Monday January 23, 2012

Dear family and friends,

I have decided that Portugal needs something. Something special to happen in terms of the gospel. There are so many people that are here and don't have the opportunity to have gospel, but they simply don't want it, it is super sad, but true.

On the up side, erineu was baptized this last weekend and the he is a new member of the Church. We are teaching a lady named Rosa that is progressing as well as she can, slowly, but progressing. She has decided that she is going to go to the United States next year and that Elder Ellsworth and I are her sons. She was divorced in her first marriage in Cabo Verde and then ditched the guy and 3 kids and came to portugal. He was sort of a jerk to her. He forced her to marry him when she was 17 years old, and didn't treat her very good and did some really mean things to her. Anyways she came to Portugal, remarried and she doesn't know what happened to that guy. they had one kid together and he brought some kids in the marriage, but one day, he just left, it is sort of sad. Anyways, Her son from the 2nd marriage loves alochol and doesn't treat her right. When we came in, she has fallen in love with us, since we actually talk to her like a real person, and not just a thing. It is sad, but she is coming a long.

We went with the Sisters to go and do intereviews. I got to interview a brazillian girl that was really funny. I got the pleasure of calling President torgan to tell him we were coming home late, he didn't card, but it was funny how the Sisters were debating who got to call.

I also interveiwed a little boy, and I explained to him that the law of Chastity is not doing anything bad with a girl. He then looked at me and said, I have already kissed a girl. I decided to take advantage of the situation and ask him why, and he said, because I like her. It was fun. He was about 12 years old.

anyways until next week.

Elder Hope

Monday January 16, 2012

Dear family and friends,

 

It is good to tell you that Erineu will be baptized this next weekend, the 21st, we had a scare this last week because before, because he is Muslim. Luckily, his parents won't kill him, so he can still be baptized. That will be a fun story to tell about him. We found him in the road, and he told us that he was simply curious, so he checked it out and he will be baptized literally 3 weeks after we found him. We teach him every night and he just loves the spirit. His family refused to come to the baptism, but they won't kill him, which is good.

We also had the oportunity to go to a cabo verdians party this week. We went sang happy birthday to the people, made friends, and then got out when they broke out the alcohol. Everyone was super nice there.

Truly the hardest thing that we are dealing with is unhappiness in the zone. A lot of people are simply sad that they are not having sucess, it is hard to see, I have been blessed to see several fruits of my labors.. We asked president Torgan about it and he said 2 things. 1, he quoted president Walton and said, If they are not having fun, they are obviously doing something wrong, and secondly he said that there are only 2 problems in their area, Them, and their companion. I thought it was sort of harsh, but then as I realized that he meant that the companionships aren't working together, and when they lose Christ in their companionship, they are sad, it just happens that way.

The truth is that Elder Ellsworth works differently than all of my other companions, but I like it better. He is not afraid to be bold. He wants his last 2 transfers to be his best 2 transfers.

Until next week,

Elder Hope.

Monday January 9, 2012

Dear family and friends,

It is weird to think that I will be done with my mission in somewhere between 52 and 58 weeks (with the whole missions combining they still don't know what they are doing for my group, they aren't worrying about us yet)

Anyways so my new companion is named Elder Randall Ellsworth. He is from Orem Utah, is 22 years old and was in the Marines before his mission. He has been out 1 year and 9 months now and only has 2 more transfers left before he goes home. He is probably one of, if not my favorite companion right now because he has been showing me how to have fun and be a zone leader at the same time. The way our mission is, the Zone Leaders are generally stressed most of the day about their investigators or their zone, and there is always a problem. Elder Washburn was a fanatic about the numbers and worked as hard as he could to get the number goals. Elder Ellsworth has come in to renew that love of service by saying that there are 3 things we need to remember as leaders:

1. Never judge someone on how many baptisms they have, only judge them on how close they are to Christ. (here it is a baptism game in such a lot of missionaries have lost focus of the real prize)

2. If you are not having fun, you ARE doing something wrong

3. always ask yourself and your Zone at the end of the day do you feel like you were walking with Christ today?

He is my first companion that has been able to explain to me what president Torgan has been trying to say. I didn't understand that in the way it is translated it doesn't sound quite right in English, but in Portuguese, it works great. President Torgan has told us that the faithful will see Christ, but we have to go to him. the first step is to walk with Christ during our day and have him there and talking to him when we can, in this way we can get constant revelation, as well as resist sin a lot easier. The next step is to let Christ teach the lessons while we only testify to what he says. That way we won't have to worry about our teaching, christ will do it (plus he teaches a lot better) We have a promise that our tounge will be filled with the words, so we should live up to that promise. The final step is to thank him when he does that. It is a lot easier said than done, but it makes more sense now than what it did when President Torgan was saying it, just some of the phrases are still strange for me.

This week was basically a week of just just finding and passing by people. I can't think of anything special, except that I got to go to Seixal for Church to talk to the bishopric. The bishopric was refusing to confirm a baptism of the Irmãs, so I got to go and speak to them as a Zone Leader. I took Elder Jones with me (he one of the other elders in my apartment). So I sat down, talked to him, and then I had some other problems to resolve there, and then we had the sacrament and left, so I only had to go to church for 10 minutes on Sunday. It was funny, since transfers changed everything up. In Seixal there are already 2 duplas there (1 irmãs and 1 elder dupla) and then elder Jones and I was there, so everyone was super confused why 6 missionaries were at church, it was really funny.

all in all, it was fun. Love y'all

Elder Hope

Monday January 2, 2012

Dear family and friends

So we got our transfer calls and I will be staying another one in Miratejo, this time with Elder Ellsworth. He is my buddy, we just haven't ever served together. We are ready to get to work, I am way excited to serve with him and serve as a zone leader with him.

The church has 1 new member! Jessica was baptized on Saturday and comfirmed on Sunday. Her mom said it was ok.

Wayalo was an interesting story. He was marked to be baptized on the 1st (sunday) but never showed up to church. So we went out to his house and he said that he was just leaving to go get groceries. He stopped, said I know I shouldn't buy groceries on sunday, but I forgot yesterday and I don't have food. We told him he had a baptism to go to, but he left and told us not to wait for him, so guess what?, we waited. About 20 minutes later he came back and told us that the store was closed. We had a super spiritual lesson with him, and then he went into his room, got some boxers and said, alright, lets go to the baptism. So he should be confirmed next week. It was sort of a strange baptism, because we called everyone at the last minute. Since none of the bishopric was there or the stake presidency, I got to preside at the meeting.

It is interesting what we can do when we put our minds to it. Everyone before my mission told me if I could baptize 10 on my mission I would have done a good job, even the missionaries, the average for Portugal is 7 a mission.

This last week I did 2 divisions, one with an elder named Elder Barbosa, who has been a dead missionary for about 6 months now. I got there and just basically said that we needed to get to work, and we did. It was a way fun transfer. The trick was to not let him bring up his home.

The other division was with Elder Pedersen. He is super cool and it was like training him, since he has been having dificulty with the language. I just told everyone he is my boss, and it was funny trying to watch people understand him. He got frustruated, but in the end he said thanks for making him learn the language. I explained that he can't get anywhere without speaking the language.

I don't know what else is going on right now.

Elder Hope