This week has been interesting to say the least. First off, you´re probably wondering why this letter came late... I´ll get to that. There´s a lot to say, I probably won´t cover it all, but let´s try to attack this week day by day.
Last pday was pretty normal. After the pday, we drove to Quarteira to meet up with one of our investigators in the home of our branch president, President Rui, who is just a boss hands down (I´ll talk more about him later). We had a little family home evening there and we taught and watched the Restoration with our investigator, Nina, a brazilian woman, 45ish years old. She is actually the boss of another one of our investigators, Maria, who is planned to be baptized this Saturday. Maria started investigating the church and she started yaking about it with all of her friends (they work together in a hair salon, duh, a lot of talking), and now Nina is an investigator who is progressing very well and actually already accepted to be baptized, but wants time to prepare. The lesson with her went very well, Rui and his wife Cândida helped a ton. Rui, for example, was baptized about a year ago, already went to the temple, and is now a great branch president. No yeah, Nina is really cool. She showed up to church (the day before) with Maria and they both really enjoyed it.
In that division with Elder Kaelberer last week we contacted a brazilian man named Ednilson. We jotted down a time to pass by, so we did this last Tuesday. His wife, Rose, answered the door, Ednilson was in the shower. The moment she heard "we´re here to share a message about Jesus Christ, we talked with Ednilson last week and he told us to pass by" she let us in.
We chatted with her a bit, and Ednilson came out. We taught the Restoration, and it went pretty well. They both listened quite attently. Ednilson is not very religious, and on the other hand Rose is a strong evangelical/pentecostal (something like that, brazilians are always complicated haha). They liked it, although Rose seemed hesitant at the end to change. Ednilson, however, enjoyed the message and accepted an invite to read and pray about the BoM. We invited him to pray to close our visit, and he did. At the end, Rose was a bit teary. She said she basically couldnt remember the last time her husband prayed but we got him to do it. It was pretty cool.
We had to travel to Lisbon once again (the third time this transfer). Elder Jan had to complete his residency in Portugal. Everything ran smoothly, we travelled the night beforehand and spent the night there, and returned afterwards. It was a bit annoying though, that trip makes 3 days in total lost in our transfer together in just travelling. We went with the missionaries of the mission office to a Chinese Buffet, it was pretty decent, cant complain.
We then had a division with our Zone Leaders in a neighboring city, Faro. They have had some difficulty in their area recently and felt the need to expand their frontiers and ideas a bit. So, for the division they took Elder Jan and I on a long walk to a far away area that was very wealthy, and there we knocked on doors for the entire day. It was kinda lame to be honest. Everybody there already has what they "need" in life like cars and big houses, so virtually nobody even stopped to listen to us.
Even though the division was a bit lame, I learned a lot. Elder Thomas, the kid with whom I passed the day, maintained a very positive attitude the entire time, even when people ended up yelling at us haha. Quite a smiley guy.
Another day, President Rui called us up to meet up with us. We walked with him to a friend of a member, Alice, who works in a little pharmacy and has been stressing a lot in her life lately. She talked with a member friend about priesthood blessings, and because of such, we were eventually invited to visit with her. There, we taught her a bit, and ended up giving her a blessing. It was a powerful experience, she is an awfully nice lady and can certainly progress.
That same night we continued walking about our scheduled stuff and taught two more lessons with President Rui´s help. I told you, he´s a boss. He just loves working with us. He´s got a job, and a 5 month baby boy, but he still makes time, up to hours a day, to try to work with us missionaries, its great.
Like I said, we had a good day at church, Maria and Nina both came. Afterwards we headed to our area to start teachin´and preachin´. We walked up to this little buildint complex, and the first door we knocked a man with about 40 years of age opened up and let us in. His name was Joaquim, and he was an atheist. He had a guitar and I played it a bit before starting, just to be cool. We had an interesting conversation with him, and ended up teaching a bit of the Plan of Salvation. It ran well, but as we kept going we discovered that he didnt have much real intent. He wanted to know if God was real or not, but he said if he knew, it would make no difference in his life. Afterwards, before we left he said "ey play one more song before you go" and I obliged and did so haha, first time in a long while, steel string too.
Later that night we knocked doors in a huge apartment tower. About half way through, we had been rejected a lot. Finally, as we knocked a door, a nice brazilian woman opened the door, surprised. We introduced ourselves to her and the large family behind her, Filipe and Rafaela, a young married couple, and Glayson and Mariana, an older married couple, like early 40´s, and a few children. There were also 3 children present, I didnt catch the mapping of the family haha. They were actually on their way out to go to church, they all had bibles in hand. We offered our message, and they turned around and led us in to the kitchen table, where we taught the Restoration. It ran well, but at the end they brought up a lot of questions about authority, until it almost escalated to a "bible bash". It wasnt heated at all, they were super nice, but they are very smart and well educated in the bible. They actually dont claim to be a religion, but rather call themselves "followers of Christ" and meet up with people in town, a group of about 30 people, Glayson being their leader. They kinda have their own little gig of a religion going, its pretty interesting.
Anyways we started talking about our teaching versus theirs, etc, but I stopped the conversation and said "look, we are all christians and believe in the bible, yet we can be divided by the same book on little things like these" from there Elder Jan and I introduced the Book of Mormon, scripture to clarify and restore. It went well after that, and they accepted it well. They committed to read and pray. At the end, Filipe had already read through the introduction.
So that was Sunday.
However some really interesting stuff happened during our pday, and this morning too. However, my time is up, the story with have to wait for next week.
Take care,
Elder Ward
So I managed to get some photos in here, finally. However, I cannot guarantee next week, its a really complicated process in this area, and they are in the drive format, I dunno, some of you may not be able to view them.. Oh, speaking of which, I will be receiving new transfers this next sunday, so even more news to come!
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