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!
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