Monday February 20, 2012

Dear family and friends,

This last week, I have had the opportunity to do some of the most interesting things ever. I will have to list them to get them all done before my time runs out. Here, in this area, we can't do internet at the chappel.

1. My companions name is Elder Nathanial White, he is from St. George Utah

2. I managed to get a TST tie for me and Elder White from one of our
investigators. TST is a company here in the South for transportation
public. Apparently he will lose his job if they find out that he gave
us a tie, and so we can't use it here, but in the states we can!!!

3. I am currently the district leader of a very interesting bunch. I
have the Zone Leaders in my district, which is really fun because I
know how it is and I am so glad I am not in their shoes right now. I
also have an area of Irmãs. We have Sister Urgilés Encalada from Ecuador
(that is in South America by Venezuela and Brasil . . . she makes sure
that people don't say that she lives close to Mexico) Then we have
Sister Campos da Silva from France. Her parents are portuguese, but she
didn't really learn very much, and then we have Sister Patricio who is
from Cabo Verde. I am loving it.

4. We went to a castle today, the zone leaders swear it is in their
area, but I decided that it is actually in ours and all the members
say that it is in our ward too, so we went and had a fun time. It is
about time that I do something exctiting on P day. We went with this
guy named Pedro. He just got back from his mission in France and he
was trying to practice English with me, but we kept switching back and
forth in English and Portuguese, so it all went over fine.

5. There is a family of 4 that we are working on baptizing. They
accepted baptism and we just have to finish the lessons and wait for
documents to come back so that they can get married. They are pretty
strong.

6. I met a guy named Vagner, he is a member from São Paulo and i have
decided that he is the strongest and coolest member that we have here.
He is always happy and his wife, Debora taught me how to make Cheese Bread.

7. Vagner wants me to ask dad if he knows a Mercedes Silva from
Londrina. He also wants you to send him a pancake recipie.

8. I met a really nice girl from Italy. she stopped us because she
figured we weren't portuguese, and started speaking in English. She
was super cool, but I found it really hard to help her, because I
always tried to change to portuguese.

9. This transfer we will always try to do email at 4 pm our time,
Elder White chats with his family on chat every week at that time.

10. We are currently in the biggest ward in Portugal with 170 active
members strong. President Torgan called to let me know that I was sent
to setubal to help open up the new ward here, they want to split this
ward, and thus, effectively splitting the stake.

12. Setubal is close to Miratejo, but I have not had anywhere near the
problems I had in Miratejo with my nose, but it is all fun.

13. We found a super awesome old antique elevador that still works. I
made sure to take a video of it working. It has 2 gate doors and
everything.

14 The awesome elevador is right next to a bull fighting ring. We
would go to a bull fight on P day, but they don't have them on Monday
and the last one they had in the area, someone died, so it might not
be the best idea.

15. Our house used to be known as the worst house in the mission, but
now it is starting to get better. Elder White and his companion before me
cleaned it up really good, and Elder White and I are still working on
it.

16. I skipped number 11

17. I bet you went back to check to see if I missed number 11

18. I have to go.

Love

Elder Hope

Monday February 13, 2012

Dear family and friends,

It is transfers again, and we don't know anything yet . . .how sad. We will try and send a quick message when we know something, if not, I will have Sister Lund send you a message ( our Elderly couple here that treats us like their own kids ) The Lunds told us that if we go to Huntsville after our missions, they will be willing to host us at their house for a double date dinner (they said they won't arrange our dates for us though). they are super cool, and I love them to death.

Well, we also had a baptism yesterday for a lady named Mimi. She technically lives in our area, but Elder Da Silva (one of the 4 elders in our house), taught her for the whole transfer before I got here (he has been here one more transfer than me), and so we gave them the number, but I still count it as one of "my Recent Converts" . . . God still knows. We had another baptism planned the same time with Mimi for a kid named Nuno. He is 24 years old, but then he called us litterally 30 minutes before the baptism and told us that he will not be baptized because he was getting pressure from his family. It was sad to lose that baptism, but I am glad that everything is working out. We will be teaching him tonight.

I had the best division ever this last week too, with Elder Losee, from Delta, Utah. I was his District Leader when I was in Ermesinde and he was in Guimerães, and then I am his Zone Leader in Miratejo, and he is the District Leader in Seixal (one of our districts), so I brought him to Miratejo and we had a blast. First off, we went to Jason and Keila's house. Keila is going to Switzerland, so we went to say goodbye and see if we could help in any way. She made us a yogurt cake and told us thanks for everything. She wants to be baptized, but she can't because her and Jason aren't married, and Jason wants to hold off on marriage for a little bit, then We went to a new family that we are teaching, and I told them that Elder Losee is the Elder that sings really well, and had him sing a solo for us. He actually does sing really well, I didn't know that, but he does, and When Elder Ellsworth returned, they told Elder Ellsworth that Elder Losee sings better than him. It is sort of funny.One thing about Portuguese people is that they are very blunt and don't have any shame to say what they think, but they also get offended quite eaisly. They all call elder Da Silva the fat Elder, but he really isn't fat at all, but thats what they call him. Later that night, Nuno passed the interview (the one the fled from the baptism) and then the Sisters from Almada came into our chappel. We found out that they had been robbed at Gunpoint (Sister Thomas still thinks it was a fake gun), and the bandit only took their cellphone and nothing else, so they came to our area to try and find us, the other Miratejo Elders, or the Lunds to get ahold of the mission, and we just happened to be at the chappel.

I am going to send pictures to finish out, but we are going to try and save some of our time so that we can send one more email tonight about transfers.

Love,

Elder Hope

 

P.S. I am going to Setúbal 2B with Elder White, I don't know anything about him, but I I will be a district leader there. I am so excited that I am going to be a District Leader, the last 3 transfers, zone leader has worn me out

 

Monday February 6, 2012

Dear family and Friends,

This week has been one heck of a week. It started out by helping Ireneu (our recent convert) find a place to live for the time being. He was kicked out of his house because he was baptized and forced to sleep in the road one night, until we finally found him. We gave him food, and got ahold of bishop to figure it out with him. He moved in with other friends in another ward, and will be attending church there from now on. These friends are looking at being baptized too in Amadoura.

Later on monday night, we marked a guy to be baptized named Manuel. He was struggling with the word of Wisdom and was hospitalized for detox. Something I don't understand is why the doctors let him smoke 5 ciggarettes a day during detox, maybe the nurses in the family can explain it to me, but it simply doesn't make any sense to me. So we went to the hospital to get him interned, and it was an experience to see the wonderful socialized health care system. He said he was treated like a king, and I say he was treated like a slave. So to start, they signed in to the ER (because that is the only place he can be signed in, even though he was going to detox, and he had an appointment) and we waited for about an hour or so until he was called to Triage, where they determine how severe it is and then he was sent back to the waiting room to wait to be interned for another hour and a half or so. During that lovely 2.5 hours only 3 ambulances came up, and 2 were people that had died. and there were only 20 people or so in the waiting room. They also decided to clean the floors while I was there, and I could have done a better job than they did in half the time with only water and no soap. They buffed the floors with black, dirty water, which I am sure is super sanitary, and then they mopped it with the same water. They put some soapy thing on the ground, I am sure didn't help any, because I do not think they knew what they were doing. We did meat a guy named lucas that came in right after us, who had broken his wrist, but unfortuanately, by the time we left, he was still waiting on Triage, but he recieved the first lesson and read about half of 1st Nephi, too bad he lives in Seixal.

On Tuesday night, we invited a boy named Nuno to the Youth Center, and he came. At the end Irenu was telling him how legit his baptism was, and he asked to be baptized. On wednesday we marked him for the 12th and he got a super strong answer to his prayer. We prayed with him and he started "Father in Heaven, Good Afternoon", and he didn't know what was going on, he just tried and tried to explain it, but he couldn't. He came to church on his own, and he is set and ready for baptism.

Tuesday we had interviews with president. He started out really interersting and told us that every day the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ have prepared a lesson for us to learn, it is our responsibility to go to the class and learn the lesson. He really understands the scriptures in a different way than others. He understands that the purpose of life is to be close to christ, and he takes that seriously, and every conference he tells us that we come closer to christ in 5 ways, Faith, Hope, Charity, baptizing, and confirmations.

I have learned that no matter what happens, god is with us.

anyways, I hope everything goes well with y'all

Elder Hope

Monday January 30, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

This will be a short email.

I sucessfully got sick this week and we have interviews with president tomorrow. My stuffy nose turned into a fever of 101 and I was out most of yesterday and today I get to rest most of the day. Elder and Irmã Lund (the couple missionaries) is taking care of me.

This last week we did a division with Costa de Caparica and we started teaching a lady the Plan of Salvation, and we walked out of that lesson and we marked her for the 19th of February.

This last week was actually pretty rough. Most of our investigators decided they didn't want to meet with us more, and the ones that do, weren't home.

We are teaching a family named Sandra and José that are coming along really well, they were sick on sunday, so they weren't able to come to church.

I'll talk to y'all next week,

Elder hope