne and I learned a lot. I´m excited to train this transfer.

     I think that´s it.

On to the next one,

Elder Ward

 A subway stop

A member gave us some aunt jemimas maple syrup and I made some pancakes to accompany it. Vigne didn´t like it...​

5 March 2018 Pelo Espírito

Dear family and friends,

     A pretty chill week, to give a summary. We got some stuff done. I´ll get started.

     I thought I was back up and healthy, in a general sense, I was. But, I kept a cough with me all week. I´d wake up at like 3am just to cough and cough. I´d go to the other room to spare my companion from my hacking. I´d sit there for a half hour coughing and then it´d pass and I´d go back to bed... an annoyance, but it basically only got in the way of sleep. It´s practically gone now.

     João Lima was confirmed by a member yesterday, everything ran smooth, he´s doing well. Not a single problem. Truly a blessing being able to work with him.

     I had a division this week after a district meeting with our district leader, Elder Fortes. He´s a cool guy, his parents are from Cabo Verde but he grew up in the US. He´s a good missionary, we got a lot of stuff done. We actually were able to teach a handful of people but unfortunately none of them progressed later in the week.

     Even so, we had some good experiences. Elder Fortes chatted with a couple on the bus ride home who had already investigated the church, were nearly baptized a few years ago, but werent because they went to France. They live in the other mission of portugal but we jotted down the info and we already sent it to the other mission.

    Do you guys remember Bruno from a few weeks back? Well, summarizing the backstory, we found Bruno, a 28yo from cabo verde in his apt building and we chatted with him and we taught him for a bit. He came to church and really enjoyed it. A couple weeks back while we were teaching him, he told us a bit about why he liked having us over saying "I took a hard test a while back (He´s studying electrical engineering) and i was really nervous. Before taking the test I prayed and told God that if he helped me on the test I´d finally go out and look for a church to join. I passed and shortly after, you guys showed up." He accepts the things that we teach very well. Unfortunately, he has a "wife", but they aren´t legally married. We had a really good lesson with Bruno this last week about real intent and we helped him work up a courage to get things moving faster.

     We used the BoM to help him understand. We read in Alma 34.32 that this time is a time for men to prepare to meet god and execute their labors. In 33 we continue to read that we shouldn´t procrastinate our repentance and that this time "is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed." We gave the typical and obvious explanation... "Bruno, you never know when our time here on earth runs out. We need to repent (aka keep the commandments, aka get married in your situation) asap so that way we´re ready should that unfortunate day come sooner than we´d like." Bruno nodded, "well, yeah, but cmon guys let´s at least hope that I won´t die tomorrow". 

     ...But I don´t like that explanation that much. It´s like we show up giving death threats to people like "hey, you might die tomorrow, so dude you gotta git stuff done now". I mean, it´s true, but there´s gotta be better.

     In the english BoM we read that we should "improve our time" during our lives, otherwise darkness that impedes labors will come... ok. Wait, improve our time? Huh? But in portuguese we read "se não fizermos melhor uso de nosso tempo..." translating to "if we don´t make better use of our time". I don´t know if my explanation makes sense, I don´t know if what I translated gives a different ring to the sentence (let´s say that I´m tone deaf to english after being isolated from it for so long), but to me it does. It´s understood here that our time here on earth is to be used to prepare ourselves to meet god and eternity (repent and such), and that we should make good use of our time, aka, we should use our time wisely too, otherwise we´ll be backed in to a corner later.

     We explained this to Bruno and he understood not only by that "death threat" but he also more importantly understood that he needed to get going with marraige plans, because God doesn´t just want to see if we choose the right eventually, he wants to see that we choose the right and that we don´t sit on the fence all worried about it.

     Funny thing is, I never understood Alma 32.34 in that way. I had never thought of that part like that, but in the exact moment that we read the verses with him those thoughts came straight into my head very clearly.

     I forgot to tell a really cool experience from last week.

     Rewinding a bit, a year and a half ago I was serving with Elder Marques in Póvoa. We were at the train station and we met this guy named Walker. He pretended to be a non member who wanted to be baptized, but we called him out and we got to know him during our train ride home. He served a mission one or two years earlier in Portugal. His dad is american, and his mother from Cabo Verde. He lived in the states for a while and in Portugal, so he´s the two at the same time. Elder Marques and Walker spent the whole ride chatting about their missions and the old mission presidents. I just listened. Walker confessed that he´s inactive, that he doesn´t like going to church anymore due to the gossip and such... ok. Well, I thought he was a decent guy, we even thought about visiting him (we kept his number) but we just never got around to it. 

     Last week, as we were leaving a lesson, I saw this guy jogging (not sport jogging, rush jogging) in the other direction. I looked at him and thought "nahw, that can´t be walker... here?" He passed and said "hey Elders!" but kept jogging... I was even more confused because I really doubted the chances of us meeting a second time in a different part of the country... But I couldn´t resist. I called out as he was about to round the corner to leave our sight "hey Walker!" and he stopped and came up to us. "Remember me?" He looked at me and said, "hey wait, yeah!"

     From there we chatted and we found out that he now lives in our area. He´s still inactive but he´s super open to us. We already ate dinner at his house this last week and when he gets a day off on monday it´s likely that we´ll spend a pday with him too. He´s not sketchy, don´t worry, he´s just got to swallow a bit of his pride and get back to church. We hope to be his first friends there, and don´t worry, we´ll still be stern with him when necessary. We met his girlfriend and we see potential in her. He asked us to give her a blessing.

     But what are the odds? I wasn´t even "supposed" to serve in this area, but I had an emergency transfer" here... hmm. No other missionary in this whole mission (from what I know) would have recognized him, not one ever met him.

     On saturday we were doing some "telemarketing" as Elder Vigne calls it with our area book. We called a brazilian guy named Lucas and we managed to meet up with him. He was really chill. He was baptized in another church, but he didn´t like it because he was basically "pushed" to be baptized. However, we gave him a brief explanation about the apostasy and restoration. We explained that we prepare people to be baptized and that we don´t puch, in fact, we have interviews before each baptism to make sure that the person really wants to and is ready. He raised his eyebrows a bit. He was down to come to church but we don´t know what happened still, unfortunately he didn´t make it. We´ll hunt him down this week.

     But yeah, that´s the week. It rained a ton. I coughed a ton. We had some good experiences.

Take care everybody,

Elder Ward

Sorry, no photos... but I hope that you enjoyed the news anyways.

26 February 2018 João Lima

Dear family and friends,

     Elder Vigne made the following comment about the luck that I have. He said "Tu tá tão azarado que se comprar um anão cresce." (You´re so lucky that if you bought a dwarf he´d grow.) Why? Well, I came down with a cold this week, really annoying, poor luck, truly. Fever, all sorts of annoyances in my throat and nose, loss of sleep due to all that, it wasn´t too fun. We lost some work time this week to recuperate a bit, but we still got out a bunch to get stuff done.

     I´ll start with the best part. We taught João Lima nearly every day of the last week and we got him well prepared for his baptism. He progressed really well, he read the BoM, everything was going well. We brought members to teach him and everything. He accepted everything, he was truly prepared by the Lord. He said that he was baptized years ago in another church, but felt nothing. He was excited to be baptized.

     He came to church dressed all fancy with a suitcoat and real shiny shoes, but most importantly with a towel. We held the baptism after the meetings at about 1pm. Fortunately, and surprisingly, quite a few members stuck around for the baptism, about 20 or so, making it my largest baptism. João was baptized by his long-time friend Geraldo, our ward mission leader. Everything ran well.

     Just before his baptism, I was sitting by his side in the front of the room. I asked "You nervous, João?" He quickly responded "No. I´m moving forward with all naturality."

     João will be confirmed next Sunday.

     We had a zone conference this week in Setúbal. It was a good time, learned a lot. Everyone was joking with me, calling me a dinosaur. (I was the "oldest" missionary there). We talked about a number of things, but a notable one was how to use the BoM in conversion. It was a good review. Truly, if someone with an open heart reads the book of mormon, he can resolve all of his doubts, because it is the BoM that allows us to trust the men who lead this church as prophets of God, and if they are such, their word is law.

     We stopped a brazilian with her 10yo son in the street this week and we came back the next day to teach. Her name was Sandra, a school teacher. She said that she was open to hear us not only because of curiosity, but mainly because she put herself in "our mothers´ shoes" aka she thought about how much we were giving up and how our moms let us leave home for two years just to talk about religion with people. 

     We had a really good lesson with her about the restoration. She was truly intrigued after hearing the news of a modern prophet to finish with apostasy. She gladly accepted the challenge to read and pray about the book of mormon, but she couldn´t make it to church so we didn´t talk much about baptism with her... yet.

     We were walking down the street when these guys in a bar called out for us... ugh... the more we try to just keep walking the louder they keep yelling "Elders! Elders! Com´ere!" So, we reluctantly went up to them and we actually had a decent conversation with 3 guys there. One was drunk, the other high, but the third was paying attention and asking legitamate questions. We chatted there for a little bit and ended up with their addresses. The one who was drunk in the middle of the conversation yelled "I NeED to PEE" and just left to relieve himself around the corner.

     Productive? No. Funny? Yeah, not every day that that happens.

     Then we round the corner after finishing with those three and then another four call out to us. At this point we thought, eh why not. These were a bit more evolved, only 2 of the 4 were high. Some legitamate questions, but no cigar in the end. 

     One of the high guys took our card crumpled it up and threw it straight at the ground as we walked away. Then his three buds gave him a look like "dude" and one socked him and said "why´d you accept it then?" Still not productive, but still funny.

     I think that´s the update. I was a bit under the weather yet again, so not a lot of action. I´m once again back to full health, all is well. Things are going good!

Até,

Elder Ward

Ps if someone mentioned last week isn´t in this email, it means that I don´t have any news about them... they stopped progressing or we lost contact with them. We havent forgotten about them though.

 Geraldo and João!