10 April 2017 Karting

Dear family and friends,

This week was really a curveball. To be honest it was quite challenging, but things ironed themselves out quite a bit. I will explain more as we go.

Last monday, after writing my email we caught a train to Olhão. There we ate kebab and then went to the basement of a huge shopping center. We were 16 missionaries, including a senior couple missionary that was with us. Missionaries from Loulé, including Elder Jan, and missionaries from Olhão and Faro, in short a big group of mishies.

In this basement there is an Indoor Go-Kart Track, the largest in Portugal. They had (if my memory serves me right) 270cc engines and a track basically the size of a full soccer field very well weaved with lots of turns and corners, and a few straightaways. It was very very fun haha. As a missionary sometimes you just don´t do things that are straight up "fun" for some time, so most of the missionaries, 5 at a time, had a good laugh and a shout screeching around the track. (If you want to see how it is, probably very easy to find go pro footage on youtube or something, search Olhão indoor karting or something like that)

It was a pretty fancy course. The waiting area had and observing booth thingy and they also kept track of the times. I payed to do a 20min run with Elder Jan, Higginbotham, Souza, and Kampff. I came in 2nd, with a 48 second lap time, Elder Jan (of course, the swiss former military won) had a lap time of 46. The all time record was 42 I think. They were fast karts. After 20 minutes we all hopped out of our karts with sore wrists and hands and jelly legs. It was actually quite a arm and shoulder work out with so many tight turns going so fast.

On Tuesday, for the third time, I had a division with Elder Fogg. It was pretty cool, nothing super special happened. The next day I had another division with Elder Ferreira (Feh-HEY-rah). He´s one of the best missionaries I´ve ever met, to be honest. He´s from Viana do Castelo, in other words, the tippy tippy top of Portugal. He met the missionaries when he was attending college in Lisbon when he was 18. He investigated the church for 4 years and finally was baptized and decided to serve a mission. He´s a phenomenal guy and super devoted, a great example. He recently turned 26 and will be returning home in 6 weeks. He´s the only member in his family.

Then Elder Kampff and I had one day together and then the next day I had yet another division with Elder Tester, in a little town called Almancil. It was a bit dry, but it was cool to pass some time with him. He´s a younger fella in the mission, I got to help him out a bit.

Then on Saturday, our zone baptized 4 people, and all of the baptisms were held in our chapel. An Angolan woman, Yolanda, was baptized Saturday morning, then a very nice portuguese woman from the Sisters in our area, Maria, was baptized at 5, and then Esmeralda and Salva, two investigators that Elder Jan and I found last transfer were baptized by him and Elder Fogg at 7pm. The font had a bunch of sins in it at the end!

The man who maintains the chapel, António, also our branch mission leader uses the water from the font with a pump to water the grass and plants outside the chapel. Now all the grass is covered in sins.

Between all those baptisms, we had a lunch appointment. We have an older French couple in our branch. They don´t speak any other language unfortunately, but love the gospel and come every week, and even brought a friend 2 times now. They scheduled with us to take us to lunch. (I dont know their names....) He picked us up in his mercedes and took us to the most touristy beach and the most touristy restaurant in all of Faro. There, we ate the most expensive touristy food you can imagine, in a little restaurant right on the beach... it was a bit strange haha, I think my order ended up being 30€, but they insisted. I tried to evade the seafood, but they got me to order the "seafood sword", seen below. It had what I think were crawfish, and another time of fish inbetween. It wasn´t horrible, my body just isnt used to it haha. I had to ask for a demonstration on how to eat the mini lobster things, the frenchman was happy to show me.

Then on Sunday we had a good church meeting. It was fast and testimony, and a british tourist family showed up. I ended up translating for them. They had 5 kids, all of them blonde, reminded me quite a bit of my family. I gave them two thumbs up for conquering travelling with so many duffers with them. The age ranges were probably 16 down to 6.

And finally, to top off the week, we received transfers last night. Elder Kampff will leave Faro, and will serve in Sacavém, an area in Lisbon, in fact, the area in which the temple is being constructed. Elder Jan, funny enough, will serve in Póvoa, the area in which I served 4.5 months and started my mission. I will continue here in Faro with Elder Welch.

I maybe mentioned Elder Welch a few times in old emails. It´s kinda funny because I actually have already done 2 or 3 divisions with him. He´s an excellent missionary from what I know. He served as the president´s assistant when I arrived in the mission, in fact, he was one of the very first missionaries I met in the field. He only has one transfer left now, so I will be "killing" him. However, I´m very excited. Should be a great learning opportunity. However I´m starting to hear little rumors about him, but who knows, I will just have to see what happens.

You guys are probably wondering about investigators, and to be honest, I don´t have any news. In short, it has been a challenge to work at my 100% here with Elder Kampff. I have hope that Elder Welch will help me reach 120%.

I think that that´s it for the news this week. Thanks for all the emails yall send me.

Take care everybody,

Elder Ward