A New Family

Portugal

Dear family and friends,

Well, my week seems unexciting but all the same it was a pretty good week. We are trying to find more investigators and we are getting used to our area. We feel like we are exploring every day areas that I am sure no other missionary has ever gone before (the elders before us that opened the area almost never went into our area because it is really far away, so it is like a new adventure everyday). It has been hot this week. Today is the first day that it has been cooler, but it is starting to warm up now. I am putting sunscreen on everyday, but the sun still seems to get through...so I am becoming red. And the people never let me forget it. Besides the fact they cannot believe that I am Hispanic and can turn red from the sun. But I just comfort myself in the fact that my little companion who is brown is getting burned as well. The sun is pretty strong here. But, we are enjoying it.

We started teaching a family of a mother and her son who is 15. We went over there Saturday night to teach the Plan of Salvation. It went really well. We talked about baptism. The mom (Alice) has some questions about baptism, but we met another one of her sons, who is 17, and claimed to be agnostic, but by the end of the lesson he was saying how "our baptism" makes a whole lot more sense. We invited them all to go to church and the two boys ended up bringing their other brother who is 18. So, it was pretty cool to have lots of young men at church and they were all brothers. They are from Cape Verde and live in a really humble house. They seemed to like church, but the one agnostic had some issues when he heard about the Word of Wisdom--pretty normal seeing as how he is 17 and said he didn't believe in organized religion. But even he said that the people were super nice and "cool" at church. Of course, the elders loved the teenage boys and the ward welcomed them pretty well. So, we are going to keep working with their family. Other than that, a lot of our other investigators have fallen through, but we are going to keep finding the elect.

This morning we had a breakfast with a senior couple in the mission Elder and Sister Lund (yes, they are related distantly to Gerald Lund--I already asked). They gave us a little training about the new Youth Center that is opening up here. To keep the young single adults strong in the church, they have Youth Centers all around Europe that the young single adults can go to that have activities almost every night, family home evening, institute, and fun stuff like that. They also gave us training on cleaning our houses...something I think some of us were in great need of hearing...(I really do love elders :)

Anyway, beyond that, I LOVED the picture mom sent. It was super cute. How long did it take to make that? Anyway, hope you all have a great week,

Thank you for your prayers and support in everything. You have no idea how much I feel it when I really need it.

Love,

Irmã Pérez