20 November 2017 E o batismo?

Dear family and friends,

     I´ll start off with our last Pday. After writing emails, we invited the other Elders from the neighboring area to our house. We already had some burgers and buns onhand, so we just grabbed some charcoal and we started up a grill. (We already have a little grill on our balcony). It ran well, the burgers actually turned out really good, it was relaxing. (See photo!)

     We have been visiting Welton frequently. Often, we stop by just to say hey or try to help him out at home. However, in all these visits, in all our time here, we only managed to teach him twice! So, this week his youngest started pre-school so now he´s got a bunch of time open during the day. We visited him on Wednesday and we taught him. We shared 1 Coninthians 6:19-20, that explains how his body is a temple. We talked about baptism, his desires and goals, and what he would like to eliminate from his life to have a cleaner temple. He talked to us about his smoking habit, and we now are helping him to stop. We explained the power of the Book of Mormon, and the assistance that it can give him, the replacement that it can be for him. He´s a trooper, he´s got a lot of desire to quit.

     He lost his cellphone this week so we couldn´t call him. We tried to visit him this week, but a few times he wasn´t home. Finally, we found him one night in the street with his two sons, Adriano in the stroller. Welton had a horrible worry written across his face. We followed him home, and he didn´t say a word, but gestured us to follow him. His son, 8yo, Lucas, said "dad, tell the Elders what´s wrong, you know things aren´t right, just let them help you.."

     We got to his place, and he explained to us a really complicated situation. His ex-wife is basically making a lot of problems in his life, ruining his friendships and just lot´s of bad stuff that I shouldn´t even dwell on. It was really sad, and we spent some time there helping him out. He seems to be a bit better now. We were hoping to see him at church, and he wanted to go again, but he ended up getting a call from a friend to do a simple cooking job during the weekend, so ended up missing church.

     He´s got a lot of potential and a lot of desire, so we´ll be working closely with him.

     Darlan, you may remember him from a few weeks back, has been really "busy". His parents are visiting him from Brasil and are staying here until the new year... This visit has become a big and constant excuse to not to come to church and stuff "no time, no time"... so, we went there and tried to teach his parents. We taught his mother, Noélia. She had all the perfect questions "Which is the true church?" "What happened with Christ´s original church?" etc. We had a good lesson with her, she asked a lot of good questions and was awfully curious. However, we got the the end, and invited her to read and pray. She accepted. We invited her to come to church and be baptized when she knows that the gospel was restored, and she basically responded, summing it up, "I dont know if Im ready to change my life, but I´ll read and pray". We explained real intent. We hope she´ll grow a true desire as she searches.

     About two weeks ago, 9pm, Elder Hawkins and I had finished with our plans, we were out of ideas, and we had a half-hour walk to get home. We decided to start walking home.

     Only after starting for about 30 seconds, I heard this baby behind us giggling and stuff. A thought came to mind "talk to the person with that baby". 

     I continued walking about 10 steps, stopped, looked at Elder Hawkins, and he at me, and I asked him "Do we need to talk to that person with that baby?" 

     Elder Hawkins immediately responded, "yeah, I had the same thought."

     We turned around, and approached a window of a ground-floor apartment. In the window, was a young brazilian father, about 25-30yo, with his young baby daughter who was playing on his lap. We talked to the man and got to know him. We talked about his family, his home, and his endeavors here in Portugal. HIs name is Zé, he´s a soccer coach.

     We guided the converstation into a conversation about God and such. We discovered that Zé is a good christian man, but doesn´t affiliate with any particular religion, although he already visited many. We invited him to here our message about the restoration. He accepted to have us over another day.

     After a few failed attempts, we finally marked a day to talk with him. He was at home alone, and he gladly received us. We taught the Restoration and it was a powerful lesson. He said he had already heard, only a little, about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon in a religious convention that he visited a long time ago, he remembered nearly nothing. He was super curious and anxious to have the Book of Mormon in the end. He said he will read and pray, and will come to church with us next Sunday.

    During the lesson, he said "after you guys talked with me, what you guys told me stuck in my head, I kept thinking ´why did they talk with me´?" I interupted him and told him about how we had been prompted to talk to him in a moment that we would not have normally done so. It was a powerful lesson. He accepted to be baptized as soon as he feels the truth of the Book of Mormon.

     You think that´s cool? That´s not all! Once again, Fernando avoided our calls and messages this week, but without invite, showed up to church!! He walked in the door, gave me a big hug, put his hand on my shoulder and said "So when is the baptism thing?"

    "Huh?" I responded.

    "The baptism thing here. I will be baptized in this church."

    "You want to be baptized?" I don´t know how to explain the expression that I had on my face.

     "yeah"

     "how about his saturday?" 

     "That´s a bit early maybe. Let´s meet up this week and plan everything, you guys can teach me more."

     So yeah, I was floored. After sacrament meeting, I brought Fernando to Fábio and said "Fernando, tell Fábio what you told me when you got here"

     "yeah, I Wanna do the baptism thing here."

     Fábio´s face was also pretty funny. He said "I have no words... that´s great!"

     On tuesday we´ll meet up with Fernando. Hopefully he doesn´t go awol again! He´s a bit slippery, but each time we get a better grip on him haha.

So yeah, if you guys want to pray for people, pray for Fernando and for Welton, they need help!

Thanks for everything, fiquem bem!

Elder Ward

 hey

 a pday a couple weeks back

our grill sesh

13 November 2017 Azeitão e Igreja

Dear family and friends,

     This week had some cool treats in it. 

     It was announced a bit short-notice, but we had a conference in Lisbon with two general authorities, Elder Owen (pres. of young mens) and Elder Durrant (presidency of sunday school) came to visit our mission with their wives. It was pretty cool. They majority of the mission went to attend the meeting that they held there, only a few missionaries from areas far away didn´t come. I got to see Elder Harker, Elder Jan, and a bunch of other familiar faces. (Funny, Elder Jan and Elder Harker are serving together in Faro now!)

     They talked about various subjects there, but for example, we learned about teaching in the way of the Savior and a bit more about applying the Doctrine of Christ. It ran well.

     Our zone, The Setúbal Zone, is about an hour by train away, but we were still invited to come and attend. The missiona office advised that we called an area in Lisbon the night before to sleep there to make the morning travel to the meeting easier. So, I gladly called the Elders who are now in Odivelas, and Elder Hawkins and I traveled there by train and subway Tuesday night. We got there a bit early, so we actually went and visited Linda, that lady that Elder Gunnarsson and I miraculously baptized. Linda is doing really well. Since her baptism, she´s gone to church every week! She loves it, made friends there and everything! We visited her at about 9:30 so we could only stay for a few minutes, but it was good to see her and she was happy to see us. We spent the night there, and I stayed up a bit chatting with the new Elders there to help them get started this transfer in Odivelas. We also bought kebab (the best kebab store is there in Odivelas haha). It was a great refresher visiting there again.

     We spent a lot of time pondering about it, but we eventually decided to sacrifice a day in Setúbal to work in a small town a bit outside the city called Azeitão. The members have been telling us that it´s super special there and we also learned about a few less-actives that are there. So, reluctantly, I decided that we could give it a shot. We didn´t find any new investigators, nor potential investigators, but we found those less-actives that the members had mentioned. One of them, the Martins Family (mother, father, and 4 kids, 16 to 8)received us very well. They were active for many many years, but have stopped going for almost a year. We chatted first with Emanuala, the mother of the family. She was happy to see us. Within a few minutes of getting to know each other she said "Elders, my youngest, Leonor, is 8 and hasn´t been baptized. I think you guys will baptize her."

     That took us off guard haha. We talked a little longer about how it would work out, etc. She told us a bit about her husband, Luís, who has had small doubts here and there about the church. Luís got home shortly after, we chatted some more and we left a message with them. They seemed to wake up a little, and Emanuela showed quite a bit of desire to return to activity.

     In our little message, we didn´t even talk about baptism, and immediately after the prayer Leonor turned to her mother and asked in a low voice "mom, are we going to talk with the Elders to do my baptism?"

     They enjoyed our visit, we will probably return this next weekend to see what progress we can make. They will try to invite some friends of their oldest son to have a FHE there. A good family.

     So in the end, our day in Azeitão yeilded something good. We did the math with google maps, and we walked 12.1 miles that day. (it´s pretty spread-out there, we didn´t anticipate such big distances)

     We also had yet another service project! The sister missionaries have been teaching a family for a little while now, and when the mother went to church, she felt something special, and since then progressed super fast. They recently moved, so we actually went to help them paint their new apartment. The work wasn´t super prepared, but we got it done in a reasonable amount of time, but we would have liked to have done it faster... It gave me lots of flashbacks to my eagle project in Italy...

     That same lady, Wal (pronounced Vahl) was baptized with her two children this last Saturday. Wal asked that I did the baptism, so I had the privelege to baptize the three of them on Saturday. It was a good experience.

     Saturday night we went to visit Welton. It was a miracle, we got there and Adriano, his youngest, was asleep. Welton recently met a friend of his, Artur, another brazilian, 28, who is now renting out a room in Welton´s house. Welton was busy making dinner, so Elder Hawkins went and chatted with Welton to get him to come to church, while I sat in the other room and taught the restoration to Artur. It ran really well. Artur´s father used to be a pastor in an evangelical church, and Artur has bounced around in several other churches. Artur lived in the states for a few years, and there a friend gave him the Book of Mormon, so for that reason Artur was curious to hear our message right from the source.

     After that visit, Artur, Welton, and Welton´s two sons came to church! Welton once again enjoyed it a lot, and Artur seemed to really like it too. Welton and Artur both smoke unfortunately, but we´ll be working with them a lot, they´ve shown a lot of potential.

     Last week we were in front of the chapel and this German tourist (a bit more of a nomad/bum) talked to us and said "you guys are the John smith guys right? I´ll come visit another day. When´s the meeting?" He actually showed up in sacrament meeting too!

     We stopped talking with Fernando, we decided to give him some space for a few weeks. He surprised us and just showed up to church! It was cool to see him! We were busy helping out Welton and talking with a bunch of other people, so we left Fábio (fernando´s friend) to talk to him. We came back just a minute or two later, and Fernando had left, and Fábio hadn´t scheduled anything, dang it! But now we know that Fernando still has some good intent in him, so we´ll try to meet up with him this week.

     So yeah, it was a good Sunday! I had to give a talk too, and being a missionary and being so busy, I didn´t plan my talk basically until we were walking to church with Welton´s family and Artur. It ran well, fortunately.

     In all it was a good week. We´re getting a better feel for things now. We´re working hard.

I guess that´s it! Take care!

Elder Ward

 This is Ana, a nice lady from our ward. She´s a family history maniac, here

s some of her 48,000 names she´s found. They´re gonna need a big stadium for her welcoming pary in heaven, lot´s of people are gonna want to be there to thank her.​

Linda! She was getting ready for bed when we showed up, but she obliged (a it reluctantly) to take a photo!

6 November 2017 Round Two

Dear family and friends,

     To put things in simple terms, this week was a bit tough. We worked pretty hard but we are still hoping to find more success. Some good things still happened though.

     A few weeks back we were trying to find a less-active member with a list that we had and we knocked the doors in the same building. We found this girl named Catarina, a brazilian. She said that she already was taught by missionaries in the past, but she stopped because she´s still from her own religion. We politley told her a bit about how were different and how we could focus in a way that would help her grow her faith through the things that we present, and she said that we could pass by later. We came back to find her brother, João, who has 14 years. He answered the door, and generally we´re not very insistent with youth, we try to focus on the head of the family, so we asked to speak with Catarina or their mother. João to call for her, and he did. We went around the corner and in a low voice said "mom...hey mom! Mom! The missionaries! Mom, c´mon, just a bit! Can they? Mom!" 

     Elder Hawkins looked at me and gestured in a way that basically said "hey, joão seems cool". Their mother eventually came to the door, she wasn´t interested in what we had to say, but we simply asked "well, since you guys aren´t super interested, could we just come in and chat with João?" And it worked out. We taught the restoration to him, it ran well. He actually was taught in the past as well (according to the area book, by Elder Marques as well!) but he didn´t remember anything. We invited him to church, asked his mother for permission, and she granted. However, João got super busy with soccer games and practice so we lost contact with him and he didn´t make it to church. We´ll hunt him down this week.

     We taught Darlan and Alynne. We had a pretty good experience. I put the photo of our family on my camera, the photo of you guys at Grandpa´s funeral, and I brought it to the lesson. We were planning to teach the plan of salvation.

     As we taught, we put a big focus on eternal families which are available because of the restoration of the priesthood. Showed them the photo "here´s my family. They look happy, don´t they?" Of course they agreed. I asked them to look for a secret in the photo. With a little help, they noticed that the photo was taken at a funeral. I explained to them the joy and comfort that a sealed family can have. We explained how the restored priesthood can seal them and help them have an eternal bond, not just a relationship on the earth. The spirit was strong, Alynne was surprised and touched. We talked about a few other details here and there, and we explained how baptism will be the first step to get there. They will pray.

     In my mission, I´ve only done service a few times... I can count on one hand, I think! There just aren´t a lot of opportunities that show up... But this week, we did service two days in a row! One night we helped out with a caravan of goods that was sent to the North of Portugal to help victims of the fires up there. We loaded up a big truck with lots of... lots of stuff. Chairs, beds, food, furniture, sacks of cement, 30kg sacks of animal feed, toys, appliances, you name it, it was good work. At one point we made a little assembly line for the sacks of animal feed and to joke around with our ward mission leader, Franklin, a funny brazilian guy, I made sure to chuck the sacks nice and hard to him haha.

     Then someone from the ward called us to help out at their house. They were selling it and had to clean it up quickly to show it to a buyer. And it wasn´t a house... It was a freaking mansion! It was huge and super modern, all boxy and stuff. Really nice, and honestly it was just overkill. We moved a bunch of boxes and furniture to the garage, to be out of the main living areas to make the house more presentable. It was good work, lots of heavy boxes. After two back-to-back service projects with heavy lifting, I thought for sure that I would be dead sore, but both Elder Hawkins and I turned out fine haha.

     Welton was super busy this week, we didn´t manage to teach him, we only got to stop by a few times to say hello. He just didn´t have the time to sit down. He didn´t make it to church though, but as we talked with him this week we found out just how much he liked going last week. He will put the youngest in a pre-school thingy this week so Welton should have a lot more time available, and a lot more time alone, without tornadoes around him. We will take advantage of that to teach him a bunch. He seems to have a lot of potential.

     Fernando was a bit slippery this week. He didn´t say it directly, but we think he´s not interested anymore, and who knows why. Our member friend, Fábio, will keep in contact with Fernando on Facebook and try to help thing out there.

  

     We had transfers! Elder Hawkins and I will stay together here in Setúbal 1C. It has been challenging, in a good way, serving in this area, and I´m excited to better my skills as a missionary to find more success in the transfer to come. There is obviously a lot I need to learn here. Setúbal hasn´t knocked us down yet, we´re still on our feet, Elder Hawkins and I will do much better this transfer.

     It´s a short email, I haven´t got a lot of news, I know. I hope to have more news next week.

Ciao,

Elder Ward

Oh, and winter finally showed up! It got cold enough to use a jacket, and reained a few times! I´m liking it a lot!

 I don´t even know if this is a cool picture, but it´s all I´ve got for now.​

And our service thingy! On my right is Franklin.

30 October 2017 Primária Grand Slam

Dear family and friends,

     This week was a bit like the rest, but we had a few great highlights.

     We started off our week getting right to work. We went to a family home evening with the Sisters and their investigators, it was a good time. They invited us so that way we could give a blessing to the mother of the family that wasn´t doing so good health-wise. They´re a family of three, a mother, and a son and daughter (twins) 11yo. They progressed super fast and were baptized this last saturday. Elder Hawkins was invited to do two of the baptisms, he enjoyed it a lot.

     On Thursday we had a family home evening with Fernando. It ran really well. We showed up and Fábio, our host, let´s say, invited a bunch of other people too! In all, we were 2 Elders, 6 returned missionaries, and Fernando in a family home evening. We taught and watched the Restoration. We gave a Book of Mormon, and we invited Fernando to be baptized. He accepted everything, he made a lot of friends (turns out that he already knew a bunch of the people there) and we just had a really good time. We didn´t have time to stay afterwards for the food, we ended up running (literally) home to get there on time. Fernando had to travel this weekend, so he didn´t make it to church. However, we will be working with him closely. If all goes well he´ll be baptized in the near future.

     We stopped by Weltons house once again this week. When we got there, to be brief, he was a wreck. He was crying and super stressed out. He was having some trouble with his papers and because of his specific and complicated situation, he was told that he might lose the custody of his two sons. He told us that he doesn´t have much reason to do anything without his sons, they´re everything to him. We only had a few minutes to meet with him. Elder Hawkins turned to me and said "let´s sing a hymn to him" so we did. I said to Welton "look, we don´t have all the answers, I don´t know how to solve your problems with the custody stuff and you´re financial situation, but we want to help. We know this will help." We sang "Come Come Ye Saints" to him. He calmed down, and the Spirit was super strong. He was so thankful, and said that we had helped him a lot. It was a touching experience.

     We ended up having other activities planned during the weekend, so we didn´t have a chance to visit him. We called him Saturday night. We didn´t want to be super pushy in a delicate and tough time, so we just let him know that we were hoping to see him church the next day. He said he would give it a shot, so we agreed to call Sunday morning to make sure. We did so, and whaddya know, Welton showed up to church with his two kids (a 2yo and 8yo) right on time!

     We also talked quite a bit with Darlan and his wife Alynne, a brazilian couple that has been taught for a while now. They came to church too (Darlan the 3rd time, Alynne the 1st, so a big progress) and they enjoyed it, they brought their two young children too (like 4yo and 8yo). 

     It ran perfectly for two reasons. 1, saturday night here in portugal we had that daylight savings thing, so here in portugal we gained an hour during the night. Darlan and Alynne have smartphones, so they got an extra hour of rest and didn´t even realize it, but it helped them get the kids ready. But even better with Welton, he didn´t know there was a time change, so he tried his best to get the kids ready, and he thought that he was an hour late, but got there right on time!

     These two families came on the perfect sunday... Primary program! The primary put on a good performance, all "cute" and stuff, and it hooked Alynne really well, but it was a home run with Welton. He came straight to me after the sacrament meeting and said "oh man, it´s great that I came on the day when the children had their show! That was so good!"

     In all, Welton really liked church, he wants to come back and put his kids right into primary. We´re working with Darlan and Alynne to be baptized in two weeks. We hope all goes well.

     Transfers next Sunday. I´ve given up on trying to predict transfers, but it is most probable that I will stay here with Elder Hawkins to finish his training. He´s doing well, has made a lot of progress since the start.

So that´s an update. Take care everyone!

Elder Ward

 We´re in "fall" now, but it´s still like 30-40c. Winter isn´t showing up.. it still feels like summer

23 October 2017 Hitman

Dear family and fiends,

     So this week was another week of lots of hard work. I´m awfully tired and to be honest I don´t have much to say. We tried our best to do plans and get going, find our investigators, find new investigators, etc. In spite of some of our best efforts, we only managed to pull off a few lessons this week, and we didn´t find any new investigators.

     We managed to teach Welton, that brazilian single stay at home dad. It was a good lesson, we taught him about the Sabbath Day, and he committed to come to church. However, he didn´t make it. We passed by his house sunday about an hour before church to see if we could helph him get ready, but he was super stressed and really put down. He´s running short on money and he only had 2 daipers to get his youngest until the end of the month... complicated things like that. We tried to comfort him and offer our support, but I didn´t know really well what to do to be honest. He also felt pretty ashamed because he had promised us that he´d go to church with us, but we made sure to tell him it was alright. He has a lot on his plate.

     On Saturday morning we had a bunch of appointments, each one fell through, when suddenly a member who was in the chapel called us and said "Elders there´s a man here waiting to talk with you". We headed straight there and we found Paulo! We have zero contact with him, the only way that we can find him is by sheer luck, and whaddya know he showed up to the church!

     He told us a bunch about what he´s going through and we addressed his concerns and we had a pretty good lesson with him. He accepted a new baptismal date and promised to come to church, but didn´t make it... so yeah, ground zero again. We´ll just have to wait until the next time we cross paths.

     But, saturday night we sent a text to Fernando, Paulo´s friend (who we still haven´t taught officially) and we said "hey, paulo is coming to church tomorrow, can you come to support him?". Fernando, being the great guy he is, showed up to church a second time! This time he payed a lot of attention and even asked a few questions like "does one have to be a member to go up there to the front and talk?" and "when someone get´s to know the church, how long does one take to be baptized?" Those perfect questions haha. Turns out that one of the members who gave a talk on Sunday was Fábio, one of Fernando´s old schoolmates. I chatted with Fernando for a bit and he said "yeah, I´d like to get a bit deeper into this church, it´s interesting" (Fernando has already gone to many churches). We set up a family home evening with Fábio, his wife, and Fernando on thursday. We have plans to teach Fernando and committ him to baptism there. He´s basically our guy with the most potential for now.

     But yeah, I think that´s an update. The other folks that we´ve worked with lately are slowly disappearing, but we still try to chase them down every once in a while.

Adeus,

Elder Ward

 I saw a mou´n and I clumbd it​ (Setúbal on the left, Tróia, where we spent last pday, on the right)

 Peter, James, and John

16 October 2017 Pickup

Dear family and friends,

     So this week things picked up quite a bit! On monday we managed to teach a guy, unfortunately he didn´t want to continue after our first visit... he claimed that he didn´t want any form of commitment, but he gladly kept the Book of Mormon.

     On Tuesday we found an old investigator that was in our Area Book. His name is Welton, +/-30, a good brazilian fella. He´s been through a lot, and it´s a long story, but to sum things up, He´s living off a medical assistance pension and is taking care of two children, 2 and 7 alone, basically doesn´t work and doesn´t have time to. He recently separated from his partner, and she isn´t capably of keeping the children... a long story too. 

     However, 8 months ago or so, Welton was found by the Sisters and taught a little bit. Things got complicated with his partner and that´s why he wan´t taught much more afterwards. We found him, and he was happy to see us, opened the door with a naked 2 year old in his arms, and didn´t even look to see how it was, he just said "come in!" He´s a great guy. Unfortunately doesn´t remember much of what he was taught in the past, but we hope to help him out. We´ve stopped by his place a number of times now, but we only managed to teach him once. The other times he was too busy, so lately we´ve been offering our help. As he´s doing some chore, Elder Hawkins mopped as I did the dishes, etc. We hope to grow a trust with him even more so that way we can start to teach. He has a lot of desire, but has two tornados for children and is one guy running all the errands. We´ll work it out.

     Another day, a portuguese man named Jorge, probably 45 years old, stopped us in the street. We were near his house and he thought we were looking for a woman named Amália, who is is maid, and a member of the church. We explained that we were just doing the normal old thing, but we took advantage of the situation. We ended up having a pretty cool conversation about he Book of Mormon and we responded to many questions that he had about the church. We scheduled to come back to his place and explain more later that week. 

     We headed back there and we taught a simple lesson. Jorge is a bit of a philisophical man, he likes to beat around the bush a bit, to talk, and make things more complicated than they are... we´ll have to learn to controll the lessons with him a bit more, but in the end it was a good experience.

     On Friday we were walking down the street and we took a path that I usually dont like to take due to the large number of tourists on that street. However, he headed that way and two guys shouted out to us... This happens a lot, but usually theyre just joking with us. However, after a few times, we came over to them and met them. Theyre two men, Fernando, a portuguese man, probably 26, and Paulo, from Moçambique, about 30. Fernando stopped us and said "hey elders, you guys gotta help out my friend here, he wants to fix his life, he needs your guys´ help."

      We had a short conversation to try to understand the subject a bit more. We learned that Paulo had a recent seperation in his family, is unemployed, and having a bit of trouble with alchohol. He said that he wants help and wants to change. We said "hey, the church is just around the corner here, wanna see it? we can talk more there." 

     We showed them the chapel, they had to leave to go to an event, but returned that night to meet with us. They were late and I called them. They were debating stopping for food before coming the second time to the chapel, but then they asked me "You guys have a little bit of food there?" A question I hadn´t been asked before. Luckily enough, a sister from the ward had prepared some soup for us and left it there in the chapel.. We took advantage of it to give some to Fernando and Paulo.

     Fernando is a funny guy, he´s a christian and all, but doesn´t consider himself from any religion. But, he´s a great helper! Paulo doesn´t have a phone right now and didn´t know his address, but Fernando has been our line of contact, and goes about hunting down Paulo.

     There in the chapel we taught Paulo. Fernando didn´t have time to stay. Paulo accepted the invite to be baptized. Elder Hawkins participated in the lesson and did well. Unfortunately, Paulo woke up late and also got lost and didn´t make it to church. It was funny though, Fernando showed up at church for sacrament, walked in and said "hey, where´s paulo? I couldn´t get a hold of him, is he here?" Fernando is a bit interesting, but we´re gonna try and teach him too. We´ll be meeting up with Paulo tonight.

     Last week, Elder Hawkins did a contact and got a phone number from a guy named Ricardo, a portuguese man of about 25 years. We called him up on saturday and he accepted to meet up with us in a park. There, we taught him the restoration and it ran pretty well. He accepted everything well, but unfortunately didn´t make it to church, even though he said he would go. But things are going well. The efforts of Elder Hawkins to do all that he can are paying off!

     We also taught Darlan (maybe you remember him from a few weeks back) and his wife Alynne. They´re a great family and we discovered that we need to teach them together to see progress. Darlan has already investigated the church for some time and I think he will just need the help of is wife. (His wife wasn´t taught much in the past due to a complicated schedule, but now is more available).

    Also, out of nowhere, this guy named Manuel came to church. A few weeks back a man in a car stopped next to us to ask us about church meetings and location, and only that, and drove off... If my memory serves me well, this last sunday that man showed up! He´s a portuguese fella, about 50 years old, and certainly a smart man. He brought up a lot of good questions in church. We tried to snag him a bit more, but he lives 30min outside of setubal in who knows where and has a new telephone number that he doesn´t know... so yeah, he got away, but I think he´ll come back. He said he would. Funny, during the third hour he started nodding off and bumping my side each time... pretty awkward haha.

    So yeah that´s the news. We had a couple little things that happened, but I´m out of time!

Ciao!

Elder Ward

 We went exploring!

9 October 2017 Zero

Dear family and friends,

     This week was an interesting learning experience. We worked really hard and we put a huge effort into getting this area up on its feet, but in the end this week ended as my first week in the mission with zeros. Technically we taught two less-actives this week, but now those lessons don´t count towards us, so it was a bit of a punch in the gut.

     Each day we put in a solid effort. I can probably never say that one day of my mission was perfect, it´s very easy to slow the pace, waste five or ten minutes, not talk with a few people, or distract oneself for even just a few minutes. Basically every day of my mission there is always something that I could have done better, some big, some small. We´re weak, we´re not expected to be perfect, but we´re expected to try. In spite of our efforts this week things just didn´t work... we contacted people with potential in the street, but when we got to their houses on the pre-scheduled time, nobody was home... several times. Darlan, who we taught last week for example, cancelled the two appointments that we tried to make this week due to travels and business.

     So, when we got home Sunday night, we added up our weekly results like we always do, and we rediscovered that 0+0=0. I sat an thought for a bit, and I came to an interesting conclusion.

     All my mission I feel like I´ve done a decent job. However, like I said earlier, I can say that very frequently there was just a bit that I didn´t put into it... I think that the Lord has stopped waiting for me. He is now with holding all of the blessings that he could give us until I start to do better. The Lord has probably been happy with my work, but he is not satisfied.

     These last few days I said things to Elder Hawkins like "man, I don´t know what´s happening, I had areas with much more challenges in the past and I still managed to at least pull off a few new investigators and a few lessons each week. I dunno what the deal is here."

     After saying sentences like this a few times, I caught myself. I said that I did those things, I think that I am the one capable of finding new investigators and teaching lessons, when in the end I have always been just the tool, not the worker. It´s funny though, because I´ve already been taught this lesson, I learned the same thing in my last week serving with Elder Thompson, but I´m still forgetful.

     So last night Elder Hawkins and I decided that all we need to do is do the best that we can and then trust that the Lord will let us teach the elect if should be his desire. We made a list of "sins and solutions" together. We listed every little mistake and thing we did wrong from the whole week, things we wanted to improve, and on the other side a plan on how we would correct each one.

     So yeah, I hope that this next week is better.

     Due to all that, unfortunately I don´t have much more to say! I´m getting to know Elder Hawkins a bit more every day (It´s a slow process, remember, we never speak english together!) He´s starting to speak better and understand at a simple and steady pace. He has shown some progress and still has a lot of desire to do the work. One day I was on the phone talking with an investigator and he took the initiative and started to talk to people around us. Unfortunately, the poor guy gets rejected a lot and sometimes people dont understand him but the key is that he is trying. I give him a big pat (smack) on the back each time too, he´s doing a great job.

     Also, don´t misunderstand! I´m doing really well, I´m enjoying the work! I know I talked a solid chunk about our difficulties, but it´s just what´s been on my mind lately, don´t worry, my chin is still raised high!

That´s a wrap,

Elder Ward

 Saturday night there was a firework show just outside our window. It was really cool with a long shutter.

 During lunch we saw this spanish ship sailing in... well if my vision serves me right it had a Spanish flag.