Dear Everyone,

 

If there is anything that I learned from this week it was that the grace of God is very really and very powerful. Here are some excerpts from the Bible Dictionary of the word `Grace:´

 

     The main idea of the word is divine means of help or strength given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ... Divine grace is needed by every soul... however, grace cannot suffice without total effort on the part of the recipient. Hence the explanation «It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.»

 

Summer has begun in Portugal! The past couple of weeks have been hot enough to need to wear sunscreen and a pair of sunglasses, which makes the days even more exhausting than usual. During Weekly Planning on Friday (which was a very spiritual experience I will tell later) My body was overcome by heat exhaustion and I began to vomit. We stayed inside for the afternoon so that I could recover and I honestly felt like my internal organs were baking inside my chest with no way to cool down. As I was laying down with the fan on the Lord taught me something.

 

I was amazed at how amazing the human body is. What a beautiful machine the Lord created! It is outstanding that normally I don´t need to consciously control my breathing and heart rate. What as miracle life is!

 

When I felt good enough to work, we took it easy, but the Lord taught me a second lesson. As we were walking around or sitting on a bench, etc. I felt my bodily pains and my emotional frustration. However as we contacted people or entered a lesson the pains left and the Lord carried me through, giving me the words to say, the questions to ask and a clear mind to understand how to help. Never before have I felt the grace of God that strong in my life! To be honest I really am not worried about my health because I know that if I take care of myself things will all work out. When I was set apart by the Stake President, He blessed me with good enough health to stay in the mission and to perform well. How grateful am I that the Lord always keeps his promises!

 

I also  learned another lesson... Perhaps this is kind of a side note, but I learned why Sisters only serve for a year and a half while Elders serve for 2 years!

 

Okay, so other than throwing up, Weekly Planning was really spiritual this week as we were making plans to mark people for baptisms. Our baptism goal for the week is 3- a goal I have not set for a long time. We were really feeling that our investigators are getting ready for some serious changes in there lives, so we started presenting dates for baptism like crazy. Rui is a friend of a recent convert that has gone to church 3 times in a row. We have been having a hard time meeting up with him, so we grabbed him after church to talk a little bit. We explained the Restoration, he actually understood, and we invited him to be baptized on the 25th. He said yes! We hope that his testimony can continue to grow and we can meet with him more this week.

 

Tavares is basically a skinnier version of Obama. He is from Guinea and moved to Portugal in hopes to gain money for his family, but now there is a Coup in Guinea so he can´t send money very well. We had a great lesson with him last night and he said that he wanted to meet with us every day! We invited him as well to be baptized on the 25th, but he said that he would be more comfortable with the 1st of June. We are really excited.

 

I love you guys so much and I am so grateful for all that you are doing to support me.

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

What a fun Mother´s Day call! I really enjoyed talking with those of you that were there! That was just what I needed.

 

This week was truly a miracle. I can´t even come to describe how much of a miracle it was! I´ll just go by days to make things sound right. Keep in mind that at the beginning of the week we had 2 people marked for baptism (Maria de Carma and Jorge)

 

Monday: P-day. We went to the mall to buy sandals for Sister Gidney, which was fun. Then we took an hour nap! In the evening we visited Jorge and gave him a simple outline defining the `big four commandments´ (Sabbath Day, Word of Wisdom, Tithing and Chastity). He accepted and asked us if he could start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning, which we excitededly agreed that it would be a wonderful idea!

 

Tuesday: District Meeting. We gave the Elders an outline of what needed to be taught to Maria and Jorge while we were gone, promising them to bring some Azorian soda in return. We had a lesson with Maria about tithing and the 10 commandments, but she wasn´t feeling ready for baptism... We packed up our bag and slept in the Sisters´ home closest to the mission office. Sleep over!

 

Wednesday: We woke up at 5:00 a.m. to get to the airport by 6:00, promising the office Elders some Azorian cookies, and be on the airplane to Terceira Island at 8:00. When we got to the Sisters there, one of the sisters had really bad side pains and had to go to the clinic at the hospital. For some reason it didn´t work out to divide in this case, so Sister Gidney and I went to their appointments for them (a little counter productive, but hey, what else were we to do?) It was really fun to do the work in another area! We met and helped some amazing people. When they got back from the hospital I stayed with the sick sister, and we did practices and watched examples from the district training videos.

 

Thursday: We took a flight to São Miguel Island and had a fantastic division! I was with Sister Bos, from Texas, that was a blast! I bet she will be a Sister Training Leader as well pretty soon. We were able to teach their investigator that was baptized yesterday, which was a treat.

 

Friday: The rest of our division on São Miguel. We got a phone call from the district leader saying that Jorge passed his interview... Whew! However we got a dissappointing call from Maria saying that she didn´t want to be baptized any time soon and that life was too crazy for her to think about things like baptism. Satan is such a stinker! Sometimes I want to grab him by the collar and say, `Stop stealing my progressing investigators! They want to be happy and find Jesus!´ Too bad he doesn´t even have a collar. While driving up to the airport we got a call from Jorge saying that he passed the interview and that he is so grateful that we took the time to help him understand the Atonement. My heart just about burst! He said that the best day of his life until that point was the day we knocked on his door! We caught a delayed flight to Lisbon at 10:00 pm

 

Saturday: We got in bed inbetween 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. and accidentally slept in until 8:00! We did our weekly planning and visited Maria. We reviewed the interview questions with her to see what she was lacking. Turns out she somehow missed the concept of repentance and needs to gain a stronger testimony of the Book of Mormon before entering the water. We met with the Elders to practice everything for Jorge´s baptism.

 

Sunday: We had 4 people in church! Granted one showed up with a hang over, but he came all the same! God really blessed us for leaving our area for so much time. After church the Elders the Elders Quorum President, Jorge and Maria (the Elders´investigator) got in all white! We wrapped up Jorge´s diabetic foot up in plastic and had the most beautiful baptismal service I´ve seen here in Odivelas. We missionaries did a musical number of ´I´m Trying to be like Jesus.´ The Elders´ Maria was baptized first, after which she said, `I´m born!´ It was really cute. Then came the tricky part. I need to take a picture of the Odivelas Baptismal Font. It is literally an old ghetto Jacuzzi  adapted into a font. Almost everyone that is baptized in that font has to get baptized twice due to complications. The District Leader and Elders Quorom President helped Jorge climb the latter, sit down, take of his prosetic leg, enter the tub, kneel down and get dunked. I was praying so hard! Everything went smoothly! That was a miracle.

 

Here is another miracle. Two weeks ago (we didn´t have any divisions) we had 0 baptisms, 4 in church, 32 lessons and 11 new investigators. This past week with half of much time in our area we had 1 baptism, 4 in church, 24 baptisms and 13 new investigators. God takes care of us!

 

I love you all and I am so grateful for all of your support!

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

This week was pretty good! We had Mission Council on Tuesday, which meant that we had 6 Sister Training Leaders from the North to come spend the night. It was fun because Sister Gidney and I set up our aparment like a hotel, calling it `Hotel Odivelas.´ We had left over pancakes from the Pancake Party last week for a continental breakfast. Guess who was there? Sister Giberson! She is now in Matosinhos, one of the highest in the north areas (I am not sure how to say that right, but you know what I mean!) Mission Council was intense, but fantastic. As a mission we are/will be focusing on marking people for baptism and helping the Recent Converts continue to progress. I am really excited because in our area we have both to work on! I love the recent converts here and we are making a big effort to focus more on them.

 

One thing that really touched me from Mission Council was when President Fluckiger gave a talk on the Atonement. One thing that he said that really stuck with me is: If you understand the Atonement, you will have nothing to fear. I really found that intruiging. Knowing that the Lord has a plan for me and for my investigators makes trust the Lord more. I am currently reading the New Testiment cover to cover in Portuguese (I highly recommend reading the Bible in a Latin language-- it makes so much more sense!) and I found a verse that I already heard but this time really stuck with me.

 

Luke 9:23 ¶And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, lethim deny himself, and take up his across daily, and bfollow me.

 24 aFor whosoever will save his life shall blose it: but whosoeverwill lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

It reminded me of my farewell talk. I remember that I said that the reason I was going on a mission was to help others hear and gain a testimony of the Restored Gospel. But now that I have a little bit more hindsight I have noticed something amazing. The more I try to help others understand and use the Atonement to repent, get answers about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, the more I see the Atonement work in my life. I have come to understand things and change more than ever before and I am so grateful. I am so glad that I have this calling as a Sister missionary and I am so glad that I still have so much time left to serve the Lord.

 

Jorge and Maria de Carma are marked for baptism this Sunday. PRAY FOR THEM, PLEASE! Sister Gidney and I will be on our divisions in the Azores, so we will be gone for 3 days. Luckily we have great ward missionaries and Elders, but we will need all the help we can get to strengthen them and help them enter the waters of baptism! 

 

I love you all. Thank you so, so, so much for supporting me!

 

Sister Derrick