It is good to note that this week has been very eventful. I have noticed that the 2nd half of my mission has been much more fruitful than the first half in terms of baptisms.
On monday we went bowling with our brasilians and we are going to go again today. I somehow won with a score of 128, and I got a turkey!!!, I was shocked, but it was cool. That night we marked a lady named emilia for baptism for the following sunday. She is the mom of Carlos Ribeiro that was baptized 8 days ago. We talked to bishop and he said he would interview him for the priesthood so that he could baptize his mom.
On tuesday we had zone conference with President Fluckiger. I had the task of going and ordering from Subway for 42 missionaries. I bought 42 footlongs, and as luck would have it, Irmã Fluckiger told me I ordered too much food. So to announce that the food had arrived, I told everyone that Irmã Fluckiger had little faith in us to eat all the food. We ate it all. That night I got to go to some meetings with the stake presidency and the mission president. We learned that there was investigator marked for baptism in our zone that lived in our area, but was going to church in Maia (another area). WE were told to take care of the situation, and help her go to church in Foz de Douro.
Wednesday Carlos had his interview for the priesthood and passed with flying colors. He is the most elect man that I know. The bishop gave him the priesthood in action book, and he has almost finished it. We were on a division with Póvoa de Varzim and I stayed in Foz. My goal was to help the greenie. We found a lot of cool people and I don't think I have contacted so many people before. I told him we would not knock doors, and we didn't. We had a nice argument with the elders in maia about their investagator. I donºt care about the number, but I was worried that she couldn't get a temple recommend or a calling in the other ward. We promised them the number, but they wouldn't budge.
Thursday Presidente got involved and resolved most of the problem. we found a lot of cool people that don't live in our area, but we stayed optomistic. A member named Julia just had her daughter move into her house, so we are really excited to teach her.
Friday I went to ermesinde on a division. Right before going into the interview, the lady said that she was going to leave the church and never come back because of family pressure. we didn't get the interview done but she finally agreed to come back to chruch. I went to jaime's office and we got a lot of things figured out with our problem from maia and for a car when you come to portugal. Emilia got super excited to pass her interview.
Saturday we did the interview for Katia, the lady that lives in Foz, she lives literally 5 minutes from us walking and reallçy close to the foz chapel. WE had correlation and had 2 baptisms marked for sunday, from Emilia and Katia. We called bishop, and he was cool with all of that.
Sunday we had a confusion at church. We had half a hurricane outside, and there were a lot of people that showed up late to church, including Carlos and Emilia. Luckily Sacrament is last. We introduced Katia to the bishop and the bishop and he started ripping our heads off for 2 baptimal services and that it doesn't work for him and such. Emilia is old and can't come back at night, so had to go right after church, and Katia has friends in Maia that wanted to come, so we sort of had to do it that way. So bishop ripped us apart and elder Harvey took Katia away. Bishop then called the two of us in and told us we can't cook in the chapel with the members. We said ok, but he kept trying to rip us apart. We said OK, we understand, we wont do it again, He continued. Finally we picked him apart by asking why he cooked with all the members 5 weeks ago to try and show him we understand. He said "Não vamos buscar aquilio" or in other words, I don't want to talk about that. So we sit down in priesthood and a lot of people are still late, so he called us in and bishop called us to go and talk to him. He told us carlos couldn't get the Preisthood because he was late to priesthood and that we can't have 2 baptismal services and ripped us apart. He told us we have no love for the people, because we are just throwing people in the water and then forgetting about them (all of our recent converts were at church) and Just ripped us a new one again. I don't know what was going on. We called the stake presidency and after 10 minutes of speaking to the stake he allowed carlos to get the preisthood. Needless to say Bishop won't even talk to us now, because we called him out with the stake since he wouldn't listen to us. We spoke to president fluckiger and he told us to be patient but that with everything he was saying and doing we did the right thing. In the end of our confusion, Carlos baptized his mom!!!!!
have a great day
Elder Hope
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