So last monday Elder Welch and I visited a little foresty riverbed thingy in some rolling mountains outside of Loulé. It was pretty cool, but there were supposed to be waterfalls but we didn´t find any unfortunately. But it was still "pretty neat".
Monday
You´ll remember me mentioning a little bit about Cícira, that brazilian woman. Well, we lost contact with here, tried to call and stuff, but no luck. Later, we were just walking down the street, contacting people when I noticed that somebody was shouting, trying to call somebody´s attention. I glanced, but didn´t recognize the person. I said, what the heck, let´s go say hey.
Turns out it was Cícira, she was sat on a bench with her husband and her 4 children (ages 9m to 9y). We chatted with her, got to know her husband, and we ended up walking about 7 or 8 minutes together to the church. There, we taught them both as their children played in the nursurey. It was a really good lesson. Cícira´s husband (well, partner, turns out they aren´t legally married) Nuno is a chill guy, a portuguese man. He looks a bit like a grump, but he really opened up with us and they accepted the restoration and a baptismal invite very well. Nuno lives here in Faro with his father, a very anti-religious man, and Cícira lives with her sister in a little village a few kilometers outside of Faro. Her sister is the same case. The children attend school outside of Faro, so they only get together in Faro sometimes to run errands and stuff. We planned to meet up with Nuno in the chapel another day, and Cícira in that village another. However, it only worked out to meet up and teach Cícira a second time this last week.
Cícira and Nuno are really great. In the little bit that we have shared with them they have accepted the gospel very well. They showed excitement to learn more. However, they in this awkward split family life have a lot of trouble in meeting up with us. However, they committed to come to church but all saturday and sunday they didnt pick up they phone... kind of annoying. So, no they didn´t make it to church, but they are still great, I hope to work with them a lot in the near future.
On Tuesday we had a huge zone conference. President and Sister Tavares came down to the algarve for the once-in-every-6-weeks training meeting. It ran well. Elder Welch and I had a half hour to talk to our zone and share stuff with them, a little training thingy. It was cool.
Zone conferences start usually at 9 or so and go until 2 or 3pm. During our lunch break, I headed outside with Elder Kaelberer to take out the trash. Elder Kaelberer, trash bags in hand, simply said "hey how ya doing?" to this guy walking by the church. The man stopped. We talked with him. His name is Ivanilson, he´s a 25ish year old man from Angola, and he´s here studying at the university. We invited him in to see the church. He came with us. Elder Kaelberer had to run and manage other things, but I showed Ivanison around. He said that he isn´t religious. He has already been to a lot of churches, but didn´t like any, and now he doesn´t really believe in god. However, after a short conversation in front of the baptismal font, we marked a time to meet up with him.
Ivanilson was taught twice this week. He´s a busy busy guy, but cut out time to meet up with us. We taught him the Restoration, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the word of wisdom. To sum it all up, he´s seriously interested now. He has already read a bit of the BoM and is searching for a testimony and a response. He came to church yesterday and liked it a lot. It was fast and testimony. He said "man, it´s true, it´s gotta be, I just gotta know for myself."
We have a baptismal date marked with him on day 20 of this month. I think he will make it, he´s a great guy. He already stopped drinking coffee so that he can gain a testimony. He stopped smoking just a few months ago. He has been prepared for us.
Good thing an Elder opened his mouth as he took out the trash.
In this huge meeting, we had a lot of missionaries who kinda just hung around. They had to wait for trains and buses to get back to their areas, or they were hanging around for the meeting that evening. Elder Welch and I basically started forming "dream teams" as Elder Welch put it, and we just grabbed random Elders and headed out to work split up and with reinforcements. That afternoon, only in a few hours, Elder Welch with other missionaries taught a few lessons and found new investigators. I also grabbed some elders and headed out, and we too found some success.
Wednesday I went to Albufeira (my old area!) with Elder Martel, from Canada. We drove there and had a decent time. We met up with Emanula (Imentioned in previous emails). She was happy to see me, and we also saw Maria (recent convert that Elder Jan baptized) and Nina (a woman I taught for a long while with Elder Jan, Maria´s boss.) We chatted with them in their hair salon, and turns out Nina finally wants to be baptized, and will be baptized this saturday if all goes well! How cool!
Thursday was a bunch of work, not too much special happened, but on friday we had a great lesson with Ivanilson (already mentioned). We also taught some new folks, a young brazilian couple (not married) who are studying here as well. Their names are Amanda and Andrei. They really enjoyed the resoration and committed to read. They also recognize the need to get married. They came to church yesterday and really enjoyed it. Amanda said "I wanna come back next week, I want to get to know this church."
Saturday was also pretty cool, we worked hard and got to teach another young brazilian couple... it ran okay, but they aren´t married... I wont go into much detail haha.
In my mission, I have decided that I´m a wedding planner. I have found tons of couples who have loved to hear about the gospel and many who applied it, but aren´t married and have trouble doing so due to paperwork. Examples: Jane and José, Jonatas and Fernanda, Clara and Joelson, Amanda and Andrei, Maria and Séni, Cícira and Nuno, Amadis and Macha, Barbosa and Esmeralda, and more that I can´t remember. It´s kinda rediculous!
So, I´ve decided that it is my destiny to become a wedding planner. I will study marital arts in BYU or something.
But yeah, the work has been good. It´s great serving here with Elder Welch, once again I´ll say that I´m having a blast.
Today we´re gonna go to Quarteira to cut our hair (for free!) with Maria and NIna haha. Connections. Then we´re probably heading to Albufeira to see the tourisy stuff there.
But yeah I think that´s it. Take care everyone,
Happy mother´s day! Love you mom!
Elder Ward
Pday drive-thru lunch.
An old well we found. Very common here in Algarve. They use basically use buckets that are welded to a big flexible ladder chain.
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