21 Aug 2017 Odivelas

Dear family and friends,

     Once again Im a bit pressured with time, so I´ll be quick.

     Last Monday Elder Harker and I rested for a bit and we also cut our pday short so that we could have a lesson with César. He showed up in church yet another time, and enjoyed it. We chatted with him in his home on monday and we had a good lesson. We brought pres. SIlva, the district president with us to the lesson. It ran really well, but in spite of our efforts, César didn´t want to accept a baptismal date... but even so, we are confident that he will be baptized in the near future.

     Monday night we had a family home evening with Mamá, basically our Angolan Grandma in the branch, it was a good meal and a good time.

     I stayed up that night until 2 am (oops) copying down important information like contacts and locations for Elder Harker, and packing my bags. Elder Harker is still in Faro with a new companion. He´ll do well for sure.

     The next morning we got up early and hoofed it to the train station. Elder Fogg and I caught a train to Lisbon, it was nice trip. We waited in the train station in Lisbon for all the other missionaries to transfer around. I met up with Elder Gunnarsson, my new companion, and we headed directly to our area.

     Elder Gunnarsson is a good kid. He´s a bit shy, but he´s got really good intentions. He´s from Florida, 19 years old. He had to wait for his visa after the MTC, so after the MTC he served for 3 weeks in Idaho and 3 weeks in Portugal. So, he´s been in this area for 3 weeks. Unfortunately, from what I´ve understood, his last trainer(s) didn´t have a super good focus in helping Elder Gunnarsson grow... in the work and in the language, it´s a long story, I wont try to elaborate. Lets just say Elder Gunnarsson is fresh in the start of his mission, and I get to show him the ropes. 

     He had a lot of wide-eyed experiences this week for sure haha.

     When we were in the Metro heading to our area, I asked him "hey do you already have plans made for today?"

     "No, I figured that you were gonna want to rest and unpack your bags, maybe we´ll get some groceries too"

     Well we got to the area, I threw my bags on the floor, we grabbed the area book, went to the chapel, chatted with the Ward Mission leader there, and we got right to work, talking with every person in the street as we went about visiting a few people. My bags stayed on the floor until last night, I didn´t eat breakfast all week, time is money, and I didn´t want to waste critical time shopping and fiddling with my bags.

     That day we contacted a man named Mauro, an Angolan. He was really chill, and he said that we could pass by the next day. On wednesday, we showed up, and Elder Gunnarsson and I had our first lesson together. Mauro accepted to investigate, read, and pray about the BoM. He´s a busy guy, so he already had something planned for Sunday. He didn´t make it to church, but we´ll teach him more this week.

     The next few days were a bit heavy. We´re basically doing a whitewash here. Not much was left in the area book, so daily planning is quite taxing and time-consuming, but even so, we managed to work a lot this week. We have one of the biggest (in a sense of population and size) areas in the mission, and it´s tough to navigate here, maps aren´t easy to find nor to make.

     Im in a training companionship, and in our area there is a sister trainer companionship as well as another elder training companionship. The other trainer, Elder Rodrigues, is a Zone Leader with me. So we´re two Zone Leaders, training, and working separately, but living together. We have the biggest Zone in the mission, with 30 missionaries. It´s quite a handful, I have no idea what I´m doing.

     We had a mission council on thursday. We had a good time, we had a big meeting focused on the "Baptismal Attitude". It was a good meeting, we took a lot of things with us to apply in our zone. A few days after we met up with all the District leaders in our zone and we had our own zone council to make set objectives, make goals and plans to establish a baptismal attitude in our zone and to help every area baptize this transfer.

     Outside of all of that stuff, we have been working really hard. Elder Gunnarsson is still learning the language and growing his self confidence, so contacts are still a bit tough for him. Even so, I made sure to show him that it´s cake.

     We haven´t let anyone pass us in the street without trying to talk to them. We passed a really congested area with about 6 bus stops in a row, each with 6 or 7 people waiting. With Elder Gunnarsson wide-eyed, we stopped in front of each bus stop and we talked about the Book of Mormon to all of them at the same time, or we talked about the plan of salvation, a modern prophet, etc. I thought it was really fun, Elder Gunnarsson just said afterwards "Você tem bolas".

     On Sunday, I had a really pleasant surprise. Elder Welch came to portugal to visit, and visited here in the Lisboa 5 Ward because he already served in this area. I was super happy to see Elder Welch, I loved serving with him in Faro. He is the same old guy, just a ball of energy and good stuff. 

     Elder Welch (oh sorry, now his name is Mason) was also really pumped to be hear, so he actually sent his parents to the hotel while he worked with us after church. We talked and laughed, talked to everyone in the street, and he showed us around a bit, gave us some tips about the area. We had two appointments, but both fell through. But one of the contacts we had was named Daniel, a portuguese man about 30yrs old. At first he basically wasn´t interested, but we explained how he could receive his own response directly from god, confirming our message. He accepted, after being really reluctant, to sit down and listen to us. We had a really cool lesson, and i never thought that i would have a lesson with a member present, especially not with a previous companion! It was super great, Elder Welch has started to teach in the MTC so he´s an even better missionary and helped out a lot in the lesson. It was as if I travelled back in time 3 transfers to when we were serving together!

     We will continue to teach Daniel this week. He was pretty excited to read the BoM.~

     This ward is really cool, lots of good folks. We had a meal with a member every day this last week, and for this whole next week. Last night, our dinner went overtime. We ate in a members home about 30m by foot from our home. At 945 we realized that we had to run home. So we did. Elder Gunnarsson was really reluctant, but we jogged until we got home, and we got home before 10pm, a success. I hope to teach him a lot about obedience, it´s one of the most important things that I´ve learned in my mission.

     So yeah, I think I´ll wrap it up. I will have to share more details later, but for now, that´s the update! Im having a good time. This whitewash is a bit of an uppercut, a lot of work, and a lot of stress, but that´s what the mission needs to be.

Ciao,

Elder Ward

 Our mini transfer meet up tuesday morning in the Faro station.

Elder Gunnarsson, Mason (Elder Welch) and a stooge

14 August 2017 Tchau Faro, Tchau Algarve

Dear Family and Friends,

     Well I´ve got news for you guys! Yes, transfers came, and I have been transfered. I will leave Faro and I will serve in Odivelas! Elder Welch, Elder Thompson, and Elder Harker all served there already. I´ve already done a few divisions there too. It should be great, I´ve heard so many good things about it. I hear it has a ward with about 130 people every sunday, so it´ll be a shocker for me. It´s basically been 4 years since I´ve gone to a sacrament meeting with more than 70! It´s a really big area, basically a big chunk of the city of lisbon. It´s been almost a year since I served in Lisbon, so it´ll be an interesting change. I will be living with another companionship. I will serve with Elder Gunnarsson, who is in the field for 6 weeks now. I will be finishing his training.

     I don´t leave until tomorrow morning. I´ll leave Elder Harker here with another missionary from a neighboring area and then I will head up to lisbon by train with Elder Fogg. I´ll meet up with my new companion and from there it´s right down to business. I hope it´s colder there.

     I´m actually a bit short on time this week. We´re cutting our pday short to head to teach César for the second time, because he only has time on monday now. We´ll get a ride from the District President, President Silva (great guy) and we will teach with him. We hope to set a firm baptismal date with him.

     César, without fail, came to church for the 4th time in a row. He could have already been baptized by now if he had more time to be taught!

     We met a cool young brazilian couple this week, Vítor and Carla. They aren´t married unfortunately, but are really open to learn and to try. We will visit them tonight to see how their reading of the BoM went. They have showed quite a bit of willingness to learn and progress. We already taught them the Law of Chastity, so they are heavily considering marraige as a consequence of their response about the BoM.

     This week we worked hard. We made a big effort to find new people. Sometimes the Lord really wants to test our patience, but in the end we managed to find a couple more people who were willing to hear our message. In fact, yesterday we talked to a mother and daughter in a park. Turns out that the mother, Saskia, it from Holland, married to an Italian, and living in Portugal for a few years now. The family speaks english together. They are christians, but don´t claim to be part of a specific church. Turns out that I contacted the daughter a few weeks back and I left her with a card. They had actually gone to mormon.org and were curious when we talked to them. We gave a brief explanation of the restoration, and she gladly accepted to hear more, but didn´t want to mark anything with us until her husband and son get back from a business trip in two weeks. She prefered to wait to investigate the church until her whole family was together... okay, sure. It´s darn interesting how much the Lord guides us to be right in front of the specific people who need to talk with us.

     Ivanilson and Basílio both came to church. It was a good time. I got to say goodbye to Ivanilson, I´m sure he´ll to really well. We will probably stop by Basílio´s house before I go too. Diego didn´t make it to church unfortunately, he slept in... again... We went to his place and we met with him last night to have a good chat. He says he´s been a bit discouraged since his baptism. He was super glad that he was baptized but now doesn´t understand what he´ll do now. We had a good conversation with him and helped him understand his potential and his future. It was a good chat.

     But yeah that´s basically all the time I have to throw out an update. I will miss Faro a ton, it was a good 4 transfers here, but life goes on!

Até mais!

Elder Ward

Pres. Rui from loulé stopped by sunday afternoon, had to snap one with this machine

 Sayonara, Aaron, President Tiago, Gary, and us after a good lunch

 Our little district

Ivanilson and Danilson

7 August 2017 Auto-Suficiência

Dear family and friends,

     Getting started, we had a good week.

     We tried to meet up with Diego all week, but he was so tired and busy that he hardly picked up the phone. So, we didn´t get to meet up with him until saturday night (a solid week after his baptism). We had a good lesson with him. We printed his photo from his baptism and we put it in a little frame and we gave it to him. He was awfully happy to receive it.

     Diego fortunately made it to church the next day and was confirmed. It was a good experience. Diego should do well.

     Unfortunately Ivanilson didn´t make it to church. He can go, it´s just really difficult with his work, he works a lot and only has sunday to rest, so he gets home destroyed saturday night and has a lot of trouble getting up and making that sacrifice. So I decided it was time to visit him. In all these months that I´ve known him, we actually never visited his house. So we headed there sunday afternoon and we actually woke him up from a nap, but he gladly let us come in. We gave him a baptismal photo too, in a little frame and he liked it a lot. We had a good lesson with him. We didn´t have to push much for him to admit that he´s been failing a bit. He recognized that he needs to do better, and he was very convinced to come to church this next sunday. His testimony is still strong as ever.

     So the whole week we worked really hard but we were seeing few results. Even so, we kept up our pace and did our best, but many of the days were just walking talking and knocking for the entire day and full of rejection. But so be it, it´s the bread and butter of our work.

     But I think we were rewarded for our diligence. Saturday afternoon we were contacting when I saw this girl sat on a curb. I have a lot of trouble guessing ages but she actually looked to have about 15 years. I talked with her, and I noticed she had a bit of trouble understanding. After talking for a little bit, we learned that her name is Adelina. She actually is 18, and is visiting the Algarve for a month or so. She lives up in the northern half of the country and is studying there, but came down here to work for a bit. She came from Timor, a small island just above Australia, close to Indonesia. She speaks a decent chunk of portuguese though because I hear that there used to be a portuguese colony there. She is a simple christian, her family back home is protestant, but she has been going to an Evangelical church lately. I dunno why, but I invited her to walk with us to see the chapel. She obliged. It was about a 5 minute walk, so we got to know her on the way.

     We showed her the chapel, and she was impressed. We sat down and taught her the restoration too. She seemed to have understood well. She accepted the Book of Mormon (in portuguese for now, but we´ll get her one this week in indonesian). We invited her to be baptized, but she said she will have to decide after coming to church and such...

     She came to church the day after and enjoyed it quite a bit. She read the chapter that we left with her and she said that she wanted to keep reading. We will be meeting with her more this week to help her progress. She said to us in our lesson that she had been praying lately to find a church where she could find and feel the "presence of God". 

     Of course we were sent to find her. She was sat down on that curb and I asked her what she was doing, she responded "uh, nothing..." We´re excited to work with her more.

     We´ve had little contact with César. He came to another Self Sufficiency class on saturday, and came to church for the third time in a row. It´s kinda funny, he didn´t respond to our messages or calls all week, but showed up with no hair pulled to that class. We showed up afterwards, but he had already left. We caught one of the members who was in the class with him and I chatted with him. He said "wow that César is great. How long ago was he baptized Elder?" 

     "Oh, he´s not baptized! He´s our investigator but we´ve only taught him once, he´s always so busy!" 

      "Really? He shared his testimony and talked a bunch during the class about his experience in meeting the church..." 

     "He has a testimony?!"

     So yeah, it seems like César is learning to be too Self-Sufficient, he doesn´t even need us missoinaries! Nah, a joke, but really he seems to be doing well, he just couldn´t meet up with us this weekend because his mother went to the hospital and stuff, but we still hope to teach him more soon haha.

     Anyways, I think that´s it. Tranfers next week. Ive been here for 4 now. In our mission it´s super rare to stay more than 4 in an area. So, it´s basically garaunteed that I´ll be transfered, so let´s see.

Ciao,

Elder Ward

 The brazilians are the ones with their tongues out.

31 July 2017 Diego

Dear family and friends,

     I´ll cut to the chase.

     ´Twas a good week, like always. After a long battle, a lot of late night lessons, and postponing, Diego was baptized on saturday. I had the priveledge of doing the ordinance which was really cool. We had the baptism at about 830 at night because Diego, like always, had to work a bunch.

     Diego was awfully nervous, but he had a good experience. The spirit was strong.

     To our dismay, Diego unfortunately didn´t make it to church the next day, after all we had done to help him. We were a bit worried, but turns out that he slept in, he forgot to set his alarm... When someone isn´t confirmed it´s one of a missionary´s worst nightmares. We work so much to baptize, and we´re really happy when it happens, but when someone isn´t confirmed it´s as if the baptism didn´t even happen, so this weekend was great but it had a flop for sure.

     But no worries, there is always next week. Diego felt really bad, but we will help him out and encourage him so that way this next sunday he will be confirmed smoothly.

    Earlier this week we had a zone conference, and Elder Harker and I had to put together a presentation for our zone. Here in the Algarve we have a district. The district is on the edge of qualifying to be a stake, so it´s a big deal, and clearly we missionaries are trying our best to help out. After meeting up with the District President for a bit we actually got a bunch of info about the progress and we made a presentation about the battle to get a stake. It ran well. The Algarve will probably become a stake in a few months (but I,  sadly after nearly a year in the Algarve, probably wont be here to see it...) All that is lacking currently is a few more qualified melk. preisthood holders in every branch, so the missionary work lately here has been focused on reactivation and men. Good stuff.

     Afterwards we learned a lot of good stuff from President Tavares. I really like him, he is an excellent leader and teacher.

     This week we found a lovely family from Guiné Bissau. We haven´t taught them all yet, but until now we´ve taught Elizabete and Ludmila. Elizabete arrived in portugal quite recently, has 29 years, and is a member of the (i dunno the name in english, but translating it should be) "Worldly Church" (Igreja Mundial). However, she obliged to hear our message, she enjoyed it, read moroni 10 and came to church with us this last sunday. Ludmila is her cousin, she has 14 years and is catholic. She came with us to church too! We were happy to have them there. After sacrament meeting every african member we have just went to their corner and they all started chatting and stuff, often switching to creolo aka their dialect. They seemed to have enjoyed church quite a bit.

     César, our busy busy friend is actually doing really well. We didn´t get to communicate with him for the entire week, but on saturday he passed us in his car honked and stopped to chat with us. He came to church once again, and enjoyed it. I took some time to chat with him after sacrament meeting and we talked about how he´s been feeling, particularly about baptism. He said he would like to be baptized, but want´s to prepare himself more (we want to prepare him more too! We´ve only taught him once these last too weeks!) We chatted about how we will keep in contact more.

     The district put on a Self-Sufficiency class Sunday afternoon. They announced it in church and César was really interested, so he went. He really enjoyed it and went without us, which shows a lot of courage haha. He was able to meet a lot of great members there and has plans to start attending the classes, so now he´s getting integrated well! It´s just tough for Elder Harker and I to plan lessons, but in our next lesson we will certainly plan a baptismal date.

    But yeah, that´s basically an update of everything. We´ve been working really hard, it´s awfully hot, but I´ve learned to like it. We´re really searching to find the Lord´s sheep that will hear his voice! 

Ciao!

Elder Ward