Dear
family and friends,
This last monday I prepped my bags and we all headed to the metro to get to the
train station where transfers would happen. It´s always annoying traveling with
big heavy bags but so be it. I really enjoyed serving in Odivelas, I will miss
serving there, it was so short! Elder Gunnarsson was transfered to Portimão, a
city in the Algarve that I already did many divisions in.
On Tuesday I met up with Elder Fogg and we traveled together to
the Mission Office because he too was going to train a new missionary. We got
there and we had to wait around for a couple hours until our new companions
showed up. That´s when I saw Elder Hawkins for the first time with his group of
raggedy and tired missionaries (jet lag and such). We had to stay that night in
the mission office in order to attend some meetings the next day before
chucking the new missionaries into the field. We didn´t get to our new area
until about 5pm on wednesday. We actually got a text message from president and
his wife (but it was certainly sister tavares´ idea) saying "you may not
work with you new companion until wednesday after the meetings. For now, they
will rest." I was a bit bummed, I wanted to go straight to the street with
him.
Elder Hawkins is a good kid. He´s from Washington state, funny
enough, but he´s from the south-east corner. He´s a good mormon farm boy, 19
years old, from a family of 11 children, he´s the 10th. He played football,
baseball, and basketball.
Elder Hawkins went to the MTC but then had to wait for one transfer
for his visa to be processed. While he waited, he was assigned to serve in a
mission temporarily in Salt Lake City. There, he never did a single street
contact, and never taught a single investigator. There, 85% of the population
are members of the church, so he only worked with less-actives and he just went
to activities to "gain member trust". In this last transfer, Elder
Hawkins tried to take the time to study the language to be more prepared for
portugal. He told me that the missionaries that he lived with were poor
examples, so he was super excited to get to work here in portugal.
The best part about Elder Hawkins is his desire to serve. He may
not know what to do, how to do it, not even how to say it, but he tries to do
it. On our first day of work, I had done all of the street contacts. Towards
the end of the day I turned to Elder Hawkins and said "ok, your turn. Talk
to this man who´s walking in our direction". To my surprise, Elder Hawkins
didn´t hesitate and talked to the guy. He only was able to say "we´re
missionaries from Jesus Christ, we want to talk a message with you".
In short, that guy wasn´t interested, and I had to continue the
conversation after Elder Hawkins didn´t know what to say (which was immediately
after). But I was super glad and proud of what Elder Hawkins has the courage to
do. Many times new missionaries have to wait a few weeks to muster the courage
to stop people in the street to talk to them.
I´m trying my best to help Elder Hawkins learn how to do everything.
I try to include him in all the parts of the work, and it´s running well. Each
day he talks a little better and understands a little more. It´s slow progress,
and we´re starting from near zero, but we´ll get there.
In all, training is super tiring. This was one of the most tiring weeks
of my mission.
Rewinding
a bit...
When we arrived in Setúbal, we immediately looked at the area
book, step one of a whitewash. After examining it for a little bit, I took a
deep breath and accepted that we would have to really take the bull by the
horns and construct a lot of our own work here. (It wasn´t horrible,
fortunately the last Elders left one or two investigators).
I like Setúbal, it´s a cool city. Reminds me a lot of the cities
in the Algarve. It shares some characteristics in common with Beja as well. It
has quite a bit of tourism, a series of ship ports for industry, tourism, and
fishing, a few small mountains in the distance, decent sized apartment
buildings and an acceptable number of people to talk to in the streets.
We got to work using mainly the Area Book as a guide. We talk to
everyone we see in the street and we try to visit names that we find in the
Area book. Unfortunately in the last year in this area there were few
missionaries that used the area book well, so as a result we are basing our
work off of poorly updated information. Many people we try to find have
forgotten about us, lost interest, or moved already.
But we keep pressing forward. In our efforts to find and meet people
we got to know a few folks who have a bit of potential. We are trying to
arrange appointments with them to get the work going. Despite all of our best
efforts however, we only managed to teach one lesson which made me glad. Elder
Hawkins bore his testimony in portuguese, it ran well.
That lesson was with an investigator left by the previous Elders.
His name is Darlan, a good brazilian guy with a wife and two yound kids. Darlan
has already gone and studied a lot of churches, but has recently met the
missionaries and enjoyed his experience. He is stuck in a common situation that
is more or less "I like this church, I´ve felt the spirit, I cannot say
that it´s false, but I also can´t say with all my heart that it´s true, I just
want to take some more time to make sure I understand everything, especially
joseph smith before being baptized." He admitted to us that he has a fear
of making a leap of faith.
Darlan has already read the entire book of mormon, is starting
with gospel principles, and knows the missionaries for a few months now. We
showed up, got to know him, and we shared Enos and John 14-21. We challenged
him to wrestle with god in fervorous prayer and to keep all the commandments to
receive a more certain response. He obliged, in fact, turns out that he still
drinks a little here and there... hmm. He committed to stop and study and pray
more. Anyways, he´s a great guy and just needs to push himself and be pushed a
little more, if that makes sense. He´s really funny, gave us food, and said
he´s gonna have us over for lunch next sunday after church.
This whitewash is also really strange because we know very very
few of the members here. We helped a couple move the other day, but turns out
they´re from the neighbouring ward. And this last weekend we didn´t meet any at
church because of general conference... it´s a bit strange! We´ll get to know
them more this next week.
Anyways,
I think that´s a summary. I hope you enjoy.
Tchauzinho,
Elder
Ward
Ah,
one more thing!
Elder Hawkins has never been to Europe, so he´s seeing a lot of
things for the first time, and to be honest I find some of his comments funny
because they remind me of my transition to Europe 4 years ago. For example:
"Hey
Elder Ward,
-are
all the licence plates like this in Italy too?"
-does
the whole country use cobblestone?"
-where´s
our dryer?"
-we
only have one chapel in our area?"
-is
all the milk like this?"
Elder Hawkins a bit tuckered out on the ride to
our area
We live in the best house in our mission, it has
a great view!
We have a member that lives in our building.
Tiago, an RM. We stopped by just to say hey and chat a bit. We mentioned that
we didn´t have a lot of food because of the whitewash and he said "then
stop by here tonight!" I politely declined, I don´t like to mooch. He
insisted, but we escaped. That night we found dinner and some other food on our
doorstep. Quite a surprise!
Transfers!
I weighed my bag afterwards and it came in at 36kg! (~79lbs). Don´t ask, I
guess I just have a lot of junk. The wheels are wearing out so sometimes it was
easier to just carry it...
