Ola a todos,

 

This week was neat. The church is doing a promotion called `He is the Gift´ for Christmas and is doing a ton of advertising as well as showing a new clip. It´s really exciting to get people interested in visiting the site! This Thursday we had a division, during which a member invited us over for lunch. She´s a cute, old lady named São that loves to crochet. In fact she showed us how to make a crochet basket at a relief society activity last week. Anyway, we showed her the video by helping her find it on her tablet, and then she shared it with her facebook friends! It´s really exciting how big this is going to be :) For those of you who don´t know, you need to check out youtube.com on Sunday December 7th because the Church is doing a youtube takeover! Woo hoo!

 

Well, like I said we had divisions on Thursday, which was really fun. I was with Sister Cardoso, who is from Porto (I believe that is called Oporto in English) in the north. She actually served here for 6 months! She showed us some tid bits.

 

This Sunday was really special because it was Stake Conference, which means there were people from Setúbal there. Guess what? My gypsy family is still active! Plus some of their family members and friends have been or are going to be baptized! I was honestly shocked because I saw Arlete, a crazy lady I contacted on the street with Sister Giberson. I tell you, she was CRAZY. But yesterday I was in the line for the lady´s restroom and she looked normal and cute! I was in shock. The gospel has turned her into a calm, pleasant person to be around. Isn´t that amazing? I was seriously jumping off the walls when I saw Carmen and Corina again. I also saw Leandro, a 10 year old I baptized with his mom Stella. He was with his dad, who was baptized after I left. To be honest, I have stopped asking other missionaries how my recent converts are doing because usually they only have bad news to tell me. Sometimes it feels like even when you bend over backwards for them it´s only a matter of time before they reject the good word and go back to their old life. It´s also funny that of all my recent converts from Setúbal, the gypsies and a ten year old are the ones that are still strong. Some of my best baptismal candidates have become the worst recent converts and some of my best recent converts were the worst baptismal candidates. If there´s one thing on the mission I have learned so far is that God is the only one that can judge individuals.

 

I love you all. I am excited to see you soon. But until then, I am thankful for your prayers and I hope to finish strong.

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

Before I tell you about our week, I need to say I´m sorry. I Portuguese (this might actually just be a missionary saying, but I´m not sure) instead of saying we chastised or chewed someone out, we say that we `gave them the knife,´ meaning that our words were cutting. I just skimmed my last email and realized that I was a little harsh about the whole trunkiness thing. I´m sorry. It´s just hard hearing about the fun things we´ll do together when I still have to go work in the rain and do the same wonderfully exhausting work that I´ve done everyday since June 26, 2013. Please forgive me for losing my patience.

 

This week was a rollercoaster! We had so many good moments and so many frustrating ones as well.

 

Just to get it out of the way, here´s the bad news:

 

We taught Rita this week and came to know that her parents won´t let her be baptized until she is 18 or 19. We are still going to teach them, but it is a really frustrating experience. Bruno Silva just judges us the whole time and after every lesson lists the things that we are doing wrong. I am really, really proud of myself for not getting in a fist fight with him.

 

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday it rained harder than ever before! Good thing I bought rain boots last transfer! I have never seen so much rain in my life. The streets were like rivers. We stopped at a bus stop to go to another town in our area and got splashed so much that I got water in my ears! We might as well have been swimming! There is a sweet ward missionary, Nuno, who walked with us ALL DAY on Tuesday in the rain and NO ONE wanted to talk to us even though we had set up several appointments. I felt so bad for him.

 

Alright, here´s the good news:

 

Rita came to church! She looked really cute.

We started teaching some part member families! It´s really exciting. Jessica is the sister of a recent convert named Mayara. She has a lot of potential and we hope that she will progress.

Sister Lewis had her first introduction to cod fish yesterday for dinner. It was delicious!

 

Something really sweet happened yesterday. We had invited a less active to church, and we had arranged to walk with her to the chapel on Sunday morning. Well we were half way when we got a call saying that she couldn´t. We had to take some deep breaths. We turned around to walk back when we heard something fall. We stopped and looked around. Turns out a sweet elderly woman tripped on a loose cobblestone and fell. Wow, that was perfect timing! We helped her up and brushed her off. God is so aware of His children, isn´t He?

 

I love you all and I hope that you all have a Happy Thanksgiving. Have a wonderful week!

 

Sister Derrick