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!
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