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