Ola a todos,

 

This week was neat. The church is doing a promotion called `He is the Gift´ for Christmas and is doing a ton of advertising as well as showing a new clip. It´s really exciting to get people interested in visiting the site! This Thursday we had a division, during which a member invited us over for lunch. She´s a cute, old lady named São that loves to crochet. In fact she showed us how to make a crochet basket at a relief society activity last week. Anyway, we showed her the video by helping her find it on her tablet, and then she shared it with her facebook friends! It´s really exciting how big this is going to be :) For those of you who don´t know, you need to check out youtube.com on Sunday December 7th because the Church is doing a youtube takeover! Woo hoo!

 

Well, like I said we had divisions on Thursday, which was really fun. I was with Sister Cardoso, who is from Porto (I believe that is called Oporto in English) in the north. She actually served here for 6 months! She showed us some tid bits.

 

This Sunday was really special because it was Stake Conference, which means there were people from Setúbal there. Guess what? My gypsy family is still active! Plus some of their family members and friends have been or are going to be baptized! I was honestly shocked because I saw Arlete, a crazy lady I contacted on the street with Sister Giberson. I tell you, she was CRAZY. But yesterday I was in the line for the lady´s restroom and she looked normal and cute! I was in shock. The gospel has turned her into a calm, pleasant person to be around. Isn´t that amazing? I was seriously jumping off the walls when I saw Carmen and Corina again. I also saw Leandro, a 10 year old I baptized with his mom Stella. He was with his dad, who was baptized after I left. To be honest, I have stopped asking other missionaries how my recent converts are doing because usually they only have bad news to tell me. Sometimes it feels like even when you bend over backwards for them it´s only a matter of time before they reject the good word and go back to their old life. It´s also funny that of all my recent converts from Setúbal, the gypsies and a ten year old are the ones that are still strong. Some of my best baptismal candidates have become the worst recent converts and some of my best recent converts were the worst baptismal candidates. If there´s one thing on the mission I have learned so far is that God is the only one that can judge individuals.

 

I love you all. I am excited to see you soon. But until then, I am thankful for your prayers and I hope to finish strong.

 

Sister Derrick