Sister Selk: Going Nonstop

Ok, I am going to try and quickly write a brief summary of all the things that happened this week, but this week was literally nonstop!

We have zone conference on Tuesday, which was combined with another zone. We actually had to go sleep in the other Sisters house because we really had no idea where we were going or how to get there and we live so much further that everyone else, so Monday we traveled to the sisters house, and then woke up bright and early at 5 to get to our conference on time.

The conference was very inspired-at least for me and I learned a ton of things.

One of the things that Presidente Tavares talked about what the diference between "Por causa de...." (Because of) and "Apesar de...." (Despite of). I absolutely loved what he had to say about the difference between the two of them. He explained that usually when the scriptures say "Por causa de..." it is usually when the people are receiving chastisement for excuses. How easy it is to make up excuses in life, but he then went on to describe the fact that if we have a knowledge and faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ then we will not make these excuses. He explained that we need to be "Apesar de.." Missionaries. Despite all of our difficulties and trials in life, we can go forth in faith and do all things in the Lord.

Right after our zone conference on Tuesday, the Sisters from Barreiro- Sister stegeman, and sister Carver came with us to Montijo, and I did a division with Sister Stegeman. It was fun to be able to serve with her for the day! She is absolutely crazy and has no fear, so I learned a lot from her.

We went back to alcochete this week. We had some more success there because we found this darling less active family! Like I have previously explained, you just never know what response you are going to get when you knock on these doors, but when we knocked this door the conversation went a little like this:

"Quem é?"

"Somos as missionárias!"

"Ah Serio?!"

And then we got the most warm welcome from this family! The mom is the only member of the family, and she has 2 daughters that are 15 and 10 who are not members. She is super nice and basically explained to us that the reason that she hasn´t been active is that she likes the church feeling a lot better in America than she does with the people here.....strange I know. She is Portuguese, but says she thinks the Portuguese are too closed off and doesn´t feel much of a connection with them here. I am hoping we can help her understand the importance of church a little more, and help her and her family prepare to enter the temple!

We also had another amazing lesson with a less active this week named richard. I had heard a lot about Richard, and have tried to get in contact with him from when I got here, but finally we were able to have a lesson with him and a member from our ward. We had an absolutely amazing and simple lesson with him. The spirit was so strong and I wish that I could really explain how I felt in that lesson, because there was something different. I truly felt the need for this man to come back to church. I felt a different connection with Richard, and a huge neccessity to help this man return to church. I left that lesson with complete confidence that he would show up the next day to church. Complete confidence. So I was pretty sad yesterday when he didn´t show up, but we are not giving up yet!

There is so much work to be done here, and we haven´t been finding enough time to do it all, so if you could help us with that that would be great! haha

I wish I could explain a little bit more about everything that goes on in the week, because this is really just a small taste, but hopefully you get an idea.

Hope you guys are all doing well! Have a good week. Love ya ´ll! Andem com Deus.

Paz e Bênçãos.

-Sister Selk