Sunday October 28, 2012

Our week began with the exciting news that Gregg and Crystal are expecting a baby at the end of May.  We also received the news that Jared was offered and accepted a job with Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas.  He will work in their communications systems division.   We are happy with both of these announcements.

Our week was very busy with contacts of the PEF participants.  We also had a meeting with two of our sisters from the Church.  One is the president of a university here and the other is in charge of loans for the students.  Elder and Sister Johnson and Miguel Adriano, our supervisor, also attended this meeting.  We are looking for information to help the young people pursue their educational goals.

On Wednesday Elder and Sister Rose came to the office to get trained in doing audits and we went to lunch with them and also had a chance to visit with them after their training.  They just arrived in our mission in August and are working about two hours away from here.  Elder and Sister Johnson flew home for 10 days as one of their sons is getting married.

Sister Rodriguez and Sister Torres in Spain are doing well with their contacts and this is a huge help.  We feel like we are making some progress with the PEF participants.  We have received some good feedback from phone calls, emails and text messages.

We have had a fair amount of rain this week, but fortunately much of it has come while we were inside the office or during the night.  The temperatures have been quite agreeable, but we did buy a small heater, so we are prepared for cooler weather now.

Today we had our first invitation for lunch with a Portuguese family.  It was a very nice meal, which started with a soup made of carrots, a little bit of potato puree and something like a cucumber.  It was very tasty.  We also had meat, potatoes, and carrots, and codfish fixed with potatoes and cream.  It was much more delicious than we had expected.  The Portuguese eat codfish prepared in many different ways.  When you see it in the stores, it looks horrible and is dry and smelly.  They have to soak it for two days to take the salt out of it and then prepare it for consumption.

I finally broke down and bought some Portuguese green beans.  They looked too large for my liking, but I was told that they were good, so I gave them a try.  They were actually about the same as our fresh green beans from the garden. 

We received our absentee voting ballots this week, filled them out right then and Elder Henry took them to the Post Office.  We hope that they arrive in time to be counted.  Don’t forget to vote!

 If you are experiencing difficult times and wonder where God is, remember that the teacher is always quiet during a test.

We send our love and best wishes to all our family and friends.

Luiz & Sofia Silva, who invited us to lunch today with their 4 children. 

In Portugal many people park on the sidewalks.

This is a large plate--these beans are huge!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

We focused this week on making lots of “High-Priority” voice contacts, which is one of the things that we have been asked to do in our calling.  We still have more to do this week.  It will help that we have our new couple in Spain and since we have such a large group of participants there, Paco has asked his wife to help out starting tomorrow.  Mike has to do the large majority of our contacting because many are in Spanish and the Portuguese here is still a little difficult for me to understand.  I do okay when I am speaking to someone in person, but it is more difficult on the phone.  I have been working hard trying to get our records updated because we have had many incorrect addresses and phone numbers.  All of our students have moved here from another country except for some in Spain and those in Cape Verde.  But now I am finding that some are moving countries in Europe, so I have to be on the alert for those moves.

On Tuesday we had an appointment to get our Visas renewed.  Our initial visas were only travelers’ visas and were good for 120 days.  With our renewal, we are considered temporary residents and are good for the next year.  We will have to renew again for our final two months.  We were fortunate to have the mission Elders to help us with the paperwork and Elder James drove us to the renewal location and knew just what to do.  It only took about half an hour.  We love those young Elders and Sisters.

On Friday we had another video conference with the leaders in SLC and many groups from around the world who were available to meet in that time frame.  The new head of PEF is Robert Gay, who spoke at the last General Conference two weeks ago.  There is a whole new focus with PEF and in the coming year many changes will occur.  Standards have been raised in order for students to receive help.  They need to be returned missionaries, temple worthy, actively serving in a Church calling and also have a great desire to better themselves.  The focus will no longer be on the loan itself, but on building “Self Reliance” in the participants and to help them become contributors in society and in the Church.  The Employment Resources and Perpetual Education will combine and the Seminary and Institute people , who currently have had a big part in training about the program and starting the process, will have much less responsibility with the PEF.  The First Presidency is very concerned about our people learning “self reliance.”  They are forming a new department that will report directly to them that will separate the current Welfare department into two departments.  PEF and Employment Resources will be split off of that department and form the “Self Reliance Department.” There are many ideas that need to be implemented, but we like what we have heard so far.  There will also be more of a focus on vocational learning and less on a 4-year university education.  The idea is to help these people, in a short period of time, get training or mentoring which will get them into the work force and into the jobs that are available.  There will also be service opportunities to work off some of their loan costs.  We are excited about this because we have seen students with big loan debts and unable to get jobs because they trained in areas not currently in demand.

We had our first big rain of the season and it has turned a little cooler, but still quite pleasant.   We haven’t had to get out our comforters yet.  We have noticed that it is taking longer for our clothes to dry, however.  This could be a problem once it gets colder and damper. 

Two Cuties from Miratejo.

An investigator and her cute son.  (I gave him a sucker.)

There are lots of darling children in Portugal.

We love the gospel of Jesus Christ and we are enjoying our chance to serve here in Portugal.  We miss our friends and family and we love you all very much.  Have a great week!

YM President & RS President from Costa de Caparica.  They are engaged .

Sunday, October 14, 2012

On Tuesday we worked part of the day in the office and then packed and prepared for our trip to
Spain.  Our flight left around 4:30 PM and it was very smooth and arrived on time.  Paco met us at the airport and took us to meet Elder and Sister Rodriguez, a senior couple from Cadiz who are serving a 6-month mission in Madrid and will be helping us with the PEF contacts there.  They are staying in an ApartHotel.   This is a building of apartments which can be rented for one or two nights, six months, or whatever length of time is desired.  Paco got us an apartment there for our two nights in Madrid.  This made it much more convenient for him to pick both couples up and return us in the evening.  After we visited and got acquainted, we went to VIPS for wonderful salads.
The next day the Rodriguezs invited us for breakfast.  Then we had a day of training.  This couple has never used the computer much, so we had to be quite simple in our training.  Paco will be around to help them if they have questions, or they can email or call us also.  They speak only Spanish, so it was a little challenging for me, but I was able to communicate some and Paco helped when it was needed.  We broke for lunch and Paco took us to another VIPS because Sister Rodriguez doesn’t like Oriental food.
We finished up about 5:00 PM and then went to the old downtown Madrid again.  I took quite a few photos, as there are so many beautiful buildings there.  Many are so large it is impossible to get the whole building in the picture.  Paco was disappointed as the place he wanted to buy us dinner was no longer in business, but we found another place and had some interesting sandwiches.
We had an early flight out in the morning and told Paco we would call a taxi.  He insisted on picking us up, but when he was half an hour late because he was caught in traffic, we ended up getting a taxi and got to our gate just in time to board.  There’s nothing like a little excitement to get the heart pumping!  Needless to say, our week passed by rapidly.
Last evening we went to a nice production put on by the EFY attendees from Portugal.  It lasted over two hours, with lots of music by the young people and video presentations and remarks by the leaders.  We really enjoyed it.  When we tried to start our car afterward, we got nary a sound.  We stopped Elder and Sister Johnson and with their help and cables from another family, we got the car started.  But now we had another problem, the brake wouldn’t release so we could go forward.  It was finally decided to abandon the car there in the parking lot of a school.  The Johnsons gave us a ride home.  We were unable to attend church in Caparica again today, but we enjoyed visiting the Miratejo Ward.  It is continuing to grow and the chapel was quite full today.
We were saddened to learn that Fletch, our dog for the last 14 years, had died.  A big thank you to Brett for taking care of his burial.  We have many fond memories of Fletch—his rebounding of the basketball, his leaping and twirling when anyone was swimming, and just being a great dog.  We will miss him.
I will include some pictures from our trip to Madrid, including a photo of Elder & Sister Rodriguez.  The gospel is true and we are so grateful to have it to guide our lives and find happiness.  Love to all!

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Elder Henry was quite busy this week with interviews for new participants in Spain.  He also prepared an agenda for the training we will be giving this week when we travel to Madrid to train Elder and Sister Rodriguez who will be helping us with the PEF contacting in Spain.  We will be leaving on Tuesday afternoon and returning on Thursday morning.  Besides the training, Paco has plans to take us to some kind of a community cultural festival there.  So we should have an interesting time.

We took the day on Thursday to visit Sintra.  We met up with Elder and Sister Johnson at their apartment where she had fixed a nice brunch for us.  We then traveled to Sintra which is not very far from here.  We toured the National Palace (where many kings lived and the center of the ancient ruling class) , then took a bus which meandered way up a winding, steep road where we visited the Pena Palace. It is too big to get a great picture (and they didn’t allow pictures inside) but it was very nice.  The queen had about  six rooms designated for various activities or servants, including a beautiful bedroom.  Both palaces are really spectacular.  Pena is almost Disneyland-like except much larger and completely furnished.   We then walked a short distance downhill to the Castle of the Moors.  It was originally built by the Moors when they ruled the Iberian Peninsula during the 12th Century. There is quite a lot of restoration going on there, but it was also interesting.  We then took the bus back down  to town.  We found a place to eat, then visited the Praia de Macas (Beach of Apples) and Cabo do Roca (the western most point in Europe) before returning home.  We really enjoyed this day of sightseeing and visiting with the Johnsons.

Friday was another holiday here, but we went in to the office for a while since we had played the day before.  We didn’t want to visit Sintra on a holiday because the crowds would have been much bigger.

I did a lot of texting this week to remind the participants of General Conference.   With the difference in time zones, we watched the two Saturday sessions on our computer at 5:00 PM and 9:00 PM and of course, we really enjoyed them.  Dad went to the church today to watch the priesthood session, but we will watch the Sunday sessions in our apartment.  I am always reminded of ways that I can improve when I listen to conference.  Now, to be able to follow through with those impressions—that is the more difficult part.  Hope you all enjoyed conference and that you have a great week.  We love you!

Elder and Sister Henry at Sintra

Inside the National Palace

Partial view of the Pena Palace

Entrance into Pena Palace

Greeting over a door of the Pena Palace

At Castle of the Moors

Taken at Praia de Macas