Dear family and friends
It is interesting to have time to actually sit down and relax. I actually have 1 hour to relax today!!!
On Monday and Tuesday we went to a big 2 day conference in Lisbon. They invited all of the Zone leaders and District leaders in the country to go and be trained by president. President told us that here in the next transfer or two we are going to be getting a lot of new missionaries and are going to be losing some of the great experienced missionaries. He focused on inviting people to baptism and setting and working towards our goals. He showed graphs of our area compared to the average of the zone and mission, and it was interesting to see that when the zone leaders work well, than the rest of the zone follows suit. He told us the same thing is true in wards, that when the bishop works good and when the Elders quorumn president works well, than the rest of the ward and quorums follow suit. Monday night he threw us out in the middle of lisbon and told us that we were going to contact everyone and there dog. Imagine nearly 60 to 70 missionaries blitzing lisbon. It was great. there were over 200 references received in only 1.5 hours.
Wednesday we had to train our zone on invites to baptism. Since then they are working better. IT is interesting to see the principles of savior helping us all in our life. We marked a guy named manuel, but he didn't go to church, so he can't get baptized.
Thursday we took our recent convert Carlos around with us to teach him how to be a missionary and a home teacher. Carlos is the most elect man I know. One of the biggest problems with the work here in Portugal is that people are afraid to ofend each other by being bold. Carlos is very bold, but not overbearring. It is cool, because he has had a testemony for a while now and has been reading the book of mormon, Preisthood in Action, our Legacy, and the teachings of the Prophet Joseph smith.
Friday, we spent a lot of time with the other Carlos recent convert and Israele. Isreale was having a lot of problems with her family and baptism. She decided that she was going to be baptized and felt so strong. I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to separate her from her fiancé in Brasil, because I know that the church doesn't want to separate families, but I also know that god very clearly responded to her prayers about baptism. Our recent convert carlos opened up and told us that his family opposed him the whole time that he was being taught. He said god told him to do it, and he had to trust in god. His family threatened many things, but they are still a strong family.
Saturday Isreale was baptized. She asked me to get in a monkey suit to baptize her. Luckily I found a really awesome monkey suit with pockets, a collar, and a front pocket. I think it was for women, but I didn't care. Isreale was baptised. Afterwards, she told me that her finacé asked her to pick between facebook and baptism, she chose the baptism.
Sunday we reached our goal of having 40 people in church. We came into Foz with a frequency on a good sunday at 22 people, and yesterday we had 41 people. We went to another recent converts home (from before us) and she and her neighbor got in a fight. We convinced her to ask for forgiveness, and she came back and said that it was the best thing that ever happened to her. They live in such a humble circumstance. They have a leaky roof and our room is bigger than their house . . . which says something.
have a great day
Elder Hope
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