Sister Selk: Cover to Cover

Oh family. You absolutely slayed me with the pictures this week. Ahhh.

Needless to say, the wedding reception looked perfect, the cabin looked perfect, and you all looked pretty perfect. I love seeing you all so happy!

It seems like with each week here in Olhão my love for the people here grows more and more. I especially felt a lot of love for the members and from the members this week, which was incredible. It was a week of almoços! We had meals with members 4 out of the 7 days this week! I have decided that if I can just learn how to cook like the Portuguese I will be perfectly content in life. They know how to cook, and my belly seems to be showing it.

Monday night last week we had Noite Famíliar and dinner with the Machado family. They are such a cute family with 2 kids- Bea e Simon. We were able to teach them about family unity, and it was really good to get to know their family better.

Tuesday we had almoço with Rosaria. I don´t know if I have ever talked about Rosaria, but she is probably one of my favorite people here in Olhão. She is a recent convert, just the spunkiest and most hilarious lady, and has a husband who is still not a member, but when we went over for lunch on Tuesday he said he really enjoyed us and we were welcome to come anytime. So we are going to work on that relationship so he can enter into the waters of baptism!!!

And then on Wednesday we had almoço with Paula- another one of my very favorite recent converts in our ward!

We were definitely spoiled with food this week!

So I seem to get paired up with companions that always seem to have health problems! Sister Andrade had a lot of problems with her stomach which at times is a struggle for us, but luckily she is pretty good to go out and work despite everything. I just wish I knew how to help her a little better!! I feel so helpless sometimes. I don't know what the deal is, butI feel like I am the only healthy Sister in the mission and I just wanted to say that I feel extremely blessed with my health! Blessing for sure. It definitely makes the work 10x easier when everyone is healthy and can work their hardest.

Miracle story of the week:

On Wednesday afternoon we were waiting outside of a building for a member to arrive and let us in so we could visit Shana, and while we were waiting we saw a lady with a lot of heavy grocery bags. Anytime we see this situation we are quick to ask if they need any help, but there are a lot of proud Portuguese people. so usually they don't except our help. However, this time after insisting that we wanted to help her, this lady let us carry her groceries to her apartment. We found out that her name was Dalia, and it was quick surprising because one of the first things she said, was "Mormons right?" Apparently she had had the missionaries in her home in the past and knew quite a bit about our church. She was SUPER nice, and we were able to set up a time to visit her the next day. She has 4 kids, and said that they always like to hear our message too, which got us even more excited! We went over to her house the next day, and we were able to meet her 7 year old son Santiago who is just the cutest little boy, and had an awesome lesson with her!! She told us that she had 2 copies of the book of mormon that she had read a couple of times in the past. At first I thought that she meant she had opened it a couple times to read a couple verses, but we found out that she has actually read the book of mormon cover to cover 2 or 3 times!!!!!!

COVER TO COVER!!!

I just couldn't contain my smile when she told us this! She is so elect!!!

I know it is not going to be easy to teach her, because she has a lot of knowledge and has some questions that will be a bit of a challenge to answer, but I am so excited!!! We walked out of her door after the lesson and had to stop ourselves from screaming we were so excited!

We had an amazing sacrament meeting yesterday in church. I just LOVE fast and testimony meeting here in Olhão. I have had 3 here, and they never cease to amaze me! It is amazing to me that even though we are just a small branch here in Olhão, there are never any pauses in Testimonies. Everyone wants to get up and share their knowledge of the gospel. Incredible. In fact, yesterday I almost didn't get my turn because there were so many people that wanted to bear testimony.

After church we were invited to have lunch with the Pintos (President pinto is the president of our Ramo) and their extended family. It was about 10 km outside of Olhão at their Mother´s house and it was so fun! They had a beautiful lot of land with some fruit trees, and it was fun to get to see more of the Algarve.

I don't have a lot more time, because we are headed to Lisboa this afternoon with the....CROSSMANS!!!! Whooo! I will probably fill you in more about this next week. Amo Vocês muito!

-Sister Selk