27 February 2017 Lucky 7

Dear family and friends,

Lucky number seven because this week I´m entering my seventh transfer, aka seventh 6 week period. I´ve received news that I will be serving in Faro, a city just a bit south of Loulé with Elder Kampff, a brazilian with a lot of experience and time in the mission, in fact I will probably accompany him until the end of his mission. I´m pretty excited. It should be a good new adventure, and a great opportunity to learn from a seasoned missionary and in particular, a native speaker.

I´ve already visited Faro many times for meetings and divisions, so its actually a bit strange landing in an area that Ive already visited and worked... but should be great.

Also, luckily Elder Jan will stay in the area. This is a really good thing because he will continue the work with our investigators and friends very well.

But, Im short on time this week, I wanted to rattle off some cool experiences from these last few days.

Firsty, Álvaro is doing great. We heard him that he´s already started sharing the gospel with his wife, and will try to bring her to church with him one of these upcoming sundays. Because of his business, we didn´t get to meet up with him this week unfortunately, but Rui helped him come to the saturday night meeting of the district conference. He really enjoyed it. Didn´t make it to Sunday though, his wife didn´t like how he came home late... but we´ll certainly iron things out.

Barbosa and Estmeralda are also well. We met with them again, and this time, Estmeralda´s aunt, Salva was there. We taught the plan of Salvation, it ran great, and the spirit was strong. In spite of them not being married, we invited them to be baptized. Barbosa then said to us, "you guys oughtta look in your records for a Barbosa. I had a dream the other night something my son and I... I was at a tower with a lot of stairs, then in a font, in white... something about it reminded me of a very dim memory, that I was baptized, and I think it was in your church."

Eyebrows raised, and we asked him more. He clarified it a bit more, and we learned from him that he was baptized back in the 90´s in portugal, but he moved the week after baptism due to work and didn´t find the church afterwards, and like so became inactive. We jotted down his name, and yes, we will look for his records. Quite surprising. 

Estmeralda grew up evangelical, but she accepted the invite to be baptized. We then talked about marriage, and they said that they would make plans to get it worked out.

We planned to come back later this week but had to cancel, so we called Barbosa. I told him that we couldn´t make it and had to replan, and he was really disappointed and replied "well when´s the next time you guys can come?!" and we made a new appointment. He likes our visits a lot. They didn´t make it to church, due to an already planned event, but said they will try to make it the next week.

Amadis is also doing just great.

We visited with him this week. We didn´t have a lesson plan that was very thorough, so we planned to do a revision of the 1st and 2nd with him, and then a plan to try and explain marriage. We brought Rui with us too. We ended up having a good conversation. Amadis began to talk seriously and said (summarizing) "You guys are doing a great thing for me.. The moment you guys knocked on my door and then entered my houses you guys brought a power with you, something like a third person... I don´t feel it when you guys arent here... I know you guys have something special, this book, your teachings... and I want to use that to better my spiritual life... I´ve been thinking about marrying with Macha so that way I can be baptized in your church... Do you guys think that that´s a good idea? Should I be baptized?"

Long pause. 

Mind you, we hadn´t even talked about marriage with him until this point. We then responded "yes. Amadis, you have been feeling the spirit. By such you can know that what we have been teaching you is true."

It was a very sweet moment. Amadis will start to talk with his girlfriend Macha to make plans and will propose to her.

He made it to the district meeting, drove himself and brought a member too. He loved the meeting and the speakers spoke the exact things he needed to hear to help his conversion solidify.~

Emanuela.

Emanuela is honestly one of the biggest miracles of my mission. I can´t go into much detail, due to the personalness, sacredness, and due to time limitations... but I will say just a little, Ive already said a bit, but now we´ve got more details.

Emanuela lost contact with the church for 20 odd years, nearly died in a bad car accident, and a recovery that included 4 brain surgeries. She continued through many difficult times in her life and a few weeks ago knelt and prayed that she could find a way to worship God in his holy house, she missed the church a lot and didn´t know how to return to what she knew and discovered when she was just a teenager.

In that moment, during her prayer, my companion and I knocked on her door.

A goal, or maybe a desire I´ve had as I´ve been a missionary is to be a tool in the Lord´s hands... and I was privileged enough to be such in the life of Emanuela.

She too came to the district conference. It took a lot of courage on her part due to her shyness, but she came and enjoyed it.

Alice as well is doing phenomenal. We planned with her a baptism on March 11. She accepted firmly. She too came to the district conference, with Rui in fact, and loved it. She is progressing very well and we see a new gleam in her eyes due to the gospel. I will be able to attend her baptism in Faro, fortunately.

Elder Jan and his new companion will continue working with all of these great people. I hope to find more special people like this in Faro.

Anyways, time´s up.

Take care, the church is true, do your part,

Elder Ward 

 Emanuela

 The man, the myth the legend, Amadis

 It rained awfully dirty water, so we put a sweet decal on our car.

 My district

20 February 2017 Champs and Chumps

Dear family and friends,

I hope you guys liked that last email. My hands were tired afterwards, I know, woe is me, but it was a good week.

I forgot to even mention the announcement when it came, but this last week Elder Ulisses Soares from the presidency of the seventy visited our mission. He visited most of the mission up in Lisbon and then came south to meet with the remaining zones. It was really cool, particularly because he´s Brazilian. He visited the MTC when I was there and spoke to all the missionaries in English, but when he visited with us just this last week he spoke in Portuguese. It´s quite fun hearing the different accents and just understanding and soaking it all up. He gave us a lot of good council, in fact we were sat there for about 4 hours as he taught and answered questions. There was a lot said, but in short it was a spiritual banquet.

I also got to see Elder Cottrell. He´s still a doof.

We got to say hey to Alice this week a couple times, we made a couple appointments with her, but they fell through. Because she was sick these last few weeks she fell behind at work a lot and never finished her store inventory, so had to catch up on all that and also recover from sickness. All that left her really stressed, which always leads to her being nervous etc etc, not forgetting to mention she´s like 70 years old.

But no worries, she needs time I guess. She loves to see us when we pass by her pharmacy and is still reading the BoM. She will surely come to church soon and start progressing. We will fight for this Sunday.

Álvaro is still doing phenomenal. We lost contact with him the entire week, and no, he didn´t make it to church. We met with him on Sunday, without an appointment, with Rui too. He was elated to see us, and had drawn up two more sketches like the last one I showed, both with more details. He is a very smart, interested, and devoted man. He would have gone to church, but he´s basically an "on call" waiter so he was called in for the whole week, 18 hours a day to help out with some sort of VIP group in a hotel and didn´t get time off until Sunday afternoon when we knocked on his door. Rui got to know him better, and we already made plans to introduce the gospel to his wife. He said he will talk with his boss again about Sundays. He´s just plain great. There´s just a list of things that he does that are so great. When we showed up he whipped out his notebook with his sketches and said "alright I made some new ones, but I have a question here..." and so on. He told us, from his knowledge, what he knew about the pre-mortal existence and the war in heaven, and Elder Jan just turned and looked at me with the funniest face that said "how the heck does he remember all this after 10 years." Ah good stuff.

Also, that George Clooney doppleganger, Amadis (ah-mah-DEESH to help out with pronunciation) is doing great. We showed up for our lesson with him with Rui. We taught a modified lesson talking a bit more about the BoM, using 1 Nephi 13. It ran well, and Rui got to know him (they live on the same street too). 

Elder Jan and I came back for another appointment with him later this week, and Amadis had forgotten about it, but let us in anyway. He showed us the view of his balcony, and there on the a table and chair was the Book of Mormon, he said he was just about to sit down, relax, and read. 

We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and it ran really well. We invited him to be baptized, and he accepted. Good. Now we will be working with him to cover the remaining lessons and commandments, and help him grow a desire to follow all of them, including the Law of Chastity, by getting married. It will be a process, but I think it will run well.

Then he showed up to church yesterday again! He was dressed in a suit and everything, and stayed for all the meetings. He enjoyed it a lot. He payed attention and everything. As we walked from one class to the other, he said "so how do you guys baptize people? Where do you guys go?" Conveniently at our side in the hallway was a painting of Christ´s baptism, and I pointed to it and said "Welp, in the water." I kinda joked a bit, but then explained that a chapel in Faro has a font. But I also said that if he liked he could be baptized in the ocean because he already does kitesurfing and stuff. He said that that could be interesting.

For the priesthood meeting, the teacher put on "Legacy" and we watched it to learn about the pioneers... it was a bit odd if you ask me, but afterwards Amadis said "whats the name of this movie, I like it."

I talked with him afterwards a bit more, and he said that Rui sent him a link to "Meet the Mormons" and that he watched it. I, surprised said "whoa, how was it?" and he explained that he liked it a lot, the perspectives of different lives. He´s just darn cool. We´ll be teaching him more this week, and he said he´s already planning to come next week, which will be district conference (the equivalent of stake conference).

Richard, our new friend from Columbia.. well the news is he´s doing well. Rui is our bridge of contact. Rui tried to bring him to church but Richard was tired or something like that... a bit disappointing, but no worries. We´ll be meeting with Rui and Richard this week to talk more.

Also, Mónica gave us a call, and asked for an apology. She was sorry for having failed with appointments and asked us to wait until March to try to meet up again. I obliged to her request, reluctantly, but made her give me her word that we would visit in March. She agreed. But it´s realistic, maybe... She´s busy doing a move and stuff... but man, excuses. Nah, all is well, we´ll meet up with her eventually.

We also found some new folks to teach this week. Knocking on doors a couple weeks back, we found an African family, Barbosa (from Guiné Bisau), Estmeralda (from Angola), and their 2 year old son, Rafael. We finally got to meed up with them yesterday.

We taught the restoration to them and it ran really well. I won´t go into a ton of detail, but Barbosa, without being asked, said "I felt something with you guys today, something touched my heart" — well shoot, that´s what´s supposed to happen. It ran great, they accepted the BoM and the invite to read and pray.

But, their not married... this is like the 7th time in my mission I´ve found a couple really cool but discovered they´re not married... Oh well, another process, but they are still important.

In other news, we were invited to eat with the Finnish couple again. They are great, they even gave us a couple references. They made what I think was meatloaf, it had carrots and broccoli inside, and was dang good.

Also, Jorge (Jorge 1) one of the Ecuadorean members has a really good friend in his neighborhood, also named Jorge (Jorge 2). Jorge 1 invited Jorge 2 over for dinner, and invited us all as well. Jorge 2 said there wasn´t enough room in Jorge 1´s house, so Jorge 2 invited Jorge 1 and Jorge 1´s family to come to Jorge 2´s house to have dinner with Jorge 2´s family. Jorge 2 also wanted the missionaries over at Jorge 2´s place because Jorge 1 always said that the missionaries are cool, even though Jorge 2 doesn't believe in God. It was a feast and we shared a good message with them. Jorge and Jorge both liked it, and Jorge and Jorge were both really funny during the visit, their both large men who love to joke around. It was a good time, and honestly, a really simple example of member missionary work. X member has a friend, so he invites his friend over for dinner, and invites the Missionaries too! It´s simple, and let me tell you, it´s a lot better than us just knocking on their door.

We ate this soup that was just carcass and rice. I say carcass because they literally killed a number of chickens that morning to use to cook, and they used all of the chickens. The neck, the liver, the heart, even the feet. I dished myself some, and saw a chicken foot on my plate and just thought "um I´m not gonna deal with that" and I ended up putting it on Elder Tester´s plate. (all 4 of us went, we were ordered to come in larger numbers due to quantity of food). I think I at a liver, and a piece of a heart, I dunno. But hey, it was good.

We talked about James 1:5 and invited them to pray. They were seriously joking around a lot that night, but when we shared the message things suddenly went calm, and they payed attention. It was good.

Also, Emanuela is doing well! She went to Lisbon this week for a doctor´s appointment, but gave her a call the moment she arrived home, and ended up stopping by to say hello. She couldn´t get her daughter to read Gospel Principles to her, so she ended up reading 3 pages on her own. She said she enjoyed it a lot and that a lot of memory is coming back. She said it was a struggle to read too (no vision in left eye, etc) but she still pushed through and read. She said she would read more too. She wants to re-learn everything with us.

Trouble is, she´s a very timid woman. She unfortunately said she will wait for next week to come to church, we tried to convince her and help her have desire to go, but declined... with time. She has gone through a lot in her life, so we want to take it easy with her I guess.

I dunno if I mentioned this in the last email, so maybe I´ll say it again. She lost a lot of memory, right? She said when she saw us in the peep hole the day we knocked on her door she didn´t want to open up. She thought we were salesmen. However, she said the moment she saw our little black nametags she suddenly remembered the missionaries and how she liked them back in Brasil... and like so, she opened. Pretty cool.

But yeah, that sums it up I think. Lots of cool stuff happening, it´s always a pleasure being an instument in the hands of the Lord. This week has been fun, lots of good experiences. I´m doing well. Enjoy the email, hope all is well with everybody.

Ciao,

Elder Ward

 Elder Jan, Me, Elder Tester, and Elder Tapia

 A pile of rumored "poisonous" caterpillars.

and a boid

13 February 2017 Tenho Tempo

Dear family and friends,

Good news, today we didn´t do anything overboard for pday, so I´ve actually got a relaxed amount of time to write an email, so yippee I can inclode more details. I´m not gonna worry about organization or chronological order, so just read it and enjoy haha.

Here in the Loulé Branch we often have tourists that come to visit, some quite long-term (a few months every year). There is a older couple from Finland whe has come recently, they are awfully nice. They don´t speak potuguese, of course, but they speak english quite well, so every week they need a translator. There is a portuguese lady in the branch who usually does it, but when more tourists show up or she doesn´t, us missionaries have to take over. This same Finnish couple invited us over for lunch one day and it was a good time, I never thought I would dine with Finnish people on a portuguese mission.

There is also an older couple from Wales who is staying in Loulé for a time. They are really nice, and I´ve translated for them 2 times now. Last week we had fast and testimony meeting, so it was a bit easier because I got a little break between each testimony. It ran well, until the elderly lady turned to me and said (queue heavy british accent) "If I go up there, would you translate for me?". Well, I couldnt say no and deny her the opportunity to share her testimony. So, she stood up and walked to the front, and I followed, and translated a pretty lengthy testimony. She didnt stop much for me, so I had to translate big chunks at a time haha. Afterwards the finnish man felt inspired to do the same, and brought his own personal Elder translator (Elder Tapia) to the front and bore his too. Fun stuff, I didn´t need to bear my own, I bore someone else´s.

An older Danish couple showed up this last sunday too, they spoke dutch, english, and german, so Elder Jan ended up translating for them into german. He said it was pretty hard. I said "tell me about it"

That was all in the past few weeks, so now I´ll get started with what happened in this week.

We were walking in Quarteira, and we´re always stopping random people trying to "contact" them as we say, aka try to get a name, number, and appointment to teach the gospel. I saw an older man, very well dressed, in fact, more well dressed that most people we ever see on the street, so I said to Elder Jan, "ey, Imma contact that guy, he´s probably gotta a lot of money to put into tithing" (we joke about robbing people sometimes, to clarify though, we dont) So I walked up to him and did the usual "Hey good morning how are you we´re missionaries...etc" and he said "Non capisco, sono di Italia" and I just said "OOOOHH" and then my mind made an embarassing 30 second show of an attempt to speak italian, and I utterly failed. I had the words in italian in my head but when they passed through my mouth they came out in portuguese... it was lame, we only left a card with him...

Elder Jan said to me afterwards "Now you know how I feel when I try to contact people in French, just portuguese comes out." I agreed. He then said "and now youre gonna spend the next half hour re-living that contact, trying to put together all the parts in italian so it makes sense, but its too late."

And I did. I spent probably a half hour just thinking "gosh, it would have been x and y not z." It was pretty frustrating, but hey, at least I understood him for the most part. I think Im going to try and practice more. I still have a goal to teach an italian in my mission.

You´re probably wondering how Alice and Álvaro are doing, so let´s start with Alice.

Unfortunately, she has been both sick and busy lately. She actually had to go to the hospital to help her recuperate from her fall the other week. She has problems with handling her stress, which can result in her having other health problems. It´s pretty tough on her. Because of all this, we actually didnt get to visit with her this week, although we did help her carry some things for her as she walked home from work. As soon as she is ready to visit again, we will.

Álvaro is doing phenomenal. We were doing a split with the other 2 Elders in our house, Elder Tapia and Elder Tester in Quarteira, where Álvaro lives. So all 4 of us were in the same city, and all of our plans fell through. I said, hey, lets say hey to Álvaro. 

He didnt know we were coming, and it was about 830 at night. We had Elder Tester and Tapia hide around a corner while Elder Jan and I knocked. Álvaro opened up and a smile immediately lit up his face "HEEYYY come in come in!" We shook his hand, still in the doorway, and when I shook his hand he literally tried to pull me inside haha. We said "wait wait we wanted you to meet some fellas" and then Elder Tapia and Tester popped out. Álvaro´s eyes went wide and he said "Mais irmãos!" (literally meaning "more brothers"), he was super excited to meet more missionaries. We all came in and chatted for a bit. Álvaro is great, truly. We left a new Book of Mormon with him that night because we learned that his phone cant use LDS tools. When we came back later this week, he had already read to 1 Nephi 12, and had marked it up a ton. He used to be a history teacher in Brasil, so he loves reading the BoM again.

He worked late saturday night just so he could get sunday morning off. He took the bus from Quarteira to Loulé and showed up to church for the first time in over ten years in a suit, beret, and a bowtie. He loved it. In sacrament meeting alone he took 4 pages of notes. He met a ton of the members, made some friends, shared his thoughts in priesthood meeting, and just soaked it all up, it was great.

We´re going to make plans in the near future to teach his wife the restored gospel, with Álvaro. We are also already talking with our branch president, Rui, about him getting the priesthood. So cool.

The lady I described last week with the really cool find story, Mónica, unfortunately has been flaking out a bit. Whenever we talk with her in person (3 times now) she seems super excited to learn about the gospel and meet up with us, but evertime the time comes she flakes saying something came up... I dunno. We will see what we can do. She is a busy woman, but everybody´s got time for the gospel, at least a little.

On another split this week, I was working with Elder Tapia in Albufeira. We took a little shortcut that crossed through some unused land. There was a bit of a dump there, lots of trash on the ground... tires, refrigerators, tvs, etc. Elder Tapia, being a 19-year-old boy browsed a bit, picked up a glass bottle, stood on top of a washing machine ready to throw it, but stopped and said "no way". He dropped the bottle and started to run down the hill. I followed him and we found a flippin pedal go-kart (see photo below). We were in a rush to an appointment so we only played with it for like 5 minutes, but it was pretty cool. Really beat up, but it still rolls. 

In another division, I was with Elder Tester in Albufeira. We were doing the normal thing. I had planned to knock a certain street with him, but as we were knocking there, I looked off into the distance and I remembered a building I had seen a while back that I had actually been wanting to knock for a while. So, we ended up walking to it, about 20 minutes. We entered, went to the top floor, and started knocking on doors.

At the fifth door, we heard a voice from the other side "who is it". We always hear that, so we said "The Elders!". A moment passed, and then a woman in her forties or so opened up. We introduced ourselves, and she interrupted and said "yeah, I know who the mormons are" which is usually for us missionaries, a bad sign.

Her name is Emanuela, a brazilian. We asked her how she came to know who mormons are, and she said that she was baptized a member in brazil, when she was 14. She was basically Rapunzel, locked at home all the time by her father. Her english teacher in brazil actually introduced the gospel to her. She actually snuck out to got to church and activities. Emanuela said she loved it. However, after going to church for about 3 years her father had enough of it and sent her to her grandparent´s house which was far away, and like so, she lost contact with the church. She explained that she also passed through a terrible accident (she hasnt said much about it, but I believe it was a car accident) and has been living in Portugal for the last 20 years.

She said she didnt know the church was here too, and if it was, she thought she couldnt come back because she is divorced now. We cleared that up, and planned to come back another day to visit with her more. She said she´s doing therapy and stuff now, and cannot drive due to some of her trauma. We offered an arrangement of a ride for her to come to church, and she said she would gladly accept. She said many times she was so surprised for having found the church here.

We did, we came back with a member, Jorge, one of the Ecuadoreans. We had a good visit with her. She had set the table with a little cake and drinks. She stays at home all the time, she doesnt work, and has 2 daughters, one with 21 years and the other with 14, a nationally competitive swimmer. (No, I still havent met her.) We chatted and shared a message with her. Turns out that because of her accident she lost a lot of memory. For example, she didnt know what the Book of Mormon was. She said that when she went to the door the day we knocked, she didnt know who we were and didnt plan on opening, but when she saw our nametags, the classic misisonary nametag, she remembered suddenly and opened up. In spite of the lost memory, she still has a strong testimony and is excited to reknow the gospel through us. Jorge left a Gospel Principles book, and we left a new BoM. She said she would have her daughter read them to her, because she lost the vision in her left eye in the accident too, so reading is a challenge. However, it will be good for her daughter, because like so we´ll get two birds with one stone!

To our dismay, she didnt make it to church this Sunday, she came down with a cold. But we will visit her more this week for sure. Basically Álvaro pt. 2.

In Quarteira with Elder Jan, we knocked nearly all the doors in a 20 story apt building. Not much came out of it, most of the apt´s were empty. However, we still wrote down some names of people to pass by later.

So, later we passed by the apt. of this guy named Amadis, and in simple terms, he looks like George Clooney. Without an appointment he let us right in and expressed his curiousity to learn more in his life, and discover new things. He´s a kitesurfer and a tennis coach. He´s a very smart man, and we taught him the restoration. It ran very well, he enjoyed it a lot. He understood everything quite well, saying things like "so where is the priesthood authority today?" and good questions like that. We left a BoM with him and invited him to pray about everything, mainly the BoM. He said he would gladly. We also invited him to church the next morning, and he said "I´ll talk with my girlfriend, but I cant promise anything".

Well, guess who walked in during the opening song? Amadis and his girlfriend Macha! Macha is actually ukranian. They enjoyed sacrament meeting, but due to time didnt hang out for the other two meetings. However, I talked with Amadis afterwards, and asked him if he read and prayed, and he said "I did, just like you asked. I felt very calm and peaceful, but didnt get an answer" — gosh, you missed it, by so little haha. Nah, I explained to him that that was the spirit, seemed to understand better. He said "dont worry about it we´ll talk more this week and next sunday" and just like that we got planned to meet up again this tuesday and teach him more. He´s a really cool guy, very humble open, and kind. We´re excited to work with him. President Rui got to know him and will be coming to visit with us on tuesday too.

And thats not all! A while back, before I came to the area, Elder Jan and Elder Tapia taught a team of soccer players from Columbia. They all liked it, but one in particular showed potential, Richard. He´s a really cool fella, a short guy, dark skinned, and heavy heavy spanish. He doesnt have a phone here linked in Portugal, so contact with him was really difficult, and months passed. However, Rui got in contact with him through Whatsapp and brought him with him to church yesterday. Richard loved it too. He stayed the whole time and soaked it all up. In priesthood he shared some of his thoughts too, and I actually saw him take a photo with his phone of a passage he really liked in the Gordon B. Hinkley manual. We sent him home with the manual and he said "wait I dont have to pay?" ...classic. He said to Rui he would read the whole book that night. He has a ton of faith, and Im sure will progress well here in the near future.

Honestly it has been an insane last few weeks. The Lord really wants his vineyard to do well here, and it is definitely going well! He is guiding us to his lost sheep daily, and we dont even realize it sometimes. I feel honored to be one of the missionaries who can touch the lives of these people. These experiences are all real and all really touching, I wish I could show you all the things that are happening here, but alas, I only have a keyboard.

Take care everybody,

Elder Ward

I dunno who´s praying for me, but lots of cool stuff is happening, keep it up.

The go-kart

 Found my wife too.

 I mentioned this in the last email, it´s the sketch that Álvaro made of the Plan of salvation and Restoration mixed, after 10 years.

 The view from the 20-story building we knocked. Quarteira.

6 February 2016 Um Grande Desculpa

Dear family and friends,

A few apologies to start off. The man who I described last week is named Álvaro. I will continue his story below. Also, I didn´t have time to throw in photos, will have to wait until next time. Here at the library we just cant upload.

So we met up with Álvaro again this week. In the last visit we had he mentioned that when he was baptized (10 years ago to refresh you guys) he made a little drawing that represented his understanding of the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration. He described it a little, I asked him if he still had hid, he replied "no, but I´ll draw up another one for ya". We showed up this week for our visit, he wasnt at home, so we called him and he showed in 10 minutes, with his daughter and chocolate for us. We entered, sat down, talked just a minute when suddenly Álvaro said "Alright can I get us started with a prayer?" "Of course!" he did so, and immediately got up to fetch his glasses and a little notebook. He opened it up and showed us the drawing he had made for us. Without us saying a single word, he went about explaining his diagram which outlined the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration all together, very well done. He explained all the details and then only expressed a couple small questions of things he had forgotten. We answered his questions, and it was just a great conversation. After 10 years of being baptized and never going to church he remembered everything perfectly. Next week I will try my best to show you guys a photo of that drawing, he gave it to us. We actually showed it to Pres. Rui and he said "yup, I want to have a copy of this, this is useful" hahaha.

Álvaro is an amazing man, and although we´ve only had 2 visits, its been so great working with him. He is just like a child, excited to learn and review with us, he has missed the church. He unfortunately didn´t make it to church on sunday..... his boss pulled a last minute "oh hey, youre working tomorrow" thing. Pretty annoying, but we will fight for next week.

He told us a couple other stories, and for lack of time, I cannot tell them entirely. However, we wanted to know if he had any evangelical influences, because he´s been attending there with his wife because he never found the LDS church here. He said just this "Whenever I walk into a church, I walk up to the bishop, priest, father, pastor, sobeit, and I say ´Im a christian, like you, but we´ve got some differences in beliefs. I will be here to here the word, but just so you know I will not agree with everything you say. I am here to support my family because my wife likes this church. However, I will not speak any bad of you, nor will I sway any of your followers.´" He then said that he has already shared his testimony of the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith many many times with many people. We were impressed.

We will be visiting him more this week.

We also had a visit with Alice. She is doing well, and bad at the same time. She absolutely loves our visits and all the doctrine that we are teaching her. She soaks it all up with no problem. However, she is an older woman, and a bit frail. Everything was in order for her to come this week to church, but she actually fell and hurt her arm a bit, and ended up with other small health problems such as blood pressure fluctuation (or something like that). Unfortunately the majority of the health problems she has are caused by her stress that she passes through. But things are still well, we will be working with her, just needs some time. She will surely make it to church soon and surely progress much much more.

Ive got a ton of more cool things to share, but no time!

Okay, one more!

This week we explored a bit in our area, and found a little residential pocket behind a very touristy area, and we thought "hey maybe we could come back around these parts". So, we planned, and did so.

We got there about 7pm, already dark, and started knocking on doors. To enter into an apartment building here, there is a thing with a lot of doorbells at the entrance, and you have to ring these telephone doorbell thingies and talk to people (if theyre home) in order to get in and knock more doors. Many times we buzz and entire building with a dozen or so apartments and nobody opens. So we´re buzzing doors, and we actually split up to buzz two buildings at the same time (dont worry, we could still see and hear each other).

There was this lady walking her dogs with a young girl. I thought nothing of it, I was busy ringing doorbells. I then thought "hey, I oughtta talk to her," but I ignored it. A man picked up the phone on the other end of the doorbell thing and said, as they always do, "who is it?" I replied, simple, "Hello! we´re missionaries etc etc." He said, "nah, not interested." — Normal.

Then this lady walked up to me and the door, also normal. I said "oh sorry, did you want to enter? Excuse me." 

"No no, no worries, I wanted to actually see who you were."

Not normal.

"Oh, um, Im Elder Ward, Im a missionary from the church etc etc... What´s youre na—naw, are you Mónica?"

Mónica was a referal that we recieved from a member about a month ago. This member, Odília, works in a call center and had an hour long conversation about the church with Mónica, and passed the info to us, the both of them very excited. We called and messaged many times and she was very interested, but we never got a scheduled appointment. unfortunately, so we ended up trying less, until we had stopped trying to reach her.

"Yes, I am. I recognized your voice, you are the missionary I spoke with!"

What?

We ended up talking with her for about a half hour. We got a lot of things cleared up, we got her address, and gave her a book of mormon then and there. She´s awfully nice and it was just really cool. She said "I dont believe in coincedences." —amen.

We scheduled for tonight, but she hasnt picked up the phone, so we´ll try passing by there anyways. Im excited to work with her in the near future.

Anyways, the time is gone! Sorry! I want to include more details... but I just dont have time.

Gotta run,

Ciao!

Elder Ward

gaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!