Dear Everyone,

 

I am so grateful that all of you think that I am a super noble missionary, and that you´ve sent all of your love and support about extending my mission. But I have to confess one thing before we get out of hand...APRIL FOOLS!!! Wow, I really got all of you guys going! How funny!

 

This week was a rollercoaster! I haven´t felt like this since my very first transfer, which isn´t actually a bad thing, it´s just a fact. This week we had a lot of fire and water. I´ll just outline it in days of the week:

 

Monday: P-day was good! We went to the mall. Four other Sister Training Leaders spent the night because we had Mission Council the following day.

Tuesday: Mission Council was wonderful. I got to see Sister Giberson there! This month we are focusing on making our studies more fruitful so that we can be better prepared and have a stronger conversion to Christ´s Restored Gospel. We also got a sneak peek at the new Distric 3 (training video) that has snipits from missions all around the world. The piece we saw was a lesson about repentace (taught by missionaries with less than 6 months in the mission-- knocked my socks off!) using a careful a specific approach accompanied by the Gospel of Christ pamphlet. Man, it was so good that we applied what we learned that very night in a lesson with María do Céu, whom we marked in that very lesson! Her marked baptism date is April 20th. We really hope that she can come into Christ´s fold!

Wednesday: Zone Conference was fun because Sister Gidney and I gave a training about how to make our studies better. Man! I am so, so grateful for the time I have on the mission to learn how to study the Gospel. It makes a huge difference starting and ending in prayer, planning out what and why you want to study, and then writing out how the things you learn apply to your life. Sometimes I laugh when I look at what I called `scripture study´ before the mission, because it wasn´t very fruitful. If you haven´t already, I suggest that when you read the scriptures, do it that way and you´ll get SO MUCH MORE out of it.

Thursday: Sister Gidney reached her 1 year mark! We celebrated by going out to eat at McDonald´s, where I had my first fast food hamburger is more than 5 years! We later had a lesson with a half Asian, half African man named Deep and learned that he was taught 20 years ago by the Elders back when they had flip charts. Those flip charts must´ve been really amazing because Deep remembered about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith! We gave him a Restoration pamphlet and invited him to watch General Conference at the Stake Center on Sunday.

Friday: Two people entered into the waters of baptism that the Elders and other Sisters taught. I made rice crispy treats and everyone loved it. It was funny because I guess the Elders didn´t explain how to stand when being baptized because Cicilia had to be dunked twice and Gene had to be dunked 4 times! What a hoot. It ended up being great anyway though.

Saturday: Women´s Conference was spectacular. I think my favorite part was simply the fact that the choir had primary children, young women and relief society in it. I think that this combined meeting will make us more united and aware of one another as sisters in Zion. We also watched the Saturday morning session. Elder Holland was my favorite when he talked about the Sister missionary that had a potato thrown at her because it helped me remember that it is all worth it! I am so happy to be here in Portugal helping my fellow men. I think it is teaching me how to learn to be happy. That night we got a less than pleasing phone call. They `gave us the knife´ as they say here in Portugal for not baptizing while being Sister Training Leaders. Sister Gidney and I called Sister Fluckiger, just to have a nice conversation and calm down. She invited us to come to the mission home for the Sunday Morning session.

Sunday: We went to the stake center for the Saturday Afternoon session and then went to the mission home for lunch and the Sunday Morning Session. It was so great. I loved especially Elder Anderson´s talk about defending your truths no matter what others think. The laws of God will never change and will never be `old fashioned´ spiritually speaking. It made me so grateful once again to be on a mission because I GET IT now. Before the mission I was more like those members that `liked´ those comments on facebook contrary to our beliefs. Now I understand that the laws of God don´t change depending on popular opinion. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. We ought to be trusting in His ways rather than our own. I am so excited that I still have 9 months left to learn even more in such a focused atmosphere of the mission field! We were not able to see Sunday afternoon live because it was past our bedtime, but we saw it this morning and loved it as well.

 

I love you all. I am so grateful and I hope that all is well.

 

Love,

Sister Derrick