Batismos!! 😭🫂

 

Hi!

This week has been so good!!!! 2 of my besties got baptized!!!! 

We learned in zone conference how to do a better weekly planning, and it has been SO COOL because this week we applied what we learned and we've seen so many miracles. We tried to be a lot better at being specific with our plans for each day, planning it all out at the beginning of the week rather than in the morning, and to bring those plans to the Lord in prayer, so that He can prepare people throughout our days, and put people in our path who need us. I really have seen how important good planning is and how important it is to include the Lord in those plans. Here are some of the miracles that we've seen as a result this week!!

- We were walking back from the church late and this guy in his car yells, "Hi Sisters!" kind of creepy, but we go up to him, find out he used to talk to the missionaries years ago, and now we're teaching him!!

- During our premeditated, planned rua time, we were walking down this street and saw a guy on a bench a little ways ahead. We agreed that we needed to go talk to this man. We said hi to him and asked how he's doing, and he immediately started shaking his head and started crying. We asked to sit next to him and we talked (or mostly me and Sister Smith talked because the only thing he could get out between sobs was his name Andre). We told him that we felt like we needed to talk to him because we are representatives of Jesus Christ. and that we knew that if Jesus Christ were here, he'd be sitting with you as well. We are now teaching our cutie new friend Andre 

- We had a service project (my 3rd service project in my whooole mission) cleaning a members house and we arrived there and realized we forgot some cleaning things. So the other Sisters stayed and me and Sister Smith ran back home. On the way home we ran into a friend of ours who has been difficult to contact recently, and marked a lesson! and then he came to ward conference!

- A while ago, this man messaged me on facebook saying he was a pastor and wanted to learn more about the church but that he still needed to talk to his wife about it. Weeks had passed and he's been ghosting us and we didn't think much of it. But then, we were walking to the church and we start talking to this lady walking alongside us, and she told us she is a pastor and we ended up giving her a Book of Mormon. She then said that she thinks that we are talking to her husband. We were like what who's your husband, and it was the pastor man on facebook!!! This Senhora refused to mark a time to talk or meet with us, but we told her that it's not a coincidence that we found her on the street. 

- We planned some door knocking for yesterday, we brought with us a Spanish Book of Mormon determined to give it away. We knocked for a long while and did some street contacts and nada. As we were headed home there was a guy walking near our house and we went to talk to him and he's from Spain! Studying here! He also refused to mark a time to talk or meet with us again, but he took the Spanish Book of Mormon. 

God is so aware of each of His children wow. 

This week me and Sister Smith had our dinner hour and decided to go to the store to grab some chocolate (pois). As we were walking there we were talking about the fine line of like, talking to people on the street doing contacts even during your dinner hour, because of course we are still missionaries, but it's also one of our only breaks. Anyway we were talking about that, and we were in the store and this old Portuguese man kept looking at our tags and we were like, ok we need to talk to this man. We go talk to him thinking he might have interest but actually, he just kept telling us how pretty we are and are doing an amazing job and then, he grabs my face, a hand on each cheek, and gave me the most sloppiest, nastiest, beijinhos of my life. Not just on one cheek, but both cheeks. I swear I had a drop of his saliva running down my cheek afterward. You can say that we learned our lesson!! No more contacts during dinner hour!! 

Danilo's story!!  I love this man. Last transfer, the Elders from our district came to Aveiro for district council, and then after we did some whiteboard finding! Where we set up a whiteboard by a busy shopping mall and wrote the question, "What makes you happy?" We spent like an hour stopping people, asking them to write their responses and trying to find new friends to teach. Recently, we found out that while we were doing the whiteboard finding, that Danilo thought that he should go for a walk around his house. He told us that as was on his walk, he saw us stopping people, talking to them, and that he did not want to talk to us. But then he heard a voice saying "Stop, and listen to what they have to say." We stopped him, talked to him, and marked a time to meet with him at the church. A couple days later we met and had our lesson! At the beginning of the lesson he was obviously distraught, and he told us that his brother had recently passed away, and that he was a good faithful person, and Danilo wanted to learn more about life after death. I mentioned this last week, but it has been so cool to see how the knowledge of the plan of salvation, the knowledge of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ has changed him and helped him find more purpose in his life and in the life of his brother.a Danilo was sooo prepared for the gospel!!! And ever since then teaching him has been soo easy. 

Last transfer, President invited us for the week to each one of us give a Book of Mormon to someone each day accompanied with a strong testimony. I wrote about this week in one of my emails as well! But we were walking to the church and we stopped this cutie obviously Brazilian lady on the street. We started talking and bore strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and gave her her own copy. She told us that us meeting on the street was a miracle. She said she had just moved here from Brazil and that she was looking to buy a Bible somewhere, but then that morning, she felt like she should walk a street she doesn't normally walk, and then found us offering her the Book of Mormon. Cristina herself told us it was a sign. For awhile it was hard to meet with her, because she was so busy, but then as we were almost about to stop teaching her, she lost her job, and started meeting with us every couple of days. As we were teaching her she had muuultiple dreams. One of her mom, one of us, and she told us that these dreams were Heavenly Father telling her that she is on the right path. Are we kidding??? A missionary's dream. 

Their baptism was sooo beautiful. It was also probably my most stressful baptism. Figuring out the rides, no one showing up on time, even Bispo who was leading the program, but then all the members were bullying us telling us we should start on time, having to give a last minute baby discurso because the member who was supposed to didn't show up. But as they were getting in the water, I had to stop and remind myself to remember how happy and exciting baptisms are!! And how happy and exciting the covenant they are making is!! I love my covenants!! Nothing makes me happier than to help others make them too!!

I think one of the happiest moments of my whole mission was yesterday. Not at the baptism but at the confirmation actually. It really was a combination of many things. but yesterday we had ward conference, and it started with Danilo and Cristina's confirmations. They just were SO HAPPY. They gave little impromptu testimonies at the pulpit after their confirmations and I truly just had the biggest smile on my face in the whole whole world.  I've literally never ever felt a happiness so fulfilling. 

I always get emotional in ward and stake conferences when we sustain the Prophet and the apostles. As the man was reading off their names, it was hard for me to believe that I'm in this tiny little chapel in the middle of this tiny town in Portugal, on the other side of the world, away from everything I've always known, with a congregation of members so happily and faithfully sustaining the Lord's prophet and apostles here on the earth. I'm so excited for conference!!

A struggle I've had my whole mission, is the P-day night blues. Bro it hits so hard every week. You just said bye to all of your friends and family and you have to start another week, doing the same thing you did last week, with no break in the near future. Some pday blues are worse than others, and this week was not super awesome. Even with the baptisms coming up on the weekend, I couldn't shake it! I still have so much time left on the mission! I just want a breakizinho! Tears were shed. Missions are crazy, because they are so hard, and exhausting, but like I said before, I've never felt a happiness and a joy so real and so pure, as I have doing this work. These scriptures from Ecclesiastes 3 have been on my mind. 

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. 

9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? 

10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. 

11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.

 Sister Menden

Pics! 

- Portugal is so photogenic bro 

- Us trying to get tan

- All 4 of us spent 3 hours just cleaning the kitchen guys. The before pic does not do it justice. Look at the pain on Sister Nielsons face. 

- Us so happy that's it's warm outside 

- THE BAPTISM!!!!!!! 

- Sister La Rosa is in the home mtc rn and she got called to serve here!!! And she starts in the field next week!!! Here's me manifesting us being comps.