Elder Welch and I are having a good time here in Faro. I´ll throw in a quick reveiw of the people I mentioned last week.
We had a follow up appointment with Dinis on Monday night. The assistants came down to the Algarve monday night as well, so we had a quick division. I didn´t get to teach Dinis, Elder Welch and another Elder went to that appointment. However, I heard that it ran well. They taught him the plan of salvation and discovered some more about him. For example, as they were talking about God and and families and stuff they asked Dinis "who is the person closest to you in your life?" and Dinis responded with a curveball "no one".
So from there Elder Welch learned that Dinis is actually a very lonely fella, and that with the few relationships he has with acquaintances and work he passes through a lot of obligational stress, aka, he feels obligated very easily towards people. That´s one of the reasons why he came to church and read the whole Restoration pamphlet.
I wasn´t there, but I hear that Elder Welch was able to iron out a lot of wrinkles and clarify a lot of things. We now understand that we´re gonna need to take it really slow with Dinis. So, we tried to get together with him only one time this week, but it fell through due to unexpected work on his end. He couldn´t make it to church either because of work once again. But we will certainly work with him in the future and at his pace.
Unfortunately we couldn´t arrange a time to meet up with Cristina again. She´s a teacher and has little time. Her daughter is going through some sort of medical treatment, so we didn´t get to meet up with her this week, nor did she make it to church. We´ll pay another visit this week.
We had a handful of curveballs with Bruno and Igor. Igor got a job in a bakery, and works everyday for the next month, 4am until noon, and cant choose his days off... bummer. So, it was tough to mark a time to chat with them. We got to see them once in the road and we learned that they found the church that they used to go to in Brazil and have been visiting there lately too.
Anyways, the weekend came around, we knew Igor would be working, but we invited Bruno to come to church despite all the recent happenings. He said he would come, but didn´t unfortunately, those brothers don´t go anywhere without the other. We have plans to work around these obstacles.
Carina is another story as well. In short, because she has been a bit rebellious in her family in the recent years, and because her parents are a bit stubborn, we have had a bit of difficulty. Elder Welch and I have to be really upfront with them sometimes. They are still all getting over grudges and judgements when they should all be happy that another family member is accepting the gospel. One whole lesson was focused solely on forgiveness and was actually directed more towards her parents (who are members) than Carina haha. In fact, Elder Welch and I planned a visit with Carina´s parents just to help them show a bit more Christ-like attributes to their repentant daughter. It was kinda frustrating. They are strong members, but a bit thick-skulled at the same time, excuse my terminology.
Carina came to church yesterday for the first time since a small child with her parents. She brought her two-year-old, Adriano, who was a bit of a ruckus towards the end of the sacrament meeting, but even so, Carina left with a more positive reveiw than negative. Helping Carina progress to be baptized will be a process for sure, but we´re working on it.
This week we worked our tushies off. We spent a lot of time searching, knocking, walking, and contacting. We found some decent success. It was a big investment of time and energy. It´s tiring, and it should be. Elder Welch is really funny. He´s only got 4 weeks left, so he wants to hammer it out until the end. He says stuff like "It´s not hot enough. I need to be suffering." or "We need more steep hills in this city" and stuff like that. He´s a missionary who loves to work and has "high endurance" so to speak. He doesn´t slow down at all. In short, his motto is "feel the pain, love the pain".
In this great search for new investigators, we met, knocking doors, a 19 year old girl from Cabo Verde, named Evy. As we talked with her in her doorway, I saw Janice (a young mother, less active, from Cabo Verde too, I had previously met her in KFC in which she works a few weeks back). Elder Welch and I set a time to meet with both of them. Theyre really nice and open, easy to joke with.
A few days later we sat down and taught them both. Janice was baptized a few years back, and doesn´t come to church due to work and laziness (she said it herself). We tried to focus on Evy. Evy has come to portugal recently (I forget how recently). While she was in Cabo Verde she met the missionaries, learned with them about 3 years ago. She said she has already read the majority of the Book of Mormon, but doesnt remember much. She remembers that she liked it though. The missionaries there spoke with her about baptism, but it never happened because Evy always worked on Sundays. I think the time she was taught was very limited, and because of such, she must have lost contact with them.
Elder Welch and I read the mostpart of 3 Nephi 11 with them, and we invited Evy to be baptized. She will pray about it. We also left her a new copy of the BoM, and invited her to church. She was going to come for sure, but didn´t make it because her family had to go to the neighboring city, Olhão for some reason. We will be working a lot with her, she has great potential.
Earlier in the week, Elder Welch and I travelled to Portimão, Loulé, and Ohlão to attend 3 different district meetings to give a training. It was pretty cool, we got to meet up with all of our zone bit by bit, and help them all better their teaching skills. It was a good learning experience, particularly for me. I stayed for an afternoon in Portimão doing a division with Elder Fisk, from Utah. It was pretty interesting, it was cool to see a new city and work with another Elder for a day.
Also, just for a little cherry-on-top, yesterday I went to Olhão to teach an Italian!
There are 3 Elders in Olhão, and they noticed in these last 5 weeks this guy in a nice suit who came to church but never said anything. They thought he was a member. Turns out, he´s a ~65 year old Italian man, Nino, from Palermo. He is quite well-off financially, and is working here in portugal for a time.
The missionaries there discovered this and started teaching him... well, they tried. Eventually they called me up saying "Elder Ward, you speak italian right?" "Not to great, its been a long while." "Dude we´re teaching this guy from Italy and we understand jacksquat".
Nino is a really nice guy. However, he loves to talk. So, in all of the monologues he´s given, the other misisonaries had understood that he basically want´s to leave the Catholic church, renounce he baptism there, and be baptized the right way. Simple. Now, he is seriously investigating the LDS church. However, the missionaries have had difficulty in teaching, so basically he doesn´t know much, and is now reading the BoM.
So, I showed up and tried to get to know him, get a grip on the situation, but soon after he began talking about he history of the world since the start of the catholic church. He began talking about socrates and other philosophers, John Calvin, Martin Luther, etc. I tried to control the situation a bit, but my italian has faded immensely. I started the lesson with him only understanding 20% but in the end I was understanding 75%, However, due to language troubles, and his infinite love for conversation about politics, philosophy, history, and spirituality, we didn´t get much done in our conversation that unfortunately lasted a couple hours...I was actually a bit frustrated in the end with my performance, but I´m not too worried. He understands that there was a great apostasy, and will pray and continue reading the book of mormon. I don´t doubt that he will eventually be baptized. He just needs to start listening a bit more and needs to find italian Elders!
Nino will return to italy in a few weeks, to Rome for a time. He will surely meet up with the missionaries there.
But oh man, it was good fun and very entertaining to see so many little italian quirks, sicilian quirks haha. He used his hands almost as much as his lips, said stuff like "buh" and a couple old swear words I havent heard for a long while (he used them in very specific circumstances to express a point, such as to describe Emperor Constantine).
But yeah, that´s what the mission brought to the table this week. We have plans to go to Lagos today, and maybe another cool place, so I should have cool photos for next week. For now, just one.
Ciao,
Elder Ward
We visited an old catholic chapel, and there was a bone chapel outside in the garden. It was... interesting. Yes, those are all real bones.
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