A happy new year to everyone! I hope yall had a good time. For the first time in a long time probably all of my concious life, I slept right through the new year... we had an exhausting day beforehand, and we were fasting, so we just hit the hay. It was great.
once again im on an annoying little keyboard with a different layout than normal, so i wont be capitalizing, my apologies to those ocd folks out there. but in return, i finally got to upload some photos... enjoy! i think they are in a different format than the norm, im not even sure if it will work, but yall should still be able to see them.
alrighty then, lets get to the meat and beans.
we started off our week with a division... now lets see if yall have been paying attention to the emails. pop quiz! with who did i have my first division? think real hard! Elder Kaelberer, from utah! i honestly wouldnt even expect my own mother to remember such a detail, so no worries if you didnt remember haha.
anyways elder kaelberer since that first division was called to be the mission presidents assistant, so his and his companion called us and visited our area for a division. we worked in a tripla, elder kaelberer, elder jan, and myself. it was a good time, elder kaelberer is a great guy. elder jan transalted elder kaelberers name to him from german, and funnily enough, it is the name of someone who helps cows give birth, so i imagine something like "cow bearer" but yeah what a name. elder kaelberer thought it was funny.
in such division, we managed to find and teach two indian fellas, sumar and banny. there was a bit of a language barrier, but it was a good visit. it was an interesting, and slightly disorganized discussion, we actually taught on their balcony (actually visible in one of the photos below) during a really cool sunset. their accents reminded me a lot of elder karthigeyan. were going to try to get back to them with books of mormon in hindi.
we aslo met up with a brazilian lady, geani, we met a few days beforehand and taught her a bit. she also enjoyed it. she seems to have potential, we will be working with her in the near future. shes very evangelical though, just like a lot of the brazilians we teach, so its always an interesting discussion. it was a good division, we got a lot of work in.
later in the week, we found a man from nepal, suraj, and taught him as well. he let us right in. he is originally hindu in religious beleifs, but he said that after the ban of the bible was lifted in his country he gave it a read and enjoyed it, and by such reason also enjoyed our message of the restoration. he doesnt speak english super well, so we kept it simple, and invited him to pray and ask god if the church of jesus christ had been presented to him. we knelt, and he closed his eyes and folded his arms just like a child, but didnt speak his prayer, but we let it happen. he finished, and we asked him about it and he said "i feel something different" and with such feelings he came to the conlusion that we had something truly special -- and thats exactly what we want to happen. it was a cool visit. were looking to come back with a book of mormon in nepali.
yesterday, we had a big mission conference online. we used a program that basically supported a ginormous conference called zoom, and the whole mission was there, really cool. president tavares organized it so that he could make some big announcements.
and oh boy, there have been some changes. our missionary schedule has changed completely! i now get 12 hours of designated sleep time. its great. nah, that would never happen haha.
what ive been doing for the last little while (it has small changes between trainers and normal missionaries, but this is what ive been doing recently)
7am, wake up, pray, excersizes until 730
730-830 breakfast, shower, get dressed, etc
830-930 personal study
930-1130 compainionship study / training and practices
1130-1pm outside talking to people, knocking doors, teaching people, etc etc
1pm-2pm lunch
2-3 language study
3-930pm outside talking, teaching, knocking, etc
930-1015ish daily planning (aka plan the next day)
1015ish-11pm other misc tasks, mainly phonecalls to follow up with missionaries in my district
1120ish hay, finally.
rinse and repeat!
but now its changed to:
(probably boring to some folks out there, but this is my life everyday, and rms will get it too)
7-830 same as before
830-900 daily planning
9-10am personal study
10am-1pm preachin and teachin
1-2 lunch
2-330 a mixture of language, compainionship study, and training
330-930pm preachin and teachin
930 IM FREE. well, not completely, there are still other miscellaneous tasks to do at night, but the big deal is that i can now get to bed as early as 10 if everything goes well! its a christmas miracle!
"b-but elder ward, w-wheres dinner?" - there is none. i cant tell you how many people ive taught because i didnt stop to eat dinner.
i know it was a bunch of numbers, but its a big deal for us missionaries, it literally will change our lives haha. tomorrow will be our first day really putting it in practice.
oh! i nearly forgot an interesting story!
one day this week we were working in quarteira when at about 5pm we had nothing to do. all of our appointments cancelled, so we just started walking. we stopped to talk to these people who were getting into their car, they didnt want anything to do with us, so we were about to head off, continue walking, when we heard a quiet "elders" from behind us.
we turned around to see a small portuguese woman, probably approaching 50 years of age. we immediately responded and started talking to her and she explained her situation.
her name is paulina, and she is a member of the church for a few decades now. she came to the algarve (the south edge of the country) from the north looking for her son, paulo, who is 18 years old. she was actually sitting in her car when she heard us talk to those people. she explained to us how her son had run away last summer, and how she had been trying to find him since then. she ended up in this situation, and explained to us that she saw her son walking in this area the night before. she gave us his contact, and showed us to where she saw him last, and told us that he lives in one of the buildings in the little area. we gladly obliged to help her out, and to try to find her son. she actually said "hey follow me, i think i saw him enter in one of these houses". we walked with here to a door, and without warning she just hit the doorbell, and scurried to the side out of veiw, to let us do the talking haha. it was pretty funny. she was an awfully sweet lady, and i felt really bad for her. elder jan and i tried calling paulo, but to no avail unfortunately. weve kept in touch with paulina a bit, but not much has happened. well keep and eye out for sure.
i share this because, well, it was a really interesting experience. it was also really cool how we "accidentally" just wandered into the path of paulina. "coincedences" huh
anyways, i think that sums up my week. it was a good one for sure, like always. not much contact with toni for those who are wondering, but we are heading there tonight. things are going really well in general.
Take care everybody!
Elder Ward
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