30 January 2017 Sol na Praia

Dear family and friends,

Hey! The 2nd week in a row with photos! Wow!... At last the computer in the chapel has started working, so I should be able to send a handful of photos every week. I tried to upload more but hit the MB limit really fast.

Anyways... let´s get started. We had a handful of really cool experiences.. I´ll get right to them.

A week or two back we were knocking doors in the corner of town... and the usual, it was running a bit slow. Lots of people just didn´t want to hear us, until some didn´t even open the door haha (portuguese do it all the time). We usually knock once, touch the bell, and wait 20 seconds or so... the buildings are really quiet too, so it´s easy to judge when someone´s coming or not.

We knocked a door, and Elder Jan and I started conversing about something, a minute or so passed, when suddenly a man opened the door. He was in his pajamas and and seemed pretty tired and pretty ticked too.

"Sorry sir! We hope we didn´t wake you!" I said.

"yeah yeah whaddya want" he grunted.

"We´re missionaries etc etc"

"oh... I met some of you guys in germany a while back... listen, I was resting, I´ve got a cold—"

"Could we just have your number and try another time?"

He gave us his number, and we told him we would come back the following week. In the conversation, Elder Jan tried to ease him too by speaking german to him, which he liked.

So we come back the next week and knock on his door again, he opens it, grins, and says "Come in!" and gestures towards the living room. I looked at Elder Jan, surprised.

He was doing much better, had gotten over his cold, and was no longer annoyed with us haha, had gotten back to be his normal self. We started conversing with him and he told us a bit of his story. He´s brazilian, went to germany and stayed there for three years to work. One day he was sitting in a subway and saw two kids in white shirts and ties on a bench across the hall. They were reading a book. He was suddenly curious. He got up, approached them, and asked them about the book. From there, and through some rough communication, he was taught by the missionaries for six months, and was baptized and confirmed a member of the church. He said he loved the experience, that it was an amazing time in his life, and he has a great respect for missionaries. He said he didn´t remember much in the doorway with us the first time, but now everything´s great. However, a week after being baptized, he went to Portugal. He left with some info of church locations in Lisbon, but ended up moving to Algarve (where we are now). It has now been 10 years without contact with the church. Since then, he married another brazilian woman here and has a daughter with 7 years. He has been going to a local Evangelical church with his wife and kids, but after our conversation he said he would come to church with us asap (he had work this last sunday, but next sunday fosho). He had to go pick up his wife at the bus station, and we had another appointment, so we split up that night, but we agreed to come back to his house later that night to chat more.

We got back there and he prepared a little snack for us. We sat chatting even more. We started talking about the gospel with him. We shared 1 Nephi 8 (Lehi´s dream) and he loved it, as he read about the fog and then the iron bar, he said "ah I see why there´s a bar!" He understood everything very well and put in really good input. He said that he has already read the book of Mormon all the way through once, but lost it recently (we downloaded LDS tools on his phone before we left). He told us the story of the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. From there, he also told us about some things he remembered from D+C and the Pearl of Great Price. We even talked about the priesthood (he never got it) and we told him that as he comes back he can get the priesthood and baptize his wife and daughter. He liked that idea.

In fact, he´s already a missionary, on Christmas, he told us, he knocked all of the doors in his apartment building and gave all his neighbors some chocolate with his daughter. He also invited all of them to remember the true meaning of Christmas at the same time.

Ok pause. Cool story, right? Now tell me, coincidence? nah. So many things were so coordinated, and now the time is right for him and his family. It´s quite funny, had Elder Jan not spoken to him in German in the moment that he found out he lived in Germany, he would have slammed the door.

We work in a district here in the Algarve, we are hoping to create a stake, it has been a huge project lately. All that is needed is a few more priesthood holders, and we found one who will fill one of those spots faithfully.

So yeah, a cool story.

We also taught Alice again this week. This time, it was just Elder Jan and I. We had a really good visit. She has had a hard life. Her son (already a grown man) went missing and actually died, and she never found out about the death for 2 years, stuff like that. She is now dealing with a lot of stress and pressure, but she herself has said that with our visits and the gospel, she is feeling much much better. We taught the Plan of Salvation to her. It ran so well that we ended up teaching her about baptisms for the dead, in relation to her son, because welp, she really wanted to know! She asked all of the perfect questions... She soaked it all up. It was really great. Unfortunately she was a bit sick and had to run a big inventory thing in her shop, so she didnt get to go to church.. grr... but she already said she´ll surely come this next Sunday.

A bit of misc info... (applies to recent RM´s haha). We had a world wide missionary broadcast, and they changed a bit more of our everyday work. Instead of tons of key indicators (lessons with member present, references contacted, other lessons, etc) we now only have 4. Baptisms/confirmations, investigators with a baptismal date, inv´s in church, and new inv´s. It changes things quite a bit... But I thought Chase maybe would find it interesting. Weekly planning takes a lot less time iwth only 4 key ind´s!

This week, miraculously, we actually had 5 meals given to us. We ate once with Maria and Nina, and other times with members, mainly Ecuadorans. It was great, good food. One was a huge family night thingy, and they invited a ton of non-member friends, and all of them were Ecuadorans too! Lots of ponytails and 2 whiteboys. We hope to be able to teach some of them in the new future.

We went to the beach these 2 last pdays. It was pretty cool, but man I wanna get in the water haha.

I think that´s all. Not much more time, sorry. But these for sure were the highlights of the week.

Until next week,

Elder Ward