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.

FELIZ PÁSCOA

Well, since Sister Andrew and I figured we wouldn´t be getting any Easter mail, we took it upon ourselves to make an Easter Pot to celebrate. Turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.

The young women in our branch made dinner for us this week as part of a personal progress goal. It was adorable.

Sleep is for the weak.

I don´t think it will come as any surprise that we had another crazy week! A ton of work to be done and not enough time to do it, so unfortunately it has cut into a bit of my sleeping time. But I will sleep when I am dead, I am just extremely grateful for the success that we have been having! I think President has noticed that we are doing good things here in Montijo, and I am sure that it is because of all of your prayers as well that we found out Sister Andrew and I will be staying together another transfer!!!!! I am not going to lie, I was absolutely sure one of us would be leaving, and we were pretty bummed about it the whole week, but then we actually got in on the secret a little early that we would be staying together and we are absolutely stoked about it! It is pretty rare for companions to stay together more than 2 transfers in this mission, but it is just our luck because we have about 3 people we are preparing for baptism!

We are going to get some serious work done this transfer!!! I´m Super excited about it.

As for main events this week.

We had our zone meeting on Tuesday, and I got my training finally out of the way. Like I said before, you know how much I love public speaking, so I was not really looking forward to giving this training, but it turned out pretty well I think! 

We also had our 3rd division for the transfer, but this time I got to go to Mem Martins!!!! I was so excited about it because since I went there every week when I was serving in Mafra, I actually already know a ton of the people even though I haven´t ever actually served there. I served with Sister Barron for the day. She was in the MTC with me, but since then I haven´t served very closely with her, so it was fun to get to spend some time with her.

We visited a lot of people I already knew which was awesome, and even got to go see Joelma and Andreia who go help out Mafra every week.

We literally got home from our division Thursday at about 6, after traveling for 2 hours, and it was absolutely crazy because we had a ward talent show scheduled for 6 on Thursday as well. We ran home and dropped all our things off, I grabbed my uke, and we headed to the church. I am going to be completely honest and say that the hour that we started the activity Sister Andrew and I had NO idea what we were going to do still, and hadn´t practiced anything. (Who has time for that?) So we ended up getting to the church and winging the song Hallelujah hahah oh my goodness, SO CRAZY!!! We did it 2 times through- Sister Andrew sang and I played the uke. It was quite the sight..... But hey, it didn´t end up being too bad for making it up on the spot! haha We also had 4 investigators show up to the activity which was awesome, and we also had a member bring their mom, with whom we will be doing a family home evening this week! Crossing our fingers that we have some success from this member reference!!! 

I don´t have a ton of time to write, but just for an update, Denilson, and Toni are marked for baptism on the 10th of April, and they are probably the coolest people ever!!! Sister Andrew and I are incredibly excited we get to stay together and continue to teach them until that point. Please keep them in your prayers that everything runs smoothly for them. 

We had tons of other incredible lessons and experiences this week, but I am running short on time. The Lord is blessing us extremely here in Vasco da Gama! Our next project is convincing President Tavares that we need a car, because we literally do not have enough time for everything! It is a pretty amazing feeling.

Thanks for all the love and support fam. Love you all! Hope you had an amazing Páscoa.

Paz e Bênçãos!

-Sister Selk

Zone Pride! Miratejo March 2016

Divisions with these Lovely sisters! And I got to see Mariano!!  

Some pictures from our ward talent show this week!

Graziela taught us how to make her specialty dish this week. So Good.

Aleluia

I definitely had one of the best weeks in the mission this past week. It was such a solid week full of absolute miracles!

I had my second division this week, but this time it was with....SISTER TILTON!!! You better believe that I was incredibly excited to serve with her again for even just one day. She is currently serving in a tripla, so we had Sister Tilton, Sister Hansen, and Sister Ditton come to our area. Sister Ditton is in her second transfer like Sister Andrew, and Sister Hansen is in her first transfer.....power to Sister Tilton for training two sisters....that is absolutely insane. She is a powerhouse.

I always get a little stressed about divisions. It is a lot of pressure to try and have solid plans for two people. I have been fasting before every division, and was really hoping to see the miracles from that. I am going to be completely honest and say that it was slow going at first. We literally called every single person we could to try and set up appointments for Tuesday.....We called SO MANY PEOPLE! And absolutely no one was available on Tuesday, so we had no fixed plans. So I stayed up later on Monday night just trying to at least organize a bunch of people from our area book that we could pass by. By about midnight on Monday night I had plans, backup plans, and double backup plans to pass by a ton of people.

Sister Tilton and I ended up going to Pinhal Novo for the day, and basically passed by a ton of people that had previously been taught by missionaries. Although we didn´t have a ton of success with that, God still provided us with some major miracles! Just being able to work and contact with Sister Tilton again was a miracle in and of itself. We work so well together, and have a ton of fun so it is the best of both worlds with her. But besides being able to work with Sister Tilton, we had so many good experiences that day. We were walking down the main street and were going to pick up some dinner real quick when a lady stopped us and asked if we were the missionaries. She works next to the cafe we always go to to eat, and has seen us a number of times, but said she was always to hesistant to stop us, but this time she came out from her store to talk to us! She is a mom with a 14 year old daughter that were baptized in Setubal- another area in Portugal, but then they moved to Pinhal Novo and no longer knew where the church was. She said she missed going to church and wanted to start going again. I honestly couldn´t believe it! It was so incredible! Sister Tilton and I just walked away like "did that really just happen?" Then, not even like 10 feet away from where we were talking to her, we got stopped yet again by a guy who asked if we were the sisters. Although I had never seen this young man before, I knew exactly who it was. President Luis told us about a young man from Pinhal Novo that had been baptized over the weekend. Although he is living in our area, and we probably should have received his reference, the elders in another area baptized him, and he has been attending church in another ward. President Luis didn´t know his name or really anything about him, and just a few hours earlier I had asked him if he had found out anything more about him so we could contact him somehow. He still didn´t know anything, but luckily the Lord has all the information, and placed this young man right in our path. It was literally the most incredible thing ever. His name is Paulo. He is 25 years old and just the most amazing guy. You can tell he already has such a strong converted testimony and already wants to send in his mission papers. He received the priesthood this week in the other ward, but said that he wants to start coming to our branch, so we are going to start working with him!

The rest of the week was absolute gold. After divisions, our work picked up majorly. There were 2 solid days that we had to run from lesson to lesson, and we found and are teaching so many amazing people at the moment. So I am going to tell you a bit about them.

While calling everyone in preparation for divisions, we called a less active member Etiandro. We had never met him before, but we set up a time to meet with him. We got to his house and no one was home which was unfortunate, but then when we were walking out of the building we saw 2 black men just sitting and talking. I decided to walk over there and see if they happened to know who Etiandro was. Well turns out that we were talking to him and his friend-Toni. I didn´t realize but we had actually contacted Toni already before in January, but it was a super fast contact because he had just gotten out of the hospital and was on his way to the pharmacy. Well, we ended up being able to teach them both and Etiandro bore his testimony to Toni, and it was such a good experience. I invited Toni to prepare to be baptized and he accepted. He wanted to come to church yesterday, but unfortunately he had work, so he couldn´t this week. But I am super stoked to be teaching him. He is such a humble man with huge potential.

We also got to teach Denilson and his family again this week. It was so hard having to wait until Saturday to be able to teach them again! But Denilson is still super interested and has tons of questions. He explained to us that he started attending the Evangelical church for a while and had the desire to become a preacher, but then said he realized it was a lot more complicated than what he initally thought. He is incredible smart, and knows a lot of things! We set up another appointment to talk with him again, but this time we made sure we didn´t have to wait a whole week to talk to him, so we will actually be talking to him again tomorrow!

And the final people that I wanted to tell you all about are Sorin and Andreia. This family is so awesome! They are actually from Romania, but have been living in Portugal for 11 years. We contacted Andreia on the street, and it has been a few weeks, but we finally got to stop by and talk with them! Oh my goodness, I am so excited about this family I can hardly stand it! Ahhhh! We got to teach them the first lesson on Saturday, and invited them to church. They had a bunch of questions which I absolutely love! Sorin still has some trouble speaking and reading Portugues, so we were able to give him a book of mormon in Romanian, and I think he really loved it. Andreia didn´t end up coming to church on Sunday because she was at home with her kids, but Sorin came for all 3 hours and I think he really enjoyed it! The members treated him so well, and the best part is that our elders quorum president- Nicolae actually could speak to Sorin in Romanian and told him to call him any time.

I wish I had time to really explain all of the miracles that we saw this week. But basically my level of happiness was through the roof. So good! Thanks for all your prayers on my behalf. I am definitely receiving all the blessings!

I am especially grateful this Easter week for the sacrifice and resurrection of our Lord and Savior. I feel his presence everyday and I have seen his hand in this work, and because of that I know that he lives. I know that he lives for us. He didn´t rise the 3rd day just for him to live again, but he rose so that each of us through him might live. I know this is true. I know he loves each and everyone of us to an extent that we cannot comprehend. He truly is our living Savior and Redeemer.

Love you all! Feliz Páscoa!

Paz e Bênçãos

-Sister Selk

Noite familiar com familia simão!

Are you a Mary or a Martha?

Minha Família!!

Other than feeling like I just spent 4 hours straight yelling my guts out at a rock concert, this week was pretty dang good! Unfortunately Monday night I got hit hard with a fever and I don´t even know what. My tonsils exploded aswell, but the good news is that I think I finally have the 60 year old Portuguese smoker sound down PERFECTLY. 

#quebênção

I spent all Tuesday in bed quite miserable, but by Wednesday morning I was able to get working again! I feel like the Lord has definitely helped me to recover quickly here on the mission.

This week Sister Andrew and I went to discover another one of the secret cities in our area-Moita. We have just a few families that live there, and one of the members that lives in Moita invited to have lunch with her, so we thought it would be a good excuse to go work there for the day. Amalia is the name of the member, and she is just the dearest little thing! She is 60+ years old and I really just don´t even know how to describe her, but I just enjoy her personality so much, so it was fun to get to know her a little bit more.

Before our chapel was here in Montijo, it was actually in Moita, so we have a lot of lost members there, and records from past investigators. I think we are going to try and work there again this week to see what we can do to find these members.

I know I talked about richard in my last email, so I will give you an update on him! We went over to his house again this week (partly to give him a hard time about not coming to church, but mostly to encourage him to come again :) We actually had another lesson marked with Fernando right after we talked with Richard, so at the end of our lesson with Richard we invited him to com teach Fernando with us. I was super happy when he immediately responded that he would, and we all walked over to the church together. I can´t even explain in words how happy I was to see Richard walk in the church doors, and then it just got even better when at one point in the lesson I read a scripture and Richard bore his testimony to all of us about how he felt the spirit so strong in that moment because that was the first scripture the missionaries had shared with him. SOLID! So goooood!

So basically that lesson rocked.

We also found a family this week! Families are like gold here on the mission. It was a contact that we had made and had tried to make contact with these past weeks, but never ended up meeting up with them. Well we passed by yesterday, and were greeted by a guy in super swagg and baggy white sweat pants, gages in the ear, and kzumba going in the background, and that is when I really got excited! haha But in all honesty, I wasn´t exactly sure how it would go down. We taught the mom-sara and two rapazes- lenio, and Denilson. I was definitely expecting Sara to be the most interested in out message, because she is the one we first contacted, but in the end it was incredible because Denilson (the guy in the white sweat pants) was the one asking all the questions. We left the Restoration pamphlet with them to read and in the end Denilson was like, "So I can read this and then write down all of my questions for you to answer next time?"

This is the moment where every missionary secretly lets out a scream and says, HECK YES YOU CAN!

I am pretty dang excited about this families potential! 

As for a little sneak peak into what I have been studying lately. I decided to study the last week of Christ in preparation for Easter this year. There is a good timeline with tons of scriptures to look up in the Bible Dictionary. Today I was reading about Jesus at Mary and Marthas house. I love the differences in attitude between Mary and Martha. Martha is busy cooking and cleaning and doing all the things that need to be done around the house, while Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus just listening to all the things he has to say to her. I realized extremely fast this morning that I am definitely more of a Martha when I need to be more of a Mary. Some times we get caught up in all the small details of life-Making sure our home is perfectly decorated, or the family meal is perfectly seasoned, or whatever it may be- that we lose track of the big picture. I know that the most important thing is that we are striving to develop a Christ centered life. This is really all that Christ asks, so that is going to be my challenge this easter season.

 I am so grateful for my savior and this easter season that we have to reflect upon him, and strive to better our lives to live in harmony with his.

I hope you guys have an amazing week! Thanks for everything you do!

Paz e Bênçãos!

-Sister Selk