Monday March 26, 2012

Dear family and friends.

 

I am sorry to say that Elder White is being Transfered, and I am staying in Setubal as the District leader and I will be recieving an elder named Elder Fry. I don't know anything about him, Elder White doesn't know anything about him, and neither does anyone in the zone because last week he was in the MTC, so I will be Training this next transfer, which is the thing President Torgan cares most about. He has for the whole time here, prayed more about his trainers than any other possion, including the Missionary Branch Presidents, Zone Leaders, Assistants, or district Leaders. He prays and confirms his trainers before any other thing is assigned, he tells us if the greenies don't have a good first transfer, the rest of their missions will be difficult, because you always will remember your trainer. It just happens that elder Brown, my trainer, is in our Zone now, so I have been keeping up with him. He goes home in June or July, he hasn't decided yet, with the 3 week difference. So I have a district of greenies. The Sister's are a companionship of three and all 3 of them are in their 2nd transfer, and I am training, so I am litteraly in a fun spot this transfer.

 

It will be interesting to see what is going on here. Elder white and I had the Baptism of Sandro this last week and that was a good end of the transfer. His brother, Felipe baptized him, and I confirmed him a member of the church. He was baptized and comfirmed on Friday because he was supposed to go to viana do Castelo for the weekend, so we got permission to confirm him on Friday.

 

Elder Packard and I did a stake out on Saturday night. We did a division waiting for their investagator to get home, so we could do a baptismal interview. It is interesting to see how much Elder Packard has grown too. For 2 hours we sat on the hill above this persons house and talked our missions and how they changed our lives. During those two hours we raced this investigators brother and since he lost, he had to call his sister to find out where she was, we contacted everyone that walked by, but there weren't many of them. Finally she passed the interview, and was baptized yesterday as well.

 

I don't know why this email took me so long to write, but it did,

I will talk to y'all later

 

Elder Hope

Monday March 19, 2012

Dear family and friends,

It's Father's Day in Portugal today!!!

Next monday is transfer monday, and Elder White is really sure that he is leaving, this is his 3rd transfer in Setubal, but it should end on a good note, we have a baptism and a confirmation on Friday of a guy named Sandro. He was marked last transfer and is the one that didn't want anything to do with the missionaries when I arrived, and 6 weeks later, he is getting baptized. He is going to get confirmed on Friday because he is going to Viana do Castelo on sunday with his sister, and they will go to church there.

One of the recent converts from last transfer was sustained this sunday to get the Aaronic Priesthood, and several people opposed it. That was something a little different. His mom even opposed it (but she is an eternal investigator, so she didn't have any say). but apparently he hasn't been acting very good, so there was an interesting confusion. The end result is that on sunday he was given the Aaronic Priesthood. It was interesting because the bishop didn't even meet with the members who opposed it.

Well our gypsie family had the day and time wrong for the church, but José, the dad, said that he was talking to Heavenly Father and Heavenly Father said that we needed to open a gypsie congregation during the week in our chappel. as you can imagine, the bishop said no, and José was content with just going to church on sunday. Unfortunately, he thought it started at 10 o'clock at night instead of in the morning, so he will come next week. José said that while he was talking with god that god told him this church was one of the true churches. I don't think he understood the first lesson, but we will go by and teach them this upcoming week.

Sandro's birthday was this last weekend, and they had some really strange drink there that was "alcohol free", but after the fact, elder White and I decided it wasn't. The members and nonmembers were drinking it (it was some sort of strawberry juice), and everyone told us it was fine, including the members. We trusted the members and it tasted really bad, so we kept drinking it, until I gave it to the members, and told them that it tasted really bad, and I didn't like it. That night I had headache, and decided that we drank alcohol on accident. President Torgan said to ask for forgiveness even though we are unsure if it had alcohol or not. It wasn't listed as an ingredient (I looked very carefully).

We had a lot of fun with sandro this week. Last monday we taught him about the law of chastity and well, guess what?, he had plenty of really strange questions for us. One of our faithful members that smokes told him very interesting things about the law of chastity and about the way that everything is done, I won't go into details, but I thought it was quite funny.

We found an American guy that has dual citizenship in the USA and Brasil. He is in Portugal for 3 weeks on R and R. he is serving in Afganistan right now. He was telling us some really interesting stories. He was in a Helicopter that was hit and 3 of the 7 people inside were killed and the 3 killed weren't given Purple hearts, and he was sort of sad about that. He also said that the US is basically done in Iraq. we only have 2 active bases in Iraq and at the height of the war we had 20. We were told that Afganistan had 20 active bases and still has 20 active bases. He gave us veteran coins from Afganistan and we are going to go and give him an English book of mormon tonight, and he was at church.

Elder Hope

Monday March 12, 2012

Dear family and friends,

I am sort of sad to say that Guilherme wasn't ever baptized, he decided to go out and get drunk right before his baptism . . . that is NOT a good choice, and Mario was also marked, but he refuses to give up wine, so that doesn't work, and he didn't come to church, so those things are falling apart.

This last week, Elder White and I had a really good week in terms of lessons. One of my highest weeks ever!! we taught 34 other lessons! The mission average is about 15 to 20.

One of the ladies that I baptized in Miratejo named Joanna (she was taught by the sisters and I interviewed, and baptized her. I don't count her as one of my baptisms, but she counts me, which I thought was way cool!) was in Setubal, and by a whim, she saw me and yelled at me from the 3rd story window by name and introduced me to her family here in Setúbal. She was grinning so big, and was telling her family that I was the Elder that Baptized her, even though I only taught her 2 or 3 lessons, but every week in Church, I loved seeing and talking to her, so she was super excited that she could get Photos with me and we were really excited to get a lesson with a member present and a couple new investigators.

I am excited because tomorrow night we have plans to go to a gypsie church with some friends of ours. She said she would come to ours. I am not near as scared of gypsies now, but it will be strange, with me and elder white being the only white guys, with plaques that say jesus cristo.

I had a division with Elder Packard this week where we found this lady that we approached and she said, Oh I'm sorry I am sinning, I need to quit smoking. Of course, she was a brazillian lady and she was really cool, we also found an homeless guy that said he would go to the end of the world and back if he could get baptized, but he had to be baptized in the ocean.

There is this lady that has come to church these last few weeks, and wants to meet with us, but really has no time. She brought up at a hi and bye visit that she has never been baptized and feels really good in our church. She also told us that she hates black tea, refuses to drink because her husband drinks and it makes him crazy, doesn't like the taste of coffee, and only smokes 2 cigarettes a day. Also we found out that she is legally married. So she is perfect to baptize, just if we could meet with her.

We got permission to play basketball with the Sisters (I gaurd elder white, and the Sisters guard the Sisters) and Sister Campos de Silva got nailed in the nose, her nose is always red, but It was red after the fact, but she is fine now.
Our new mission president was announced.

Stephen L. Fluckiger, he is an area seventy and some say he is from the Carrollton, Texas Stake and others are saying he is from the Dallas East stake, but we do know that he is from the Dallas Area.

I thought that was really interesting.

I can't think of anything else.

Have a good one.

Elder Hope

Monday March 5, 2012

Dear family and friends,

This last week we ended up marking that "lazy" investigator for the 24th of March and he is actually pretty excited for it. His name is Sandro and he was marked for baptism last transfer but he had problems with smoking and told us that he likes smoking and wants to continue. I told him it was really stupid to smoke (I even used the brazillian phrase Burro para carumba) and he seems to like the frankness. I sometimes feel bad being so direct, but now we have that relationship where he teases me all the time about me not being able to date and kiss girls. . . .don't worry, I have already spoken with him about the law of chastity, and he agreed with me.

Last friday we found a guy named Jarom. (his real name is Gilherm), but we call him Jarom for short. He came to church and we taught him after church and he asked us if he could be baptized. He said he felt so good in church and really wants it for his life. He asked about the minimum requirements, and asked us if we can baptize him next sunday. We will be teaching him every day and it is possible. We told him about the importance of baptism and he said that is what he wants in his life. I did a fake baptismal interview with him and I learned that in church he got super confused with Joseph Smith and the Temple and is convinced that Joseph Smith saw god and Jesus in Madrid while he was dressed in white and married in a temple in New York to someone for eternity . . . so we have to fix that too. But it is cool that he doesn't Smoke, Drink, Drink coffee (he doesn't like coffee or Black tea) and he also doesn't have any girlfriend or anything to break the law of chastity and has said that he is still a virgin . . . more info than I wanted to know, but I found out anyways, which is super uncommon here. . . . sad, but true.

Elder White and I got kisses from a black lady this last week, which is technically against the rules. It was an accident, but hey!, she's a new investigator! We told her as missionaries we can't give kisses, and she was sort of embarassed, but it's all good, she invited us to eat lunch with her next saturday.

This last week we had a Zone Conference with President Torgan, where him and his wife both called us to repentence for playing a game called Magic. (I don't know what that is, but we repented for it)

Well I will talk to y'all next week

Elder Hope

Monday February 27, 2012

Dear family and friends,

This week the spell check doesn't work because someone put the computer in the Portuguese Language, . . . Who would think of doing that? It's ok though, I don't even use the spell check anyways.

The week started off by losing 4 of our strongest investigators and another 4 on the very edge (mostly because of family problems, for some reason they believe that if god wanted them to be mormon, then they would have been born mormon, even though they haven't been to mass in the last 30 years)

This last week we met a brazillian guy from Santa Catarina and we taught him a general lesson and he asked in the general lesson if he could get baptized. We thought long and hard about it, for a whole 0.2 miliseconds and then told him that he could be baptized. We ended up marking him for the 10th of March. He is sort of a strange guy. He is homeless by choice. He lives in a car and has a little garden everything he wants there. He is a happy old man and so I thought he was a crazy until the second lesson with him where we taught about Joseph Smith and he knew the bible really well. He told us that he loves studying the bible on his free time, we gave him the book of Mormon and he has been liking what he has been reading. He came to church and just left on sunday right after sacrament meeting, we had no idea where he went, until after church we found him, and he told us that he thought that was the end of church. He is excited for baptism but is super nervous because he has a broken arm. I love the health care here, they put a cast on his arm for 2.5 months and then are going to take the cast off on March 12th, and he will have surgery to fix his broken arm and then they will put another cast on for 6 more months. . . . It makes perfect sense if you don't think about it!!

There was a guy from last transfer we picked back up this week that was marked for baptism. I called him without knowing his story and just started talking to him, He told me that there was no way that we were going to go to his house. After 2 minutes of talking on the phone we got an appointment and went over there. He tried to hide in the kitchen while Rute, a recent convert, was in the living room. I went into the kitchen after him and told him I was there to talk to him and not Rute. We had a lesson standing, and left with another appointment. We then watched the Joseph Smith Restoration movie with him, and he didn't understand it because it was in "brasileiro", not Portuguese. (I still think it it is a lie because I understand brazillian just fine), anyways long story short, he didn't go to church and we went over there there to find out what happened, and I heard all of his excuses and then told him that we have one word for all of those excuses, and the word is laziness . . . I don't know if I should have said that, but the following lesson that we had was super awesome and he said he will go to church next week, and will actually pray about the book of mormon this time, so I guess it worked.

So we go to a members house every sunday to eat a cake that is his "special recipie" and it is actually not very apetizing, but we eat it and say yum yum, and he keeps giving us more and more slices, well, somehow the sisters always get out of it, and so we are left eating this whole cake that doesn't taste like a cake and trying to entertain this member and his family of nonmembers at the same time, it's glorious.


Well that is all for now.

Elder Hope