4 December 2017 A Primeira Vez com Genealogia

Dear family and friends,

     This week ran well. It was one of our best weeks here in Setúbal, numbers-wise. Through our area book we found a few old investigators. We had interesting experiences with them. Fortunately, we broke the ice quickly and they explained frankly and right off the bat why they didn´t progress so well with past missionaries.

     One´s António Mina. We learned that he was taught a lot, but actually never read the BoM alone to really find out if it´s true. It seems like he talked in circles in the past. He also seems to have developed his own religion, so to speak, claiming that only benevolence, brotherhood, and justice are the attributes that he beleives in, and he just beat around the bush with abstract ideas. He focused much more on having a fancy conversation with us than just learning about he restored gospel... It wasn´t a productive lesson, but oh well. We might give it another shot. (Portuguese love to talk)

     Our other was a man named Ricardo, a security guard. He was also  taught many many times in the past, and quickly explained "I don´t like tithing". Okay. He continued "but go ahead, all the Elders explain it a different way, give me your opinion of tithing".

     Instead of giving a monologue, I simply said "look, the modern prophets say that tithing is a law of God. It all depends on whether or not you believe in the Book of Mormon as proof of modern prophets and revelation". 

     After reviewing the simple chain-link belief intertwined in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the restoration, he simply replied that he likes the book of mormon. In fact, he already read a good part of it, but he doesn´t seem to give it the credit it deserves as scripture and also proof of living prophets. It´s just a good book about God to him... Sometimes people just don´t get it, but sometimes we also just don´t know how to explain it. Whichever it was, we missionaries are always trying to better our teaching skills to help people have the best chance to accept the restored gospel.

     We´re still visiting Welton a couple times a week to leave a short prayer with him, help clean up a little, stuff like that. When the kids aren´t home we try to teach him, but those opportunities are rare. He´s still having a few ups and downs, and didn´t make it to church this week, even though he wanted to go... things just have gotten in the way. He´s a "long-term" project, I guess.

     We are finally getting a grip on Fernando! We met up with him Wednesday morning in the chapel and we sat and had a good lesson. We explained the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the necessity that he has to prepare himself for baptism. He explained that he wants to be baptized, and we taught what was necessary. We reinforced the need to read the BoM and pray. He accepted the challenge. We also taught the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom. He raised his eyebrows a bit, but we talked about how he can live the laws and what blessings he´ll receive. (He drinks tea and coffee). He accepted the challenge, but didn´t accept a baptismal date... But, Fernando was a champ and went to church in the chapel closer to where he lives where we had a stake conference, so it was an experience pretty good for him! We watched a transmission in our chapel, and from one of the camera angles we saw Fernando, which was great.

     We kept in contact with Paulo this week! He was outside of Setúbal all week, but he came back Sunday... after church, darn. However, we invited him, and Fernando to a little Integration Night (I dunno what you´d call it in english, but that´s the translation). They both showed up and had a cool little reunion! After all, we met them both together in the first place. We had a small spiritual thought, some simple group games, and refreshments afterwards. It ran well, and members, recent converts, and investigators were able to mix a bit.

     We also had a pretty cool miracle this week. We were walking towards the chapel when this little old portuguese lady, not a single tooth, Ângela, stopped us and simply asked "Are you boys from a church? Is it that church that does geneology?" With a short and happy response, we led her to the church, we entered, talked for a bit (she talked a lot more, like I said, portuguese love to talk) about her ancestry that she already is familiar with and we got right to it. We helped her create an account and we started a little tree with her. She enjoyed it a lot, and we actually managed to discover a couple of great great grandparents with her, she was really happy to see the tree grow. She explained how one of her ancestors was an aviator who flew from Portugal to Brasil, stuff like that.

     Ângela is a bit poor, and doesn´t have a working phone nor a steady address right now, but she gave her word to come to church. She did, enjoyed it a lot, and also came to that activity Sunday night! She´s a witty lady, she caught on to the games well (signs game, etc). She met Ana at church (that 50k family history machine that I mention a couple weeks back) and we planned to meet up at her place on Tuesday to continue and to teach. It´ll go well.

     We also had a division with the Assistents this week in their area, Mem Martins. I went with Elder Egbert, a great guy. He was trained by Elder Welch, and we three did a division a year ago in Odivelas together. Lots of little memories weaved in a lot of experiences, people, and places. I learned a ton with him, It was a good eye-opener for me.

     So, I think that sums it up for now. It was a good week. Elder Hawkins is doing well, he´s a great companion. We hope to see some more good stuff this next week!

Ciao,

Elder Ward

A photo after our little activity. Myself, Fernando, Paulo, and Elder Hawkins

27 November 2017 Aceleração

Dear family and friends,

     It has been a pretty simple week. Last Monday and Tuesday we worked pretty hard. When we aren´t busy teaching our current investigators, we use our Area book a lot. We are trying to find a lot of people that previous missionaries left behind, and we are trying to also visit people that we have found. We often do a lap through the area trying to find people, and we talk with every person in our path. Through these efforts, we end up finding more people, eliminating or finding older potential investigators, and so on. We´re basically just trying to hunt people down and find that at home to try to make a teaching opportunity, and when that doesn´t work out we talk with the greatest number of people possible to find someone who may be interested. We visit members in the process and we help them grow the desire to share the gospel and develop simple tactics to do so in the process.

     This is basically the bread and butter of our work. Sometimes we don´t have any appointments in a day, so we just try our best to create opportunities to teach using these methods. It´s a bit tedious sometimes, but it´s a necessary task. If we didn´t talk with anyone new, we would have very few investigators. Sometimes this routine continues for a few consecutive days, and doing so we often memorize a lot of addresses, streets, neighborhoods, and often with a little time we start to recognize people in the street by name.

     So, when you wonder what I did in a week when I only talk about our investigators, just imagine Elder Hawkins in a busy street, stopping every person that passes to show the Book of Mormon or to introduce any gospel principle, and every once in a while writing down a name and number to visit another day as we walk towards a pre-determined address that has a potential investigator.

     Sometimes I bring a few sheets of contacts from previous missionaries with me. Sometimes I just hold the sheets in hand and I call dozens of people who were contacted up to years ago by other missionaries as I let Elder Hawkins contact people.

     Yeah, I felt like explaining to you a bit more of what I really do all day, I hope you have a better idea now. So when I don´t explain what I did last Tuesday, you can safely assume that I did the above for 6-9hrs, studied, ate, and/or went to some meeting.

     And don´t worry, we´re not robots. We talk and laugh, sometimes we joke with people (not in a bad way, sometimes we just have funny experiences with people) We plan our route each morning after praying and pondering, and sometimes we stop to ponder and pray during the day to find other special opportunities. It´s good stuff.

(I think I repeated myself there a few times, whatever, let´s move on)

     On Wednesday we we´re walking in the city center and this guy behind us whistled to call for us. We stopped and talked to him and met him and his girlfriend. They´re António and Lana, two portuguese, about 35yo. António was baptized years ago, but is now inactive. He introduced himself and explained that he was baptized, has a testimony of the BoM and everything, but because of life´s complications and such, he became inactive. However, he´d like to return to church, and he told us straightly "I want Lana to be baptized there too" as he told us about his baptism. It was pretty cool, but then he went off into a rant about a doubt that he had about the gospel... how Joseph Smith couldn´t have seen God and lived...etc. We eventually cut the converstation and marked a day to visit him. 

     That day we came back and taught them both. It was a decent lesson, we started with the Restoration (we wanted to review for António to help him understand better, and give Lana a good start) but we switched to the 3rd lesson, the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we discovered a bit more about them. They both have some addictions and have desires to repent and follow Christ, so we talked about simple commandments that will help them grow their faith (read, pray, church attendance) and they accepted to do them all, although Lana was too nervous to pray in the end of our lesson. They promised to come to church, but unfortunately didn´t make it, we still don´t know why. We´ll try to hunt them down this week again. It was cool to get to know them.

     A few weeks back, we talked with a nice lady in a park named Sílvia, a portuguese woman of about 40 years. After calling, cancelling, and rescheduling a few times, we managed to meet up with her this week in the same park to teach.

     When Sílvia was attending college in the north half of Portugal she met some Elders that taught english there, and received a Book of Mormon. She was never taught, but read some parts of the book and enjoyed it. However, this was 20 years ago so she hardly remembers.

     There in the park, we taught her the Restoration to help her understand where the Book of Mormon came from and what it means. She enjoyed the lesson, and she said that she felt the same feelings there as she did when she read the BoM 20 years ago as we taught her. We gave her a new one and invited her to come to church, but she already has her children involved in a youth group each Sunday morning so she will have to look ahead to plan a Sunday to go. She will try her best. We´ll meet with her this week to continue teaching.

     We had interviews with President Tavares this week, so we travelled to Lisbon by train and had a good chat with him there. It´s always cool travelling and also seeing and talking with Pres. I enjoyed the experience. We got back from Lisbon just after lunch and we went to Zé´s house.

     We had a really good lesson with him. He had read, since our first visit, until 1 Nephi 12! He really likes the Book of Mormon, and he said that he´s prayed about it and knows that it´s true. Woo! That´s how it should always work!

     However, Zé still hasn´t come to church. He gives soccer classes each sunday morning, and he was already paid for them, so he is obligated to give the classes in the hour he agreed on. However, he told us that he´s going to call each person with whom he gives the classes to try and reschedule the future classes to a different time so that way he can come to church. Zé is doing really good, we just need to get him to church a few times and he´ll gladly be baptized!

     A few weeks back we met a guy named Carlos in the street. A potuguese man, about 50 years old, but seems younger. He works with heavy machinery (cargo cranes, ships, etc) in the port here in Setúbal. I wasn´t expecting him to, but he accepted to have us over to share our message.

     After calling, visiting, cancelling, and rescheduling a few times we finally managed to teach him this week. He´s got a tough situation.

     Carlos had a marraige that lasted 18 years but then ended in divorce, some time alone, and then another marraige that lasted 6 years, and just 2 months ago ended in divorce, and here´s Carlos alone again, starting a new life. For these reasons he was open to have us over, he said that he´s been through tough times and wants to know what he can do better.

     We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We talked a lot about repentance and baptism. We learned by the environment there that he has a few bad habits, such as alcohol and probably cigarettes. We invited him to start living the Gospel, to pray, and to come to church with us, to repent, and to be baptized. He didn´t make it this last week due to a trip he already had planned, but we´ll work with him to get him to church this next sunday. He´s a cool guy. I hope to see some good progress with him.

     Welton has had ups and downs. He´s still in a really complicated situation with his ex-wife, to be honest, I can´t explain what´s happening, it´s pretty lame, but now police are involved. Nothing is dangerous, we´re just trying to find the right moments to talk with Welton and help him out. He was going to come to church this Sunday, but didn´t make it unfortunately. We still haven´t talked with him since Sunday, but we´ll continue working with him.

     Fernando, welp, he´s slippery! We didn´t get to teach him this week. He said that he had an unexpected event, so cancelled our lesson. Then he didn´t pick up the phone the other times we called....

     He surprised us, this time because he didn´t come to church... but we exchanged a few messages last night because we had an activity that we wanted to invite him to, but it didn´t work out. He said "let´s try tomorrow", so we´re gonna try today... He´s sly!

     But, if you have good memory, you´ll remember Paulo, our friend from Moçambique that was originally introduced to us by Fernando. We lost contact with Paulo for a few weeks, but it turns out that he got a job in a city a bit far away, so was over there for a while. He recently returned to Setúbal. 

     How do we know this? Right after the meetings yesterday, he showed up to the front of the church to talk with us! It was a pleasant surprise. He said that he´s been reading the BoM and has also been loaning it on and off with a friend. So, we gave him another! He said that life is steadier now, he´s got a room that he´ll stay in for a while now really close to the other chapel in Setúbal, and he´s going ot buy a cellphone this week! We´ll be keeping an eye on him so that way he can be taught and baptized at last.

     When we got home from church to eat lunch, he called us with his friend´s phone just to tell us that he had found a scripture that he liked in the Book of Mormon. He said that he´s going to talk to all of his african friends and invited them all to church to discover the same thing that he has. It was a pleasant surprise!

     The plan is to hunt down the two sly dogs, Fernando and Paulo, and baptize them together. After all, they were walking together a month or two ago when they talked with us the first time!

Well, it´s a long email. Surprisingly, I have more to say, but I don´t have much more time... I will send another next week, don´t worry, haha

Tchauzinho, adeus, vá, obrigado, abraço, tchau, tchau, obrigado, adeuszinho, vá, obrigado, boa tarde, fica bem, obrigadinho, tchauzinho, vá,

Elder Ward

(^that´s how you hang up in portugal)

 Numerous people have called me crazy for wearing short-sleeve