Dear family and Friends,
For the record:
1) Mom, I was not chastized by you because I send this email to Bishop Young as well.
2) We have transfers next monday
3) Bishop Young has still not responded to me.
5) Bispo Furtado (in Coimbra) was sort of chapped with us last week (I will explain)
6) Good Job Megan for your adventures . . . When did you get roller blades?
7) Congratulations Jessica on your baptism!!!!
8) Did you notice I skipped number four?
9) Did you look to make sure that I skipped number four?
10) And thus begins my letter to my family (and bishop young) . . .
so to begin with my justification of the story. We called Bishop Furtado in Coimbra and told him that Celeste would be baptized on thursday, and she was, but the bproblem that we had was he said that he didn't know her at all. . . In our defense she had already been to church 5 times, and he taught a lesson with us to her about following the will of god and not her own will. Needless to say she was a miracle baptism. She was a member reference and we taught her the first time last transfer. She didn't like us because we were two 20 year old boys that wouldn't accept her excuses nor have sympathy with her when she didn't go to church because she was resting (I wanted to tell her that the high priests go to church to rest, but I decided not to). So after 2 sundays at church and refusing to speak with us, she asked everyone how she could get baptized. Everyone kept saying that she had to meet with the elders, but we are Americans that don't understand the portuguese culture. Finally we went up to her at church and said look, we just have to meet with you for 1 hour and you can be baptized. She agreeded on the grounds that she was baptized on Thursday during her work break . . . don't know why, but that was her stipulation. So, on Tuesday we met with her with our district leader and he interviewed her and taught her what she needed to know, and she was baptized, the weird part is that she asked me to baptize her.
Another interesting difference that I noted between Jessica's mission and my mission is that with question 4 that talks about grave crimes and such is treated by the zone leaders, the zone leaders interview those people, unless president gives you special permission as a district leader (which I had when I was in Setubal).
This last week I had the privilege of going to another church. They said that we could have free lunch if we went to their church, so we did. Elder Rose didn't want to go, so I took Elder Gooch from Coimbra 1 with me. They explained that when we have the light of christ in our lives, it purifies our soul. . . . and I can agree with that until they sat us down and told us to not say anything and just focus on our feelings. So we were sitting about 1 meter away from another person and they pointed their hand at us with their palm open and shut their eyes. Jo, the member we brought with us and Elder Gooch and I were curious to figure out what was going on. They then told us to turn around and they did the same thing to our backs. This is called Johrei. It is a japaneese word that means light of God. They apparently transmitted light of god into us through their palm with in essence purified our souls. The leader of Portugal was there to answer any of my questions, so without being rude for being part of a frankly ridiculous ritual, I asked him if Jesus Christ saves us. He said yes. Then I asked if Meishu Sama saves us (some japeneese guy that they really like) they said yes. I then asked why we need to be saved twice, and he told me my soul wasn't pure enough and I needed to do more Johrei so that I could feel how they both save us. And then he and another guy which is the leader of Coimbra started debating on why it was necessary, so I think it is interesting that I completely confounded their equivalent of an area seventy with a simple question, and I was actually just curious, I wasn't trying to argue. We then had a really cool lesson with them about the restoration and gave both of them a book of mormon.
So that about sums up my week, my soul was purified this week by a japaneese ritual and we baptized Celeste.
Elder Hope
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