Olá Amados, como estão?
Things are pretty great here in Portugal, despite its persistance in being chilly and rainy. I'm sure when it gets hot i'll miss the weather though, so i won't complain much. Time keeps flying by, we have transfers coming up in two weeks already, at this point i won't even try to guess what's going to happen, but it'll be exciting.
I hear the swine flu is pretty epic, we happened to talk to an otorrinolaringologista (probably misspelled, ear, nose, and thoat doctor) which is an interesting story that i'll talk about in a bit, and he didn't seem to worried about it, but i'll look out for pigs with flu-like symptoms.
It good to hear that everything's going well with the family. It reminds me of the scripture in D&C 100 that says something to the effect of 'your family is well, and they are in my hands.' But yeah, good to know.
The week went well, a few really amazing things happened, a few somewhat sad things happened. The coolest thing is that Síria, this girl from Brasil that wants to serve a mission but hasn't been able to go to church because of her work, finally found new work in Lisbon, and is going to have Sundays off, which is great. Ana Paula is going to get baptized with her two kids, which is also cool. We got a call from Wanderley on sunday and he went to church and is doing good out there. We sent him letters last p-day, so hopefully we'll hear from him sometime soon.
Did the pictures I emailed get to you last week? It's possible they got lost in the series of tubes between here and america, but there shouldn't have been problems. Oh. Also, I finished the Dad's journal as far as I have it so far, and one more thing to stick in a package would be some nutrigina facesoap (just some basic stuff) All they have here is Clean and Clear, and I think I already decided that that doesn't work.
In less happy news, Maiery's mom slipped at work and had a concussion or something, so Maeiry was up really late and didn't make it to church, meaning she won't be able to be baptized on the 9th. (Here, we have a rule that you have to go to church 5 times before you can be baptized, at first I thought it was a little harsh, but i've yet to find someone who was prepared enough to be baptized who hadn't been to church 5 times, so I think it's a pretty good rule). She still wants to be baptized though, so it will just be a matter of when. We also got a chance to meet the Anti-Mormon Aunt. She turned out to be pretty nice, which was unexpected. The day before Francisco and Fatima Esteves (two members here) saw the aunt and maiery and her cousins in the supermarket and gave them a ride back, and then the next day we gave them our umbrella so that they wouldn't get soaking wet in the rain (we got a little bit soaking wet in the rain) after hanging out with them at the hospital waiting to hear about Adriana (maeiry's mom).
That story could have been a little better organized, but all this to say she's had some good contact with members recently, so hopefully she'll at least recognize that we're not of the devil.
Um, other news...The weeks sort of run together. Today i'm doing a division with Elder Linquist, who was in my group in the MTC (divisões are when you switch companions for a day, I think you call them exchanges in english) which is fun. I always learn things when I work with other people, that's the general idea between transfers, but I guess I have a lot to learn from Elder Oram or something.
In more happy news, Manuel went to church again. He's been an investigator for a really long time now, and we're still pretty perplexed as to why he doesn't progress, but he's working on quitting smoking and is doing well with that, so that's great.
Oh! My story about the eye nose and throat doctor. Monday, we didn't have any appointments, and our district meeting had been moved to tuesday, so we were contacting people in the morning, when this lady came up to us and said, “Do you speak english??” She was rather distraught. We said 'yes' and as we talked to her we found out she was from canada and was just a little bit lost in Mafra, not in the geographical sense (mafra is pretty small) but more in an emotional way. She needed to find a travel agent and a doctor and such. We ended up spending almost an entire day with this woman, helping her get what she needed. It turned out to be a pretty cool day of service, met some cool people, saw people be charitable (portuguese people really are very nice, especially when you don't talk to them about religion) and helped a lady get everything worked out to get back home. By the way, fun fact: If you have a Cold when you fly, you have a chance of collapsing the tubes that run from your nose to your ears and there by causing extreme amounts of pain. Não bom.
So that was basically my week. It was a good week. Mother's Day is coming up fast, did it cost you any money last time for me to call? I'll probably be calling from the esteves again, but I still don't know what time i'll be calling. I'll try to make sure I know that before next week. Anyway, until then, stay well, avoid pandemics, epidemics, and any other variety of -demics. Thankyou for your prayers, your letters, and your support, all of which help keep me going. Time is passing absurdly fast, I don't know if it's like that over there too, but here it's crazy. It might just because we're farther east. Anyway
Abracões e Beixinhos
~Elder
