12 February 2018 Doente

Dear friends and family,

     This week was simple. On monday we did some shopping, I managed to find a cheap light jacket to use and some ties. Elder Vigne and I got to work for the next day but then I ate something that got me really sick... lets just say that I got a fever and my digestive sistem stopped working and I had to do a full restart. I had to stay home for the greater part of the week... because of suck, I just don´t have anything to say... Sorry to disappoint you guys, but I was not able to get stuff done this week.

     But in other news, I don´t know if any of my old friends or acquaintances are still chugging through my emails, but I´d thought that I´d through out a side info just for your guy´s information. I applied to BYU Provo, BYU Idaho, and LDS Business college, and it is very likely that I will attend one of those schools this fall.

     So yeah, that´s a wrap. One of my shortest, sorry.

Take care,

Elder Ward

PS my health has returned back to normal, all is well. We´ll have a bomb week now

here we are

5 Feb 2018 Começando em Costa

Dear family and friends,

     Our second week in Costa da Caparica just passed. We have explored and gotten to know our area much better. It´s been running well. I´m getting along really well with Elder Vigne, we´re both getting a lot of work done here.

     So we´ve been doing the bread and butter of missionary work lately. We´ve been filtering through our anorexic area book to find direction in what we´ll do and where we´ll go throughout the day, and when things fall through, we improvise with street contacts, door knocking, etc. It has worked well, fortunately, a handful of people this week that we found in the street or by other methods let us in to share our message.

     We visited Márcio once more this week, but he´s been awfully busy. He works for a large broadcasting business in Brazil and received a big project. He´s a fault-finder, basically. He observes for hours and hours the same 30s commercial to make sure that there weren´t any CG errors... He examines every shadow, frame, it´s really deep. So, he didn´t have time to have us teach for very long, but he said that he´d surely try to come to church. He still desires to be baptized. However, it looks like his week was just too busy.. we havent heard from him and he didn´t make it to church.

     But, like I said, we found some other cool people. For example, as we were searching for an investigator from a few years back we simply started to chat with this guy, bruno, +/-22, from Cabo Verde in the entrance of the building. He lived right there and we marked to come back. He said that he had been interested in finding a religion.

     We came back the next day to teach and we had a really good lesson. We taught him the restoration with really opened his eyes and helped him understand what he could do to find the solution to his search. He came to church (he lives a bit far away but he drove to church, which is rare!) and really enjoyed it. We taught him the plan of salvation there and he soaked it all up. He will travel to france for 2-3 weeks to visit his family, but we´ll pounce again as soon as he gets back, we kept his email to stay in touch.

     Like last week, we found a bunch of people from old records in our area book, but due to the lack of missionaries here for a time they too lost interest... but even so we´re manageing to find new people to teach.

     I didn´t mention it last week, but last sunday I played the role of translator! It´s been a while haha. A south african lady named Neo came to church. I chatted with her a bit and learned a bit about her, but also learned that she was passing through a tough time in her life, and that basically she was trying to re-activate herself in the church. So, I took advantage of the opportunity of translation to teach too haha. She had revealed some necessities, and as people were giving their talks or teaching the lessons I may have changed the subject a bit to help her understand which gospel principles she could apply to confront her difficulties.

     She said that she was living with some people who gave her a ride to church so we invited her to bring those same people with her this week but unfortunately she didn´t make it... but it was an interesting experience.

     Speaking of english, in language study I´ve been teaching Elder Vigne English. He´s certainly a beginner. As I teach him I realize more and more just how ridiculous the english language is... summarizing, I would say that english is a very disobedient language... It´s amusingly frustrating sometimes because I have to explain to Elder Vigne that a sentance is structured a certain way, but I sometimes genuinely don´t know why, its just the way it is... I´m grateful that I learned english growing up, it´d be so annoying to learn as a second language.

I think that´s it for now. Sorry, not a lot of news. We´re working hard here and we´re enjoying it. It´s great being able to focus in my area and my companion, and most importantly my relationship with the savior, and nothing more. Please take the time to forget the world and focus on what really keeps you living.

Tchauzinho, vá,

Elder Ward

I´ll give you guys a treat. A series of phrases and expressions that Elder Vigne, a true Gaúcho uses in his part of brazil- (I´ve got a list)

—"Tou mais perdido que uma cebola numa salada de fruta" 

"I´m more lost than an onion in a fruit salad"

—"Este é o pulo do gato"

"This is the cat´s jump", meaning "this is the secret"

—"O pato tá morto"

"The duck is dead" meaning, "the job is done"

—"Porque eu sou um bixo solto!"

"Because I´m a loose critter!" aka because I´m unpredictable. He always says it before doing something really out of the ordinary or funny.

 A view from our area.

Elder Vigne doesn´t run much, especially during our day to day work, but he ran to see the new sandwich in McDonalds.

29 January 2018 E.T.

Dear family and friends,

     In short, a crazy week.

     So things were going normal in Setúbal, I was training Elder Baird, we were getting stuff done, I knew the area well, it was all good. We had plans to teach some new people like Manuel and Paula.

     Tuesday morning I wake up and get stuff going. We go to a district meeting. I noticed that the zone leaders weren´t in the meeting. I called to find out where they were, and they said that they were in the mission office... ok. I continued in the meeting, and just as I got it started my phone rings with the contact "president Tavares". Uh oh. I left the room to answer.

     "Good morning President."

     "You doing good Elder?"

     "Of course President." A short pause.

     "Elder, are you sitting at the moment?"

     "No... Should I?"

     "Well, lean on something, I have news for you... You are being transferred now."

     "Now?"

     "Now."

     He then explained to me that I would be transferred that very day to a new area, Costa da Caparica with a new companion, Elder Vigne. He explained to me that there were some complications in a few areas and he needed to mix some things around. He explained to me that I would be there to help out Elder Vigne in this part of his mission. It´s a long story, really.

     So, wide-eyed, I returned to the meeting and continued for five minutes. I then received a call from the the Assistants saying that they had already planned the trip. They´d be there in a half hour to pick me up and leave me in my knew area. Elder Baird would stay temporarily in a tripla with some other Elders in a nearby area.

     I returned to the meeting once more, and we finished the quickly ended the meeting. I knew that I wouldn´t be ready in a half hour, not even close, so I took a moment to call a few people and we stopped by Welton´s house for example on our way home. I then passed some time cramming everything into my suitcases and we quickly called a taxi to get to our rendezvous point. There I met up with Elder Vigne, and we drove to our area.

     I wont use a paragraph to explain how surprised I was, but just take my simple words and understand that I was certainly not expecting that. You could have sat me down in a blank room for hours and hours and just let me guess and guess what would happen the next day and I wouldn´t have ever guessed.

     Anyways, Elder Vigne is a great guy. He has french decent, hence the name, but is Brazilian through and through, a really funny guy, reminds me a lot of Gabe. He´s 20, and a crackup. He´s from Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost part of Brazil. He´s a good worker, and really enjoys the work. We get along well. In fact, I met him a year ago when he started his mission. I was his zone leader while he was being trained in a neighboring area. I was his first division, I´ve seen his growth as a missionary. He´s passed through some recent difficulties, so I´m here to help him.

     President told me that he had plans for me to train yet another new missionary, he would have been the 5th! But I´m actually super grateful for this opportunity to serve with Elder Vigne. We don´t have leadership responsibilities... we can focus completely in our new area and the work that we have to do.

     And about the new area... Costa da Caparica is a pretty small city that sits right on the beach. It´s very similar to one of my previous areas, Quarteira. I like it a lot. It´s a bit touristy, but even so we´ve already learned that we can get stuff done here. It has had rumors of being a tough town, but we´re not worried.

     For the first time in my mission I´m not living in an apartment. We live on the bottom floor of a little house, a member lives above us. The house sits 30 meters from the beach, so each morning we jog on the beach and do other exercises there. It´s great. The house is tiny, cold, but no worries, I like it that way.

     Our area was actually closed last transfer, and we are re-opening it. The ward was happy to see us on Sunday. When we got here we quickly looked through the area book to find that unfortunately the past missionaries hadn´t written a single thing since last November, meaning that a large chunk of work before its closing wasn´t even registered. We used what we had. We managed to find a few people who were being taught in the past, but many had lost interest. We are now starting from near zero, but even so we have seen some good success.

     The first contact we did was a man named Márcio, a brasilian. Him and Elder VIgne of course worked out really well. We managed to teach him twice now. He missed church because of his pregnant wife, but we had a really powerful lesson about the plan of salvation yesterday with him and he accepted baptism for the week after next. We have high hopes for him. And looking back, it wasn´t even planned for us to be there that day... but lo and behold, we were.

     Anyways, I returned to Setúbal today just to open the area book there and write down whatever more I could. Our train and bus both didn´t work out, so we ended up getting back late... but we got permission to still write a little. I already don´t have any more time. I´m doing good, it´s been a crazy week.

Take care,

Elder Ward

Oh! While I was visiting Setúbal I ran into Paulo! He´s doing well, went to church and everything! He said that his xwife told him that he wants to be baptized, the sisters are going there now to teach! woo! Also heard that Manuel came to church which means that he´s progressing well!

 Paulo today!​

 Our district in my rushed departure.

Saying goodbye to Setúbal...