Sister Selk: 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