BATISMO: EAT, SLEEP, BREATH

I feel like presidente tavares is making an army of baptizing machines here in the Portugal Lisboa mission. I will say that the standards are high and demanding in this mission which has caused all of us to strengthen and utilize our faith more that we thought possible. 

He has so much faith, and is doing all that he can to help us strenghten and develop our faith to the point that we see the miracles of the Lord flood into our lives.

So basically our focus this week was strengthening our faith even more so that we could see baptisms happen. We were inviting everyone to be baptized! President has put a huge focus on marking people for baptism in the first lesson, so we were doing that as well as just inviting people in the street to be baptized. We were able to mark 2 people to be baptized this week, so now the challenge is preparing them to get to that point.

Our last Pday was cut down to only 2:00 because we had to do a 4 hour planning session on how we would improve our work. From that point on we have been working as hard as we can and exercising our faith to the best of our abilities. 

We still haven´t seen any incredibly large miracles, but there have been countless tender mercies from the Lord this week.

We had divisions with Sister Tilton and Sister Hansen once again. They came to our area to work, and I don´t need to say a whole lot more other than the fact that I absolutely love working with Sister Tilton. That´s not really new news though.

That night we had a dinner planned with the Young Women in our branch- There are only 2- so we made cafe rio and then actually gave them a missionary/personal progress goal to work on. Luckily we had 2 extra sisters because our young woman are INCREDIBLY quiet. It was a bit painful trying to make conversation with them, but it was fun all the same.

We met some pretty cool new people this week. I will talk about José Lagarto and Luisa.

José Lagarto was a contact that we made in the street. He is an incredibly nice man, a little bit soft spoken, with the most beautiful Portuguese son I have ever seen. 

I don´t think I have ever wanted to steal a baby so much in my life.

Fransisco (The Son) is only 20 months old and has the cutest curliest hair I have ever seen along with the thickest eyelashes. Oh my goodness. I died. 

We were able to have a lesson with him in one of the parks near our church. He isn´t a very religious man, but he was super nice, and accepted everything. I was really hoping he would should up with his wife to church yesterday, but unfortunately they didn´t show up. We will see what happens in the future with them.

Luisa is the other awesome contact that we made. We were knocking doors last week and she told us to come back this next week. We were able to have an awesome lesson with her! I will say that you can feel a difference in lessons where you know that the person really wants to hear and learn and know for themselves and the lessons with people who are half-hearing what you are saying and are listening just to be nice and polite. BUt Luisa´s lesson was definitely a solid lesson. She is from Capo Verde, and when we asked her if she had ever met with the missionaries or knew anything about our church she just said that back when she was in Capo Verde she remembered a missionary whose name was Elder Frango that was very loved within her neighborhood. She has so much curiosity and it was clear that she was very interested in our message. We marked her to be baptized, but the only problem is that she works almost every sunday. So fam....WE NEED YOUR PRAYERS! Please pray for these people that they will be able to come to church:

1. Mariana and Maria

2. Carmin, Luis e Familia

3. Toni

4. José

5. Luisa

I would really appreciate it if you could all include these people in your prayers :)

Let me just talk about Toni for a second as well. Toni is So cool!!! And I know he is going to be baptized. I have absolutely no doubts, but he too works a ton and hasn´t been able to make it to church. He goes to work at 5:30 in the morning and works until 9:00 at night everyday. That has make it incredibly hard for us as well to be able to meet with him because we have to be in our house at curfew and he lives a good 1/2 hour from our house. But this week we were able to meet with him 3 times! MIRACLES!!! One of those times required that we sprinted the mile+ back to our house to that we could make it there on time, but it was totally worth it! He works so hard and doesn´t complain about a single thing. I am determined to see that man baptized before I leave. We will be meeting with him again tonight, so maybe I will try and take a picture for you guys. 

As you can see it was another busy week. We haven´t had time to think about anything else other than these people. and I am so grateful for that. I love serving these people, and I love being able to be the instrument that brings other people unto Christ. 

This church is true!

Paz e Bênçãos!

-Sister Selk

I made café rio for the moças in our branch in return for the dinner they made us a few weeks ago. It turned out pretty dang good!

Copy and Paste

"Well the title of this email basically sums up the week.  It has been raining a lot here... and for some reason it seems like nobody is home and nobody wants to receive us... Haha So basically we had a nice little trial of just putting our shoulder to the wheel and working as hard as we could with our umbrellas in the rain! «-- Except we don´t even own an umbrella."

That was the first few lines of Mason´s last email, which I thought summed up our week perfectly. haha Funny how the Lord works.

If you all just want to go read his email, you will get a pretty good idea of what we experienced here in Montijo this week. We were trying to work super hard towards the goals that we had made, but everything seemed to slip through our fingers.

We tried contacting our golden family from last week, but every time we passed by the 14 year old son was the only one at home. We honestly were trying so hard! We actually ran into their son on the way home from the zone conference we had this week on the bus. And as we approached the stop closest to his house I made the decision to again try and meet with this family again. It was pouring rain, we had our huge area binder with us, and we were pretty excited to just go home, eat something, change into clothes suitable for rain, and then go to work again, but I was determined to meet with the family. We walked with Ruben to his house, but again nobody was home. It was a super bummer, but I am sure we will have success this week.

Like I mentioned, we had our Zone Conference this week. It was super good. I cannot even begin to describe my love for Presidente and Sister Tavares. I haven´t talked about them enough, but they are absolutely incredible people. I was able to have a good little interview with Prez. He asked that he interview me first, which was nice because he was able to take a little bit more time to give me some good advice about our area. After Sister Tavares came up to me, and we started talking. We ended up being the last people to leave the conference because we spend a good hour or more talking to her and just trying to soak in all the advice we could from her.

It was nice to receive a little bit of parental guidance.

I don´t have much more to report since this week was a slower one, but get ready for next week, because I am certain we are going to see miracles flooding into our work here in Vasco.

Love you guys! Thanks for all the love and support. Fiquem Bem.

Paz e Bênçãos

-Sister Selk

Something extraordinary

There was no denying the presence of the Lord in he work this week. It was a pretty normal semana with some extraordinary moments.

I wil give you a little update on some of the people that we are teaching since it has been awhile. First off, the two people that we had marked for baptism- Toni and Denilson.....well unfortunately they absolutely fell off the face of the planet! We had tried to get in touch with them and they are nowhere to be found, so because of that we were a little bummed this week. We went from having several people marked for baptism to having.....none. But luckily we went on divisions this week and Sisters Carver and Aiono came from Barreiro to come work with us in our area! They are both only in their 3rd transfer, but they are little missionary power houses!! I went with Sister Aiono to work in Pinhal Novo, and left Sister Andrew worked here in Montijo. We had a super good division! Sister Aiono and I went to an Irmãs house there in Pinhal Novo and had a lesson with her, Paulo, and another recent convert Paulo that was actually baptized in other ward but lives in our area...long story.... but during that visit, we were getting started and I asked Paulo how he was coming along on the Book of Mormon reading chart that we had given him the last time we talked with him, and he was like "Oh good, the only problem is that I finished it."

I was thinking he meant the chapter that we had left with him to read, but nope.

He finished the WHOLE book of Mormon.

I literally just jumped up from my chair and walked out of the house! hahah I was so impressed! I couldn´t believe it! He is incredible!

The rest of the week was pretty normal. We decided we needed to focus on finding new people, since all of the people we were teaching flaked out on us. It was a bit of a draining week to be honest, and there were a few days that I was EXTREMELY tired. I don´t know what my problem was, but I could hardly stay awake to save my life! Saturday afternoon was one of those days, and I remember saying to Sister Andrew that morning that we were going to knock on someone´s door that day and they were just going to open it and let us right in and we were going to have a miracle. (This by the way has never happened before on my mission) I have gotten invites to come back, but no one has ever just let us in right on the spot. Well after having a really slow morning of work, we came home at lunch and all I could think of was how much I would just like to sleep the rest of the day. And then I thought of the atonement, and whenever I have moments like this, the phrase "It was never easy for Him (Christ), Why should it be easy for you?" pops into my head. And to be honest that was about the only thing that was giving me energy to go back out and work some more. We walked to one of the furthest areas in Montijo after that to try and see if Toni was in his house. He wasn´t, so we decided to knock yet again another apartment building. It was about 8:45 when we knocked on Porta 2E.  I didn´t remember this before I knocked the door, but only about a week or 2 before we were searching for a less active member in our ward list which just happened to be the neighbor of Porta 2E. When we came up to knock the door there was a family that was at the door talking to some other people. We said hi, and had a short little conversation, but didn´t want to interupt the conversation they were having with the others

I had completely forgot about this, but then on Saturday We knocked on the door, and I saw their faces and realized I had already seen them before. I asked them if they remembered seeing us the other day, and then introduced ourselves as the missionaries of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. And then continued to explain that we had a message that we knew would bless their family.

I could not believe it when I finished talking and the mother stepped to the side, opened the door further, and invited us in. I just looked at sister Andrew like "What is going on!!!!" 

I can´t even begin to explain what happened next. It was literally the most incredible, and by far one of the coolest experiences I have had on the mission. 

We entered the home of this beautiful family: Carmin (mom), Luis (dad), And 4 children. They invited us in and we all sat around the table. I love teaching families, but I will admit that at times it can be a little difficult to feel the spirit as strong when the children are running around, or playing with their toys etc. But with this family it was completely different. 

Before we started Carmin went and grabbed a book and laid it on the table and told all her family to come and listen. Well, it turns out that the book that she layed on the tabled was the Book of Mormon. The elders had given it to her about 3 years ago when she was living in Pinhal Novo, and she explained a whole other miraculous circumstance that I wish I had time to explain, but just know that the Lord completely prepared this family!

We decided to explain the plan of salvation to them. I have a puzzle that I like to use and I began to lay out the parts on the table. We began to explain, and this family was 100% attentive. They have one son that is 14, 2 twins that are 9 years old, and then another son that is 4. The spirit was so stong as we explained what God´s plan was for them. At one point Carmin asked a question to see if she was understanding everything that we were explaining correctly, and the question she asked was so intelligently put that I couldn´t help but smile and think "THEY GET IT!" There were so many miracles that happened in that lesson and I really can´t describe all of them. At one point (Actually basically during the whole lesson) Sister Andrew and I were completely in tears, at another point their 9 year old daughter was in tears, and just overall it was one of the neatest experiences of my mission. This family is incredible! I have so much hope for them, and I know that they are going to be baptized!

I have become a huge believer in the phrase "Where one door closes another door opens." I know that the Lord is preparing the people. There is no doubt in my mind. I love this work, and I am extremely grateful for the savior and the amount of love he has for each one of us.

Hope you guys have a great week! Love you all!!

Paz e Bênçãos!

-Sister Selk

Divisions!! Also, don´t worry mom, Alfredo is still here and cooler than ever.

Lunch today: Smoked salmon and pineapple tosta.