From Portugal With Love

It was a busy week for us. Even though it was Labor Day on Monday in the US, we spent the day at the office here in Portugal. On Tuesday, after working a couple of hours, I had an appointment for my first permanent here. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it is better than the ones I got in Brazil. We went back to the office afterward and then had a visit in the evening with Nuno and Monica again. This time we went with Simon, counselor in the bishopric.

Wednesday we spent the day at the office and then drove to Caparica again, where we met Elders Barr and Peacock and made a visit with them to see Rosa, a lady without legs, and her daughters and grand-children. It was a nice visit and the one daughter was at church today. We had some time to kill between appointments, so we took the Elders to get a treat and then met up with Simon again to make another visit. The scheduled visit fell through, so we visited Teresa, Isabela and Jessica. I sat next to Isabela, who held my hand and smiled at me during the entire visit.

Thursday was Mike’s birthday so we made it our Preparation Day and went to explore some areas where we hadn’t yet been. We drove out to Casilhas where you can take a ferry across the bay. It is pretty cheap to make the trip over and back; we will have to try it sometime. This was in an interesting older section. We tried some of their pastries and bought a few items. We drove to Brandao and Trafaria to see what was there and ate a wonderful meal of Salmon at a little restaurant in Trafaria.

I spent several days this week working up a list of PEF participants whose records need updating. These are students who are now living in Europe somewhere, but whose records still show their address in some other location. We have two men in our office who work with church records, so we will probably have to enlist their help when I have the list completed.

Saturday I had to be at the church by 8:20 to take a bus with other women to an all-women’s meeting in another area. To start with our bus was late and then because of a very severe traffic accident, we were delayed 1-1/2 hours in arriving for our 3-hour meeting. What we did hear was very good. Elder Nelson’s wife, Wendy, was speaking when we arrived. She talked a lot about being holy women and an experiment she had done with several women. We were also able to hear Sister Rasband who stressed that we are all daughters of God. As soon as I returned to the church, Mike met me so we could travel to a missionary meeting with the Johnsons. It was quite an experience to arrive there, but fortunately Mike had studied the route on Google Earth. There were several narrow streets and one-way streets and a person could get really confused without preparing ahead of time. We had a wonderful meeting with most of the missionaries in our mission and Elders and Sisters Rasband, Texeira, Rocha, Richards, Bishop Causse and President and Sister Fluckiger. After our meeting we had sandwiches and ice cream and a nice visit with Elder and Sister Johnson.

Prayers are needed for our dear brother Jerry Henry. He fell several times, was taken to the hospital and then transferred to UC Davis in Sacramento where they are treating him for an infection and an aneurysm (an excessive localized enlargement of an artery caused by weakening of the artery wall).

Remember how much you are loved by us and by our Heavenly Father!