This weeks word is "bênçãos", meaning blessings, because this week was pretty great and weve seen some bênçãos for sure.
But Ill start with what we did last Pday. We hopped some trains all the way to this really touristy place in Lisbon. We visited the Castelo de São Jorge which was a pretty fancy castle on a hill that overlooks all of Lisbon, it was pretty sweet. I didnt read the history signs around, but I think it was originally constructed by the Arabs or something, then the Portuguese found it convenient to use. It was cool.
Like I said it was very touristy, so there were obviously handfuls of people from all over the world, Japanese, French, British, Americans... and drumroll... Some italians! I caught a wiff of some italians having a conversation with a vendor, and I couldnt help but stop and listen. The other missionaries were like "whats he doing" and I just didnt respond, only listened. It was crazy because I still understood what they were saying... It was really strange, like hearing a song you havent heard in a long time, but still are familiar with it. Afterwards, I turned to Elder Marques to explain, but when I tried to talk to him in Portuguese I ended up saying like half of my sentence in italian, had to switch gears haha. But I was super satisfied to hear, and most importantly understand some italian again. I miss that language.
Sometimes I still have to stop myself from saying "ciao" for greetings and "grazie", and a couple other words here and there that just stick.
When we returned, we stopped at this mall-type thing that was attached to a big train station here, and Elder Marques did some shopping, and then we headed back to the platforms to get a train home. For some reason, our train was delayed an hour and a half, and we just sat there roasting. It was great.
We had a zone conference the next day. President Tavares and his wife, my zone and another zone were combined for the day, totalling in some odd 30 missionaries there. It was a good time. I was asked to pray and bear testimony during the meeting, and President Tavares complemented me on my Portuguese, so Im at least learning something here, right?
I learned a ton there, there was a training type activity and all sorts of stuff. It was also fun to spend some time with other missionaries. Afterwards, we had some down time while we waited our turn for interviews with the President, and an Elder brought his guitar, so whaddyaknow I got to relax for a bit and play a guitar again! It was pretty sweet.
So I mentioned blessings at the beginning, lemme explain. These last few weeks E. Marques and I have been working really hard, roasting and knocking and talking and teaching, the usual. But we unfortunately werent seeing progress. Some of our investigators weve been working with havent been keeping their commitments and going to church, things like that. But this week we were able to find (officially) 4 new investigators, all with pretty good potential.
We found David, and African man in our area book who appeared to be progressing well, but for unknown reasons communication with him stopped for like a year. We found him the other day, re taught him the first lesson, and he said he wants to be baptized. With the missionaries in the past, he was about to, but had to fly out of the country for work and missed his baptism, but he said this week "yeah we need to plan a date, I want to invite all my friends". It was pretty great. Hes super busy with work, but we will work with him to get him baptized soon!
We also found a couple weeks ago a young Angolan named Alex, we only chatted with him in the street. This week, we managed to find him at home and taught him the 1st lesson, and he soaked it all in. He accepted a date for baptism and everything, and he appears to have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, for whatever reason he didnt make it to church yesterday, but we will find him tonight and get the wheel rolling again.
While walking through Via Longa, Elder Marques suddenly stopped and said "we should knock this street here", and so we did. At first, nothing, but then this nice old lady named Lucilia opened her door, and we chatted with her for a little while. She lives alone, and is a Jehovahs Witness, but lately has seen a lack of love, respect, and good experiences in her church, and she appeared very open and touched by our quick little chat with her. She lives alone with a bunch of cats (they were climbing on her as we spoke with her) so we cant teach her unless we bring someone else. We plan on doing so soon, just have to work it out. But it was crazy because E. Marques said he just felt like we should knock that street.
No concrete evidence with Lucilia yet, but from what I saw, she appeared to be ready for what we had to say.
But thats not all! That same street, 2 houses down, we found a Brazilian family, the father being Flavio. We returned a couple days later and taught him (wife was busy, kids are really young). He too, really soaked it up, and accepted to be baptized. We just need to return, teach him more, and follow up to make sure he is progressing on his own. It was really cool.
This week we also met with some members, and received a bunch of references from all of them. Its funny, we always ask "do you know anyone who would be interested...?" and they always say "nah no nah I dont know nobody" and so on, but eventually they give us 1 reference, and then they cant stop, giving us like 8 names by the end of the visit. Happened twice this week.
A couple days ago a member called us, a Brazillian named Nilton, saying he needed our help, and to bring as many missionaries as we could to the chapel at 4pm. We were a bit skeptical, so only E. Marques and I went. There this member went off on a monologue on all sorts of subjects, for example: brazillian sweets, portuguese dictionaries, women, his son, education, a random verse from the bible explaining hardness of hearts, the past, present, and future, and more. It was pretty funny, but we sat an listened. At the end he said "I need you guys to go out there and share this with all the people you possibly can" and we agreed, but really we dont know what his point was.
This saturday was really fun. We had a ward activity in the morning. I wont go into too much detail, but it was all sorts of games and activities with water balloons and such, it was a good time. It was full of laughter, wet people, and people chasing others with buckets of water. The members had a great time, bonded a lot, but unfortunately nobody brought a non-member friend, so unfortunately not much missionary work was done, but it was till a good time.
Later we had a stake activity, it was a little concert/talent show in this park in another area. It was pretty cool, we proselyted in the streets nearby the hours beforehand inviting people to it, but it was a pretty poor turnout unfortunately, mostly just missionaries there haha, but still a good time.
Yesterday we had church, and also had a dinner with the Bishop and his family. My family and a handful of others will get this, but our bishop here is the Portuguese spitting image of President Fomby in all forms of personality and humor, it was a really funny time, got some references too.
Some side notes:
-Forgot to mention this last week, but I got spat on (oh no!). We were waiting for an elevator in a tall apt building. I looked up the stairwell just to look, and there were some heads up there looking down, and whaddya know some spit landed right next to my tag. A little frustrating, oh well, but actually a bit more funny than frustrating. A couple weeks back a bird pooped on my nametag haha, I guess Ive just got good luck.
-When I want to say "I dunno" I still habitually say "buh", the italian way to express the same thing. When I do this people just look at me weird and then I realize it and say "Eu não sei" haha.
Anyways, I think that wraps it up. Hope you guys enjoy.
The Church is true!
Até logo,
Elder Ward
ps- its really hot
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