Dear Everyone,

 

Transfer day! Sister Caldwell ended her mission yesterday at 4:00 in the afternoon, and now I have Sister Anderson from Colorado as my companion. We lived together in Odivelas for awhile. Ironically this is the first time I have ever met my companion before the actual transfer day. I think this transfer should be a good one. She just came from the beautiful islands of Madeira, where she had the time of her life, so it´s been hard for her to adjust to me and dusty Miratejo. But things will work out, because they always do.

 

Ready for an emotional rollercoaster? Here´s this week in a nutshell:

 

Monday: The Zone Leaders, District leader and his companion went with us to Torre de Belém (famous historical site) for Sister Caldwell´s last P-day. It was fun, but rainy. 

 

Tuesday: District Meeting. It was sweet to hear Sister Caldwell´s last testimony :) we also ate some Rice a Roni that Mom sent us in a package! Yum!

 

Wednesday: We gave a last lesson to Kinita before her baptism marked for Saturday the 27th.

 

Thursday: We sweeped our Area Book and found some good investigators.

 

Friday: During weekly planning our electricity got cut! We called the office, but they weren´t able to resolve the problem on Friday, and the power company doesn´t work on the weekends... Kinita had her interview and passed.

 

Saturday: Still no power, but that´s no problem! We were focused on the baptism. We got the baptismal font filled with warm water, members ready to support, and program printed. But Kinita threw a fit. Turns out we didn´t have a baptism. I can´t tell you what a sickening feeling that was. Later that night we had some nasty phone calls from our leaders. Ouch. Later they apologized, which was sweet of them. No hard feelings :) Joaquim, our recent convert, actually lives outside our ward boundaries and decided to go to the ward that he should even though the chapel is further away. Sweet thing took us out to dinner at a great, classic Portuguese restaurant. I ate cod fish, a traditional Portuguese favorite!

 

Sunday: At church I was Sister Caldwell´s personal photographer as she was saying her last farewells. A cute teenager named Rita came and talked to her, asking if she could be baptized! She has been coming to church for the past month AND WE NEVER KNEW! She looks and acts like a member so it never crossed our minds to ask if we could teach her. Wow! I am really excited to start teaching her and get her wet!

 

I love you all,

 

Sister Derrick

Sorry! I accidentally sent send! Elder Ballard said:

 

`I invite all members, regardless of your current calling or level of activity in the Church, to obtain a copy of Preach My Gospel... Read it, study it, and then apply what you learn to help you understand how to bring souls to Christ through invitation and follow-up... There are practical ways for members to help and support our missionaries. For example, you can tell the missionaries that you are studying Preach My Gospel and ask them to show you what they are learning in their studies... Brothers and sisters, can you imagine the impact if family and friends included things they are learning from their personal study of Preach My Gospel in their letters and emails to their full time missionaries?´

 

Well, I invite you guys to get Preach My Gospel and get crackin´! I want to hear what you guys are learning, and I hope you share that with the ward/stake missionaries and full-time missionaries when you get a chance!

 

Have a wonderful week. Until next time,

 

Sister Derrick

 

P.S. Oh! I forgot to mention that... I´m officially trunky! A week ago I got my 12 notice call. I will return on December 9th. :(

 

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 6:00 PM, Elizabeth Derrick <elizabeth.derrick@myldsmail.net> wrote:

Dear Everyone,

 

This week was really strange, but it was good all the same. There is a woman in the ward whose name is Maria Chaves. She´s in her late 70´s, I think, and was baptized 30 years ago with her kids, but her husband never joined the Church. She invited us over to her house this week. We thought that we were going to have a lesson with her and her husband, so we got excited about completing her family! Alas, when we arrived her husband just shook our hands and left for the other room, telling us not to bother him. But Maria showed us a whole bunch of family pictures, particularly of her Granddaughter Raquel. She thought that we looked like twins! So she called up all her relatives so that I could talk to them, she gave us 4 table cloths (our future wedding gifts), a roasted chicken and a kilo of cheese and crackers to take home! It was quite the surprise! She calls me `Raquel´ now and everytime we talk, she starts crying. Oh, and did I mention that she tried to line me up  with her grandson that is a BYU student? What a day!

 

We fasted on Wednesday. It was a really powerful one. We fasted to help prepare 3 people for baptism. We don´t care if they get baptized now or later, but we fasted to find 3 elects. We actually marked Kinita, an investigator since a few transfers ago, for the 27th! We´ve been finding some good new investigators as well, which gets these people one step closer to the Lord! We also fasted for Sister Caldwell. That poor thing is going home next Tuesday. It´s been emotional for us both to only have her for one more week. I pray that she has a wonderful time turning the page and starting a new chapter in her life. We also fasted for Anne Marie. From what I heard last week she wasn´t doing well, so I thought it would be good to include her in the fast. I love fasting. Man, two years ago I dreaded fasting, but now I love it. Truly every one of my heartfelt fasts have been answered. I don´t doubt this one will be answered as well.

 

We had a lunch appointment with a member neighbor of ours and had also another surprising service opportunity. Her name is Cecília and she is really cute, but got in an accident at the beginning of the year. It has been a long and slow recovery for her, but miraculously she can walk and function just fine. She´s a widow and sometimes we pass by just to see how she´s doing since she´s kind of lonely. Well, she´s not flexible enough to clip her own toenails, so I clipped them for her. I tell you, it was a WAR to clip that lady´s toenails. It took like 20 minutes because they were so long and thick. Man, I better get some points in heaven for that! Ha!

 

On a more serious note, I have had some really fruitful studies this week. I have a goal to finish all the April 2014 General Conference talks before the October Conference comes around. I´m so close! I found a little gem I wanted to share with you all. In Elder Ballard´s talk, he reviewed his last talks (they´re about the name of the Church and missionary work) and talked about how important it is for us to follow up with the Lord´s work. Invite and follow up on how the progress is going afterwards! He had invited us to invite someone else to come closer to Christ. Then he said:

 

Dear Everyone,

 

This week was an interesting one. I was put under house arrest again after talking to the mission nurse because of my fever. She said that my immune system was just exhausted, so even though I wasn´t super sick I still needed to stay inside. It took quite some patience on my part. But I learned my lesson because Sister Caldwell needed to renew her residency, so we went to Lisbon on Thursday and it wiped me out. But long story short, I am feeling 100% better, so I can´t complain. It sounds like there are quite a few Sisters in my same boat. Missions are rough on the feminine body, so I´m not surprised that several Sisters have had to take breather. Our colleagues were really nice and helped us out, though.

 

Once we finally got outside on Friday afternoon, we saw some good things happening. Joaquim Borges is really doing well! Oh, how we love him. He´s totally our Portuguese dad. We normally teach an English class on Wednesday evenings, but because I was sick, the Elders taught. He called afterwards making sure we were all okay. Man, normally we  are the ones making calls like that. It was kinda nice to be on the receiving end this time. Anyway, we´ve been having to clean sweep our area because we haven´t had progressing investigators since Joaquim was baptized. Of course being sick doesn´t help out, but that´s in the past! We´re determined to find and help people progress. On Saturday we taught a pretty good first lesson with a sweet lady named Deolinda. She came to church! She´s great. I hope that she continues with us.

 

I sure love you all,

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

Well, this week has been very interesting. We have had many surprising disappointments, but many surprising miracles! Most of the investigators with whom the previous Sisters were working have lost interest. Their basically dropping like flies! It has been really sad to read about the progress of a great person, show up, and realize that deep down they don´t want anything. Maybe that is the reason for the white wash. Oh well, we´ll just have to find the elect people ourselves.

 

Something amazing that happened this week is that we had a baptism and a confirmation. How did that happen? Only God knows! The Sisters had been teaching a man named Joaquim for about a month, but he left to go to Brazil with some work buddies for a 2 week vacation. While he was here he came Sacrament Meeting several times and to some of the ward activities. The Sisters left a paper saying to call him on Monday, so we did. He was really disappointed, as was EVERYONE at that point, that we weren´t the same Sisters. It was so sad, because he even bought them souvenirs. Awkward. But he still agreed to meet with us. We taught him every single day, reviewing the things that had already been taught, and... Wala! He came to the church at 6:00 sharp in a suit and tie, ready to be baptized. WOW! He is truly prepared. The best way I can describe Joaquim is this: If Dad were 50 and Portuguese, he would be Joaquim. He even payed his tithing right after sacrament meeting and invited us over for lunch so that we could meet his 80-year-old mother that lives with him. We are so, so excited to see him continue to grow. I still can´t believe that it all happened!

 

Another interesting surprise happened on Thursday. There is a woman named Conceição (that´s Conception in English) that gives us lunch every Thurday. Normally it´s pretty good. This week she´s cooking chili! Anyway, last week she cooked a true blooded Portuguese meal called `Dubrada.´ Neither of us knew what it was, but we were up for trying something new... Turns out that it´s a stew made from white beans, potatoes, carrots, sausage and... wait for it... STOMACH LINING. I don´t think there´s anything else to be said about that!

 

Thank you all for your kind support.

 

Sister Derrick