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
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