Dear Everyone,

 

Viseu is a really nice place and I am enjoying it. There are two wards here. Sister Fuertes and I are in the Viseu 1st ward and it is my first time being the only companionship of missionaries in a ward. It is kinda fun! Viseu itself is relatively small, so naturally all of the members and most of the progressing investigators live really far away. João our marked investigator lives a 45 minute drive away, so we have been having his lessons over the phone with the pamphlets. Crazy! But when you´re elect I guess it doesn´t matter, because so far he´s been understanding the message anyway! It´s cute because he has been giving Balbina, an elderly recent convert, a ride to church because the busses don´t run on Sunday. We are really excited for him and we hope and pray that he will be baptized this Sunday, confirmed next Sunday and an Aaronic Priesthood holder the following Sunday! Lots of prayers!

 

We found a great, typical Portuguese grandpa named José Coelho (Joseph Rabbit) in a street contact on Wednesday. Typcial Portuguese grandpa means the following:

- Wears dentures, or has rotting teeth (he has rotting teeth)

- Needs reading glasses but doesn´t have any

- Talks for hours about something completely irrelevant

- Knows everyone on his street

- Retired and single

- Goes on walks for most of the day just to pass the time

Seriously. I can spot one of him miles away! But he is really special because after we contacted him we set up another time to meet up. In our next lesson he took our card with a picture of the Book of Mormon on it out of his pocket and asked if he could have a book of his own! He came to Church yesterday and asked if we could talk to his daughter. We are really excited to see him progress as well. He told us that his attitude has been better ever since we met him for the first time. Hopefully he keeps it up!

 

Saturday was kinda crazy, but fun as well. The ward asked for our help in an 8-year-old´s baptism! I gave a talk and Sister Fuertes lead the music. It was cute.

 

Well, we´re still learning the ropes around here, but things are going pretty well. Sister Fuertes and I have a new catch phrase among ourselves: ´Live and learn!´ That about sums everything up! 

 

I love you all! Thank you for supporting me :)

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

This week has been a true adventure! I had a lot of twists and turns, but it all ended to be fine. Here´s the dish:

 

Monday: I went on a wild goose chase to find and help the Sisters arriving to Odivelas. We were told to be in a three-some until Thursday when my companion Sister Stuart arrived. I showed them the basics of the area.

 

Tuesday: Zone Meeting. We got a really great talk to read about the importance of not being afraid to lance out baptismal invites. It was a really great talk and I´ve been having fun applying its advice. Basically it takes Acts 2:37-42 to the max. Then I visited my recent converts for the last time.

 

Wednesday: We were in a lesson with a progressing investigator, Edmilsan, and all of a sudden the Jehovah´s Witnesses knocked on the door! Awkward! It made for a good laugh. Half way through the day I got a phone call from President Fluckiger saying that I needed to come to his office ASAP. So we dropped everything and took the next metro to Benfica. There he told me that I would not be training Sister Stuart in Gaia, but instead I would be going to Viseu to do the 2nd transfer training of Sister Fuertes.

 

Thursday: I took my bags to the bus station and set off for Viseu! I arrived a little after lunch time and we set to work. Sister Fuertes is really sweet. She is a Mexican-American 19 year-old that is so easy to get along with. It´s fun because she already knows quite a bit about missionary work, so now it´s just the fine tuning. Because neither of us have been in the area for very long we don´t know where very many things are, but we work with what we have and have fun.

 

Since arriving in Viseu I´ve had some pleasant surprises. First off, the apartment is squeaky clean compared to when I got to the other ones! What a tender mercy. Second of all there are some really great investigators, both new and old, that we have to work with! Currently there is a family of a recent convert that are SO CLOSE to getting baptized, but they just need to buck up and decide if they want to really live the gospel or not. You know what I mean? I mentioned the word `baptism´ and they freaked out for 45 minutes! It was quite the adventure. There is also a guy named João (John in English) that we marked for baptism yesterday! We are excited about him. The ward is a much more manageable size and the members seem to be really good, so I am excited to get to know them more.

 

Yesterday we had an interesting experience. There was a French tourist that asked us for help catching the right bus, but turns out that the buses don´t run on Sundays. So we walked with her to where she needed to go. Her name was Cecile and she was so cute! After getting to know her a bit, we came to see that she didn´t believe in God, but knew that `there is a larger force out there.´ She was in a car accident, in which her mother passed away and Cecile needed to have 10 surgeries to recover. We said a prayer with herand left our card and later she said `It was a sign! I believe in the signs.´ I honestly am not exactly sure what she meant by that, but it was such a pleasure to help her. It is times like those where we go out of our way to help someone that needs our assistance- both temporally and spiritually- that makes me feel like a disciple of Christ!

 

I love you all. Have a good day!

 

Sister Derrick