4 December 2017 A Primeira Vez com Genealogia

Dear family and friends,

     This week ran well. It was one of our best weeks here in Setúbal, numbers-wise. Through our area book we found a few old investigators. We had interesting experiences with them. Fortunately, we broke the ice quickly and they explained frankly and right off the bat why they didn´t progress so well with past missionaries.

     One´s António Mina. We learned that he was taught a lot, but actually never read the BoM alone to really find out if it´s true. It seems like he talked in circles in the past. He also seems to have developed his own religion, so to speak, claiming that only benevolence, brotherhood, and justice are the attributes that he beleives in, and he just beat around the bush with abstract ideas. He focused much more on having a fancy conversation with us than just learning about he restored gospel... It wasn´t a productive lesson, but oh well. We might give it another shot. (Portuguese love to talk)

     Our other was a man named Ricardo, a security guard. He was also  taught many many times in the past, and quickly explained "I don´t like tithing". Okay. He continued "but go ahead, all the Elders explain it a different way, give me your opinion of tithing".

     Instead of giving a monologue, I simply said "look, the modern prophets say that tithing is a law of God. It all depends on whether or not you believe in the Book of Mormon as proof of modern prophets and revelation". 

     After reviewing the simple chain-link belief intertwined in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the restoration, he simply replied that he likes the book of mormon. In fact, he already read a good part of it, but he doesn´t seem to give it the credit it deserves as scripture and also proof of living prophets. It´s just a good book about God to him... Sometimes people just don´t get it, but sometimes we also just don´t know how to explain it. Whichever it was, we missionaries are always trying to better our teaching skills to help people have the best chance to accept the restored gospel.

     We´re still visiting Welton a couple times a week to leave a short prayer with him, help clean up a little, stuff like that. When the kids aren´t home we try to teach him, but those opportunities are rare. He´s still having a few ups and downs, and didn´t make it to church this week, even though he wanted to go... things just have gotten in the way. He´s a "long-term" project, I guess.

     We are finally getting a grip on Fernando! We met up with him Wednesday morning in the chapel and we sat and had a good lesson. We explained the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the necessity that he has to prepare himself for baptism. He explained that he wants to be baptized, and we taught what was necessary. We reinforced the need to read the BoM and pray. He accepted the challenge. We also taught the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom. He raised his eyebrows a bit, but we talked about how he can live the laws and what blessings he´ll receive. (He drinks tea and coffee). He accepted the challenge, but didn´t accept a baptismal date... But, Fernando was a champ and went to church in the chapel closer to where he lives where we had a stake conference, so it was an experience pretty good for him! We watched a transmission in our chapel, and from one of the camera angles we saw Fernando, which was great.

     We kept in contact with Paulo this week! He was outside of Setúbal all week, but he came back Sunday... after church, darn. However, we invited him, and Fernando to a little Integration Night (I dunno what you´d call it in english, but that´s the translation). They both showed up and had a cool little reunion! After all, we met them both together in the first place. We had a small spiritual thought, some simple group games, and refreshments afterwards. It ran well, and members, recent converts, and investigators were able to mix a bit.

     We also had a pretty cool miracle this week. We were walking towards the chapel when this little old portuguese lady, not a single tooth, Ângela, stopped us and simply asked "Are you boys from a church? Is it that church that does geneology?" With a short and happy response, we led her to the church, we entered, talked for a bit (she talked a lot more, like I said, portuguese love to talk) about her ancestry that she already is familiar with and we got right to it. We helped her create an account and we started a little tree with her. She enjoyed it a lot, and we actually managed to discover a couple of great great grandparents with her, she was really happy to see the tree grow. She explained how one of her ancestors was an aviator who flew from Portugal to Brasil, stuff like that.

     Ângela is a bit poor, and doesn´t have a working phone nor a steady address right now, but she gave her word to come to church. She did, enjoyed it a lot, and also came to that activity Sunday night! She´s a witty lady, she caught on to the games well (signs game, etc). She met Ana at church (that 50k family history machine that I mention a couple weeks back) and we planned to meet up at her place on Tuesday to continue and to teach. It´ll go well.

     We also had a division with the Assistents this week in their area, Mem Martins. I went with Elder Egbert, a great guy. He was trained by Elder Welch, and we three did a division a year ago in Odivelas together. Lots of little memories weaved in a lot of experiences, people, and places. I learned a ton with him, It was a good eye-opener for me.

     So, I think that sums it up for now. It was a good week. Elder Hawkins is doing well, he´s a great companion. We hope to see some more good stuff this next week!

Ciao,

Elder Ward

A photo after our little activity. Myself, Fernando, Paulo, and Elder Hawkins

27 November 2017 Aceleração

Dear family and friends,

     It has been a pretty simple week. Last Monday and Tuesday we worked pretty hard. When we aren´t busy teaching our current investigators, we use our Area book a lot. We are trying to find a lot of people that previous missionaries left behind, and we are trying to also visit people that we have found. We often do a lap through the area trying to find people, and we talk with every person in our path. Through these efforts, we end up finding more people, eliminating or finding older potential investigators, and so on. We´re basically just trying to hunt people down and find that at home to try to make a teaching opportunity, and when that doesn´t work out we talk with the greatest number of people possible to find someone who may be interested. We visit members in the process and we help them grow the desire to share the gospel and develop simple tactics to do so in the process.

     This is basically the bread and butter of our work. Sometimes we don´t have any appointments in a day, so we just try our best to create opportunities to teach using these methods. It´s a bit tedious sometimes, but it´s a necessary task. If we didn´t talk with anyone new, we would have very few investigators. Sometimes this routine continues for a few consecutive days, and doing so we often memorize a lot of addresses, streets, neighborhoods, and often with a little time we start to recognize people in the street by name.

     So, when you wonder what I did in a week when I only talk about our investigators, just imagine Elder Hawkins in a busy street, stopping every person that passes to show the Book of Mormon or to introduce any gospel principle, and every once in a while writing down a name and number to visit another day as we walk towards a pre-determined address that has a potential investigator.

     Sometimes I bring a few sheets of contacts from previous missionaries with me. Sometimes I just hold the sheets in hand and I call dozens of people who were contacted up to years ago by other missionaries as I let Elder Hawkins contact people.

     Yeah, I felt like explaining to you a bit more of what I really do all day, I hope you have a better idea now. So when I don´t explain what I did last Tuesday, you can safely assume that I did the above for 6-9hrs, studied, ate, and/or went to some meeting.

     And don´t worry, we´re not robots. We talk and laugh, sometimes we joke with people (not in a bad way, sometimes we just have funny experiences with people) We plan our route each morning after praying and pondering, and sometimes we stop to ponder and pray during the day to find other special opportunities. It´s good stuff.

(I think I repeated myself there a few times, whatever, let´s move on)

     On Wednesday we we´re walking in the city center and this guy behind us whistled to call for us. We stopped and talked to him and met him and his girlfriend. They´re António and Lana, two portuguese, about 35yo. António was baptized years ago, but is now inactive. He introduced himself and explained that he was baptized, has a testimony of the BoM and everything, but because of life´s complications and such, he became inactive. However, he´d like to return to church, and he told us straightly "I want Lana to be baptized there too" as he told us about his baptism. It was pretty cool, but then he went off into a rant about a doubt that he had about the gospel... how Joseph Smith couldn´t have seen God and lived...etc. We eventually cut the converstation and marked a day to visit him. 

     That day we came back and taught them both. It was a decent lesson, we started with the Restoration (we wanted to review for António to help him understand better, and give Lana a good start) but we switched to the 3rd lesson, the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we discovered a bit more about them. They both have some addictions and have desires to repent and follow Christ, so we talked about simple commandments that will help them grow their faith (read, pray, church attendance) and they accepted to do them all, although Lana was too nervous to pray in the end of our lesson. They promised to come to church, but unfortunately didn´t make it, we still don´t know why. We´ll try to hunt them down this week again. It was cool to get to know them.

     A few weeks back, we talked with a nice lady in a park named Sílvia, a portuguese woman of about 40 years. After calling, cancelling, and rescheduling a few times, we managed to meet up with her this week in the same park to teach.

     When Sílvia was attending college in the north half of Portugal she met some Elders that taught english there, and received a Book of Mormon. She was never taught, but read some parts of the book and enjoyed it. However, this was 20 years ago so she hardly remembers.

     There in the park, we taught her the Restoration to help her understand where the Book of Mormon came from and what it means. She enjoyed the lesson, and she said that she felt the same feelings there as she did when she read the BoM 20 years ago as we taught her. We gave her a new one and invited her to come to church, but she already has her children involved in a youth group each Sunday morning so she will have to look ahead to plan a Sunday to go. She will try her best. We´ll meet with her this week to continue teaching.

     We had interviews with President Tavares this week, so we travelled to Lisbon by train and had a good chat with him there. It´s always cool travelling and also seeing and talking with Pres. I enjoyed the experience. We got back from Lisbon just after lunch and we went to Zé´s house.

     We had a really good lesson with him. He had read, since our first visit, until 1 Nephi 12! He really likes the Book of Mormon, and he said that he´s prayed about it and knows that it´s true. Woo! That´s how it should always work!

     However, Zé still hasn´t come to church. He gives soccer classes each sunday morning, and he was already paid for them, so he is obligated to give the classes in the hour he agreed on. However, he told us that he´s going to call each person with whom he gives the classes to try and reschedule the future classes to a different time so that way he can come to church. Zé is doing really good, we just need to get him to church a few times and he´ll gladly be baptized!

     A few weeks back we met a guy named Carlos in the street. A potuguese man, about 50 years old, but seems younger. He works with heavy machinery (cargo cranes, ships, etc) in the port here in Setúbal. I wasn´t expecting him to, but he accepted to have us over to share our message.

     After calling, visiting, cancelling, and rescheduling a few times we finally managed to teach him this week. He´s got a tough situation.

     Carlos had a marraige that lasted 18 years but then ended in divorce, some time alone, and then another marraige that lasted 6 years, and just 2 months ago ended in divorce, and here´s Carlos alone again, starting a new life. For these reasons he was open to have us over, he said that he´s been through tough times and wants to know what he can do better.

     We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We talked a lot about repentance and baptism. We learned by the environment there that he has a few bad habits, such as alcohol and probably cigarettes. We invited him to start living the Gospel, to pray, and to come to church with us, to repent, and to be baptized. He didn´t make it this last week due to a trip he already had planned, but we´ll work with him to get him to church this next sunday. He´s a cool guy. I hope to see some good progress with him.

     Welton has had ups and downs. He´s still in a really complicated situation with his ex-wife, to be honest, I can´t explain what´s happening, it´s pretty lame, but now police are involved. Nothing is dangerous, we´re just trying to find the right moments to talk with Welton and help him out. He was going to come to church this Sunday, but didn´t make it unfortunately. We still haven´t talked with him since Sunday, but we´ll continue working with him.

     Fernando, welp, he´s slippery! We didn´t get to teach him this week. He said that he had an unexpected event, so cancelled our lesson. Then he didn´t pick up the phone the other times we called....

     He surprised us, this time because he didn´t come to church... but we exchanged a few messages last night because we had an activity that we wanted to invite him to, but it didn´t work out. He said "let´s try tomorrow", so we´re gonna try today... He´s sly!

     But, if you have good memory, you´ll remember Paulo, our friend from Moçambique that was originally introduced to us by Fernando. We lost contact with Paulo for a few weeks, but it turns out that he got a job in a city a bit far away, so was over there for a while. He recently returned to Setúbal. 

     How do we know this? Right after the meetings yesterday, he showed up to the front of the church to talk with us! It was a pleasant surprise. He said that he´s been reading the BoM and has also been loaning it on and off with a friend. So, we gave him another! He said that life is steadier now, he´s got a room that he´ll stay in for a while now really close to the other chapel in Setúbal, and he´s going ot buy a cellphone this week! We´ll be keeping an eye on him so that way he can be taught and baptized at last.

     When we got home from church to eat lunch, he called us with his friend´s phone just to tell us that he had found a scripture that he liked in the Book of Mormon. He said that he´s going to talk to all of his african friends and invited them all to church to discover the same thing that he has. It was a pleasant surprise!

     The plan is to hunt down the two sly dogs, Fernando and Paulo, and baptize them together. After all, they were walking together a month or two ago when they talked with us the first time!

Well, it´s a long email. Surprisingly, I have more to say, but I don´t have much more time... I will send another next week, don´t worry, haha

Tchauzinho, adeus, vá, obrigado, abraço, tchau, tchau, obrigado, adeuszinho, vá, obrigado, boa tarde, fica bem, obrigadinho, tchauzinho, vá,

Elder Ward

(^that´s how you hang up in portugal)

 Numerous people have called me crazy for wearing short-sleeve

20 November 2017 E o batismo?

Dear family and friends,

     I´ll start off with our last Pday. After writing emails, we invited the other Elders from the neighboring area to our house. We already had some burgers and buns onhand, so we just grabbed some charcoal and we started up a grill. (We already have a little grill on our balcony). It ran well, the burgers actually turned out really good, it was relaxing. (See photo!)

     We have been visiting Welton frequently. Often, we stop by just to say hey or try to help him out at home. However, in all these visits, in all our time here, we only managed to teach him twice! So, this week his youngest started pre-school so now he´s got a bunch of time open during the day. We visited him on Wednesday and we taught him. We shared 1 Coninthians 6:19-20, that explains how his body is a temple. We talked about baptism, his desires and goals, and what he would like to eliminate from his life to have a cleaner temple. He talked to us about his smoking habit, and we now are helping him to stop. We explained the power of the Book of Mormon, and the assistance that it can give him, the replacement that it can be for him. He´s a trooper, he´s got a lot of desire to quit.

     He lost his cellphone this week so we couldn´t call him. We tried to visit him this week, but a few times he wasn´t home. Finally, we found him one night in the street with his two sons, Adriano in the stroller. Welton had a horrible worry written across his face. We followed him home, and he didn´t say a word, but gestured us to follow him. His son, 8yo, Lucas, said "dad, tell the Elders what´s wrong, you know things aren´t right, just let them help you.."

     We got to his place, and he explained to us a really complicated situation. His ex-wife is basically making a lot of problems in his life, ruining his friendships and just lot´s of bad stuff that I shouldn´t even dwell on. It was really sad, and we spent some time there helping him out. He seems to be a bit better now. We were hoping to see him at church, and he wanted to go again, but he ended up getting a call from a friend to do a simple cooking job during the weekend, so ended up missing church.

     He´s got a lot of potential and a lot of desire, so we´ll be working closely with him.

     Darlan, you may remember him from a few weeks back, has been really "busy". His parents are visiting him from Brasil and are staying here until the new year... This visit has become a big and constant excuse to not to come to church and stuff "no time, no time"... so, we went there and tried to teach his parents. We taught his mother, Noélia. She had all the perfect questions "Which is the true church?" "What happened with Christ´s original church?" etc. We had a good lesson with her, she asked a lot of good questions and was awfully curious. However, we got the the end, and invited her to read and pray. She accepted. We invited her to come to church and be baptized when she knows that the gospel was restored, and she basically responded, summing it up, "I dont know if Im ready to change my life, but I´ll read and pray". We explained real intent. We hope she´ll grow a true desire as she searches.

     About two weeks ago, 9pm, Elder Hawkins and I had finished with our plans, we were out of ideas, and we had a half-hour walk to get home. We decided to start walking home.

     Only after starting for about 30 seconds, I heard this baby behind us giggling and stuff. A thought came to mind "talk to the person with that baby". 

     I continued walking about 10 steps, stopped, looked at Elder Hawkins, and he at me, and I asked him "Do we need to talk to that person with that baby?" 

     Elder Hawkins immediately responded, "yeah, I had the same thought."

     We turned around, and approached a window of a ground-floor apartment. In the window, was a young brazilian father, about 25-30yo, with his young baby daughter who was playing on his lap. We talked to the man and got to know him. We talked about his family, his home, and his endeavors here in Portugal. HIs name is Zé, he´s a soccer coach.

     We guided the converstation into a conversation about God and such. We discovered that Zé is a good christian man, but doesn´t affiliate with any particular religion, although he already visited many. We invited him to here our message about the restoration. He accepted to have us over another day.

     After a few failed attempts, we finally marked a day to talk with him. He was at home alone, and he gladly received us. We taught the Restoration and it was a powerful lesson. He said he had already heard, only a little, about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon in a religious convention that he visited a long time ago, he remembered nearly nothing. He was super curious and anxious to have the Book of Mormon in the end. He said he will read and pray, and will come to church with us next Sunday.

    During the lesson, he said "after you guys talked with me, what you guys told me stuck in my head, I kept thinking ´why did they talk with me´?" I interupted him and told him about how we had been prompted to talk to him in a moment that we would not have normally done so. It was a powerful lesson. He accepted to be baptized as soon as he feels the truth of the Book of Mormon.

     You think that´s cool? That´s not all! Once again, Fernando avoided our calls and messages this week, but without invite, showed up to church!! He walked in the door, gave me a big hug, put his hand on my shoulder and said "So when is the baptism thing?"

    "Huh?" I responded.

    "The baptism thing here. I will be baptized in this church."

    "You want to be baptized?" I don´t know how to explain the expression that I had on my face.

     "yeah"

     "how about his saturday?" 

     "That´s a bit early maybe. Let´s meet up this week and plan everything, you guys can teach me more."

     So yeah, I was floored. After sacrament meeting, I brought Fernando to Fábio and said "Fernando, tell Fábio what you told me when you got here"

     "yeah, I Wanna do the baptism thing here."

     Fábio´s face was also pretty funny. He said "I have no words... that´s great!"

     On tuesday we´ll meet up with Fernando. Hopefully he doesn´t go awol again! He´s a bit slippery, but each time we get a better grip on him haha.

So yeah, if you guys want to pray for people, pray for Fernando and for Welton, they need help!

Thanks for everything, fiquem bem!

Elder Ward

 hey

 a pday a couple weeks back

our grill sesh

13 November 2017 Azeitão e Igreja

Dear family and friends,

     This week had some cool treats in it. 

     It was announced a bit short-notice, but we had a conference in Lisbon with two general authorities, Elder Owen (pres. of young mens) and Elder Durrant (presidency of sunday school) came to visit our mission with their wives. It was pretty cool. They majority of the mission went to attend the meeting that they held there, only a few missionaries from areas far away didn´t come. I got to see Elder Harker, Elder Jan, and a bunch of other familiar faces. (Funny, Elder Jan and Elder Harker are serving together in Faro now!)

     They talked about various subjects there, but for example, we learned about teaching in the way of the Savior and a bit more about applying the Doctrine of Christ. It ran well.

     Our zone, The Setúbal Zone, is about an hour by train away, but we were still invited to come and attend. The missiona office advised that we called an area in Lisbon the night before to sleep there to make the morning travel to the meeting easier. So, I gladly called the Elders who are now in Odivelas, and Elder Hawkins and I traveled there by train and subway Tuesday night. We got there a bit early, so we actually went and visited Linda, that lady that Elder Gunnarsson and I miraculously baptized. Linda is doing really well. Since her baptism, she´s gone to church every week! She loves it, made friends there and everything! We visited her at about 9:30 so we could only stay for a few minutes, but it was good to see her and she was happy to see us. We spent the night there, and I stayed up a bit chatting with the new Elders there to help them get started this transfer in Odivelas. We also bought kebab (the best kebab store is there in Odivelas haha). It was a great refresher visiting there again.

     We spent a lot of time pondering about it, but we eventually decided to sacrifice a day in Setúbal to work in a small town a bit outside the city called Azeitão. The members have been telling us that it´s super special there and we also learned about a few less-actives that are there. So, reluctantly, I decided that we could give it a shot. We didn´t find any new investigators, nor potential investigators, but we found those less-actives that the members had mentioned. One of them, the Martins Family (mother, father, and 4 kids, 16 to 8)received us very well. They were active for many many years, but have stopped going for almost a year. We chatted first with Emanuala, the mother of the family. She was happy to see us. Within a few minutes of getting to know each other she said "Elders, my youngest, Leonor, is 8 and hasn´t been baptized. I think you guys will baptize her."

     That took us off guard haha. We talked a little longer about how it would work out, etc. She told us a bit about her husband, Luís, who has had small doubts here and there about the church. Luís got home shortly after, we chatted some more and we left a message with them. They seemed to wake up a little, and Emanuela showed quite a bit of desire to return to activity.

     In our little message, we didn´t even talk about baptism, and immediately after the prayer Leonor turned to her mother and asked in a low voice "mom, are we going to talk with the Elders to do my baptism?"

     They enjoyed our visit, we will probably return this next weekend to see what progress we can make. They will try to invite some friends of their oldest son to have a FHE there. A good family.

     So in the end, our day in Azeitão yeilded something good. We did the math with google maps, and we walked 12.1 miles that day. (it´s pretty spread-out there, we didn´t anticipate such big distances)

     We also had yet another service project! The sister missionaries have been teaching a family for a little while now, and when the mother went to church, she felt something special, and since then progressed super fast. They recently moved, so we actually went to help them paint their new apartment. The work wasn´t super prepared, but we got it done in a reasonable amount of time, but we would have liked to have done it faster... It gave me lots of flashbacks to my eagle project in Italy...

     That same lady, Wal (pronounced Vahl) was baptized with her two children this last Saturday. Wal asked that I did the baptism, so I had the privelege to baptize the three of them on Saturday. It was a good experience.

     Saturday night we went to visit Welton. It was a miracle, we got there and Adriano, his youngest, was asleep. Welton recently met a friend of his, Artur, another brazilian, 28, who is now renting out a room in Welton´s house. Welton was busy making dinner, so Elder Hawkins went and chatted with Welton to get him to come to church, while I sat in the other room and taught the restoration to Artur. It ran really well. Artur´s father used to be a pastor in an evangelical church, and Artur has bounced around in several other churches. Artur lived in the states for a few years, and there a friend gave him the Book of Mormon, so for that reason Artur was curious to hear our message right from the source.

     After that visit, Artur, Welton, and Welton´s two sons came to church! Welton once again enjoyed it a lot, and Artur seemed to really like it too. Welton and Artur both smoke unfortunately, but we´ll be working with them a lot, they´ve shown a lot of potential.

     Last week we were in front of the chapel and this German tourist (a bit more of a nomad/bum) talked to us and said "you guys are the John smith guys right? I´ll come visit another day. When´s the meeting?" He actually showed up in sacrament meeting too!

     We stopped talking with Fernando, we decided to give him some space for a few weeks. He surprised us and just showed up to church! It was cool to see him! We were busy helping out Welton and talking with a bunch of other people, so we left Fábio (fernando´s friend) to talk to him. We came back just a minute or two later, and Fernando had left, and Fábio hadn´t scheduled anything, dang it! But now we know that Fernando still has some good intent in him, so we´ll try to meet up with him this week.

     So yeah, it was a good Sunday! I had to give a talk too, and being a missionary and being so busy, I didn´t plan my talk basically until we were walking to church with Welton´s family and Artur. It ran well, fortunately.

     In all it was a good week. We´re getting a better feel for things now. We´re working hard.

I guess that´s it! Take care!

Elder Ward

 This is Ana, a nice lady from our ward. She´s a family history maniac, here

s some of her 48,000 names she´s found. They´re gonna need a big stadium for her welcoming pary in heaven, lot´s of people are gonna want to be there to thank her.​

Linda! She was getting ready for bed when we showed up, but she obliged (a it reluctantly) to take a photo!

6 November 2017 Round Two

Dear family and friends,

     To put things in simple terms, this week was a bit tough. We worked pretty hard but we are still hoping to find more success. Some good things still happened though.

     A few weeks back we were trying to find a less-active member with a list that we had and we knocked the doors in the same building. We found this girl named Catarina, a brazilian. She said that she already was taught by missionaries in the past, but she stopped because she´s still from her own religion. We politley told her a bit about how were different and how we could focus in a way that would help her grow her faith through the things that we present, and she said that we could pass by later. We came back to find her brother, João, who has 14 years. He answered the door, and generally we´re not very insistent with youth, we try to focus on the head of the family, so we asked to speak with Catarina or their mother. João to call for her, and he did. We went around the corner and in a low voice said "mom...hey mom! Mom! The missionaries! Mom, c´mon, just a bit! Can they? Mom!" 

     Elder Hawkins looked at me and gestured in a way that basically said "hey, joão seems cool". Their mother eventually came to the door, she wasn´t interested in what we had to say, but we simply asked "well, since you guys aren´t super interested, could we just come in and chat with João?" And it worked out. We taught the restoration to him, it ran well. He actually was taught in the past as well (according to the area book, by Elder Marques as well!) but he didn´t remember anything. We invited him to church, asked his mother for permission, and she granted. However, João got super busy with soccer games and practice so we lost contact with him and he didn´t make it to church. We´ll hunt him down this week.

     We taught Darlan and Alynne. We had a pretty good experience. I put the photo of our family on my camera, the photo of you guys at Grandpa´s funeral, and I brought it to the lesson. We were planning to teach the plan of salvation.

     As we taught, we put a big focus on eternal families which are available because of the restoration of the priesthood. Showed them the photo "here´s my family. They look happy, don´t they?" Of course they agreed. I asked them to look for a secret in the photo. With a little help, they noticed that the photo was taken at a funeral. I explained to them the joy and comfort that a sealed family can have. We explained how the restored priesthood can seal them and help them have an eternal bond, not just a relationship on the earth. The spirit was strong, Alynne was surprised and touched. We talked about a few other details here and there, and we explained how baptism will be the first step to get there. They will pray.

     In my mission, I´ve only done service a few times... I can count on one hand, I think! There just aren´t a lot of opportunities that show up... But this week, we did service two days in a row! One night we helped out with a caravan of goods that was sent to the North of Portugal to help victims of the fires up there. We loaded up a big truck with lots of... lots of stuff. Chairs, beds, food, furniture, sacks of cement, 30kg sacks of animal feed, toys, appliances, you name it, it was good work. At one point we made a little assembly line for the sacks of animal feed and to joke around with our ward mission leader, Franklin, a funny brazilian guy, I made sure to chuck the sacks nice and hard to him haha.

     Then someone from the ward called us to help out at their house. They were selling it and had to clean it up quickly to show it to a buyer. And it wasn´t a house... It was a freaking mansion! It was huge and super modern, all boxy and stuff. Really nice, and honestly it was just overkill. We moved a bunch of boxes and furniture to the garage, to be out of the main living areas to make the house more presentable. It was good work, lots of heavy boxes. After two back-to-back service projects with heavy lifting, I thought for sure that I would be dead sore, but both Elder Hawkins and I turned out fine haha.

     Welton was super busy this week, we didn´t manage to teach him, we only got to stop by a few times to say hello. He just didn´t have the time to sit down. He didn´t make it to church though, but as we talked with him this week we found out just how much he liked going last week. He will put the youngest in a pre-school thingy this week so Welton should have a lot more time available, and a lot more time alone, without tornadoes around him. We will take advantage of that to teach him a bunch. He seems to have a lot of potential.

     Fernando was a bit slippery this week. He didn´t say it directly, but we think he´s not interested anymore, and who knows why. Our member friend, Fábio, will keep in contact with Fernando on Facebook and try to help thing out there.

  

     We had transfers! Elder Hawkins and I will stay together here in Setúbal 1C. It has been challenging, in a good way, serving in this area, and I´m excited to better my skills as a missionary to find more success in the transfer to come. There is obviously a lot I need to learn here. Setúbal hasn´t knocked us down yet, we´re still on our feet, Elder Hawkins and I will do much better this transfer.

     It´s a short email, I haven´t got a lot of news, I know. I hope to have more news next week.

Ciao,

Elder Ward

Oh, and winter finally showed up! It got cold enough to use a jacket, and reained a few times! I´m liking it a lot!

 I don´t even know if this is a cool picture, but it´s all I´ve got for now.​

And our service thingy! On my right is Franklin.

30 October 2017 Primária Grand Slam

Dear family and friends,

     This week was a bit like the rest, but we had a few great highlights.

     We started off our week getting right to work. We went to a family home evening with the Sisters and their investigators, it was a good time. They invited us so that way we could give a blessing to the mother of the family that wasn´t doing so good health-wise. They´re a family of three, a mother, and a son and daughter (twins) 11yo. They progressed super fast and were baptized this last saturday. Elder Hawkins was invited to do two of the baptisms, he enjoyed it a lot.

     On Thursday we had a family home evening with Fernando. It ran really well. We showed up and Fábio, our host, let´s say, invited a bunch of other people too! In all, we were 2 Elders, 6 returned missionaries, and Fernando in a family home evening. We taught and watched the Restoration. We gave a Book of Mormon, and we invited Fernando to be baptized. He accepted everything, he made a lot of friends (turns out that he already knew a bunch of the people there) and we just had a really good time. We didn´t have time to stay afterwards for the food, we ended up running (literally) home to get there on time. Fernando had to travel this weekend, so he didn´t make it to church. However, we will be working with him closely. If all goes well he´ll be baptized in the near future.

     We stopped by Weltons house once again this week. When we got there, to be brief, he was a wreck. He was crying and super stressed out. He was having some trouble with his papers and because of his specific and complicated situation, he was told that he might lose the custody of his two sons. He told us that he doesn´t have much reason to do anything without his sons, they´re everything to him. We only had a few minutes to meet with him. Elder Hawkins turned to me and said "let´s sing a hymn to him" so we did. I said to Welton "look, we don´t have all the answers, I don´t know how to solve your problems with the custody stuff and you´re financial situation, but we want to help. We know this will help." We sang "Come Come Ye Saints" to him. He calmed down, and the Spirit was super strong. He was so thankful, and said that we had helped him a lot. It was a touching experience.

     We ended up having other activities planned during the weekend, so we didn´t have a chance to visit him. We called him Saturday night. We didn´t want to be super pushy in a delicate and tough time, so we just let him know that we were hoping to see him church the next day. He said he would give it a shot, so we agreed to call Sunday morning to make sure. We did so, and whaddya know, Welton showed up to church with his two kids (a 2yo and 8yo) right on time!

     We also talked quite a bit with Darlan and his wife Alynne, a brazilian couple that has been taught for a while now. They came to church too (Darlan the 3rd time, Alynne the 1st, so a big progress) and they enjoyed it, they brought their two young children too (like 4yo and 8yo). 

     It ran perfectly for two reasons. 1, saturday night here in portugal we had that daylight savings thing, so here in portugal we gained an hour during the night. Darlan and Alynne have smartphones, so they got an extra hour of rest and didn´t even realize it, but it helped them get the kids ready. But even better with Welton, he didn´t know there was a time change, so he tried his best to get the kids ready, and he thought that he was an hour late, but got there right on time!

     These two families came on the perfect sunday... Primary program! The primary put on a good performance, all "cute" and stuff, and it hooked Alynne really well, but it was a home run with Welton. He came straight to me after the sacrament meeting and said "oh man, it´s great that I came on the day when the children had their show! That was so good!"

     In all, Welton really liked church, he wants to come back and put his kids right into primary. We´re working with Darlan and Alynne to be baptized in two weeks. We hope all goes well.

     Transfers next Sunday. I´ve given up on trying to predict transfers, but it is most probable that I will stay here with Elder Hawkins to finish his training. He´s doing well, has made a lot of progress since the start.

So that´s an update. Take care everyone!

Elder Ward

 We´re in "fall" now, but it´s still like 30-40c. Winter isn´t showing up.. it still feels like summer

23 October 2017 Hitman

Dear family and fiends,

     So this week was another week of lots of hard work. I´m awfully tired and to be honest I don´t have much to say. We tried our best to do plans and get going, find our investigators, find new investigators, etc. In spite of some of our best efforts, we only managed to pull off a few lessons this week, and we didn´t find any new investigators.

     We managed to teach Welton, that brazilian single stay at home dad. It was a good lesson, we taught him about the Sabbath Day, and he committed to come to church. However, he didn´t make it. We passed by his house sunday about an hour before church to see if we could helph him get ready, but he was super stressed and really put down. He´s running short on money and he only had 2 daipers to get his youngest until the end of the month... complicated things like that. We tried to comfort him and offer our support, but I didn´t know really well what to do to be honest. He also felt pretty ashamed because he had promised us that he´d go to church with us, but we made sure to tell him it was alright. He has a lot on his plate.

     On Saturday morning we had a bunch of appointments, each one fell through, when suddenly a member who was in the chapel called us and said "Elders there´s a man here waiting to talk with you". We headed straight there and we found Paulo! We have zero contact with him, the only way that we can find him is by sheer luck, and whaddya know he showed up to the church!

     He told us a bunch about what he´s going through and we addressed his concerns and we had a pretty good lesson with him. He accepted a new baptismal date and promised to come to church, but didn´t make it... so yeah, ground zero again. We´ll just have to wait until the next time we cross paths.

     But, saturday night we sent a text to Fernando, Paulo´s friend (who we still haven´t taught officially) and we said "hey, paulo is coming to church tomorrow, can you come to support him?". Fernando, being the great guy he is, showed up to church a second time! This time he payed a lot of attention and even asked a few questions like "does one have to be a member to go up there to the front and talk?" and "when someone get´s to know the church, how long does one take to be baptized?" Those perfect questions haha. Turns out that one of the members who gave a talk on Sunday was Fábio, one of Fernando´s old schoolmates. I chatted with Fernando for a bit and he said "yeah, I´d like to get a bit deeper into this church, it´s interesting" (Fernando has already gone to many churches). We set up a family home evening with Fábio, his wife, and Fernando on thursday. We have plans to teach Fernando and committ him to baptism there. He´s basically our guy with the most potential for now.

     But yeah, I think that´s an update. The other folks that we´ve worked with lately are slowly disappearing, but we still try to chase them down every once in a while.

Adeus,

Elder Ward

 I saw a mou´n and I clumbd it​ (Setúbal on the left, Tróia, where we spent last pday, on the right)

 Peter, James, and John

16 October 2017 Pickup

Dear family and friends,

     So this week things picked up quite a bit! On monday we managed to teach a guy, unfortunately he didn´t want to continue after our first visit... he claimed that he didn´t want any form of commitment, but he gladly kept the Book of Mormon.

     On Tuesday we found an old investigator that was in our Area Book. His name is Welton, +/-30, a good brazilian fella. He´s been through a lot, and it´s a long story, but to sum things up, He´s living off a medical assistance pension and is taking care of two children, 2 and 7 alone, basically doesn´t work and doesn´t have time to. He recently separated from his partner, and she isn´t capably of keeping the children... a long story too. 

     However, 8 months ago or so, Welton was found by the Sisters and taught a little bit. Things got complicated with his partner and that´s why he wan´t taught much more afterwards. We found him, and he was happy to see us, opened the door with a naked 2 year old in his arms, and didn´t even look to see how it was, he just said "come in!" He´s a great guy. Unfortunately doesn´t remember much of what he was taught in the past, but we hope to help him out. We´ve stopped by his place a number of times now, but we only managed to teach him once. The other times he was too busy, so lately we´ve been offering our help. As he´s doing some chore, Elder Hawkins mopped as I did the dishes, etc. We hope to grow a trust with him even more so that way we can start to teach. He has a lot of desire, but has two tornados for children and is one guy running all the errands. We´ll work it out.

     Another day, a portuguese man named Jorge, probably 45 years old, stopped us in the street. We were near his house and he thought we were looking for a woman named Amália, who is is maid, and a member of the church. We explained that we were just doing the normal old thing, but we took advantage of the situation. We ended up having a pretty cool conversation about he Book of Mormon and we responded to many questions that he had about the church. We scheduled to come back to his place and explain more later that week. 

     We headed back there and we taught a simple lesson. Jorge is a bit of a philisophical man, he likes to beat around the bush a bit, to talk, and make things more complicated than they are... we´ll have to learn to controll the lessons with him a bit more, but in the end it was a good experience.

     On Friday we were walking down the street and we took a path that I usually dont like to take due to the large number of tourists on that street. However, he headed that way and two guys shouted out to us... This happens a lot, but usually theyre just joking with us. However, after a few times, we came over to them and met them. Theyre two men, Fernando, a portuguese man, probably 26, and Paulo, from Moçambique, about 30. Fernando stopped us and said "hey elders, you guys gotta help out my friend here, he wants to fix his life, he needs your guys´ help."

      We had a short conversation to try to understand the subject a bit more. We learned that Paulo had a recent seperation in his family, is unemployed, and having a bit of trouble with alchohol. He said that he wants help and wants to change. We said "hey, the church is just around the corner here, wanna see it? we can talk more there." 

     We showed them the chapel, they had to leave to go to an event, but returned that night to meet with us. They were late and I called them. They were debating stopping for food before coming the second time to the chapel, but then they asked me "You guys have a little bit of food there?" A question I hadn´t been asked before. Luckily enough, a sister from the ward had prepared some soup for us and left it there in the chapel.. We took advantage of it to give some to Fernando and Paulo.

     Fernando is a funny guy, he´s a christian and all, but doesn´t consider himself from any religion. But, he´s a great helper! Paulo doesn´t have a phone right now and didn´t know his address, but Fernando has been our line of contact, and goes about hunting down Paulo.

     There in the chapel we taught Paulo. Fernando didn´t have time to stay. Paulo accepted the invite to be baptized. Elder Hawkins participated in the lesson and did well. Unfortunately, Paulo woke up late and also got lost and didn´t make it to church. It was funny though, Fernando showed up at church for sacrament, walked in and said "hey, where´s paulo? I couldn´t get a hold of him, is he here?" Fernando is a bit interesting, but we´re gonna try and teach him too. We´ll be meeting up with Paulo tonight.

     Last week, Elder Hawkins did a contact and got a phone number from a guy named Ricardo, a portuguese man of about 25 years. We called him up on saturday and he accepted to meet up with us in a park. There, we taught him the restoration and it ran pretty well. He accepted everything well, but unfortunately didn´t make it to church, even though he said he would go. But things are going well. The efforts of Elder Hawkins to do all that he can are paying off!

     We also taught Darlan (maybe you remember him from a few weeks back) and his wife Alynne. They´re a great family and we discovered that we need to teach them together to see progress. Darlan has already investigated the church for some time and I think he will just need the help of is wife. (His wife wasn´t taught much in the past due to a complicated schedule, but now is more available).

    Also, out of nowhere, this guy named Manuel came to church. A few weeks back a man in a car stopped next to us to ask us about church meetings and location, and only that, and drove off... If my memory serves me well, this last sunday that man showed up! He´s a portuguese fella, about 50 years old, and certainly a smart man. He brought up a lot of good questions in church. We tried to snag him a bit more, but he lives 30min outside of setubal in who knows where and has a new telephone number that he doesn´t know... so yeah, he got away, but I think he´ll come back. He said he would. Funny, during the third hour he started nodding off and bumping my side each time... pretty awkward haha.

    So yeah that´s the news. We had a couple little things that happened, but I´m out of time!

Ciao!

Elder Ward

 We went exploring!

9 October 2017 Zero

Dear family and friends,

     This week was an interesting learning experience. We worked really hard and we put a huge effort into getting this area up on its feet, but in the end this week ended as my first week in the mission with zeros. Technically we taught two less-actives this week, but now those lessons don´t count towards us, so it was a bit of a punch in the gut.

     Each day we put in a solid effort. I can probably never say that one day of my mission was perfect, it´s very easy to slow the pace, waste five or ten minutes, not talk with a few people, or distract oneself for even just a few minutes. Basically every day of my mission there is always something that I could have done better, some big, some small. We´re weak, we´re not expected to be perfect, but we´re expected to try. In spite of our efforts this week things just didn´t work... we contacted people with potential in the street, but when we got to their houses on the pre-scheduled time, nobody was home... several times. Darlan, who we taught last week for example, cancelled the two appointments that we tried to make this week due to travels and business.

     So, when we got home Sunday night, we added up our weekly results like we always do, and we rediscovered that 0+0=0. I sat an thought for a bit, and I came to an interesting conclusion.

     All my mission I feel like I´ve done a decent job. However, like I said earlier, I can say that very frequently there was just a bit that I didn´t put into it... I think that the Lord has stopped waiting for me. He is now with holding all of the blessings that he could give us until I start to do better. The Lord has probably been happy with my work, but he is not satisfied.

     These last few days I said things to Elder Hawkins like "man, I don´t know what´s happening, I had areas with much more challenges in the past and I still managed to at least pull off a few new investigators and a few lessons each week. I dunno what the deal is here."

     After saying sentences like this a few times, I caught myself. I said that I did those things, I think that I am the one capable of finding new investigators and teaching lessons, when in the end I have always been just the tool, not the worker. It´s funny though, because I´ve already been taught this lesson, I learned the same thing in my last week serving with Elder Thompson, but I´m still forgetful.

     So last night Elder Hawkins and I decided that all we need to do is do the best that we can and then trust that the Lord will let us teach the elect if should be his desire. We made a list of "sins and solutions" together. We listed every little mistake and thing we did wrong from the whole week, things we wanted to improve, and on the other side a plan on how we would correct each one.

     So yeah, I hope that this next week is better.

     Due to all that, unfortunately I don´t have much more to say! I´m getting to know Elder Hawkins a bit more every day (It´s a slow process, remember, we never speak english together!) He´s starting to speak better and understand at a simple and steady pace. He has shown some progress and still has a lot of desire to do the work. One day I was on the phone talking with an investigator and he took the initiative and started to talk to people around us. Unfortunately, the poor guy gets rejected a lot and sometimes people dont understand him but the key is that he is trying. I give him a big pat (smack) on the back each time too, he´s doing a great job.

     Also, don´t misunderstand! I´m doing really well, I´m enjoying the work! I know I talked a solid chunk about our difficulties, but it´s just what´s been on my mind lately, don´t worry, my chin is still raised high!

That´s a wrap,

Elder Ward

 Saturday night there was a firework show just outside our window. It was really cool with a long shutter.

 During lunch we saw this spanish ship sailing in... well if my vision serves me right it had a Spanish flag.

2 October 2017 Setúbal

Dear family and friends,

     This last monday I prepped my bags and we all headed to the metro to get to the train station where transfers would happen. It´s always annoying traveling with big heavy bags but so be it. I really enjoyed serving in Odivelas, I will miss serving there, it was so short! Elder Gunnarsson was transfered to Portimão, a city in the Algarve that I already did many divisions in.

     On Tuesday I met up with Elder Fogg and we traveled together to the Mission Office because he too was going to train a new missionary. We got there and we had to wait around for a couple hours until our new companions showed up. That´s when I saw Elder Hawkins for the first time with his group of raggedy and tired missionaries (jet lag and such). We had to stay that night in the mission office in order to attend some meetings the next day before chucking the new missionaries into the field. We didn´t get to our new area until about 5pm on wednesday. We actually got a text message from president and his wife (but it was certainly sister tavares´ idea) saying "you may not work with you new companion until wednesday after the meetings. For now, they will rest." I was a bit bummed, I wanted to go straight to the street with him.

     Elder Hawkins is a good kid. He´s from Washington state, funny enough, but he´s from the south-east corner. He´s a good mormon farm boy, 19 years old, from a family of 11 children, he´s the 10th. He played football, baseball, and basketball.

     Elder Hawkins went to the MTC but then had to wait for one transfer for his visa to be processed. While he waited, he was assigned to serve in a mission temporarily in Salt Lake City. There, he never did a single street contact, and never taught a single investigator. There, 85% of the population are members of the church, so he only worked with less-actives and he just went to activities to "gain member trust". In this last transfer, Elder Hawkins tried to take the time to study the language to be more prepared for portugal. He told me that the missionaries that he lived with were poor examples, so he was super excited to get to work here in portugal.

     The best part about Elder Hawkins is his desire to serve. He may not know what to do, how to do it, not even how to say it, but he tries to do it. On our first day of work, I had done all of the street contacts. Towards the end of the day I turned to Elder Hawkins and said "ok, your turn. Talk to this man who´s walking in our direction". To my surprise, Elder Hawkins didn´t hesitate and talked to the guy. He only was able to say "we´re missionaries from Jesus Christ, we want to talk a message with you".

     In short, that guy wasn´t interested, and I had to continue the conversation after Elder Hawkins didn´t know what to say (which was immediately after). But I was super glad and proud of what Elder Hawkins has the courage to do. Many times new missionaries have to wait a few weeks to muster the courage to stop people in the street to talk to them.

     I´m trying my best to help Elder Hawkins learn how to do everything. I try to include him in all the parts of the work, and it´s running well. Each day he talks a little better and understands a little more. It´s slow progress, and we´re starting from near zero, but we´ll get there.

    In all, training is super tiring. This was one of the most tiring weeks of my mission.

Rewinding a bit...

      When we arrived in Setúbal, we immediately looked at the area book, step one of a whitewash. After examining it for a little bit, I took a deep breath and accepted that we would have to really take the bull by the horns and construct a lot of our own work here. (It wasn´t horrible, fortunately the last Elders left one or two investigators).

     I like Setúbal, it´s a cool city. Reminds me a lot of the cities in the Algarve. It shares some characteristics in common with Beja as well. It has quite a bit of tourism, a series of ship ports for industry, tourism, and fishing, a few small mountains in the distance, decent sized apartment buildings and an acceptable number of people to talk to in the streets.

     We got to work using mainly the Area Book as a guide. We talk to everyone we see in the street and we try to visit names that we find in the Area book. Unfortunately in the last year in this area there were few missionaries that used the area book well, so as a result we are basing our work off of poorly updated information. Many people we try to find have forgotten about us, lost interest, or moved already.

     But we keep pressing forward. In our efforts to find and meet people we got to know a few folks who have a bit of potential. We are trying to arrange appointments with them to get the work going. Despite all of our best efforts however, we only managed to teach one lesson which made me glad. Elder Hawkins bore his testimony in portuguese, it ran well.

     That lesson was with an investigator left by the previous Elders. His name is Darlan, a good brazilian guy with a wife and two yound kids. Darlan has already gone and studied a lot of churches, but has recently met the missionaries and enjoyed his experience. He is stuck in a common situation that is more or less "I like this church, I´ve felt the spirit, I cannot say that it´s false, but I also can´t say with all my heart that it´s true, I just want to take some more time to make sure I understand everything, especially joseph smith before being baptized." He admitted to us that he has a fear of making a leap of faith.

     Darlan has already read the entire book of mormon, is starting with gospel principles, and knows the missionaries for a few months now. We showed up, got to know him, and we shared Enos and John 14-21. We challenged him to wrestle with god in fervorous prayer and to keep all the commandments to receive a more certain response. He obliged, in fact, turns out that he still drinks a little here and there... hmm. He committed to stop and study and pray more. Anyways, he´s a great guy and just needs to push himself and be pushed a little more, if that makes sense. He´s really funny, gave us food, and said he´s gonna have us over for lunch next sunday after church.

     This whitewash is also really strange because we know very very few of the members here. We helped a couple move the other day, but turns out they´re from the neighbouring ward. And this last weekend we didn´t meet any at church because of general conference... it´s a bit strange! We´ll get to know them more this next week.

Anyways, I think that´s a summary. I hope you enjoy.

Tchauzinho,

Elder Ward

Ah, one more thing!

     Elder Hawkins has never been to Europe, so he´s seeing a lot of things for the first time, and to be honest I find some of his comments funny because they remind me of my transition to Europe 4 years ago. For example:

"Hey Elder Ward,

-are all the licence plates like this in Italy too?"

-does the whole country use cobblestone?"

-where´s our dryer?"

-we only have one chapel in our area?"

-is all the milk like this?"

 Elder Hawkins a bit tuckered out on the ride to our area

 We live in the best house in our mission, it has a great view!

 We have a member that lives in our building. Tiago, an RM​. We stopped by just to say hey and chat a bit. We mentioned that we didn´t have a lot of food because of the whitewash and he said "then stop by here tonight!" I politely declined, I don´t like to mooch. He insisted, but we escaped. That night we found dinner and some other food on our doorstep. Quite a surprise!

Transfers! I weighed my bag afterwards and it came in at 36kg! (~79lbs). Don´t ask, I guess I just have a lot of junk. The wheels are wearing out so sometimes it was easier to just carry it...

25 September 2017 A Fistful of Surprises

Dear family and friends,

      This week was a lot different from any other week in my mission. It was pretty crazy. I don´t think I´m going to focus in chronological order, so let´s go!

     I mentioned Linda in last week´s email. We continued to teach Linda, everything ran really well, she didn´t have any problems with any of the commandments. So, we continued forward, and she progressed so well, she was so ready, that we taught everything to her in 3 visits, and afterwards we brought the District Leader, Elder Slater to do the interview.

     Everything ran smoothly. We planned a baptism, invited folks, and Linda was baptized by Elder Gunnarsson (his first baptism!) Saturday morning. She came to church the next day I had the privilege to confirm her. It was really cool. Adding it up, she knew Elder Gunnarsson for only 6.5 days, and in 7.5 days she was already a member. (President authorized)

     I´ve never taught someone who was so ready to just become a member. She was super happy and simply wanted to move on, and it´s not our calling to stop her!

    This experience was really a huge blessing. The first 5 weeks of this transfer Elder Gunnarsson and I worked like crazy. So many things went wrong, I was honestly doubting that we would baptize this transfer, but literally Heavenly Father just gave us a Hail Mary that worked out really well. After church yesterday I turned to Elder Gunnarsson and said "I hope you learned just one thing with me. Work, and work, and when that fails, work some more, because it´s the only way that God will see it fit to give you success."

     And to add to all this, I got really sick this week and I had to travel to 2 other areas to do baptismal interviews... so we lost a lot of time, and the sickness was annoying, but hey it all worked out in the end.

    Sunday afternoon, I got a call from President Tavares. He thanked me for my service as a Zone Leader, and said that I would be transferred to Setúbal 1C, an area that I will have to describe another time, because I´ve never been there! He said that I will train a new missionary, Elder Hawkins there. I will do yet another whitewash (my 5th of now 6 areas). I will be a District Leader there.

    After hanging up, I was absolutely floored, I thought that I was guaranteed to stay in Odivelas for at least 2 transfers. It was a complete curveball!

Now some other things

     One of my goals in the training with Elder Gunnarsson was to help him learn to do street contacts alone. When I served with my other companions, we always walked on opposite sides of the street talking to everybody that passed by. It ran well, we found a lot of cool people with this tactic.

     However, a new missionary like Elder Gunnarsson often doesn´t have the courage nor the language skills to do so, but it was my goal to help him do this in this last week. So, one day, we were walking towards another part of town and I said, "okay Elder Gunnarsson, you walk on the other side. I´ll stay on this side, talk with everyone you see" "uh, oh, uhm, but" "go, stay in my sight"

     So we split up. We started walking and talking with people. After each contact I always glanced to make sure that Elder Gunnarsson was close by. After about five or ten minutes I looked to find him and he wasn´t there. I crossed to his side, and I was a bit worried, I thought that maybe he got scared and ran away or something.

     After giving a lap around the street, I found him on a neighboring street talking with two people who were also proselyting for another church... I rolled my eyes and cut the conversation because Elder Gunnarsson had basically entered in a little "bible bash". I leave him for a few minutes and he´s already wound up in a little mess. I thought it was pretty funny.

     I interviewed an old Angolan man who was taught in Sacavém named José. He´s a typical catholic fella who doesn´t go to church much. He has a son who lives in Germany and is a member of the church and a bishop there. José wasn´t really interested in the gospel back when his son was baptized. His son simply asked José to greet the missionaries the next time he saw them in the street and ask them for a blessing for his wife who has cancer. A month or so ago, José saw the missionaries in the street, he called out to them, they talked to him, gave a blessing to his wife, and he progressed in the gospel and was baptized on saturday. It was a privilege to do his interview. His son was super happy to hear the news. I thought it was a cool story to share.

     But yeah, I think that´s basically an update for this week. It was a good week for sure. I´m doing better now, I only have a slight headache and a cough. I will travel to the mission office tomorrow and I will receive my new companion and we´ll get to work in Setúbal!

That´s it!

Ciao!

Elder Ward

 Linda!

 A photo with our mission leader after he twisted his knee.

Our district.